Grateful? Let me count the ways ...
Posted on Saturday, November 29, 2008
Thanksgiving and Christmas make a man grateful to be home, like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, the classic movie and now a stage play. George gripes that he lives in a “drafty old barn.” But a visit from Clarence the angel teaches him to see the place a different way.
“Look at this wonderful old drafty house !” George turns around. “Isn’t it wonderful ?”
Today’s George and Mary Bailey might be wondering how to make the mortgage payment in a year of financial upsets, but the moral is the same. Every day George comes home, and he still has one, is another day to be thankful.
From the clutter in the attic and the grungy coffeepot to the creaky step to the bills — even the bills — gosh ! — and a door to close against the wind and a roof to keep the rain off, Mary, isn’t it wonderful ? Here’s a home tour the way George learns to see things, with thanks to the Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s coming Christmas show It’s a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play. ‘YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN A GREAT
GIFT, GEORGE’ The attic: A great place for things that you’d rather not see. But what about things that don’t want to see you ? Bats flitter, rats skitter and squirrels “often get into attics, walls and chimneys,” according to the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. How to keep pests out ? Fix holes and loose boards where they sneak in, so nothing scratches on the roof but Santa’s reindeer.
Dishwasher: It’s never more appreciated than after Thanksgiving dinner — and on the Saturday after Thanksgiving when the last few morsels of leftovers somehow add up to another huge pile of dirty plates. Thank you, Mrs. Modern. Dishwashing is one of the first jobs that people dreamed of handing off to a machine. Science fiction of the early 1900 s imagined clanky robots in the kitchen, scrubbing away. The 1939-40 New York World’s Fair promised the “World of Tomorrow” would be a machinewashed planet of squeaky-clean dinnerware.
The fair’s Westinghouse Pavilion showcased “The Battle of the Centuries” — a dishwashing contest between Mrs. Modern and her new electric dishwasher and old-fashioned Mrs. Drudge at the sink.
Mrs. Drudge slopped around, Mrs. Modern relaxed, and the machine won every time. Public demand made the dishwasher one of science fiction’s first predictions to come true. Still on the wish list: a robot able to cook and serve dinner and clear the table.
Estate: The homeowner has something to show for himself — something to pass along, as the King of Swamp Castle tells his son in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1976 ), pointing out the window: King: “One day, lad, all this will be yours.”
Prince: “What, the curtains ?”
King: “No, not the curtains, lad, all that you can see stretched out over the valleys and the hills. That’ll be your kingdom, lad.”
Spamalot is the Broadway musical version of the movie, Dec. 16-21 at Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville. ‘PLEASE, LET ME STAY HERE’
Garage: Home of the garage band. Bill Jones compiled the CD The Little Rock Sound, 1965-69 for the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies (1999 ). “‘ Garage band’ is an afterthe-fact label for the groups that popped up all over America in the wake of the British Invasion,” Jones says. “Even a band as musically challenged as the one in which I lamely played drums thought of ourselves, potentially, as the new Kinks or Animals or Them, not as a mere afternoon assembly of suburban wannabes.” Still, the term is a garagelike jumble of misconceptions.
“I’m not sure I knew anyone in a ‘garage band’ who lived in a house with a real garage,” Jones says. “Carport, yes, though neighborly relations and parental intervention would have discouraged use of that particular venue. My group practiced — if you could call it that — in the downstairs playroom in my parents’ split-level house.”
Jones’ group “earned from two gigs a total of $ 20 and a cold pizza,” but others went on to regional and even wider success. Little Rock had its own sound thanks to The Romans, The Coachmen and The Culls.
Today’s GarageBand is Apple software that allows a person to make music on the computer in any room of the house. Thank you, Steve Jobs.
Home, sweet home: World War II made soldiers yearn for home, and the war’s end brought a new era of American prosperity — a real chance to buy into the American dream. More and more people thought of owning a home, and the pop tunes and ballads of the time helped make for today’s nation of homebodies. Thank you, Dinah Shore, Bing Crosby, Guy Lombardo. “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To”
I’ll Be Home for Christmas ” Our Little Ranch House ” Crosby crooned about his dream house “with picket fence and rambling rose” (“ Dear Hearts and Gentle People” ). Hank Snow’s hideaway “nested in the Western hills” (“ My Adobe Hacienda” ). And Helen Forrest promised, “We’ll settle down in Dallas / In a little plastic palace;/ Oh, it’s not as crazy as you think” ( “I’ll Buy That Dream” ). Junk drawer: It’s just a house until there’s a drawer, probably in the kitchen, crammed with good and useless odds and ends, including everything that has fallen off the kitchen window ledge into the sink more than three times. Then it’s a home.
Kitchen: High-tech appliances make it gleam and beep like never before. The modern kitchen has everything to turn out a Thanksgiving feast from scratch — and no reason to bother, thanks to so many grocery stores that cater to foodies with ready-made, heat-and-eat, and pop-it-in-the oven meals. The Fresh Market and Whole Foods Market in Little Rock, Ozark Natural Foods in Fayetteville, and expanded grocery-store deli and sushi counters sell the makings of fast meals that look like a day’s work. But no shiny invention takes the place of the old-time kitchen table, where homework is done, newspapers are read, world affairs settled — where Hugh Hefner pasted together the first issue of Playboy, and at least one leg wobbles (the table, not the magazine ) and the ketchup bottle is right where it belongs.
Leaves: Where most people see a job, Joe Chesser sees a chance to do good. Chesser is youth minister at Windsong Church of Christ in North Little Rock, and this month is time for Teen Leaf Raking. He enlists teenagers to rake leaves for the church’s elderly members. “It is not often that we get the chance to mix our older and younger members in casual settings,” Chesser says. “Sure, we worship together and see each other at the church building, but the home is so much more conducive to interaction and relationship building.” He cites “very clear instructions from Jesus himself that if we are to be the people God wants us to be, we should be looking out for the needs of others.” Leaves, he says, “turn out to offer our church the opportunity to bless each other.” ‘JUST STEP ON IT — JUST GET
ME HOME !’ Mortgage: The monthly statement might seem hard to appreciate, but it’s thanks to home loans and mortgages that millions of Americans have a residence with a mailbox to receive bills. Thank you, George Bailey.
Here he is (James Stewart ), telling off the mean and miserly Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore ) in the 1946 movie It’s a Wonderful Life:
“Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You’re right when you say my father was no businessman. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante building and loan, I’ll never know.... But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter, and what’s wrong with that ?...
“ Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you ‘re talking about — they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath ?”
The movie is retold in The Rep’s production It’s a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play, Friday-Dec. 29 in Little Rock.
“I wish I could take credit for selecting the play in the context of national issues,” director Robert Hupp says, “but our plays are selected about a year in advance, so it just happened to become an exceptionally timely show.”
George wants to help people buy houses at fair prices, but his building-and-loan is in terrible trouble. He sees “bankruptcy and scandal and prison” coming.
“While I think our audience’s primary connection to It’s a Wonderful Life is one based on nostalgia, I think the comparisons and connections to current events will be unavoidable,” Hupp says.
George’s only hope is that people will be thankful enough for their home loans to help him survive his own cash shortage.
“I’m hoping the optimism and good feeling of It’s a Wonderful Life gives our audiences something to enjoy and be thankful for this holiday season,” Hupp says. “It is certainly a very positive take on a less than positive situation that all too many of us are experiencing right now.”
Plumbing: The old way was a cold trudge to the convenience out back. Thank goodness for pipes, and for plumbers. Then again, Arkansas still celebrates the outhouse, especially in Mountain View, home of October’s annual Championship Outhouse Races. “Things step up a notch with the Parade of Outhouses,” according to the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce’s description of the event. “The crowd gathers to cheer for their favorite ‘ people-powered potty’ team of driver and pushers. The wheeled outhouses are outfitted with a steering device for the driver [while sitting on a potty seat ], with power provided by two pushers... all sense of decorum is abandoned.”
Roof: A house with no roof is like a box with no lid, no good to put stuff in. “That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff.” Thank you, George Carlin. Also, a parent needs a roof to hit every now and then, and a partygoer needs a roof to raise on New Year’s Eve.
Vacuum cleaner: Today’s high-tech bagless vacuum cleaner took more than a century’s tinkering. Thank you, Melville, Bissell, William Henry Hoover, and a bagful of other names in history’s full sweep of carpetcleaning pioneers, for picking up Thanksgiving’s crumbs. Great-great-grandmother dragged all the rugs outside to thump the dust and soot out of them. She whapped away with a carpet beater that looked like a badminton racket. Carpet-cleaning was such a big and wheezy job, people were grateful for any improvement. The first vacuum cleaner was a horse-drawn clunk that parked outside the house, and only the hoses went in. The first so-called “portable” vacuum sweeper weighed nearly 100 pounds. Today’s vacuums commonly weigh less than 10 pounds, and some of the mightiest marvels will whisk up the last kernel of popcorn on the floor — the wily one, the rogue of the lot — in maybe, oh, two, three or four tries.
Yard: Once raked, the grass takes so little effort this time of year — thank you, Jack Frost — there’s time for an afterdinner, after-leftovers nap with the cat. Or as things turn out: Sleep with cats, wake up with cats on top of you. “Merry Christmas, you wonderful old building and loan !” — George Bailey Coming next week:
Haven’t started your Christmas decorating yet ? We’ll share some ideas to get you in gear.
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