Uncle Sam Wants U and S

The dollar coin honoring our 18th president has been issued by the United States Mint. I have a roll of the coins sitting here on my desk, and it brings to mind the story of how he became known as Ulysses Simpson Grant.

When he was born, his mother was confounded by all the relatives offering their opinions about what and after whom he should be named. To avoid offending anyone, she told them all to write their choice on a piece of paper, which she would put into a hat, and whichever one she drew would be the baby's name.  It was her mother-in-law, who had been reading the classics, who submitted the winning entry, Ulysses.

His grandfather, meanwhile, was so put out that the boy wasn’t given his name that the only way to appease him was to add it, and so the child was christened Hiram Ulysses Grant. He went by his middle name, though, and his chums called him Lyss.

The congressman who wrote his recommendation to the U. S. Military Academy didn’t know Grant’s full name, but he knew the families and assumed that he had been given his mother’s maiden name, so he filled in the name as Ulysses Simpson Grant. Grant decided he could straighten it out when he got to West Point.

Upon his arrival there, however, he happened on a list of the incoming cadets tacked to a bulletin board on which he was listed as U. S. Grant. He liked that so much, thinking it the perfect name for an American army officer, that he never had it corrected. His classmates teased him by calling him Uncle Sam Grant, and for the rest of his life he was known to his comrades as Sam.

The Loss of Innocence

I was doing very poorly on spelling tests when I was in the second grade. I generally spelled only two or three of the words correctly. After coming home with yet another poor result, my mother sent me to my room to study my newest batch of spelling words. When I thought I was ready, she quizzed me, then sent me back to my room to work on those I got wrong. It took several repeats, but finally I had those words down cold.  The next day, I sailed through that spelling test with confidence.

The day after that, however, my teacher, Mrs. Mackin, made me stay in the room when the other children went out for recess so she could talk to me about the spelling test. I had gotten nine of the ten words right, a huge improvement. The problem was that the little boy who sat next to me, whose name was Van, had also gotten only one word wrong, which we both misspelled exactly the same way. Since Van always did well on his spelling tests and I didn’t, the teacher suggested that the sudden miraculous improvement in my spelling was the result of my having copied the words from Van’s paper.

I was shocked and appalled -- so genuinely aghast, in fact, that the teacher had to believe me when I explained how hard my mother had made me study the spelling words.

What was really sad was that up until that moment it had never once occurred to me in my innocent young life that there even was such a thing as cheating.

Composers notwithstanding

I heard the Overture to Il Signor Bruschino by Rossini this morning.  This piece is well known for several sections in which the second violins are required beat out a rhythm by tapping their bows on their music stands. 

Composers have also been known to call for using the wood part of the bow on the strings, either striking them (col legno battuto, "hit with the wood") or dragging it across them (col legno tratto, "drawn with the wood").

As far as I've ever known, violinists hate doing those things.  Beginning violin students are warned never to hit anything with their bows, because if the wood breaks, it cannot be repaired.  If required to perform a piece where the bow could be damaged, players will try to bring a cheap old bow to use.

There's a scene in the movie "The Competition" which always bothers me.  In order to show their appreciation for something Richard Dreyfuss does in a rehearsal, the wind players of the orchestra applaud while the string players all tap their bows on their instruments.

I don't think so.  Professional musicians do not bang $4,000 bows against $35,000 violins for anybody.  Not even Richard Dreyfuss.

I'll Take You Up On It

Although I have no recollection of it whatever, when I was quite young I apparently began agitating about wanting to learn to play the piano. I must have been persistent, because in the summer of 1955, when I was eight years old, my parents bought me a piano, and my mother arranged for me to begin lessons that fall.

At my very first lesson, my piano teacher, Mrs. Roberts, explained what was expected of me in the way of practice. She said there was no excuse for not practicing. “Even if you hurt a finger,” she said, “you can work around it. The only way to get out of practicing would be to break your arm.”

The next day, therefore, on my way home from school I fell off my bicycle and broke my arm. Lessons were suspended for six weeks.

A long time later Mrs. Roberts told me that for years she had always given new students that same no-excuse-but-a-broken-arm speech, but after me, she never said it to anyone again.

Whether the Weather Is or Ain't

I recently heard a woman on television say, "If you don't like the weather in Texas, wait five minutes -- it will change!" as if that was really cute and really original.

Everybody says that about wherever they live.  Something else everybody says:  There are only two seasons in ...

... Chicago -- winter and August!
... Texas -- summer and notsummer!
... Maine -- winter and the Fourth of July!
... Michigan -- winter and road construction!
... Alaska -- tourist and winter!
... Florida -- hot and hotter!
... Vancouver -- summer and hockey!

Yeah, yeah, real cute.

Mid-Michigan where I live has three seasons -- fall, winter, and summer.  It goes right from cold, wet and windy March into summer with hardly a 70-degree day in between.  My first spring-less year here I said to somebody, "Don't you have spring here?" and he said, "Oh, sure -- remember last Wednesday?"

This year we're doing the yo-yo thing.  Last week it was 85 degrees one day and 53 the next.  It looks like we're not done with that yet. The predicted highs for Monday and Tuesday next week are 82 and 63, respectively.

But today is supposed to be sunny with a high near 80.  Maybe today will be spring.  That would be nice, especially if it is to be the very last day for life on earth.

In a twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet -- and here it comes

Loyal reader Nancy S. of Bath, Michigan, has suggested I comment on the prospect of the world coming to an end on Saturday.

Yes, there are folks who actually believe the world will end two days from now.  An 89-year-old Colorado "Internet preacher" named Harold Camping came up with the date after combing the Bible for clues and adding up the days.  He says the world will end in fire, which will disappoint those who prefer to have it end in ice.  (You'll remember Robert Frost said he really didn't care which.)  If they were predicting it would end in flood, I'd say they had a better chance, at least in North America.

This is the same guy who made the same prediction for a date in 1994 and is now explaining that his calculations were wrong that time, but he's got it now.

How unhappy will Mr. Camping's followers be, do you think, when they wake up Sunday morning to find they and the world are still here?

At least he won't have to explain why he didn't prepare a sermon for Sunday's service.

Mother Married a Hunky (Part 2)

Prologue: Two Bohemian words figure prominently in this story.  One is bábovka, pronounced bob-BUFF-ka. It’s a kind of poppy-seed pound cake made in a bundt pan. The other word is bačkory, pronounced buch-coody, which rhymes with much-goody. (Trust me.)

One time when they hadn’t been married too long, my folks stopped one evening to visit with my father’s parents and two unmarried sisters who still lived at home. Grandma served coffee and bábovka, and in a sincere effort to compliment the cake as well as to show her willingness to absorb some of the ethnicity of her husband’s family, my mother said to her mother-in-law, “This bačkory is the best I’ve ever had.”

Everyone laughed. My mother wanted to know what she had said, but nobody would tell her.  They all thought it was so cute, and Grandma just nodded her head and beamed upon her new daughter-in-law, accepting the praise in the spirit in which it had been given.

Alone in the car on the way home, my mother demanded to know what was so funny, and my father said, “You told my mother that she makes the best house slippers you ever ate.”

Epilogue: If you're going to pick up one or two words of a foreign language from hanging around people who are speaking it, what are the chances one of them will be the word for house slippers? But I can tell you how my mother heard it, and probably often.  Grandma Knez couldn’t abide seeing people without shoes.  If someone came into a room in stocking feet or, worse, barefooted, she would encourage them -- not so subtly -- to put on some house slippers by pointing at their feet and crying, “Bačkory! Bačkory!”