Southern Bookman

Returning to Mountain Way

I returned to Mountain Way Wednesday for the longest walk I've taken since undergoing knee surgery in early summer.

On a gorgeous autumn afternoon, my wife and I headed back to one of our favorite walking paths near our home.

Mountain Way, which runs off Wieuca Road, is a quiet street that has registered many changes in Buckhead through the years: housing construction booms and busts, politics, neighborhood preservation and improvements.

Bordered by Little Nancy Creek, Mountain Way passes through a valley between two ridges. When we first moved into the neighborhood, the road as its name suggested was a rustic preserve of trees and wildflowers in the middle of Atlanta. Then after years of neighborhood opposition, Ga. 400 tore through the area, desecrating Mountain Way's beauty with a towering overpass, massive supporting columns and a sloping concrete embankment.

In recent years, civic leaders have sought to heal the wound by developing Mountain Way Common. The not yet completed park offers sidewalks and decorative planters, a walking trail along Little Nancy Creek leading to a pedestrian bridge and a sculptured swing beneath the overpass.

Decorative picnic tables have been set up in a vacant lot across from the park, and Livable Buckhead installed beehives and flowers.

Mountain contains an interesting mix of futuristic homes, 1950s ranches and one remaining rustic cabin from the days when the area was a weekend getaway for wealthy Atlantans. At a huge LA-styled home where construction was halted for years, joyful workers completed a driveway. We wondered if the huge home would at last be finished for someone to live there.

Sitting on the bright red swing designed by artist Robert Proctor, we heard MARTA trains and cars pass by high above us. New beauty rises from the ruins of the past. After a few reflective moments, we headed for home.

 

Celebrating 41 years of marriage

Beautiful fall weather, as on the day 41 years ago when my wife and I married at Atlanta's Christ the King Cathedral.

So many who were present at our wedding are no longer with us. Nieces who were children have grown up and had children of their own. Our children are successful adults.

Our wedding began our life in Atlanta, which has undergone tremendous change in our time here.

We have watched generations of Braves, Hawks and Falcons players come and go. Our children advanced through Atlanta public schools from kindergarten to high school, then graduated from college and started careers. Holidays and seasons flew by.

Over the years, I lost old friends, who shared my love for music and books. I often stop and think about them, as the old Beatles song said.

On our anniversary, I remember the good times.

 

 

 

Farewell, Tony Dow, who played Wally Cleaver on "Leave It to Beaver"

It's been a bad week for baby boom cultural figures.

Following the deaths of Hollywood legend Bob Rafelson and accomplished actor Paul Sorvino, Tony Dow died Wednesday morning of cancer at age 77.

Dow gained fame as Wally Cleaver,  the tolerant older brother of the impetuous Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver on "Leave It to Beaver," which ran from 1957 to 1963, first on CBS and then on ABC.

With Barbara Billingsley as the gorgeous, stylish mother and Hugh Beaumont as the wise father, the show presented an idealized suburban family confronting innocent challenges of childhood and growing up. As with other shows of the period, the Cleavers' neighborhood was all-white, and the turmoil then upending American life never intruded.

A former diving champion, the athletic, curly-haired Dow was a heart-throb for teenaged girls. With a persistent smile, he sometimes teased Beaver or showed exasperation at his kid brother's hijinks, but treated him with amused tolerance. Such big brothers were rare in real life.

Like other TV child stars, Dow had a tough time adjusting to later life. He continued his acting career, appearing in a number of TV roles, and later was a busy director. But he battled and overcame serious depression, becoming an advocate for mental health services. He also received recognition as a sculptor.

His co-star, Jerry Mathers, remembered Dow as kind and generous.  As middle-aged adults, Mathers and Dow reunited for several "Beaver" sequels.

Dow's Wally was the friend or big brother we wished we knew in real life.

 

Notes from rehab

Nearly three weeks after knee replacement surgery, normal life is slowly returning.

Thanks to the resolute support of my wife and family, I've completed the first stage of rehab. After a regimen of home visits from competent  and cheerful physical therapists, I'll switch to outpatient work next week. My steady progress so far encourages me for the hard months to follow.

In between exercises - the old squats, leg lifts and calf raises along with new stretches and bends - I've kept reading newspapers, magazines and books while watching “Law and Order” and “Andy Griffith” reruns on TV.  The Braves winning streak helped ease the pain.

My young neighbors brightened a couple of days, bringing me a handmade-card, a home-grown cucumber and banana bread. Friends and sisters sent encouraging messages and cards.

Walking's one of those gifts I took for granted. Now, with the help of a cane, I'm relearning how to place one foot after another, bend my knee, land on my heel.

I'm thankful for each step across the floor.

Jason Gay's rules for family touch football a Thanksgiving tradition

I fell into the Thanksgiving spirit reading another edition of Jason Gay's rules for family touch football.

The Wall Street Journal sportswriter has been doing the column for 11 years, and it's still fresh and funny.

Gay's annual rules column evokes the love and understanding of family get-togethers, the bittersweet travails of aging and the joy of new generations.

The touch-football rules column is now as much a part of the holiday as the Macy's Parade in New York City, turkey and dressing, and pro football games.

With political conflicts dividing families and Covid still hanging over the country, Gay's column celebrates shared traditions that still unite us.

The column brought memories of friends and loved ones who've passed away, and Thanksgivings of years past:

Furman Bisher's annual AJC column giving thanks for the blessings in his life.

The AJC's annual ad-heavy Thanksgiving paper.

Trips to Louisiana, Ohio and New York City. Years at home, hosting others.

Driving from Chattanooga to Atlanta with my then fiance and mother-in-law to be.

A family feast at the Waldorf Astoria and walking through snow past Radio City Music Hall to watch the Macy's parade, its famous helium-filled cartoon characters floating by, tossed by the wind.

Golf with my father at Baton Rouge's Sherwood Forest Country Club.

An LSU-Arkansas game at Tiger Stadium.

Taking my then small children to a Georgia-Georgia Tech freshman game at frigid Grant Field.

Late night trips to Hartsfield-Jackson Airport to pick up a child coming home from college and Joe, my late brother-in-law, flying in from New York City.

My now grown-up children home from school in Gainesville, Baton Rouge and Princeton.

Watching Alex Karras and the Detroit Lions beat Vince Lombardi's undefeated Green Bay Packers.

Family gatherings, the voices and laughter of so many now gone.

I'm thankful to be thankful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A weekend tale of two cities: the Braves, Shakespeare, Nashville and Atlanta

The new Fifth and Broadway district in downtown Nashville flowed with tourists packing the heat-scorched sidewalks Saturday afternoon.

Rising above the venerable Ryman Auditorium and old-time draws like Tootsie's Lounge, the complex offers food courts, office buildings, clubs and the impressive National Museum of African-American Music.

Fifth and Broadway perches between the Ryman and Bridgestone Arena, home of concerts and the NHL Predators. It's also near the Country Music Hall of Fame and Broadway clubs.

My wife and I had driven up from Atlanta to visit our daughter and see the Nashville Shakespeare Festival's "12th Night." The night before, I'd gone with my son to witness the Braves' thrilling victory over the Giants at Truist Park.

Headed through the Nashville throng, I was startled to remember the empty dirt lot where Fifth and Broadway now stood. Over the years during periodic visits to Nashville, I'd marked the construction's slow progress. Now, as the crowds swarmed by, I had a moment of dissociation in realizing that this congested setting had once been that barren place.

Fifth and Broadway give me a spell of Nashville envy, although the tourist horde was overwhelming. Sure, Atlanta has the Beltline, the College Football Hall of Fame, Mercedes Benz Stadium and State Farm Arena, but lacks a downtown draw like Fifth and Broadway. The comparable Centennial Yards development at the Gulch appears years away.

On our way from east Nashville to the Shakespeare play, we got bogged down in traffic headed to the Titans' exhibition game against the Cardinals at the downtown Nissan Stadium. Like Atlanta, Nashville is a sprawling interstate-enmeshed city that burgeoned without rational urban planning.

As with the Braves, the Shakespeare production required traveling by car and parking in the garage of a corporate office tower. The Nashville Shakespeare Festival gives outdoor performances at an amphitheater that's part of the One City complex, one of the many multi-use projects popping up around the city, as in Atlanta.

Enhanced with Tom Mason's rock-flavored arrangements of Shakespeare's songs, the Nashville troupe presented an ebullient "12th Night." In the role of the fool Feste, Mason set a festive mood for the company, playing his guitar with the backing of a drum and bass and giving Shakespeare's lyrics a Nashville flair.

Arrayed in modern dress - boots and cowboy hats prominent - the  cast adorned the comedy of cross-dressing, mistaken identities and concocted letters with a light sit-com mood.

The crowd left happy, just as the Braves fans had the night before.

 

 

 

Books: A short story summer with Susan Minot and Shirley Hazzard

This summer, I'm on a short-story binge.

Following Emma Cline's collection "Daddy," I'm reading Susan Minot's "Why I Don't Write" and Shirley Hazzard's "Collected Stories."

Minot's first collection, "Monkeys," published in 1986, began a family outpouring of books about the death of their mother, Carrie Minot, killed when her car was hit by a train. She drove unto the tracks because the rail crossings' warning signals had malfunctioned following a snowstorm.

But Susan blamed their alcoholic father for her mother's death. Three of her siblings subsequently wrote books about their upper-class New England childhood, taking different views about the family's dynamics.

The Minots fascinated me; I saw them as real-life embodiments of J.D. Salinger's Glass family. Along with Susan, Eliza, the baby, and George have written novels about the family, and its seven children. Brother Sam, upset about George's depiction of him, published an online memoir.

Susan Minot had the biggest success with the best-selling novel, "Evening," made into a heart-rending movie starring Vanessa Redgrave as a dying elderly woman looking back on a youthful love affair.

Fondly remembering "Monkeys," I was excited about the release of "Why I Don't Write," Minot's first collection in 30 years. While uneven, the collection displays Minot's cool wit and understanding of human desire. The title story is an amusing list of social media distractions.

Hazzard's stories of disappointed romanticism are written in the high style castigated by 1960s minimalists. It's a pleasure to read her sentences, reminiscent of writers such as Katherine Mansfield. Henry James also comes to mind, although Hazzard's language is more transparent.

Troubled by wayward desire and the trivialities of modern life, Hazzard's sophisticated characters express appreciation for poets like Robert Browning, evoking an era when cultural knowledge was widespread. Even when beset by emotional pain, they speak eloquently.

How nice to rekindle my love for short stories. Perhaps I'll find a book or two that revives my lost passion for novels.

Virginia-Highland, Ponce City Market celebrate return to public life

Skateboarders, bicycle riders, skaters and walkers packed the Beltline Saturday morning near the Ponce City Market.

The festive crowd flowed past the old Murder Kroger, now capped by a futuristic building and offering a cool bar and a Starbucks with a deck overlooking the walkway.

Joyous at returning to public gathering after the long months of the pandemic's isolation, people streamed through Ponce City Market, many with kids in strollers, and most not wearing masks.

After shrimp po-boys at the Fish Camp and a visit to the crowded Posman Books, my daughter and I headed to Virginia-Highland, where my wife and I bought our first house more than 30 years ago after living in an apartment in Little Five Points right after getting married.

My daughter and I wanted to celebrate a new independent bookstore, Virginia-Highland Books, which had recently opened on Highland near the famed Virginia intersection.

Occupying two floors, the bookstore offered a wonderful selection of books and a friendly staff. The store wasn't crowded, allowing comfortable browsing. I ended up taking home Shirley Hazzard's "Collected Stories."

Sitting in the Perc coffee shop with my daughter watching people sitting at sidewalk tables and walking past on Highland, I thought that those benighted Buckhead residents seeking to secede from Atlanta despised this urban diversity. They wanted to withdraw into a cocoon. Yet Buckhead is part of neighborhoods like Virginia-Highland, Little Five Points and the Old Fourth Ward, receiving economic and social benefits from their vitality.

Atlanta's neighborhoods are connected in a city tapestry. One cannot stand alone without the others.

 

"This Is Us" brings Nicky home at last

If Nicky Pearson would have gone to Woodstock with his girlfriend, Sally, he would have heard John Sebastian's acoustic solo performance of "Darlin' Be Home Soon," which mesmerized the music festival's huge crowd.

Sebastian's recording of the song with his band, The Lovin' Spoonful, casts a nostalgic glow on Nicky and Sally's fragile love affair during Tuesday night's "This Is Us."

All of the broken hopes of the 1960s play out, shattered like the elderly Nicky's handmade snow globe. Yet, the dream endures at the episode’s end.

Beautifully portrayed by Michael Angarano, the wounded young Nicky rejects Sally's dream of going to Woodstock, then traveling across country to California for a life of hippie freedom. She imagines voyaging the open road with him in her van she calls Pearl, evoking Janis Joplin's posthumous album.

Instead, Nicky, who expresses his fears to his brother, Jack, chooses to stay home with his loving mother, Marilyn, and abusive, alcoholic father, Stanley. Sharing their pride at Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, Nicky can't free himself from his family's emotional entrapment.

Jack, who's left the family home but remains tied to its rituals, would have made the trip with Sally. A previous episode of the show followed his road journey to California with his future wife, Rebecca.

The broken relationship between Jack and Nicky, their close ties a casualty of Vietnam, adds to the episode's drama.

Desperate to reconcile with Jack, Nicky is unable to connect with his brother at a Vietnam reunion. After receiving affirmation from his wartime commanding officer, Jack heads toward marriage and fatherhood, while Nicky withdraws to a solitary, embittered life as a chronic alcoholic.

As the aged Nicky traveling across country to greet his nephew Kevin's twin children, Griffin Dunn endearingly portrays a man discovering his true self after years lost to Vietnam grief and family wounds. His gruff exterior conceals a sensitive, fragile, creative man still fearful of intimacy.

Kevin has named the boy twin for Nicky, whose efforts to cope with the modern world after years of withdrawal flavor the drama with bittersweet humor. He sees his beautifully carved gifts destroyed because of idiotic air-travel regulations; isn't it time for those to be banished from the nation's life?

But Nicky makes it to California, at last accomplishing a replica of the dream envisioned by Sally.

The cross-cultural references continue: Dunne is the nephew by marriage of Joan Didion, whose writings on her native California and the turmoils of the 1960s counterculture are hallmarks of the era's literature. Didion's warmth and insight glow in conversations between her and Dunne in an enlightening Netflix documentary.

"This Is Us" at its best illustrates our battle with the past, what we seek to save, and what we seek to escape.

Directed by "30 Something's" Ken Olin, Tuesday's episode titled "One Small Step" indicates that no matter how long, we can come to see ourselves at last.

 

 

 

 

 

A Christmas wish for the return of live performances

For my wife's Christmas gift last year, I purchased tickets to Tony Bennett's Valentine's Day concert at Atlanta's Symphony Hall.

Bennett gave a great performance before a festive, sold-out audience. Before the show, we enjoyed a romantic dinner at the Arts Center's packed 1280 Restaurant.

Covid-19 was a small cloud on the horizon. In a few weeks, the virus had grown into a vicious storm, closing down all public events.

For Christmas last year, we also received tickets to see Wynton Marsalis perform with the Atlanta Symphony in March. We also planned to attend the Atlanta Opera's production of "Porgy and Bess" in late February. Both events were canceled as the coronavirus spread. I've imagined the performances taking place in some alternative universe.

In previous years, we've found under the tree tickets to "Hamilton" and "To Kill a Mockingbird." But no such gifts this holiday season, with Broadway dark and its return unknown. No concerts at Atlanta Symphony Hall to give as presents. The 1280 is closed.

With such a damper on Christmas joy, I was cheered at AJC stalwart Bo Emerson's recent report on the return of the Fox Theater's Mighty Mo organ after a renovation.

My Christmas wish is that one day we'll gather again to hear those majestic sounds.