Les Green Archives - Page 2 of 18

Song of Scheherazade

cf. Rimsky-Korsakov

The Final JEOPARDY answer for Tuesday, January 10, 2023, was in the category CLASSIC TALE CHARACTERS. “In one 19th-century translation, she ‘perceived the dawn of day and ceased’ speaking nearly 1,000 times.”

To my mild surprise, no one got the correct answer. The contestants answered Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, and Echo.

I knew immediately it was Scheherazade, though I wasn’t positive I knew how to spell it. While I read a story about this Arabian Nights tale, my greater recollection was from the music, which is often the case with me.

Specifically, there is an album by a group called Renaissance. It put out an album called Scheherazade and Other Stories. The title track, Song of Scheherazade, which took up the entirety of Side 2 on the LP, ends with these lyrics:

Scheherazade bewitched him
With songs of jeweled kings
Princes and of heroes
And eastern fantasies

Told him tales of sultans
And talismans and rings
A thousand and one nights, she sang
To entertain her king
She sings, Scheherazade…

Natal day present

I had heard the album several times when I was in college at SUNY New Paltz. But I did not own it.

As I noted seven years ago, in the winter to spring of 1977, I had graduated from college. But adrift, I ended up crashing at my parents’ house in Charlotte, NC. I was pretty miserable, helping sell costume jewelry and other geegaws. (If I had used a word as sophisticated as “geegaws” at the craft fair, I would be chided for allegedly putting on airs.)

My family asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I requested that Renaissance album, and I received it. But it was clear when my father heard it, he didn’t think much of it, which merely fed into my melancholy.

After the JEOPARDY show last month, my wife reminded me how much her college friend Alison played that album in heavy rotation. This prompted me to buy the CD, which now came as a three-disc (2 CDs, 1 DVD) set.

The first time I came to the end of the album, I wept, partly from the beauty of Annie Haslam’s voice and maybe a little from a sad memory.

The classical side

This story reminded me of another piece of music titled Scheherazade, written in 1888 by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. A 2007 NPR story by Scott Simon explained the power of music.

“For centuries, composers have tried to spin tales in music. My understanding of how important the concept could be was cemented by Leonard Bernstein when I went to a New York Philharmonic rehearsal. Bernstein raised his hands up and asked, ‘Do I have to tell you the story of this Haydn symphony?’

“These typically reserved musicians were practically jumping up and down, nodding their heads in anticipatory glee, like children at storytime. Bernstein was the consummate storyteller, often elaborating on or, dare I say, even fabricating some of the finer details for dramatic effect. But the memory was indelible for me, and the lesson was clear: It’s all about the story.”

Listen to:

Renaissance album

Renaissance side two

Several versions of the Rimsky-Korsakov

My dad did what? Said what?

labor relations and safety coordination

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been pouring over my 1972 diaries. Mostly, I’ve noted my foibles. But now and then, I say, “My dad did what?”

Tuesday, August 1: Premiere of Compendium on CV7 (I assume public access cable) at 10 pm. “Barbara and Dad were hosts.” Surely, Barbara was the very active Barbara Oldwine, who died in 2014. the topic was The Black Family. I have ZERO recollection of this.

Friday, August 4: In the presence of his friends John and April, who had come over for dinner, he announced he would run for mayor of Binghamton in 1973. Three young black men from Highland Falls, Orange County, came over. Nope, don’t remember that either. And since he had JUST moved to Johnson City, I don’t know HOW he could run. Ultimately, he did not.

Checking Newspapers.com

One of my sisters suggested I look up Newspapers.com to see if he ever made any overtures toward the political office. I searched for him on Newspapers.com for 1972 and 1973. He was elected to a couple of boards involving the Broome County’s Red Cross and a group involved with housing for children.

He became the labor relations and compliance officer and safety coordinator for Edward L. Nezelek, Inc. around 9 Jan 1973.

Several articles about difficulties between the State Division of Human Rights and its Binghamton-Broome advisory committee, chaired by Les Green, were reported. By 17 March 1973, things were getting better. Dad was one of those “trusted voices” asked to comment on whatever racial tension occurring in Binghamton.

The house fire in August 1973 at 29 Ackley Avenue in Johnson City was reported. My sister Marcia’s name is misspelled as Marsha. The fire marshall said a “cigarette from an ashtray emptied into a trash basket next to the stove may have caused the fire.” There was damage to the kitchen, bathroom, attic, and roof.

No mention of political ambition. But what’s this? Here’s a classified ad for 28 July through 1 August 1973: “GOOD SLIGHTLY USED folk guitar, price negotiable.” He was going to sell his beloved 1958 Gibson guitar? THIS shocked me. As it turned out, he didn’t sell it but took it to Charlotte, NC, when he, mom, and Marcia moved, and it stayed with him until his death. My sister Leslie now owns it.

The picture

This is a picture of my father, approximately at age five, in Binghamton, NY, circa 1932. I had never seen the photo until February 2022. It is the earliest pic I have seen of him by about a decade. But I don’t know where it is except for the word Calvary. A church? A daycare?

There is a Calvary Baptist on Chenango St, which had a kids program. But what’s with the outfits? Christian service brigade and/or pioneer club? Binghamton history folks: do you have any thoughts? He was probably living at 339 Court St at the time; he was there two years earlier. Or he could have been at 10 Tudor St, off of Susquehanna St.

BTW, tomorrow, my father would have been 96.

My rendezvous with destiny

10 Riverside Drive

Ely Park entrance — By Paul Konecny, used by permission

Recently, I commented on my friend David’s Facebook response to his Wordle 3 score that I’d gotten two 3s in a row, “my rendezvous with destiny.” This was an obtuse clue that day’s word, which was TRYST. He said, “That sounds like the title of your next blog post.” Okay, I always do what David says. (HA!)

ITEM: Someone posted a picture of the gateway to the hundred steps to Ely Park on Facebook’s Historic Binghamton site. This was at the corner of Oak and Prospect Streets, less than four blocks from both my Grandma Williams’ house on Maple Street, south of Prospect, and our house on Gaines Street, east of Oak Street.

The gateway was razed, along with dozens of houses in Binghamton, Johnson City (plus the baseball stadium Johnson Field), and westward in the late 1960s to build the new Route 17, which is becoming I-86. My grandma had relatives that were displaced. But somehow, I had it in my head that the construction was even more disruptive than it was.

If you take the westbound Exit 72 and turn right then left, I know you’ll find a cemetery where my friend Karen’s mom was buried in 2012. But if you turn right and then right again, you’ll find the Ely Park golf course. I haven’t been in that section of the city since the highway was built. Next time I’m in town, I’ll need to go there.

Les as a child

ITEM: My sister Marcia found a picture of my father from c. 1932, which I posted on the Historic Binghamton site, trying to find more information about it. I’ll post it here later this month.

One guy commented that my father “would sometimes sing with my Dad, Pete Reynolds. You and your family visited my family when we lived on Brady Hill Rd in Conklin Forks.” Always fascinating when my past comes back.

A woman named Arlene noted: “Knew your parents and the family through the dental office where I was a dental hygienist. Loved all of them!!” That was 10 Riverside Dr. with Dr. Levey. That was in a separate building right behind my pedestrian’s office, Israel J. Rosefsky, who retired at 88 and died in 2005 at 95. I have a favorable recollection of Arlene.

Old friend

ITEM: In the 1980s, I had a friend named Jean. We used to hang out together, going to plays or concerts; I’ll have to check my diaries eventually. She had a daughter who I was fond of. But I lost track of them.

As I noted, Sue from my choir died recently. I just discovered that Jean’s daughter is Susan’s granddaughter! Moreover, my wife knows the husband of Jean’s daughter. At the funeral, I discovered I had given Jean’s daughter some Elfquest comics back in the day. She knew who Raoul Vezina, my FantaCo friend, was and even remembered that he died from an asthma attack in 1983.

I think a better title for this would have been, My Ever-Present Past, a Paul McCartney song title.

Grandma Gertrude Williams

August 10, 1897-January 24, 1982

It occurred to me that I’ve written a few times about my paternal grandma Agatha Green. For instance, here and here and especially here. I am reminded that she was born 120 years ago on July 26.

I’ve written far less about my maternal grandma Gertrude Williams, born August 10, 125 years ago. I think it’s because my relationship with her was more… complicated. She was born Gertrude Elizabeth Yates, daughter of Edward Yates and Lilian Bell Archer. For the longest time, even my mother believed she was born in 1898. I always remembered it because it was the year of the Spanish-American War.

Then one day in the mid-1960s, she went to register to vote. Unwilling to lie to a government official, she confessed her true age.

I thought Gert grew up in the house my mother always lived in until mom got married. But in the 1905 New York State Census in Binghamton, NY, she lived at 53 Sherman Place, a street razed c. 1960 to build a park near 45 Carroll Street. By 1910, she lived at 13 Maple Street with her parents and her younger siblings, Edward, Ernest, and Adina, or Deana as everyone called her. Gert had an older sister who had died before she was born.

In March 1912, her father died. Yet, in July of that same year, her mother Lillian married a guy named Maurice Holland, a guy from either Texas or Mexico, depending on which subsequent Census you believe.

In the 1920 Census, the household was Harriet Archer (Lillian’s widowed mother), Lillian, Maurice, and Lillian’s four children. Gert, now 22, was working as a maid.

My mom enters the picture

Gertrude married a guy named Clarence Williams around 1927, and they had a child named Gertrude. (She will hereafter be referred to as Trudy to avoid confusion.) And they had a second child, who did not live long and died in early 1929.

In the 1930 Census, the household consisted of Lillian and Maurice; Gertrude, Edward, and Deana, Ernie having moved out; a nephew of Lillian named Edward Archer, 17; and my mother Trudy, 2. Here is a picture of Gert with her mother, sister, and daughter.

But where’s Clarence? Fuzzy gossip suggested that Lillian and maybe even Harriet (d. 1928) drove him away. I never got the real story. Gert is 32 and working as a servant.

By the 1940 Census, the residents were Maurice (Lillian d. 1938), Gert, Edward, Deana, and Trudy. Gert only had a 6th-grade education, and she was working as a housekeeper.

My sister has many undated pictures of people visiting 13 Maple Street, eating in the not-very-large backyard. So it was some sort of cultural mecca. What was THAT all about?

I’ve just seen the 1950 Census

It shows Edward, 47, as head of household, naturally(!), because he was the eldest male; he was a truck driver. Adenia, 42, was a stitcher. Gert, 52, was now listed as separated from Clarence (d. 1958) and not working outside the home. Trudy, 22, is a shipping clerk. She married Les Green, 23, on March 12, 1950; he was a cleaner doing remodeling work.

Eventually, in 1950, my parents-to-be moved into 5 Gaines Street, about six blocks away. It was owned by Gert and presumably her siblings.

I enter the picture

I was born in 1953. In 1958, when I was going to kindergarten, I was supposed to attend Oak Street School. Since my mother worked outside the home, at McLean’s department store, it was determined that 13 Maple Street would be my school address so that I could go there at lunch and after school, tended to by Gert and Deana. Ed had moved out by then.

Deana was cool. We’d play 500 rummy and Scrabble. I taught her canasta, which Grandma Green had shown me.

Gert was a pain. She would tell stories, but it was difficult following them or believing how much, if any, was true. She would indicate that we should not go near this person, who turned out to be a relative. Worse, she forbid her adult daughter and us to see her brother Ed because he was living with a woman, Edna, who was not his wife. After Ed died in 1970, my strongest memory was of Gert and Edna crying on each other’s shoulders at the funeral.

Fear

There were “bad men” lurking in the Oak Street underpass, we were told. The boogie man existed. When I washed the dishes, which I did at home regularly, she told me I shouldn’t because it wasn’t manly. This was one of the several times that Deana said to Gert, “Leave the boy alone!” When Deana died in 1966, I was devastated.

My mother was in a tug-of-war between her mother and her husband, which I alluded to here. Dad clearly did not like Gert. One time, we were having dinner, and someone asked Gert if she wanted some peas. She said, “I’ll have a couple.” My father put two peas on her plate. It was shocking and bite-your-lip funny and may explain why I can be such a literalist.

Mom’s first cousin Frances Beal, Ernie’s daughter, tells a Gert story here, in the fifth paragraph from the end.

Kidnapped

When my parents and baby sister Marcia moved to Charlotte, NC, it became clear to everyone except Gert that Gert needed to move down with her daughter and son-in-law. She had a coal stove, which required going to the basement to shovel the coal into pails and carry it up rickety steps. I did this a lot as a kid, which I oddly enjoyed.

It was the task of sister Leslie and me to take Gert to Charlotte. She railed against it. Where would she get stockings? “They sell stockings in North Carolina.”

She lived in Charlotte until she died on Super Bowl Sunday in 1982. She was cremated in Charlotte but buried at Spring Forest Cemetery in Binghamton, less than 100 meters from 13 Maple Street.

I did love Gert, I believe. But I didn’t always like her.

Les Green: a very important person

Binghamton’s finest

One of my sisters sent me this newspaper clipping from 1970. There’s Les Green, a very important person, in Binghamton, NY with city and county leaders, state legislative representatives, and others.

If I’m reading my Les Green history correctly, this took place largely over a 15-year period. It was roughly from 1959, when he first started singing and playing his guitar publicly, until 1974, when he, my mother, and my baby sister moved to Charlotte, NC.

And it wasn’t because he was a civil rights leader or a singer of folk songs. It was that he was those things AND a tremendous arranger of flowers AND a painter of signs AND a set designer for the Civic Theater. He was very active in his church, from running the mimeograph machine that produced the weekly bulletin to singing in the choir to leading the MAZET singers, the youth choir which included my sister Leslie and me. Also, he was an advocate for those with mental illness at Binghamton State Hospital; I do wonder what was his special affinity for that place was.

Moreover, he and his wife bought their first house in 1972, after living in a property owned by his mother-in-law for all of his married life. After I wrote about my dad a few years back, an acquaintance seriously suggested that there should have been a statue of Les Green in Binghamton.

CLT

So, on the anniversary of his death in 2000, I’ve been musing about how he felt about the move to Charlotte. Surely, he took time to find his bearings. When he first came down there, he referred to it as a “big country town.” And he wasn’t wrong, though it become more civilized over time, with a real mass transit system, not the abomination it used when I lived down there at the beginning of 1977.

The family had a rental house and they took time before discovering the right church for them. He did important work there. His job, where he became a Vice-President of J.A. Jones probably generated more income than any other job he had. He was very involved in his church, with music but also a breakfast program.

But he was always out looking for the financial rainbow, starting so many little businesses that neither my mother nor their accountant knew how many. He regularly came to me in the latter stages of his life wondering how he could get rich on this new World Wide Web thing. (The brutal truth is that he couldn’t because he was lousy at recordkeeping or even giving his wife or the accountant his receipts. Being online wouldn’t have helped.)

When he moved the Charlotte, he was sure that he couldn’t find a market for his music in the South. I was not convinced he was correct. He did start writing poetry; I have a massive manuscript in this very room.

Thinking about you, dear old Dad, as you liked to be called.