Songs, The Baboon Congress

Sweet Adeline, Surprisingly

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Today’s post comes from Clyde in Mankato.

When Harmon Killebrew died two years ago, I mourned a bit for my mother. She was a dedicated and savvy baseball fan. It occurred to me that Harmon’s death took away the last popular cultural link to my mother, who greatly admired his play and demeanor.

Then a few days after that my wife asked me, “Who was the Italian singer your mother was so gaga over?” “Jerry Vale,” I answered. Ah, there was one more pop culture link to my mother.

However, Jerry Vale died last weekend.

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Now to describe my mother as gaga over anything seems a large stretch, but in fact she was exactly gaga over Jerry Vale, not dissimilarly to Elvis fans. When I was in junior high I was puzzled and embarrassed by her response to a Jerry Vale song on the radio, which was quite common on KDAL radio in the late 50’s and early 60’s.

My mother’s name was Adeline, but no one ever called her Sweet Adeline, not even my father, who could be quite tender and loving to her, in deep contrast to his normal pattern of behavior. My mother turned into some other person when Jerry Vale sang, a person I never otherwise saw. It was not only his voice, but she freely admitted it was also the handsome face. Today I realize how delightful and just simply human was this sharp contrast in her character.

Ten years ago my son, who loves and collects all forms of music, told me he had discovered the perfect Italian crooner. He wondered if I had ever heard of Jerry Vale. I treasure that moment of the wheel turning all the way around.

http://youtu.be/3CL7sl3udiE

My father also had his contrast in character that embarrassed me back then. Looie was usually a coarse, harsh, angry, insensitive man, exactly like the father in my novelized version of my childhood. That same man loved to dance. He danced (meaning the old time dances like waltzes, polkas, and schottisches) with great relish and accomplishment.

Anniversary 2

A group of people in our neighborhood, Knife River Valley, held monthly dances in an old school house. My father’s favorite was the broom dance, a form of musical chairs while dancing. If you were left without a partner after the music stopped, you had to dance with the broom. My father’s turns with the broom was graceful, in tempo, and unselfconsciously funny. Oh, how embarrassed I was! Luckily I later grew old enough to be left home alone or with my sister.

What unexpected contrasts did your parents have in their character? Or you?

45 thoughts on “Sweet Adeline, Surprisingly”

  1. While my mother did most of the parenting, she often called on my father to support her. As is normal, in my teen years I saw him as an authority figure who mocked people my age and disparaged our rock stars. “That Elvis hops around like he has a wild hair up his butt,” is one of the lines I remember. My parents, but especially my dad, represented the social norms of older , conservative folks. I resented that and bristled at my dad’s sweeping dismissal of rock musicians.

    Not until I wrote my book about my parents did I finally see that my dad was an impish rebel as a youngster. Even in his adult years, he was moved to giggles by the pretensions of many authority figures or institutions in his surroundings. His boss made him attend Kiwanis meetings, for example, and then almost fired Dad when he made fun of their rituals.

    A constant theme in our home was Dad’s glee in inserting earthy humor in situations where most adults would be serious. But that was a basic part of his character, which was skeptical and impudent. If my mother admired a bed she had seen with a diaphanous canopy over it, Dad was sure to remind us that, “When I was a kid, we kept the can o’ pee under the bed!”

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  2. My mother was a little swoony over Mario Lanza. She had a lifelong habit of keeping possessions pared down to a mimimum, but there were some 78 rpm Mario Lanza records in the record cabinet. We didn’t have a record player that would play them. The rest of the record collection was all 33 1/3.

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  3. i was off to a rolling stones concert years ago at the metrodome with cousin dan and his little brother pat. we had been out on a weekday afternoon and had consumed just enough beer to be self assured and bulletproof. someone mentioned that the stones were in town and that keith richard had been ito the bar the night before and what a cool guy he was. i declared that we were going to the stones concert but that the way to do it was to wait until just before the concert began and ge the tickets form the poor planning folks who needed to unload their tickets at the last second before the concert began. this involved having more beer because the last minute was still aways off. i have discovered that there is a fine line between having too much beer and having just enough. i have seen others have too much but i personally have never experienced this. the night we are discussing as a night just like any night in the winter of 2014, it was 20 below zero. we drove over to the metrodome, parked the car, and headed toward our rolling stones evening. it was cold so it was a commitment in postive thinking. it was also in the olden days whne you parked you car and didnt need a credit card or a roll of quarters to leave you car for an unknown amount of time. we bought the first 3 pack of tickets we came across and headed in. there were our folding chairs in the last last last row of the main floor smashed up against the railing of all the permanant seats not far from the beer stand. we got another beer and stood there as the ushers started taking down our chairs and fold ing them up to be put on a cart and taken away. we went up to the guy with the chairs and asked why he was folding up our seats and he pointed us over to a guy with a pencil behind his ear and a mitt full of tickets. the fire marshall made us take these down . i have to find someplace else for you guys. 3 tickets oh geeze. he looked at some tickets and looked up into the second deck in the right field bleachers. oh no you dont, we need main floor seats and we want them now. front row will be just fine thank you very much. he laughed and dug down in the stack and found three that would do the trick and walked us forward to middle of the floor.. we took anothe swig of beer and told him to dig a little deped we didnt want to be right next ot the sound column they had built on the floor. he shrugged and dug and pulled out a pair of tickets that fit the request and walked us up to the 15 th row. are these ok he asked. yep . thanks man and off he went. we were pretty impressed, 45 minutes ago we were planning on drinking beer for the evening and here we are in row 15 of the stones. i have always said that drugs are nit bad but the wrong quantity in the wrong place can be a problem. at this concert the surrounding doctors had just the right perscriptions for the entire evening. we sipped and puffed and sang and danced the entire night away. the seats were there but i dont beleive we ever sat in them. it was an evening to go with the flow on and little cousin pat asked cousin dan about tim. he is like a completely different person at stuff like that. i had never thought about it until that moment but i can go on autopilot and roll with the flow when the occasion is right. i love it when that happens.
    my kids see glimpses of it all the time, but the glimpses are a blink of the go with the flow at the stones on that cold winter evening with the guy who had nothing in mind but making the moment the best it could be.

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  4. Good morning. I can probably come up with some unusual things about my parents such as those mentioned by Clyde. By the way, very nice story, Clyde. However, the main thing that surprised me about them was their tolerance to things I liked that I am sure they didn’t like. My Dad did tell me he didn’t like the way college students dressed, but he never told me I shouldn’t dress that way.

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  5. My dad was a guy’s guy – fishing and hunting and sports – but once in a while his soft side would show through, like when he fell in love with our first kitten. That was fun to watch.

    My mom loved music, but it pretty much had to be classical or Broadway. Anything remotely country could set her off. So I was flabbergasted when I came home in the early 70s to learn that she had started CLOGGING.

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  6. Such a beautiful post, Clyde.

    As both my parents are still around and very much as they have always been, I’m afraid I have no nostalgia about them (there for awhile, I thought maybe they were getting old, but I was mistaken about that).

    I do feel very lucky to have gotten to know my paternal grandparents as people towards the end of their lives.

    Up until then, I had always thought Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” was a portrait of them. Imagine my surprise when Grandpa told me about their wedding dance. (I’m still a bit in shock that a girl brought up in the Wisconsin Synod of the Lutheran Church had such a thing as a wedding dance)

    Back in the day, the place to have your dance was in the dancehall above the hardware store. I guess after my grandparents’ dance, they stock guys had a busy day, as a lot of stuff had rattled off the shelves from the dancing.

    Would love to write a memoir of them, but I have scanty material, and come from a family that does not talk. I suspect they were a lot more interesting (and fun) than they let on.

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    1. In my childhood everyone had a wedding dance. All were held in various old buildings scattered through the countryside. Most like where my parents danced were old schoolhouse. A couple were old churches. The rest were township halls. These were great places. About everyone of them was also a 4-H club. All had outhouses out back. The wedding dances were rather loose about some restrictions, particularly about under-age drinking, as long as no one got carried away. Being out in the country and not in town opened things up. Not wild, but every now and then my father, a volunteer and rarely-pad deputy sheriff, had to threaten to arrest or would suggest somebody just leave or talk to parents of kids going beyond the limits. My parents were at many of the dances, which were pretty much open to anyone to come. My parents went to dance. My mother loved to dance too. And there was a live band, such as drums, base and accordian, always an accordian. Oh, how I grew to hate accordians. I was often at the dances too, which were so boring for an 8-12 year old. Other kids were there but not often kids I knew or who had much appreciation for me and my eccentricities. Then I got to stay home. Some of my earliest memories were from these dances, falling asleep at about age 4-6 while watching someone scattering wax on the floor.
      The Knife River Club is still standing and in use. It does ow have indoor toilets.

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      1. In WInnipeg we went to several dances called Socials, which were held for a marrying couple a month or so before the wedding and were considered fund raisers for the bride and groom. It was very common in Manitoba, and when we moved to ND we were told that such occasions were common long ago here as well. Our friends in grad school held a social for us before we married.

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        2. We have forgotten how people shared to help folks pay for big moments, like these socials to help people get started. That was community, as were the wedding dances of my childhood. As much as I disliked going, even at a young age I understood they were about community. 4H was about community. Wonder if it still is?
          In my parents day they did shiveries, if that is spelled right. They would all go to where the new couple were and play pranks and then give them done special gift, such as a calf, sometimes. Sometimes they led to hard feelings because the pranks got out of control or because someone was too sensitive, which is how I think I would react. That led to smaller pranks without shivery in my time. Do people still do pranks? There is a shivery at the end of Oklahoma, when the couple are put on the haystack.
          I much preferred weddings of my childhood to the show-off events of today. Back then the registry was the mother of the bride. You would ask her what they still needed. You give her the gift ahead of the wedding so she could keep track.
          Community!

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      2. I understand there were dance halls all over the place in Southern Minnesota at one time. There are very few there now, but they aren’t completely gone. Of course, there is a famous one just over the Minnesota Iowa border at Clear Lake. That is the Turf Ballroom which is still operating. It is the last place that Buddy Holly and couple of other famous rock musicians played before they died in a plane crash.

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        1. My grandmother owned the Hollyhock Ballroom in Ellsworth for a short time in the 1950’s.

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  7. My dad is a spark plug and my mother was the brakes. My dad is impulsive, my mother cautious. Dad is a collector; Mother was a minimalist. Dad is quick tempered and then immediately forgiving. My mother was slow to anger but held a grudge. My mother was patient. My father has no patience.

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  8. My husband is very patient. I am not. Son is patient. Daughter is not. I have a quick temper. I also have been known to hold a grudge. I am impulsive. Husband isn’t. My dad was very mechanically inclined before his heart attack.I am very mechanically inclined. Husband and son have no mechanical skills. Daughter has mechanical skills. I am a minimalist. Son is a minimalist. Husband is a collector. My mother was quietly controlling. I am not so quietly controlling. We are all worriers and anxious.

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    2. It is fun to see things develop down in our family. Women often are their aunts. My sister Cleo is Aunt Irma. My daughter Becca is Aunt Cleo, but she has Adeline’s needle and cooking skills and her disinterest in cleaning. If she had the time she would kick out excellent quilts like Adeline. We have some cousins who are also Aunt Irma and one is Aunt Addlie (Adeline’s preferred name). But my grandkids all come from nowhere. Mr Tuxedo is in some ways my son. But who knows where our newest grandson got that very complacent personality. No one like that around here or on the other side. And granddaughter Lily, is just Lily.
      I am mostly from nowhere, part my dad’s quick temper and part my mother’s darker side. My depression for sure comes from her side. My father often moaned and ranted how I was not like him. My mother more than once hinted she was glad I was not.
      Cleo was just here; it is eerie to watch her age. All her gestures and mannerisms are Adeline’s in old age. But otherwise she is Irma with whom she has a close relationship.
      I am rambling. Druggy. I will shut up.

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  9. my dad came from the son of an alcoholic who was a teetotaler, his wife was the quiet irish mother from the movies. he said he never heard them argue, they would go in the other room and argue with the doors closed. my dad was a tke the easiest path kind of guy. everyone loved him and he got by on his niceness. my mom was a girly girl with abuafont hairdo in 1960 and the jackie kennedy sungalsses, she saw the light in the 70’s and went hippy just in the nick of time for me. i was raised catholic and am still recovering. i was pushing the envelope all the time i was growing upa nd then when the 70s arrived and my parents went new age i was allowed to make my own calls. i am told i dont allow my kids enough rope to make their own decisions and am critical wen they do. tough learn to deal with it is what i say, i am doing the best i can and will be better with the next round of kids. my dad used to say kids are like pancakes, the first two are just practice. my oldest will concur.
    i love the line in i think its pricne of tides where the main guy says of his fatehrign skills … my job is to screw you up and make your life miserable and your job is to figure it out and do the best you can in spite of me. that is my parenting philosophy in a nut shell. i discovered about 15 years ago it is never necessary to say in my opinion. it came out of my mosth what on earth else could it possibly be?
    my parents were an interesting contrast in that he was not curiosu and she was. he was not a new thing person she was, he was hapy hwher he was and she always wanted to go forward to the next step, he grew up in fargo with firends for life and she moved every couple of yers and made friends everywhere she went, he was always worried about the next shoe dropping , she was unaware of the time of day day of the week and that the consequences could be anyhting you needed ot consider,

    my wife and i are yin and yang. she is a dutch german and as straight as they come, i wonder how all that straight stuff came to be the norm, she likes security and sameness, i need new and changing vistas and tweak stuff just for ht esake of tweaking it, she wants to make sure the kids never have a chance to feel the pain of life, i like the doctor who told my son when he was getting stitches on his face, now you have some charachter, she is set on a path and rides it til its dead. i find a path and see how many branches it has and wher this option and that will lead and then where the next and the next and the next go
    my children are very familiar with my mantra,
    the bible is 50% stories about how to live live from examples of how to do it right and 50% from how to do it wrong, be sure not to miss the examples of how to learn from doing it wrong.i am exceptional in that area and a great many lessons can be learned.
    i am amazed at how many people live their lives because someone told them that this is the way to do it. i have pointed out that you can find a person to state that anything in the world is the way to do it but you really need to figure out what is right for you not the the whack jobs who who stand on their soap boxes and proclaim stuff. heck i can proclaim stuff but i would feel bad if i knew people lived their lives but the thoughts that spill out of my mouth. i am told occasionally that i have shifted 180 degrees on a view and i can only shrug and say that today i believe the stuff coming out of my mouth today. check back next week to see if it holds up.

    clyde, you look like your dad. you know how how you have a vague idea of what a radio personality looks like and when you see him its not at all what you were thinking, thats my experience of the impression i had of youe dad while reading. not wrong just different. your mom is right on the button your dad is not.
    great post thanks

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    1. No I look exactly like my mother’s brothers and her father. I am all Wetter in appearance. My wife feels sort of displaced being around my Wetter uncles in a group, how much I look like them and how I have their mannerisms. Adeline’s siblings are always take by how I walk and move and sit just like their father, who died right before I was born.
      I wish I looked like my father, the always very thin and strong body. I’d even take his big nose to have his body.

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  10. That is their 25th anniversary in our kitchen above Knife River Valley , which was all put together by my sister. I could write a short story about that. My father, for his very practical reasons, and my mother, for very monetary reasons, were not happy on that fall Saturday afternoon. So I had a choice of four pictures. One does show how they started the event in a bad mood. One is silly and out of focus of them cutting the cake, which they did not do at the wedding. One is caught at a very bad moment, either by accident or showing something else going on–I think just an accident. But because their witnesses and others came all the way from Sebeka as a surprise and because it was done by my sister, the holy blessed one who could do no wrong in my father’s eyes and who could manipulate Mother right up to her death, it all came off.

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  11. My doctor is following FDA guidelines and trying to switch me from one drug to another. I am at day 8, when I am supposed to not use both in a scattered pattern as I had been, but use only the new one. It did not work. So at 4 I took the old one. I have slept a very drugged sleep all morning. It has not been a fun week and I have some unfun days ahead.

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  12. Greetings everyone! My mother was a wonderful, generous, kind and loving person. But when people were coming over, she would go absolutely ballistic about trying to get the house cleaned up for guests. It was bizarre. Once guests arrived, she went back to her lovely, charming self.

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    1. I don’t know how charming I might be most of the time, but I sound just like your mother when I have company coming over.

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      1. I am doing well. Working fulltime at a temp-to-hire position — just waiting to be hired. Jim is still in college. Kids are great. Thanks for asking, Clyde. I’ve missed you all, but I made a point to get to Steve’s to see everybody that I could.

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    3. Ah, one of the very delinquent baboons that showed up at Steve’s! It was so good to see you Joanne. Glad you’re poking your head in whether you’re planning on doing that regularly or not.

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  13. My father was like a yard gnome come to life: round rosy cheeks, round nose, a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face. He was not a big man (I was taller than him by junior high), but he surprised high school friends of mine who would foolishly take the bait when challenged to a push-ups contest, which he most often won (he stopped at the YMCA every day on his way home from work – so he might have looked like a yard gnome, but he was strong). He was very easy going, liked to play the piano – a quiet, jovial sort. Except once or twice when I witnessed him get really angry…I still remember waking up in the middle of the night, hearing him yell (and swear – he never swore) at my brother one night when my brother was in high school. I learned later that my brother had come home less than sober. Not sure of the whole story there, but Dad was not pleased. It didn’t happen a second time. I just knew that if I ever had the Wrath of Dad rained down upon me I would not be able to hold my head up for weeks. Even in his last years when time and life were becoming somewhat loosed from his brain, he continued to be a jovial sort at least most of the time. It was an indicator to us, as family, how frustrated he was about his failing memory and brain that he would occasionally lash out in frustration – it was so out of character. Better to remember the days when he would play the same snippet of a hymn 4-5 times in a row than the days when he got crabby if you reminded him that he had already washed his hands…

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