Let It Snow

Today is George Washington’s real birthday, and Mother Nature has intervened, along with Mayor Bloomberg, to arrange a snow day and make me feel both patriotic and prescient for sticking with my Tuesday-Friday spot earlier in the week. The news flash came last night, during the debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Austin, Texas: “Alternate Side Parking Rules Suspended on Friday, February 22, 2008 for Snow Removal.” I did not watch the debate (for some reason, I couldn’t find it in the TV listings), but I did my civic duty by reading all about it in today’s Times, from seven-thirty to eight this morning, in the comfort of my living room instead of in the front seat of the unheated Eclair.

Already the Times reporters are filing stories from Cleveland, where next Tuesday’s climactic debate is scheduled to take place. There was a story today by Sean D. Hamill about a “peace palace” (here), where people can be trained in transcendental meditation, being built in Parma, a suburb of Cleveland. Building peace palaces all over the world was a project of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose death, earlier this month, I failed to register. As it happens, my family has its ancestral roots in Parma: my great-grandfather’s farm was there, on land that has long since been subdivided into a classic blue-collar suburb. (An official of Parma was quoted in the Times as saying, "What do you mean a 'Maharishi Peace Palace?' We're Parma, Ohio. We eat pirogis and drink draft beer.") Parmatown was my first mall, and in its parking lot I learned to drive, twice (once an automatic, with my father beside me in the Plymouth Fury II; later a stick shift, thanks to a very tolerant friend, in a crash course before auditioning for a job driving a milk truck—which I got!).

In another curious convergence of family and politics, my sibling Baby Dee is playing Austin tonight, in the wake of the Democratic debate. This is slightly better timing than her gig in Boston on the night of the Super Bowl. She is playing Cleveland a week from today, on February 29th—Leap Year Day—after the debate but before the all-important Ohio primary. Too bad Dennis Kucinich did not exploit the fact that he’s related to Baby Dee and lock up her celebrity endorsement. He might still be in the running. The peace candidate could have gone straight from a demonstration of yogic flying in Parma (also his ancestral land, of course) to Dee’s show in the Tavern of the Beachland Ballroom, in Cleveland Heights, where he could have requested Dee’s only overtly political song, “My Very Own Police Force,” about Rudy Giuliani. I think to myself (with apologies to Louis Armstrong), What a wonderful flaky world that would be.

Higher Math

I am afraid I was unable to benefit from Washington’s Birthday (observed) today, because I have a Tuesday-Friday 7:30-8 AM spot that is just too good to give up. I thought of trying to shift into a Monday-Thursday spot, but even if I’d found one, on Sunday, say, with the same cushy hours, I’d have to go back again on Thursday, so it would still entail two forays, and as long as I’m going out there twice, I might as well go twice to the spot I’m already in, right?

February, of course, is the month of frenetic bogus holidays designed to make up for its being so suicidally depressing. Last Friday, February 15th, was Susan B. Anthony’s birthday. The great women’s suffragist got her start as a temperance booster, so her party is a dry one. A glance at the pictures of Susan B. Anthony on the World Wide Web will make you realize that it took a formidable woman to campaign successfully for the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. (It was added to the Bill of Rights in 1920, fourteen years after Susan B. Anthony’s death.) I looked in vain for any reference to our heroine in the Times or in the speeches of, say, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Can it be? Is it possible that just as Senator John McCain has to steer clear of George W. Bush so as not to damage his standing as the Republican candidate for President (in his heart, Bush is probably a Huckabee guy, anyway), Hillary Clinton cannot afford to be associated with a protofeminist? Surely as Washington is the Father of Our Country, Susan B. Anthony is the Mother of Us All. The Empire State Building was lit up in red-white-and-blue for her, anyway. At least, I think it was for her.

Patriotism, Deconstructed

Today, of course, alternate-side parking is suspended in honor of George Washington, the Father of our Country, although his actual birthday is not till February 22nd (Thursday). My grandmother had the same birthday as Washington, except after a busybody aunt went and changed it. My grandmother moved to Cleveland from Ontario, Canada, when she was three years old. Aunt Harriet went to Canada when Grandma was in her seventies, poked around in old church records, and came back with the earth-shattering revelation that Mary B. had actually been born on February 20, 1887, and had been exploiting the connection with George Washington ever since. Grandma was an impostor, with a taste for cherry pie.

I experienced a similar irritation when our fearless leaders changed Washington's birthday, but of course I was mollified by the three-day weekend. Besides, it wasn't the first time George Washington's birthday had been changed. A new calendar was instituted in his lifetime, so his actual date of birth, February 11, 1732, was pushed back. I don't understand about the new calendar (did they add days or subtract them? and if they added them, why did they put them in February, which feels long enough as it is?).

If I associate George Washington with my grandmother, I have them both cross-indexed under Jack Benny. Now, does everyone know who I mean when I say Jack Benny? A few weeks ago, I mentioned the name and two people at my table of four didn’t know who I was talking about. One was Italian, so he has an excuse; the other was under thirty. I had to explain (in Italian, no less) that Jack Benny played the violin, made jokes about being cheap (“Era molto economico”), and had a television show and, before that, a radio show. Then I had to hasten to explain that the radio show was before my time—pul-lease. The Jack Benny Show was one of my grandmother’s favorite television programs. She also liked Lawrence Welk and Alfred Hitchcock. (I hadn’t realized that her tastes were so catholic.) Once, as a child, no doubt on my grandmother’s birthday, I saw Jack Benny play George Washington in a skit about chopping down the cherry tree. “I cannot tell a lie,” he said. Then Rochester appeared, and I don't remember the punch line. I remember that, in a wig, Jack Benny looked a little like George Washington. And I remember Grandma showing us the trick with the dollar bill where you can turn the portrait of George Washington into a mushroom.

Well, now that I’ve paid my respects by free-associating the Father of our Country into a cheap trick with a dollar bill, I feel I can get on with my day. If anyone is interested, there’s a wonderful biography called “Washington: The Indispensable Man,” by James Thomas Flexner, a reduction of a four-volume scholarly biography into a single, extremely readable 400-page book. I read it while I was doing some research on a Washington impersonator. The best part was about the Battle of Manhattan, when the British came over the East River and landed at Kips Bay (Second Avenue at about 32nd Street, now a strip of Irish bars), sending the Continental Army into disarray, and Washington galloped down from Harlem to try to rally the troops. Incidentally, he hated the official Gilbert Stuart portrait that has become iconic; at the time of the sitting, his false teeth were really bothering him. Perhaps he foresaw his reincarnation as a mushroom.

Oh yes, Grandma also had false teeth. I don't know about Jack Benny's situation vis a vis dentures, but my mother always said he wore a girdle.