I’ve never liked when sportswriters disdain great athletes playing past their prime, arrogantly asserting they should have quit before the sad decline.
Willie Mays was well past his prime at 40 when my father and I took my seven-year-old brother Philip to Shea Stadium on August 25 1971, so he could see one of the greatest players of all time. The Mets drew 16,000 fans over the season’s average for the game with the San Francisco Giants. Willie struck out three times in a row, but my brother got to see that swing, even if it wasn’t so sweet anymore. (He also saw Mays’s teammate Dave Kingman hit the side of the Giants' team bus, beyond the left-field bullpen.)
The following year, while batting .184, Willie was cast off to the Mets, returning to the city of his early grandeur, 21 years after turning his back on Vic Wertz and breaking Cleveland’s heart from 425 feet away.
In his final year, 1973, Willie Mays batted .211, which was 91 points lower than his career average. Sportswriter Bill Madden was among those to place Mays with “the many Hall of Famers who could never quite concede when it was time to quit,” lamenting “the everlasting image of a 42-year-old shell of former greatness, stumbling and falling down in the outfield in the 1973 World Series.”
I treasure Mays memories from the ’73 World Series: He got the first hit of the series, and, in his last at-bat ever, drove in the go-ahead run off Rollie Fingers in Game Two (and yes, he stumbled getting out of the box).
But the indelible moment gracing my memory for 46 years came when the umpire called out Bud Harrelson at the plate after a phantom tag. Willie was on-deck, and he anguished over a play that didn’t involve him for a team he barely knew.
Not for nothing, but Willie wasn’t the only player who had trouble with fly balls in the blinding sun. Here’s 30-year-old left-fielder Cleon Jones.
And by the way, Willie also stumbled in the outfield during the ’54 World Series—after making that magic catch and throw.
All this is in preface for a hypothetical question I’ve been trying to formulate for many years. This is the closest I’ve gotten:
If you could relive just one season of one major leaguer’s career, would you prefer to be Willie Mays in 1973, a shell of your former self (six home runs) but with a career’s worth of brilliant memories? Or would you choose, say, 23-year-old John Milner’s 1973 (23 homers), without a whole lot to remember, but a future to dream?
Characters: Alan Ziegler, Erin Langston, and surprise guest star Robert Weide (multiple Emmy-winning director of thirty Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes, writer-director of documentaries on Kurt Vonnegut, Woody Allen, and Lenny Bruce (Oscar nominee), and somehow involved in everything that has made you laugh or giggle ever.
The story: Our last night in Paris. Erin and I perambulate for an hour or so, sidewalk-shopping for our final dinner. Almosts but not-quites. We pass Atlas on Rue de Bac three times (where we first ate 29 years ago). As we're about to sit down at Cafe de Paris, Erin says, “I’m still thinking Atlas," where we were intrigued (and slightly terrified) by the raw bar parked on the sidewalk.
We order Les Plateaux L'Atlas, and a granfalloon of sea creatures is deposited on our table; they will not be sleeping with the fishes tonight.
Erin receives shelling and other tips from the server. About these little darling he says, "Just pop them in your mouth. It is OK."
I think of the line in Midnight in Paris "In bed with a bad oyster," and wonder if one of us should abstain, like couples who won't fly on the same plane. Erin goes to work cracking, and I retreat to Twitter to take my mind off the carnage. This photo jumps out:
The post is by Robert Weide: "Sitting at an outdoor cafe on the Left Bank. A local just walked by, wearing a Curb Your Enthusiasm T-shirt. I seriously considered going up to him and introducing myself, figuring it would blow his mind. By the time I decided to do it, I’d have had to chase him, so passed...."
Robert Weide has been on my radar for many years—“Curb” of course—but mainly his Vonnegut film. I had studied with Kurt in graduate school and meant to see if Robert might need a teaching anecdote—Kurt rarely taught so there aren’t that many of us (John Irving being one). I never reached out, but started following Robert on Twitter. By the way, “X” looks very much like a study for Vonnegut’s signature drawing of an asshole, introduced in Breakfast of Champions:
And by the byway, the above scan is from the copy Kurt signed to me exactly 50 years ago, when he was 50-years-old.
Back to Paris.
It doesn't take a forensics expert to realize Robert Weide is across the street.
(Later, I will ask myself the cop-show question: “Can you zoom in there?” Not enough to be admissible in court, but there we are, kettle of fish and all.)
Rue de Buci used to be easy to cross--no cars--but now one has to look both ways multiple times for bicycles (a wonderful comedy school classroom for learning double-takes under pressure). I make it across and search the outdoor tables futilely for beef bourguignon. What does he look like? There's a man leaving who looks like what I remember him looking like in the Vonnegut film. "Are you Robert?"
I'll let Robert pick up the narrative from his subsequent tweets:
"I get up to leave. An American guy walks up to me and says, 'Are you Robert Weide?' I answer affirmatively, and say, 'How could you possibly know that?' since the name is famous, but the face is not. He says, 'I'm a big fan and I follow you on Twitter, and I just popped in to look at Tweets and I saw your photo about the guy in the Curb T-shirt, and saw the plate that said 'Cafe de Paris' and realized my wife and I were right across the street from you.' They were at the Cafe Atlas, which you can see in the picture. His name is @AlanZiegler and his wife is Erin. Alan not only was he a fan of Curb and my Woody Allen doc, but was a graduate student of Kurt Vonnegut's when Kurt taught at City College in NY in the late 70s. We were calculating the odds of his seeing that photo at that place at that moment, when we looked at the photo again and zoomed in, and realized that Alan and Erin were visible in the shot. So now we come full circle with a photo of Alan and me at the Atlas. We should have angled it so you could see the Café de Paris in the background. Anyway, that's the magic of my first day in Paris. Who knows what synchronicity lies ahead in the next couple of days? And yes, it was Beef Bourguignon."
(Thank you, Erin, for thinking to grab your phone and asking us to pose.)
Now here's where it gets really strange. Later, Robert texts me to check out the thread he's made of his recent tweets, featuring Erin's photo: "829k views and counting." Before I can digest this number, Robert texts, "So far 994k views. We'll pass 1m within the hour."
When Erin and I land in New York the tally is 2.9 million.
We top out at: 7:19 PM · May 22, 2024 3.3M Views
The most bewildering number is that Robert Weide has fewer than 60k followers. What's the appeal? Maybe this comment says it best:
"Wow, how cool is that. I’m sorry but I don’t know Curb, your face or name but may I say it’s still a cool story?"
Here's a sampling of other comments (most from people who do know Curb):
"A bit anti-Curb, don’t you think? Would have been more in the character of Curb if he picked a fight with you, maybe about the ending & you trying to explain it wasn’t you who directed that one."
"Wow, I had to zoom in before I realized that Alan was the head of the undergrad writing department at Columbia when I was a student there. Very nice guy. I spent two years developing a comedy series with Tim Gibbons of Curb. It’s a tiny world."
"Alan may be a member of your karass."
"OK we need to plot that story in the format of a graph of Vonnegut's Shape of Stories"
"It’s my first day in Paris too! I’m going to look for you (and Alan and Erin)."
"How is it that all romance would be lost in this story if you were in NYC eating at the New York Cafe."
"Alan looks ai generated no offence Alan."
"Sounds like the kind of circuitous serendipity that was Curb’s bread and butter. Are we certain LD didn’t outline this?"
"omg, I love Alan Ziegler, he was one of my most memorable professors at Columbia! I read this thread with interest because things like this are so much fun and then ended up having my own fun small world moment lol"
"I love small world stories. Looks like you made a new friend. And I got a lovely Friday morning read on my back patio with a cup of coffee. Sometimes this world is a miraculous place."
"A perfect story for this format. Strong start (with a hint of mystery), interesting middle, and a a satisfying ending. Plus, a gorgeous location to boot. (And it had Vonnegut!) "
"My mind is blown!!! That is a complete holiday in a day. Glorious connecting for both and oh the connections and threads of life."
"That's wild and so beautiful! Maybe your urge to take a pic of the guy wearing the Curb shirt wasn't just random. Per your first post, something was telling you to make a connection. And then this gentleman appeared! Perhaps Linda had a hand in it!"
"Wait a second. No Larry David stare-down either by Alan to make sure it WAS you or by you to make sure he WAS a Vonnegut student? Surely, there was an accordion player nearby who could have supplied the stare-down theme as one of you finally concluded, "D'accord, d'accord..."
"Stories like this is why I can’t leave this site."
What a great story. Nice Twitter detective work on the part of Alan! Are you saying you studied with Kurt Vonnegut, or only Alan did? What an amazing experience that must have been."
Yes, amazing. Here’s a little memoir of Vonnegut. I have been admitted to the City College graduate writing program as a poet, but I convince the director to let me also take Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction workshop. The class meets in Kurt’s midtown Manhattan townhouse. A few sessions into the term, Kurt tells us that his writing isn’t going well and he needs to take a week off. He looks pale and dispirited as he explains that he is trying to write about heaven and can’t figure out how to do it. Two weeks later, when I ask how the writing is going, he smiles, waves his thumb like a flag, and says, “A-number one.” He looks terrific. (His depiction of heaven doesn’t appear until a few years later, in the prologue to Jailbird.) I write a short story about rock musicians. Kurt thinks it should be a novel, that writing short stories is like “playing poker and winning $7. Are you going to settle fr easy victories, be happy with an ‘A’ in Creative Writing?” I would be thrilled with an “A” in Creative Writing from Kurt Vonnegut, but I say I’ll give it a go. Kurt replies that I shouldn’t agree so fast: “Telling you to write a novel is like telling you to get married.” Every couple of weeks we have a one-on-one meeting. Kurt usually says something before we even sit down: “You’re on to something,” and, later in the term, “You’re racking right along. It looks like a book.” The supreme compliment comes when he declares that in addition to being a poet I am “becoming a man of letters.” After reading a new chapter, Kurt says, “These guys are trouble, get rid of them,” about two of the protagonist’s band members. I assume he is speaking to me as the author, and I am ready to expunge the characters, but he clarifies that he is talking through me to the protagonist, who should fire them in the story. I leave feeling great. I am creating characters. My momentum is strong, and Kurt invites me to meet with him after the term ends. A couple of weeks go by, and I muster the courage to call for an appointment. His wife answers and tells me, “The term is over, he’s not seeing any students.” Before I can plead my case, Kurt comes on an extension and says, “It’s all right.” At our meeting, Kurt asks, “Do you know famous rock musicians?” “Not famous ones.” “Well, this is the way rock musicians will act in ten years.” “Huh?” Kurt explains that some kid in the Midwest will read my book and become a famous rock musician, emulating my characters because that’s all he knows about how a rock musician acts. Then kids will emulate him. I am not only creating characters, I am creating people. I ask how his book is going, and he replies, “It doesn’t much matter. It’s not going very well.” I can take this two ways: 1) If Kurt Vonnegut has such doubts, who am I to even try to get into the game? Or, 2) The fact that I, too, have such doubts doesn’t mean I am not worthy of being in the game. I opt for the latter. At the end of the session, Kurt inscribes my copy of Breakfast of Champions: “For Alan Ziegler, who has begun a book of his own.” I never finish that novel, but fifteen years later my manuscript of short stories wins a minor award, and I am happy with this collection of “small victories.” I send Kurt the manuscript, and ask for a blurb, figuring I am probably the tenth writer that week to ask him for one—all with connections less tenuous than mine—and that he has probably long ago forgotten me. I include a return postcard, asking him to check one of five boxes: “I will try to take a look at the manuscript and maybe write a blurb.” “No, but try again with the galleys.” “No.” “Yes, but be patient.” “It’s done. Here’s the blurb.” A week later, the postcard comes back. Kurt has checked the “be patient” box and added, “Just got back from England, so have to catch up on a lot of stuff.” But in the same batch of mail is an envelope with his blurb, which is prefaced by: “I’m honored to know you.” Likewise, I am most sure.
The New York Times ran a piece today (March 6, 2024) on Tom Meschery (Meschery NY Times); here's a rerun from 2015.
Bio Note #1: Tom Meschery was born in Manchuria and spent five childhood years in a Japanese internment camp. He received an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where his teachers included Mark Strand, Marvin Bell, and Helen Chasin. After Iowa, Tom ran a bookstore, taught for Poets in the Schools, and did physical labor before receiving his teaching credentials. He joined the faculty of Reno High School, where he taught Advanced Placement English and creative writing for 25 years; he also taught at Sierra College. Tom is the author of several books of poetry, including Nothing We Lose Can Be Replaced, Some Men, and Sweat: New and Selected Poems About Sports; he has also published the nonfiction Caught in the Pivot. In 2001 he was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
Bio Note #2: Tom Meschery was born in Manchuria and spent five childhood years in a Japanese internment camp. He was an All-American basketball player in high school and college, and an NBA All Star. He played ten years, mostly for The Warriors (first in Philadelphia and then in San Francisco) and later for the Seattle Supersonics, appearing in two NBA Finals. His #31 has been retired by Saint Mary’s College (where his career rebounding record stood for 48 years), as has his #14 by the Warriors. Tom coached the Carolina Cougars and was the assistant coach for the Portland Trailblazers. In 2003 he was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame.
I’ve been fascinated by Tom Meschery since I heard about a former NBA star, whose name was often prefixed with “hard-nosed,” turning from personal fouls to personal poems. I started a list of “athletes who write poetry” for use with reluctant students when I toured high schools. Not long after my father died in 2001, I was moved and impressed by Tom’s poem “Working Man," in which he addresses his late father (more about this later). Over the years, I have read the poem to several of my Columbia classes, and one day a student said: “He was my high school English teacher!” Interesting.
Recently, I talked to Tom (while he was recovering from his second shoulder replacement surgery); this piece is based on that conversation and other sources (see note on bottom).
Manchuria to the NBA
Thomas Nicholas Meschery was born Tomislav Nikolayevich Mescheryakov. His father was a hereditary officer in Admiral Kolchak’s Army. His mother was the daughter of Vladimir Nicholayavich, who participated in Kornilov’s failed coup against Kerensky: “My grandpa was put under arrest in the Winter Palace. Together with Nicholas II.” Tom’s mother was related to the poet Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (second cousin to Leo).
Tom’s parents met, in exile, in Manchuria, and Tom was born in 1938. In 1939, Tom’s father went ahead to San Francisco; his mother was to follow with Tom and his sister when they obtained the necessary papers. They were awaiting voyage on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The Mescheryakovs were placed in a Tokyo-area internment camp for women and children, where “there was no suffering” and they were fed well. Towards the end of the war, the guards gave them the rejects from intercepted Red Cross packages (lots of spam).
They finally made it to San Francisco. In “A Small Embrace,” Tom writes in his mother’s voice addressing him; the poem ends:
a voice kept yelling over the loudspeaker: citizens to the left, stateless to the right. A band was playing something cheerful. You pointed to the wrong father. I to the wrong husband.
Tom’s weak English was mitigated by his size and athletic prowess. He became a star basketball player at Lowell High School, where he developed his game in a modest facility that was “full of shadows” with a corduroy floor and wood backboards.
[from] Lowell High
Our coach, who was as old as the building, Taunted and inspired us, swore and cajoled us, He taught us to play without frills. We became red brick and corduroy And learned to see through shadows.
Tom went on to be a two-time All-American at St. Mary’s College, and was drafted in the first round by the Philadelphia Warriors. On March 2, 1962, in a game played in Hershey Pennsylvania, Wilt Chamberlain and Tom combined for 116 points in a 169-147 victory over the Knicks. Wilt scored 100. The game was not televised, but Tom wrote a poem about it.
[from] The 100 Point Game
That night through the fourth quarter in that mad scramble for history we all passed the ball the full length of the court to Wilt, straight and high into the dark around the rafters
Tom played for 10 seasons, averaging 12.7 points and 8.6 rebounds. His stat line in Game 7 of the Eastern Division finals is particularly impressive: 48 minutes, 32 points, 11 rebounds, 2 assists, and only 3 personal fouls.
The NBA to Iowa
Tom's first collection, Over the Rim, was published while he was an active player, and the cartoon on the back of his 1970-71 playing card is captioned “Tom is a writer of poetry.”
But, Tom says, his reading had been confined to earlier Russian and British and classic American verse, and the poems in Over the Rim were “ordinary” and “didn’t test limits or push parameters.” This began to change at a poker game. "Mark Strand was teaching at the University of Washington while I was playing for the Sonics, and I met him at a poker game run by a couple of professors.” Strand invited Tom to sit in on his class when the team was in town, and he got his “first exposure to contemporary American poetry.”
Meschery and Strand became good friends and, while Tom was coaching Carolina, the two met for dinner when the Cougars were in town to play the Nets. Tom complained about his coaching job (he titled a poem "Why I Was a Terrible Coach"), and Strand advised, “Well, if you hate it that much get the hell out of there.” He told Tom he’d write a recommendation for Iowa. In Tom’s subsequent book about his coaching year, Caught in the Pivot, he writes, “Mark told us about the number of poets who are frustrated jocks. Here I am a jock who’s a frustrated poet.”
Tom was accepted and quit his job. He and his then-wife (the novelist Joanne Meschery) packed up with their three small children and moved to Iowa, where he had “two great years. I just loved it. From then on I just couldn’t stop writing poetry.” But the transition wasn’t easy. “For the first six months I was pretty timid, I sneaked around and sat in the back of the workshops. I felt very unsure of myself.” The turning point came when he studied with Helen Chasin. “She was the first one who really said, ‘You’re not too bad you can do this, don’t hesitate to talk.’” Tom “became more confident, experimental, she gave me a bunch of poets to read and said imitate.” Classmate Michael Waters remembers, “Tom was without pretensions, itself remarkable in the Workshop, and generous with his praise."
The Mad Russian and the Sweet and Generous Man
As a basketball player, Tom Meschery was known as the Mad Russian. One game, Tom tried to stay out of trouble by swearing in Russian, but eventually a referee called him for a technical based on his “intonation.” Tom’s on-court anger often went beyond words. He told an interviewer, “If I was elbowed I elbowed twice.” Former teammate Al Attles says, “His eyes would start rolling around in his head if somebody did something to him on the floor and he’d lose it …”
In the Moment
The whistle blows and I am caught between curbing my anger or hitting the player who just fouled me. Oh, what the hell, I say.
But the hostility remained on the court. During Tom’s rookie year, Tom Heinsohn of the Celtics bloodied his eye with a right cross. After the game, they ran into each other in the tavern below Boston Garden, drank some beers, and wound up talking about painting: “[Heinsohn] said he painted in the Wyeth School.” Tom wasn’t always the smartest fighter. While playing for Golden State, he tried to punch his former teammate and close friend Chamberlain (then with the Lakers). Tom recalls, “It was cartoonish. I couldn’t reach him— he was holding my head.”
[from] Tom Heinsohn
Today I write poems and admire the back-light in Wyeth’s painting of the yellow dog sunning himself in the window and think that the violence we made together was the work of artists
Iowa classmate Michael Ryan says about Tom, “His heart and spirit and sheer gusto were as big as he was. And that's saying something. What a sweet and generous man.” When Kyle Smith—now the head coach of the Columbia University Lions—was an assistant at Saint Mary’s, he got to know Tom first through his presence that “loomed in the folklore of the alums as his jersey hung in the rafters. He was known as the ‘Mad Russian.’ Once I met the man, I do not think there could have been a more inappropriate nickname. Far from Mad, Tom Meschery is a prince of a human being who once physically touched people on the court who touched the hearts of his students and loved ones. I am sure the Christian Brothers who educated him at Saint Mary's would be so proud to see someone who has embodied the Lasallian spirit of the school motto ‘enter to learn, leave to serve.’”
The modern game is much calmer, due in part to every moment being televised and players protecting huge salaries.
After Meditating
(for Phil Jackson)
I return to your book, Sacred Hoops and I think, perhaps you’ve discovered the secret to the modern game, the centered-self each player can achieve with right-breathing, as if the soul were a tight muscle in need of stretching.
Team mantras, spiritual championships.
If only I’d known I didn’t have to throw that elbow at LaRusso or stalk Chet Walker to his locker room, spoiling for a fight, or take a swing at Wilt, while my breathless teammates feared for my life. All I had to do was breathe my way out of anger. Lungs instead of fists.
Writing workshops are non-contact endeavors (physically), but Tom recalls that at Iowa “a fight erupted in our kitchen” between a concrete poet and a traditional poet during a poker party. “Raymond Carver broke the fight up.” Michael Waters said it was the only time he saw Tom angry: “Tom had placed a huge glass bowl filled with scoops of Baskin-Robbins ice cream—all their flavors—on his dining room table, and the ice cream slowly melted into a deep rainbow sludge while folks stood around outside, calming down, wondering if the party would continue. I always remember that ice cream when I think of Tom.”
The Court to the Desk
After Iowa, Tom tried coaching again, this time as the assistant to Portland’s player-coach Lenny Wilkins, a former teammate (#18, below). Bill Walton (#32) was also on the team. At the time, the FBI was searching for Patty Hearst—the kidnapped heiress who helped rob a bank—and Bill Walton had been questioned by the FBI (there was no connection). Michael Waters recalls that Tom would “invite me to games, let me stay with him in his hotel room, and beg me not to make jokes about Patty Hearst hiding in his bathroom.”
When Wilkins lost his coaching job, Tom left the game. He had a “hard transition from professional sports. Ran a bookstore for three years, painted houses, rock work.” To pick up a little extra money, Tom “got hooked up with the poets in the schools—a week gig here and there, elementary, middle, high school, take over an English class. I just loved it. I really liked high school kids. They were on the verge of being mature, at the same time they were still wonderfully naïve, full of piss and vinegar.”
Tom earned his teaching credentials at the University of Nevada, and, while waiting for a teaching position, he spent six months coaching in Africa, where he had made previous trips for the USIA during his playing days.
Republic of the Congo
Entering the airport, the soldier guarding the passport booth can’t be more than fifteen years old. He’s holding a rifle at port arms a cigarette dangling from his lips. Above him, a banner in red print reads: A Bas Les Americains! Down with Americans! "Don’t worry,” the Embassy man says, “They don’t mean basketball players.”
Given Tom’s subsequent success as a teacher, one might expect him to have developed a love for coaching, but his competitive fire had no outlet on the bench, especially when his players didn’t approach the game with the same intensity he had. “The blindness that I have felt so often when I become enraged was beginning to cloud my eyes,” he wrote in Caught in the Pivot. Before one game, he “tried something different. I walked into the locker room and told the players to discuss the game among themselves and to come out when they were ready to play.” This didn’t turn into a transformational moment when all the swearing and cajoling take hold. Instead, “They came out all right and we got bombed…”
Teaching high school English provided Tom with an “intensity of experience” without the warfare. He has said, “In basketball you always have to be on. I think that's also true as a teacher. Every day is like a new game. The game starts at 8 in the morning and the final buzzer rings at 2:10.”
Tom was known for his tough exams and generosity of spirit. “It was the advice for life, beyond English, that was by far the greatest gift Tom gave me,” posted one student on Rate My Teachers, and another wrote, “I like all the poems we read, he's really flexible too he puts his big leg up on his desk while he's standing it’s cool.”
Now retired, Tom says, “I miss them terribly.” He kept seating charts and is “pondering putting together a project to find out what happened to 20 or 30 kids.”
Tom and His Father
[from] Reasons to Teach
…And my father, old immigrant, believer in misery, could not believe they did pay good money for a game, for work you didn’t hate and come home weak from drudgery. “Sport.” The word flew from his mouth like spit.
Tom and his father had a strained relationship and, after Tom was drafted in the first round by the Warriors, “he just said to me, ‘What kind of work is this for a man?’” His father died while Tom was serving a stint in the Army and he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. “That always stayed with me. I always carried my father around in me, so I wasn’t surprised that when I started to write about myself as a basketball player that it translated very quickly into a poem about my father.”
Working Man
I admit sleeping in late at the Hilton, ordering room service, handing out big tips while your kind of men were opening their lunch buckets. You would have scolded me: "Что это за работа для человека?" “What kind of work is this for a man?" Old immigrant, I admit all of this too late. You died before I could explain sportswriters call me a journeyman. They write I roll up my sleeves and go to work. They use words like hammer and muscle to describe me. For three straight years on the job my nose collapsed. My knees ached and I could never talk myself out of less than two injuries at a time. Father, you would have been proud of me: I labored in the company of large men.
An earlier version of the poem ends with “I labored in the company of tall men,” but Tom changed it because “When you think of Chamberlain and Moses Malone, they weren’t just tall they were really large,” as was his father.
Tom didn’t let his father impede his basketball career, and he gives him credit for instilling in him a love of poetry. “In my childhood I learned many verses by heart. My father liked the old poetry which had to be beautiful, with rhythm and rhyme. He did not accept either Mayakovski or Esenin. For us, the Russians, poetry is a part of our soul. My father, a huge and strong soldier, recited verses for me and there were tears in his eyes.”
There’s no way of knowing if Tom’s father would have come to appreciate his son laboring in the company of large men, but Tom is certain he’d be impressed with Tom’s induction into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. “He'd be pleased with his son.”
Tom Now
Tom lives in Sacramento with his wife, the painter Melanie Marchant Meschery, and he maintains a blog called Meschery's Musings on Sports, Literature and Life. He is also writing fiction, including a series of young adult novels about basketball. Tom had “kind of drifted away” from basketball when he was “teaching hard,” but has reconnected with the sport due to the combination of having more time in retirement and the welcome from Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber. The team won the NBA championship last Spring, and Tom rode in the Victory parade ("I can’t stop writing little haikus about Steph Curry").
Tom has also rekindled his friendship with Robert Hass (former U.S. Poet Laureate), who was an undergraduate classmate at Saint Mary’s. The two recently read together at their alma mater. According to one account, “Throughout the evening, the respect the two men felt for each other was evident.” Hass told “a story about a memorable college soiree where Meschery was seen hanging out of an upper-floor window in Dante Hall reciting” Rimbaud.
Hass has written about Tom’s poetry: “My only regret is that William Carlos Williams isn’t alive to read it or for me to read it to him. One of the things he wanted was a poetry like a clean jab, straight through, all force and grace…”
For an image that would have delighted WCW, let’s go back to "The 100 Point Game." Tom, Wilt, and their co-workers are headed home, when Tom sees a fellow working man at the end of his shift.
Later, on the bus driving back to Philly I watched a farmer in a horse and buggy trotting through dark Amish countryside following the brief light of his lantern home.
514: Song lyricist was my dream career: Fill a dozen or so pages with drafts, send them off to my dependent collaborator (with a sweet voice, ear for melody, and recording contract), and live on royalties as I consume experiences for my next set of lyrics. The dream came true—except for the contract and royalties.
515: I was madly in love with the 60s singer-songwriters, playing their albums on repeat (pre-digitally on a turntable) and seeing them at The Gaslight, Fat Black Pussycat, Bitter End, Gerdes Folk City, Club 47, Central Park summer concerts, Palisades Amusement Park, Newport Folk Festival: Phil Ochs, Laura Nyro, Eric Andersen, Buffy St. Marie, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Hardin, Tom Paxton, Fred Neil, Paul Siebel, Patrick Sky, Richard and Mimi Farina, Leonard Cohen, Tim Buckley, Steve Noonan, Janis Ian, and of course Bob Dylan. (Though I was never enamored of "Blowing in the Wind," which Peter Yarrow introduced on a live Peter, Paul & Mary recording with a Rabbinical "This song asks nine questions.” What motivated him to count the questions? Years later I asked him and he tousled my hair and said, “Oh you!”)
516: I took to the guitar at an early age. Here I am pretending to be a lap-guitar-cowboy (prepared for an unruly-crowd).
I toured local backyards as one of the first Elvis impersonators, right down to the cowlick.
517: When I was 15, I spent some of my Bar Mitzvah money on a $50 Harmony Sovereign guitar at the recently-opened branch of Sam Ash in Hempstead. Here's Paul Ash after closing the deal.
On the way home, my mother said, “Is this going to collect dust in the closet?” I took the bait and signed up for lessons from Al Wansor, who had an eponymous store in Lynbrook. At the first lesson, Al “taught” me to play “Love Me Tender”—single notes, no chords. I wanted to strum like Bob Gibson and fingerpick like Mississippi John Hurt. I didn't return so I never got to know that Al Wansor had toured with bands and did session work on albums. I did enjoy playing the notes to “Love Me Tender,” and eventually realized the repetition was starting to train my ear to recognize note differentials, training that was never completed because I gave up on Al Wansor.
518: I played the Harmony Sovereign at dozens of gigs, wrote songs on it, and filled cassettes labelled "noodling" and "messing." Everyone who picked it up admired its action and tone. Several years later, Jimmy Page would compose Led Zeppelin songs on a Harmony Sovereign (here on display at the Met Museum), and even played it on the recording of “Stairway to Heaven".
Also, Pete Townshend had one.
But first I had one.
519: I would pretend I wrote songs I admired, and sing them in imagined settings. I also fantasized going to go to my left on a fast break for the Knicks, which was never going to happen, but having my lyrics sung at the Gaslight was remotely possible (and did happen).
Fred Neil’s “Just a Little Bit of Rain,” comprises only 13 discrete lines, including:
And if you look back Try to forget all the bad times Lonely blue and sad times And just a little bit of rain And just a little bit of rain
I heard myself adding:
And if you look back Try to forget the last words Those hastily caste words And just a little bit of rain And just a little bit of rain
I felt like I had just gone to my left on a fast break.
520: Robert Middleman was my folkie friend throughout high school (and beyond). Somehow, we summoned the gumption to play hoot night at Gerdes Folk City (the original location, positively on Fourth Street), where on Monday nights anyone could do a song or two. The emcee sized us up and put us on first. As the sparse audience scattered politeness for Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind," the emcee said, "Well, that's a hootenanny for you," which we took to mean, "We got that one out of the way." We were followed by a kid about our age who knew what he was doing. He was Gram Parsons, later of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers (who would OD at 26). Another performer was a cowboy-type with the refrain, "I proceeded to take 3 or 4 steps backwards and give her a dropkick right in the crotch." Everyone (including me) laughed at the line, which showed up a few years later on Jerry Jeff Walker's Driftin' Way of Life album. By then, I didn't laugh.
521: In the spring of my first year at Union College, my roommate from Carmel Valley said, "One of your folksinger friends was killed near my house." He said it with a combination of hometown pride and college banter. It took me a couple of days to find out it was one of my heroes, Richard Fariña, who had left a party for his wife (and collaborator) Mimi's 21st birthday to take a ride on the back of a motorcycle.
I mourned by singing "Children of Darkness" to Mimi:
Now is the time for your loving, dear And the time for your company Now when the light of reason fails And fires burn on the sea....
For I am a wild and a lonely child And the son of an angry land; And now with the high wars raging I would offer you my hand
I wasn't wild, I wasn't particularly lonely, and I wasn't a child, but I certainly felt the need to imagine Mimi's company.
522: Though not as momentous an occasion as Ezra Pound showing up at William Carlos Williams' room at Penn, I first met Carl Rosenstock when he appeared at my dorm room to check out the Harmony Sovereign he'd been hearing about, marking the beginning of a long songwriting/performing friendship. Usually one of us would write a first draft and the other might offer suggestions. Eventually we added Cliff Safane (a true musician who played piano, sax, and bass clarinet) and called ourselves "The 42nd Street Shuttle," which came to be known around campus as simply "The Shuttle." We were regulars at the North End, a makeshift campus cafe, where performers included Phil Robinson (later to build the Field of Dreams), and afterwards we might have beers at the Rathskeller with Jeffrey DeMunn (currently with 119 acting credits on IMDB), who blew us away with his Krapp's Last Tape at the campus theater in the Nott Memorial.
We also played frequently on Rob Friedman's Folk Fest radio show on WRPI (which went on for decades). And we somehow got on the stage at Caffe Lena in Saratoga, with Cliff playing bass clarinet (probably a first for a folk club). At the end of the set, Lena declared, "Well, that's the new music!" which we took to mean, "We got that one out of the way." Set list:
523: Some lies are so unnecessary (and ultimately disprovable) that they could hardly be worth the ephemeral pleasure they might bring. This lie still confounds me: A production company was making a documentary on Union College. The producer called and said he'd heard that "The Shuttle" was the folk group on campus, and could we record one of our songs for the soundtrack? (Maybe someone would see it and offer us a contract.) Weeks after we did the recording, a classmate mentioned he had seen a preview. "Are we in it?" we asked. "Yeah," he said. "The Shuttle, right in the opening."
We weren't in it.
524: I couldn't sing. I could finger-pick passably (thanks to someone showing me the secret of double thumbing), and my Harmony Sovereign sweetened my strumming. But I couldn't run a sequence of single notes, a minimal skill set for a lead guitarist. Carl liked—needed—having me around, so I was in the Shuttle lineup, home or away, and the lead lines were keyboarded or blown by Cliff.
One of my lyrics came out, wholly formed, in my notebook, triggered by my memories of playing the snare drum in the elementary school walking band.
Carl added a lovely melody, and since there were so few lyrics, Cliff had plenty of time to stretch out. One performance, I felt the music in a way I hadn't before, and improvised a very brief solo. The show was recorded, and when my solo came up on the tape, Cliff looked at me, smiled, and said, "You had a musical idea."
The next day, a friend ran up to me on campus, held my shoulders, said, "'Proud of your brand new shoes'—beautiful!" and ran off.
525: I met a student named Paul Harris when I was being rushed by both Jewish fraternities. Paul asked me if Eric Andersen was any good. "He's great, why?" His friend Harvey Brooks, a bass player, had asked Paul to join him accompanying Andersen at a concert. They hit it off so well musically that Eric Andersen did something perhaps unprecedented: He rerecorded his current album, 'Bout Changes 'N' Things, this time with Paul and Harvey.
Paul went on to an illustrious career with hundreds of credits as accompanist and arranger: The Doors, Nick Drake, B.B. King, Ian and Sylvia, John Sebastian, and so so many more, including a stint as part of Stephen Stills' group "Manassas."
One day Paul excitedly gave me a reel-to-reel of Richie Havens' forthcoming first album, Mixed Bag. We went to the campus library, and I listened to the whole album through headphones in one of the cushioned chairs on the mezzanine, tingling with the excitement of a career being launched. "What did you think?" Paul asked, and I told him I loved it except for "Sandy," which sounded more cocktail lounge than folk club. Paul seemed crushed. "I thought that was some of my best playing," he said, and I listened again and realized that Paul was transcending musical borders, and I should try to keep up.
Paul's most stunning early achievement was arranging and conducting Tom Rush's Circle Game album, utilizing compositional approaches he'd picked up from Edgar Curtis, a Union professor. When I ran into Paul backstage at the Newport Folk Festival, we got into a conversation about the merits of the two Jewish fraternities at Union. Tom Rush sidled up and said, "So, what are we talking about?" I tried to change the subject but Paul continued with Phi Ep vs. Phi Sigma.
After graduating, Paul toured with, among others, Judy Collins. By then we had lost touch, so when I saw that Collins was performing in Troy, I tried to reach Paul at the hotel. Someone else came to the phone and said, "My name is Michael Sahl, I'm filling in for Paul." He promised to give Paul my best. Decades later I was introduced to Michael Sahl at the graduation of his son Ben, my student and friend. I said, "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. Wa talked on the phone."
525: Carl and I took a bus to New York to audition for Vanguard Records. Not only didn't we get a deal, but someone stole my borrowed guitar from the waiting room. (Fortunately, it wasn't the Harmony Sovereign.) And we auditioned for an A&R man at April Blackwood. His name was Tony, and he told us that our songs needed hooks. He was sympathetic to our artistic impulses and said he had been on the performing side of the business. Then, the pre-Dawn Tony Orlando belted out "Bless you / bless every breath that you take."
526: The summer of 1969 I was living with my girlfriend in Riverside, California, working as a newspaper reporter (infiltrating the White Citizens Council, writing about street corner preachers and a women's liberation group) while occasionally sending lyrics to Carl, who was passing the basket in Greenwich Village coffee shops.
My girlfriend moved back East on a pre-determined date to start at a new college. As much as I thought I was prepared for the split, after she left for the airport I felt like the world around me had gone empty. I grabbed my notebook and wrote exactly what happened.
The empty suitcase slowly fills You take the candle off the windowsill The dresser's empty now You look around Make sure there's nothing you left behind
You take the ticket that I bought For the bus ride to the airport Baggage on the sidewalk We just sit and talk And the driver starts his engine going You're going
The driver moves to close the door He says we can't wait anymore Caught by surprise No time for goodbyes I walk away after you turn the corner You're going
We knew at the start that it would end And we knew just exactly when You'd go back east I'd stay west It's just what places It's just what places It's just what places Have to offer To offer
Months later, back in New York, I caught one of Carl's sets. I sat in the corner, alone, paying close attention to the wizard guitarist sitting on my old stool. A young woman with bright red hair yelled, “Do the one about the candle!” (I later found out she was the daughter of a famous folk musician.)
“You know the poet I’ve been talking about, who wrote the lyrics to that song? He’s here tonight.” Carl pointed towards me, and all eyes turned my way. “But he’s so innocuous looking," said the young woman with bright red hair.
I couldn't have felt more flattered.
527: I was writing poetry and editing a literary magazine, but I got down to the Village occasionally. Carl was part of a flock of folksingers, who would play a set or two, then head for drinks at the Kettle Of Fish (above the Gaslight). When the Kettle was full, it was over to Googie’s on Sullivan Street. When the bars closed, the migration might head a few blocks down to Chinatown. Among the crew, the one I thought most likely to make it was Patrick Chamberlain, a singer-songwriter-raconteur born in East Texas and raised in rural Pennsylvania. He greeted me at one of his concerts with “The gentleman from the press has arrived.”
Back row from left to right: Carl Rosenstock, Pat Chamberlain, and an innocuous lyricist (drawing by singer-songwriter-poet Rich Levine).
And then, tragedy. As I heard it, Pat was on the phone with an ex-girlfriend, threatening to blow his brains out if she didn’t come over. She didn’t come over. I played the cassette I recorded of his recent concert. Pat introduced a song with, “They say you need three things to make it in this business: experience, exposure and an ex old lady so you have some kind of experience to write songs.” Lyrics included “it gets in my veins I can hear her refrains / I hope that she is just fine.”
The memorial service was at Calvary Church. I overhead Paul Siebel say to Steve Goodman, “If it’s all the same to Pat, let’s not do this to each other.” Goodman replied, “It really kicked that shit out of me.” Siebel looked around and said, “He sure threw a good party.”
528: I had some money, so when Erik Frandsen (who once sang “Meet the Mets” at the Gaslight) told me about a Gibson J-45 at Matt Umanov’s shop, I went for a look.
As I was testing out the guitar, intimidated by all the pros in the room, I started strumming major 7th chords. Someone pointed to a sign that read, "No major 7th chords without a note from your mother,” and I switched to double-thumb fingerpicking and plunked down $350. I still have the guitar.
529: For a few years I wrote songs with former Shuttle-mate Cliff Safane, more pop than folk. They were performed by an up-and-coming singer (who didn't come up).
530: Back in the late 60s, a magazine identified Tim Buckley, Jackson Browne, and Steve Noonan as the Orange County Three. Noonan's career didn't take off like the others, but his first album never strayed from my rotation.
506: My father's 78s were housed in a look-don't-touch cabinet.
He bought most of his records at the Commodore Music Shop, managed by Jack Crystal (lower right), Billy's father. If my father happened to be there on March 14, 1953, he might have seen Billy Crystal in the shop for the first time on his 5th birthday.
Each acquisition required a round-trip subway from East New York to East 42nd St., plus browsing, sampling in a listening cubicle, choosing, doubting, finally possessing a sphere of vinyl, silent in the hand until prodded (literally) to reincarnate the act of creation, at will.
But I didn't fully appreciate my father's commitment to his collection until after he died when I discovered a meticulously handwritten index in a spiral notebook with handmade tabs.
BY ARTIST
BY MOOD
BY TITLE
507: A couple of titles summoned memories of my father's favorite radio shows.
508: You see, my father had a milk route when I was young.
While he was making his rounds in the middle of the night, I'd make-believe a ballroom, perhaps festooned with candy canes, serving milk and cookies at the bar, my father conducting an orchestra of baseball players and zoo animals, using his baton to summon milkmen from all over the world for the matinee.
509: Writing students: Make believe ballroom milkman's matinee. Go!
510: The case of 78s made the move with us from Brooklyn to Lynbrook (a short drive from Long Beach, where the Crystal family lived). My father gradually stopped playing the records, and the case wound up as a reliquary in my sister's bedroom. Since my father's death in 2001, the records have been stored in my sister's and brother-in-law's basement, where I recently spent some time on the floor with them.
Some of the sleeves crumbled to the touch...
...not surprising since it had been at least 65 years since Jack Crystal gently shelved them.
511: My father rekindled his music connection when he and my mother started making brief trips to Las Vegas (which he continued to do after she died). He especially liked the lounges, which often featured top acts like Louis Prima and Keely Smith featuring Sam Butera.
After Prima died, Keely and Butera brought their lounge act to the Desert Inn, and my father took me to see them. We laughed when Sam said, "Keely and I have something in common. We both got fucked by Louis Prima." My father and I were on musical common ground as he basked in my enjoyment.
512: I wish I could tell him about a just-discovered connection with Keely Smith.
In January 1959, My father's mother took my sister and me to Alan Freed's Rock and Roll show. We collected a bunch of autographs, including Charlie Gracie, whom we approached in a coffee shop.I can still picture him eating by himself, appreciating the attention.
We also got signatures from Jackie Wilson and one of the Moonglows, but, at the time, the prize was getting autographs from Buddy Knox, Jimmy Bowen, and both Rhythm Orchids.
Buddy Knox continued to record as a solo artist, while Jimmy Bowen—who is still with us at 85—focussed on producing for the likes of Glen Campbell, Reba McEntire, and Dino, Desi & Billy.
He also produced—and married—Keely Smith!
While my sister and I were meeting Jimmy Bowen in 1959, Keely was on her way to winning a Grammy with Louis Prima for "That Old Black Magic." Nine years later, Keely Smith's husband Jimmy Bowen won the record-of the-year Grammy for producing Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" (loved by my father and me).
513: During my early days as a poet and poetry teacher, I wasn't sure if my father fully understood or appreciated what I was doing with my life. Did he worry that I was turning away from my clear path as a journalist? We didn't talk of such things, but he found a way to tell me: "I bought a record and can't wait to play it for you!"
My father and I were on common ground as I basked in his enjoyment.
1960s and 70s Radio disc jockey, real name Murray Kaufman; dubbed the fifth Beatle by either George, Ringo, or himself; played love songs for couples in cars watching the submarine races (for a long time I didn't get the joke); profiled by Tom Wolfe ("the first big hysterical disc jockey"); called his show The Swinging Soiree; don't mess with his ubiquitous straw hat (one man tried, once); invented the eponymous language Meusurray (which is Murray in Meusurray); bowled with the Ronettes;
presided over all-star rock shows at the Brooklyn Fox Theater;
and signed a random press release:
504: So much depends on a key and Bisquick
Two downtrodden friends on the 104 bus. “They got me a place. I'm on my way to pick up my key.” Key: a half-ounce melding of the metaphorical and the literal. I worry the keys in my pocket like amulets, conjuring long-forgotten doors. "After I get my key come over and I'll make my biscuits. Get me Bisquick. None of that Jiffy. You gotta get me Bisquick." Now I'm on Nantucket, sun setting, the key to my rental bike somewhere in the sand, no place to stay, running to catch the last ferry. Backdoor opens: "Get me Bisquick!"
505:
The greatest advertisement for color TV was black-and-white TV.
499: In 1967, Leonard Cohen asked Judy Collins, “Why haven’t you ever written any of your own songs?" which, she said, "felt like he gave me permission to write.” She went home and wrote “Since You Asked” in 20 minutes, and 55 years later the words, the music, and that voice evoke the end of Ikiru...
.... melding with Yeats:
But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!
...bearing me back graciously into the past:
500: The pizzaiolo has one hand on the oven door handle. In his head are four silent timers with no numbers.
501: My offense is lacking but I am a terrific defensive bowler.
502: Aspirational (remaining so) entry in notebook from early teaching days.
It is 5:43 p.m. in New York a Saturday one day before my birthday, yes and the Manhattanville Viaduct with her face on it.
and I am sweating a lot by now (because it's August) and thinking of Barney Josephson, pushing 80, leaving his apartment in an early 80s snowstorm to host at the Cookery and a young neighbor says "Mr. Josephson, you shouldn't go out there" "I have to, she will get in from Roosevelt Island"
and indeed she does and so do I amidst a smattering of devotees Mr. Josephson dapper in a suit he could have worn introducing Lady Day at Cafe Society tells of his concerned young neighbor and up she bounds impish smile launching into "My Castle's Rocking" ("I'm laying it on the line for protection") and Gerald Cook and everyone and I breathe deeply
The great narrative and portrait photographer Paul Aniess died on May 13, 1970. There was a large decrease in the number of professional photographs taken on Long Island the morning of his funeral, as 100 cars driven by Paul’s colleagues joined the procession in Queens. Paul Aniess produced hundreds of photo books—each a day-in-the life gem—but not one was reviewed or placed in a bookstore or library, for each was a limited edition of one. I am the possessor—and subject—of an Aniess book, which, after 62 years, shows few signs of age despite countless viewings.
489: START AT THE END
Early Saturday October 8,1960, Mr. Aniess arrived—wearing a black suit, white shirt, black tie—and turned our house into a studio. He unzipped his black bag, revealing a portable backdrop, two Nikon cameras, lights, batteries, and rolls and rolls of Kodak film. Since he wouldn’t be returning to the house, Mr. Aniess shot the closing picture first. I would later learn that movies are often shot out of sequence, which can be a challenge for actors. I think I nailed it.
490: PAUL ANIESS, AS TOLD BY HIS SON KEVIN
A couple of years ago I became curious about Paul Aniess, but he had virtually no digital trail. I did find a Kevin Aniess in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and emailed asking if he was related to Paul. Kevin's response was stunningly moving and expansive. Here it is, lightly edited:
Yes, he was my dad and photography was his life. He first became a photographer in the Air Force during WW2, however he never talked about it. It wasn’t until years later we found large aerial pictures of Paris as well as pictures of stacks of dead bodies, which appeared to be from Germany. [note: stock footage, not by Aniess]
After the war he got married to my mom. They opened up a studio in the Bronx and sometime in the early 1950’s moved into a Levitt house in Wantagh where our living room was converted into a photography studio. Then in the 1960’s they built a custom home at Merrick Ave in East Meadow. We lived on the top floor, and the bottom floor was a large studio, sales area, darkroom, and a finishing room. He spent every night in the darkroom printing pictures the old fashioned way.
Mine and my older brother’s Bar Mitzvahs were both held in our house. All of the furniture was removed and a caterer came in with tables, etc. I always wanted a big Bar Mitzvah at one of those fancy catering halls but I think my dad wanted it just the opposite since he was there every weekend. I guess being thrifty was also high on the list as we never had much money but remember never doing without anything. We were the first of all my friends to buy a Magnavox color TV when I was 13. I remember the remote control was attached with a long cord and you continuously had to kick the TV because the color would suddenly change to B&W. That was the same TV we watched the JFK Assasination, the Moon Landing, and of course the 1969 Mets.
During those years he photographed hundreds of weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. He rarely was home on the weekends at night. As a young teenager I attended many of those holding the auxiliary light. I was thrilled as we were usually seated for dinner with the band (I don’t think DJ’s existed then) and if lucky the groom or his father would give me a dollar or two. I also remember every weekend big shiny limos pulling in front of our house as those days most brides, grooms, the wedding party, as well as Bar Mitzvah boys would come and take portrait pictures between the morning ceremony and the nighttime party. On Sunday mornings tons of young girls came to our house dressed like brides who I later learned were confirmation girls. My dad's specialty was portraits of young kids and babies and they smiled when he would act like he was turning his nose and then squeak it.
I also remember all the local politicians of both parties as well as some B-List celebrities came to our house for publicity pictures. Our neighbor facing our back yard was the Bonanno Family, of Mafia fame. They had all their pictures taken by my dad and unusually insisted on buying their proofs by cash. Maybe 20 years ago I did a Google search of my dad’s name and a listing popped up for a book of the life of Bill Bonanno that credited my dad as taking one of the pictures.
Chucky (Charles) was my best friend for a while. He was the only adopted child of the Bonannos. They escaped a rival Mafia gang in the middle of the night and I never got to say so long. We heard the house was riddled with bullet holes inside after they left. When the book Honor Thy Father came out we learned how bodyguards slept on the floor next to the parents' bed. From our little deck we used to watch groups of men sitting around the pool smoking big cigars. We never knew who they were. One day the swimming pool was covered in wood and what we were told was they were afraid one of the kids would drown. Never did find out the real reason. Also read in a book later written by Bill Bonanno how he had an affair with the young lady who rented a room in the house right next to us with the dental office. She also escaped in the middle of the night.
When not doing affairs my dad was mainly a portrait photographer. He was an officer of the Long Island Professional Photographers Association and won tons of ribbons at their conventions. One was for a self portrait of a huge Great Dane with its paws on my dad’s shoulders giving him a kiss because he had a dog treat in his mouth.
I remember the Dog’s name was Nevr-Dull of Jonah. The owner was George Basch, who owned the Nevr-Dull cleaner company.
Basch lived down the block from us and we considered him rich. For several years he would drive a new Cadillac and after a couple of years my dad would buy his used car and we would drive around looking rich. My dad’s license plate was 19-PA. The PA was for Paul Aniess. I remember when I was little we were riding along the Parkway and I had to pee real bad. My dad stopped on the side of the road and a cop pulled behind us with his lights flashing. He asked what was going on. My dad explained and then the cop looked at the car and the low license plate. He must have thought my dad was a big shot and walked away apologizing like crazy.
Another ribbon was awarded for a full length picture of a beautiful girl that my dad mounted on a widow shade, which was sent to her husband in Vietnam so it could be rolled up before the Sergeant came in the barracks. I remember she wanted it to be nude but my mom had none of that; I think she wound up wearing a full bathing suit. This was the 1960’s. [Update: When I got your latest email I searched my closet and found a memory book about my dad that I hadn’t seen in at least 45 years. It included the window shade girl. I remembered her wearing a bathing suit but the pic shows it was a sun dress which I guess was sexy at the time.]
My dad was never sick a day in his life but at a photographers convention at the Concord Hotel in 1970 he had a heart attack. A few months later he decided to get an aortic valve transplant, which we were told was not real risky. He died the next day. It was quite a shock and I was only 15. His funeral took place in Queens and I recall that almost every photographer on Long Island attended and the car procession was maybe 100 cars long.
Several months later my mom had a tag sale where many of those same photographers came and bought all his equipment. Somewhere around that time I went in the attic and there were envelopes with the proofs from hundreds of weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. They only had names and no addresses and I went through phone books to try to match them up. Then I hand-wrote many postcards to say we had their proofs and I would sell them. If I remember it was $25.00 for all the proofs. Possibly you received one but I don’t remember. Maybe 10 or 20 people responded to my mailing.
I think about my dad almost every day. You are the only person who has contacted me in maybe 50 years so it is nice to know someone else remembers him. I would be honored if you wrote about him.
491: MORNING SHOOT
Mr. Aniess guided us through a series of poses, establishing the "becoming a man" narrative.
Today I pretend to become a man so I pretend to shave. No blade.
Today I pretend to become a man so I pretend to drink whiskey. With the cap on the bottle.
Posing four people of different sizes on steps requires precise positioning.
We were not a hand-holding family—I didn't notice this detail until recently.
Shari Lewis's Lamb Chop: I didn't remember we had you. Now I miss you.
Like Fay Wray reacting to a nonexistent (yet) King Kong. I think I nailed it.
When shooting an old-fashioned double-exposure, make sure there are no objects in the middle.
492: PRE-CEREMONY
Because no photography would be allowed during the service, once again I posed out-of-sequence.
For more about Rabbi Saperstein and the lead-up to my Bar Mitzvah, see: Bar Mitzvah Blues.
A mensch. All I remember from my Bar Mitzvah Hebrew is the blessing over wine.
Not a clue.
493: THE SERVICE
I was pleasantly shocked when these turned up in the album. Not easy to be stealthy with a big camera.
After the service, I overheard Rabbi Saperstein tell my father that he had been worried about me. My crest started to fall until the Rabbi went on to explain that because three boys were involved (instead of the usual two), he had to utilize all three Torahs, and he had entrusted me to carry the extra-heavy one.
494: RECEPTION
Yes, I remember, they used to call me Al, and I was the kid with the drum. I played the snare drum in the marching band (I can still tap out cadence #2 with my fingers), but this was my first time playing a whole drum set. Based on the crowd's reaction, I nailed it.
Today I pretend to be a man, so I pretend to smoke.
No need to pretend.
In the back on the right is my father's uncle from Chicago, whom I hadn't met before and never saw again. I know who he is due to his resemblance to my grandfather, a career criminal (specializing in safe-cracking), who had died several years earlier:
For a lot more about my father's relationship with his father, see Observation Deck. For my grandfather's rap sheet, see Grandfather resume.
The dais. Everyone has a story. Here are a few snippets:
Richard Jacobs (upper left): Walk-to-school friend and political ally. Senior year, we brokered a deal to co-chair Class Night.
Jacobs was a fine athlete. When we set up a makeshift wrestling ring in Abby Terris's (lower right) backyard, I tried fighting him once, then opted to be the announcer, improvising witty (I hoped) commentary. In the mid-70s, my mentor David Ignatow introduced me to his open-secret lover, Virginia Terris—poet, scholar, and Abby's mother! She said, "I used to watch you in the backyard. What a clever boy." Robert Middleman (lower left) and I did the folk music scene throughout high school and beyond, playing guitars together, scooping up folk albums as soon as they hit the Sam Goody racks, hitching to Boston and Cape Cod, and even playing a Hoot night at Gerde's Folk City. We are Facebook friends, and mourn the mounting deaths of our folk heroes while celebrating the ones who endure.
Conga line, close to reaching dominoes territory.
My father giving me an assist.
My mother's father saying the Hamotzi blessing, which is, essentially "God gave you this bread and all He asks is that you wash your hands before eating it." Click here for my fantasy of my grandfather hanging out with Max Jacob and Picasso Grandfather in Paris
495: A TALE OF TWO CLASSMATES
Another Aniess setup: Paul Guyer distracts me while Bobby Humphrey administers a hot foot. Two friends whose paths diverged to opposite ends of the psyche.
In fifth grade, Bobby Humphrey presented me with a silver mesh "friendship ring." I liked wearing it. One day, I noticed Bobby didn't have his on. He said he lost it and would buy a replacement. He never did. By senior year, we presumed Bobby was gay. He was the only boy working on the costume committee for the Class Night skit, and he lent me a blue shirt because Richard Jacobs and I were cops. Bobby died in July 1968, apparently of an overdose. Five years later, while clearing out my childhood closet in Lynbrook, I found a manila envelope on which my mother had written "Bobby's shirt. To return."
Paul Guyer—known as The Brain—called me meathead a decade before All in the Family.
One Sunday I was at Paul's house and he invited me to go to the beach with his family. Paul's mother asked him to "pack the book review." I didn't know what that meant, and I was puzzled when I saw it was a whole section of The New York Times. I could imagine someone reading a review of a book, but an entire publication with nothing but book reviews? And to bring that to the beach?! Paul and I remained friends and co-founded a fraternity when the cool fraternity turned down all of our friends. Paul was valedictorian, and I visited him at Harvard, but we gradually lost touch. Six years later, I was working the decollating machine on the night-shift for the Consolidated Computer Company (while writing during the day) and was taking the 3 a.m. train to Lynbrook when I ran into Paul, who was returning to his parents' house after attending an academic conference. My hands and clothes were ink-stained; Paul was wearing a three-piece suit. He said he was doing his dissertation on "Kants Aesthetics," which I heard as one word and asked if he was learning physiology. Paul held back a laugh as he explained he was studying Immanuel Kant, probably wondering how I had failed so miserably to live up to my potential.
The writing thing worked out for me, and the Kant thing worked out for Paul.
But the world thing didn't work out for my brief best-friend Bobby.
496: ARTIFACTS
497: POSTSCRIPT
On May 4, 1970, I am walking on campus, dazed, having just heard the news. “What’s wrong?” a classmate says. “They just killed four of us at Kent State,” I reply. A few days later, we huddle around a fuzzy television screen and listen to Walter Cronkite narrate the memorial service. In the background, amidst the static, I can make out the mellifluous intoning of, “All they were saying was give….peace….a ….chance.” It is the cadence I tried so hard to emulate nine years earlier. “I know him,” I say with pride. “You know Cronkite?” “No, the Rabbi.”
486: Charles Simic Was Generous to Children On Memorial Day 1979, my ten-year-old nephew, Craig Luchen, was kicking around a soccer ball in his backyard during a family gathering. Craig was ahead of the curve in his soccer devotion (long before "soccer moms"), and had yet to meld with the piano, so we didn't have a whole lot to talk about. A sudden chill caused someone to say Brrrr," and I blurted out "All at once the whole tree is trembling / And there is no sign of the wind." Craig paused mid-dribble and pronounced, "Charles Simic!" then resumed his pursuit of an imaginary net. He later explained that a poet had visited his school. Now we had something to talk about. For a school assignment to illustrate a poem, Craig picked Simic's "Watermelons."
I particularly liked the tongue. I had a color photocopy made (big deal then) and mailed it to Simic (no email then). A week later, I received this post card:
I was especially touched by "My kids loved it too and were sort of proud of their Pop" (Simic did indeed respond to my book in detail.) This was the postcard Craig received:
Decades later, Craig remembers the "loon-music." And I remember that Craig was sort of proud of his Uncle.
Uncle and Nephew
487: Charles Simic Drives a Soft Bargain
In 1995, a few Columbia undergraduates wanted to invite Charles Simic to campus, particularly to talk about prose poems (for which he had won the Pulitzer Prize a few years earlier, engendering squawks from lineophiles). We had a minuscule budget. I suggested they write to him anyway and point out that we do not have access to Columbia's endowment. Simic said yes, on two conditions: We pay for his bus fare from New Hampshire, and we buy him a hamburger at the West End. We did not make a counteroffer.
Simic was warm, friendly and funny. When the students asked him about the prose poem backlash, he said, "My experience is that no matter what you do, someone is going to say something stupid about it. No matter what. There are many literary people out there who don't believe in the existence of prose poems....[My book] was the final nail in poetry’s coffin. American Civilization is doomed when shit like this wins prizes, they said. I must admit I loved it. It's always a pleasure when you can upset defenders of some imaginary virtue."
There was one more negotiation before we relocated to the West End. The students wanted to take some pictures with him, and he agreed on the condition they take one with students stepping on him. They obliged. When I reminded him twenty years later, he replied, "That’s very funny. I remember it now."
480:I strive to arrange my life like a European meal, concluding with my salad days.
481: By all means bring a knife to a gun fight in addition to your gun.
482: I see someone I used to know across the street. As I approach, I realize it is not my old friend. Undaunted, I say, “Hey, Stanley, great to see you! How’s Veronica and life on the rodeo circuit?” The stranger stares blankly, then a glint of recognition. “Christopher,” (not my name) he says, “I still feel bad about that night, and how is Gloria and life at the clinic?” We talk until we are all caught up and part ways.
483: Paul Langston was once called upon to inquire, in response to a phone message, “Who in the Sam Hill is Sam Hill?”
484: Steve Allen interrupted himself while chatting with guests on his radio show to observe that the coffee he continued to sip was now lukewarm, and he would have sent it back had it been served that way. I feel similarly about my body.
In the subway heading to The New Yorker for an editing session with Roger Angell, I fantasize hovering near the receptionist’s desk as a line of supplicants with manila envelopes are each declined entry (“I just want to make sure he gets the references”). They watch their precious cargo being tossed into a huge bin marked Slush, and stare as I approach, no envelope in tow. The mere mention of my name gets me a smile and a wave-through. “Who is that, did you catch his name?” one whispers, and I turn and say, “Keep at it. I was once slush, too.” When I arrive, no supplicants, no Slush bin, but I do get a smile and a wave-through. At first glance, Roger Angell reminds me of Fred Clark, the original Harry Morton on the Burns and Allen show.
“We were talking about you at dinner last night,” he says. "Hariette Surovell was over, and she spoke highly of you. [I had met Hariette 15 years earlier, in Kurt Vonnegut’s workshop at City College. On the first day of class, Kurt recounted a dinner conversation from the previous night and turned to Hariette for confirmation: “You were there.”] Roger shows me a copy of my manuscript with edits, including several new commas. Before I can garner the guts to resist, he adds, “These are Mr. Shawn’s commas. You don’t want them, do you?” This could be the beginning of a beautiful editorial friendship.
We move on to Roger’s markings. As we resolve each edit, he crosses out a notation in the margin. I've been working on an essay categorizing feedback comments (reactive, descriptive, prescriptive, and collaborative). As an example of collaborative feedback I'm using a New Yorker edit: “Not every word in a published piece has necessarily been written by the name in the byline. New Yorker editor Harold Ross wrote ‘bucks’ for John Cheever during his editing of ‘The Enormous Radio.’ In the story, a diamond is found after a party; a character says, 'Sell it, we can use a few dollars.' Ross replaced dollars with bucks, which Cheever found ‘absolutely perfect. Brilliant.’” So I am inwardly giddy to see high whistles have become clanking chains, and zips turned to cuts. And my “Ghost Story” will forever be known as:
Here's a fine example of an addition-through-subtraction edit:
Throughout the session, my downward peripheral vision is drawn to a substantial collaborative edit at the end of the story.
This won't be as easy as Mr. Shawn's commas. I'm not sure if I get it. But I accept the change, hopeful I will share John Cheever's appraisal: "absolutely perfect. Brilliant." [Eventually, I come to read it as, "My ghost re-merges with ghostly traffic—his work here done."]
I leave the New Yorker and float to Times Square, a whisper amid the talk of the town. I wind up at Lee's Art Shop and treat myself to a leather portfolio [which I still use].
The process isn't over.
The sentence in question:
I picture—as a New Yorker cartoon—a huddle of writers and editors trying to make sense of a coffee cup's open window revealing a now-cold night: Barthelme and Beattie almost come to blows as Mr. Shawn keeps muttering about commas.
I am touched by the care Roger Angell is taking with my story, and his use of prescriptive feedback: "I wish you'd tone it down." I love seeing his self-edit:
The modest solution is, "He stares at the cold coffee."
There's one more wrinkle. When I receive the author's proof I become fixated on "project hand-shadow ghouls onto the wall." Onto or on to? On to or onto? becomes as agonizing as the eye exam question "this way, or is it better this way?" I finally decide that on to better captures the act of projecting, rather than placing. I call and leave a message asking for the change.
Early publication morning, I run toward the newsstand on Broadway. I stop, suddenly terrified that my story was cut at the last minute by Mr. Shawn ("I warned you about those commas!"). But it's in there! My story in The New Yorker. Yes. I glance through till jolted by:
I will realize that onto is the right choice, but not before several hours of self-haunting. Traffic, no doubt.
Long ago, on the off-chance I might run into the Devil at the Crossroads,
Robert Johnson's Crossroads Mine
I prepared a modest negotiation list (not worth trading my soul for, but perhaps Mephisto would settle for my soles: 1) Appear on WBAI 2) teach at Columbia University 3) publish in The Village Voice 4) publish in the Paris Review 5) publish in The New Yorker.
By 1986 I had yet to crack the toughest nut, The New Yorker (of course, The New Yorker). I sent off an un-agented story, like buying a lottery ticket for the cost of roundtrip stamps. One afternoon, I slowly opened the mailbox, ever-hoping to find my SASE feather-light, sans story. Once again, not again. Upstairs, I clicked my blinking answering machine.
474: I’ve been on my last legs since the day I was born.
475: You should have at least one radio that gets tuned by fingers turning a dial so you can experience the pleasure of flying through a static storm (keep the volume up), miraculously encountering a muffled sound, and calibrating a precise landing—the pleasure of earned clarity. Take off into the unknown (beyond your usual pre-sets): spend time with polkas, foreign languages, troubled souls, repugnant politics, raps and rhapsodies. All without the push of a button. Imagine driving deep in the night during the 1940’s, out of signal reach in any one of 18 states from Maine to North Carolina or six Canadian provinces, working the dial until you synchronize with the 50,000 watts of “WWVA, Wheeling West Virginia” and you know you won’t be alone for many miles and hours.
476 (excerpted from The Cameo Awards): Best Performance by a Man Sitting Alone in a Café comes down to two classic performances. Runner up is Sam Berry in his best—and only known—role, as the “gas station attendant” (though he does no attending) in Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas. Berry observes Harry Dean Stanton passed out and says, “What the hell?” Trying to rouse Stanton he adds, “Hey!” (which suggests he had an under-five contract). The movie goes nowhere if Berry doesn't convince the audience that he would call a doctor, if only to clear the path to the beer in the refrigerator.The clear-cut winner, however, is the legendary Feather Man from the Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson (aka Po & Storm) video for Robert Palmer’s “Big Log.” Feather Man has no lines but oh those imperious eyes broadcasting contempt after he brushes away the unwelcome feather. Is it Feather Man who crushes the fallen feather or does the white shoe belong to Robert Palmer (ending the chase for Led Zeppelin’s Feather in the Wind)? A case could be made for either but my money is on Feather Man, who may still be sipping that beer without savor.
477: You should have a watch or clock that requires winding. Let it run down occasionally and experience the miracle of time travel: Set it slowly, backwards, and remember what transpired. Set it forward, slowly, and invent your future. Wind it next to your ear, savoring each click. Do not ever overwind. You will be sad and lose your ability to control time.
With Steph Curry swishing three-pointers into the bucket by the bucket, I was reminded of this piece from 2015, in which Tom Meschery said, "I can’t stop writing little haikus about Steph Curry," and thought it might be time for a rerun because more people should know about Meschery. If you don't have time for the whole piece, scroll down to his poem "Working Man." It's a stunner.
Bio Note #1: Tom Meschery was born in Manchuria and spent five childhood years in a Japanese internment camp. He received an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where his teachers included Mark Strand, Marvin Bell, and Helen Chasin. After Iowa, Tom ran a bookstore, taught for Poets in the Schools, and did physical labor before receiving his teaching credentials. He joined the faculty of Reno High School, where he taught Advanced Placement English and creative writing for 25 years; he also taught at Sierra College. Tom is the author of several books of poetry, including Nothing We Lose Can Be Replaced, Some Men, and Sweat: New and Selected Poems About Sports; he has also published the nonfiction Caught in the Pivot. In 2001 he was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
Bio Note #2: Tom Meschery was born in Manchuria and spent five childhood years in a Japanese internment camp. He was an All-American basketball player in high school and college, and an NBA All Star. He played ten years, mostly for The Warriors (first in Philadelphia and then in San Francisco) and later for the Seattle Supersonics, appearing in two NBA Finals. His #31 has been retired by Saint Mary’s College (where his career rebounding record stood for 48 years), as has his #14 by the Warriors. Tom coached the Carolina Cougars and was the assistant coach for the Portland Trailblazers. In 2003 he was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame.
I’ve been fascinated by Tom Meschery since I heard about a former NBA star, whose name was often prefixed with “hard-nosed,” turning from personal fouls to personal poems. I started a list of “athletes who write poetry” for use with reluctant students when I toured high schools. Not long after my father died in 2001, I was moved and impressed by Tom’s poem “Working Man," in which he addresses his late father (more about this later). Over the years, I have read the poem to several of my Columbia classes, and one day a student said: “He was my high school English teacher!” Interesting.
Recently, I talked to Tom (while he was recovering from his second shoulder replacement surgery); this piece is based on that conversation and other sources (see note on bottom).
Manchuria to the NBA
Thomas Nicholas Meschery was born Tomislav Nikolayevich Mescheryakov. His father was a hereditary officer in Admiral Kolchak’s Army. His mother was the daughter of Vladimir Nicholayavich, who participated in Kornilov’s failed coup against Kerensky: “My grandpa was put under arrest in the Winter Palace. Together with Nicholas II.” Tom’s mother was related to the poet Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (second cousin to Leo).
Tom’s parents met, in exile, in Manchuria, and Tom was born in 1938. In 1939, Tom’s father went ahead to San Francisco; his mother was to follow with Tom and his sister when they obtained the necessary papers. They were awaiting voyage on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The Mescheryakovs were placed in a Tokyo-area internment camp for women and children, where “there was no suffering” and they were fed well. Towards the end of the war, the guards gave them the rejects from intercepted Red Cross packages (lots of spam).
They finally made it to San Francisco. In “A Small Embrace,” Tom writes in his mother’s voice addressing him; the poem ends:
a voice kept yelling over the loudspeaker: citizens to the left, stateless to the right. A band was playing something cheerful. You pointed to the wrong father. I to the wrong husband.
Tom’s weak English was mitigated by his size and athletic prowess. He became a star basketball player at Lowell High School, where he developed his game in a modest facility that was “full of shadows” with a corduroy floor and wood backboards.
[from] Lowell High
Our coach, who was as old as the building, Taunted and inspired us, swore and cajoled us, He taught us to play without frills. We became red brick and corduroy And learned to see through shadows.
Tom went on to be a two-time All-American at St. Mary’s College, and was drafted in the first round by the Philadelphia Warriors. On March 2, 1962, in a game played in Hershey Pennsylvania, Wilt Chamberlain and Tom combined for 116 points in a 169-147 victory over the Knicks. Wilt scored 100. The game was not televised, but Tom wrote a poem about it.
[from] The 100 Point Game
That night through the fourth quarter in that mad scramble for history we all passed the ball the full length of the court to Wilt, straight and high into the dark around the rafters
Tom played for 10 seasons, averaging 12.7 points and 8.6 rebounds. His stat line in Game 7 of the Eastern Division finals is particularly impressive: 48 minutes, 32 points, 11 rebounds, 2 assists, and only 3 personal fouls.
The NBA to Iowa
Tom's first collection, Over the Rim, was published while he was an active player, and the cartoon on the back of his 1970-71 playing card is captioned “Tom is a writer of poetry.”
But, Tom says, his reading had been confined to earlier Russian and British and classic American verse, and the poems in Over the Rim were “ordinary” and “didn’t test limits or push parameters.” This began to change at a poker game. "Mark Strand was teaching at the University of Washington while I was playing for the Sonics, and I met him at a poker game run by a couple of professors.” Strand invited Tom to sit in on his class when the team was in town, and he got his “first exposure to contemporary American poetry.”
Meschery and Strand became good friends and, while Tom was coaching Carolina, the two met for dinner when the Cougars were in town to play the Nets. Tom complained about his coaching job (he titled a poem "Why I Was a Terrible Coach"), and Strand advised, “Well, if you hate it that much get the hell out of there.” He told Tom he’d write a recommendation for Iowa. In Tom’s subsequent book about his coaching year, Caught in the Pivot, he writes, “Mark told us about the number of poets who are frustrated jocks. Here I am a jock who’s a frustrated poet.”
Tom was accepted and quit his job. He and his then-wife (the novelist Joanne Meschery) packed up with their three small children and moved to Iowa, where he had “two great years. I just loved it. From then on I just couldn’t stop writing poetry.” But the transition wasn’t easy. “For the first six months I was pretty timid, I sneaked around and sat in the back of the workshops. I felt very unsure of myself.” The turning point came when he studied with Helen Chasin. “She was the first one who really said, ‘You’re not too bad you can do this, don’t hesitate to talk.’” Tom “became more confident, experimental, she gave me a bunch of poets to read and said imitate.” Classmate Michael Waters remembers, “Tom was without pretensions, itself remarkable in the Workshop, and generous with his praise."
The Mad Russian and the Sweet and Generous Man
As a basketball player, Tom Meschery was known as the Mad Russian. One game, Tom tried to stay out of trouble by swearing in Russian, but eventually a referee called him for a technical based on his “intonation.” Tom’s on-court anger often went beyond words. He told an interviewer, “If I was elbowed I elbowed twice.” Former teammate Al Attles says, “His eyes would start rolling around in his head if somebody did something to him on the floor and he’d lose it …”
In the Moment
The whistle blows and I am caught between curbing my anger or hitting the player who just fouled me. Oh, what the hell, I say.
But the hostility remained on the court. During Tom’s rookie year, Tom Heinsohn of the Celtics bloodied his eye with a right cross. After the game, they ran into each other in the tavern below Boston Garden, drank some beers, and wound up talking about painting: “[Heinsohn] said he painted in the Wyeth School.” Tom wasn’t always the smartest fighter. While playing for Golden State, he tried to punch his former teammate and close friend Chamberlain (then with the Lakers). Tom recalls, “It was cartoonish. I couldn’t reach him— he was holding my head.”
[from] Tom Heinsohn
Today I write poems and admire the back-light in Wyeth’s painting of the yellow dog sunning himself in the window and think that the violence we made together was the work of artists
Iowa classmate Michael Ryan says about Tom, “His heart and spirit and sheer gusto were as big as he was. And that's saying something. What a sweet and generous man.” When Kyle Smith—now the head coach of the Columbia University Lions—was an assistant at Saint Mary’s, he got to know Tom first through his presence that “loomed in the folklore of the alums as his jersey hung in the rafters. He was known as the ‘Mad Russian.’ Once I met the man, I do not think there could have been a more inappropriate nickname. Far from Mad, Tom Meschery is a prince of a human being who once physically touched people on the court who touched the hearts of his students and loved ones. I am sure the Christian Brothers who educated him at Saint Mary's would be so proud to see someone who has embodied the Lasallian spirit of the school motto ‘enter to learn, leave to serve.’”
The modern game is much calmer, due in part to every moment being televised and players protecting huge salaries.
After Meditating
(for Phil Jackson)
I return to your book, Sacred Hoops and I think, perhaps you’ve discovered the secret to the modern game, the centered-self each player can achieve with right-breathing, as if the soul were a tight muscle in need of stretching.
Team mantras, spiritual championships.
If only I’d known I didn’t have to throw that elbow at LaRusso or stalk Chet Walker to his locker room, spoiling for a fight, or take a swing at Wilt, while my breathless teammates feared for my life. All I had to do was breathe my way out of anger. Lungs instead of fists.
Writing workshops are non-contact endeavors (physically), but Tom recalls that at Iowa “a fight erupted in our kitchen” between a concrete poet and a traditional poet during a poker party. “Raymond Carver broke the fight up.” Michael Waters said it was the only time he saw Tom angry: “Tom had placed a huge glass bowl filled with scoops of Baskin-Robbins ice cream—all their flavors—on his dining room table, and the ice cream slowly melted into a deep rainbow sludge while folks stood around outside, calming down, wondering if the party would continue. I always remember that ice cream when I think of Tom.”
The Court to the Desk
After Iowa, Tom tried coaching again, this time as the assistant to Portland’s player-coach Lenny Wilkins, a former teammate (#18, below). Bill Walton (#32) was also on the team. At the time, the FBI was searching for Patty Hearst—the kidnapped heiress who helped rob a bank—and Bill Walton had been questioned by the FBI (there was no connection). Michael Waters recalls that Tom would “invite me to games, let me stay with him in his hotel room, and beg me not to make jokes about Patty Hearst hiding in his bathroom.”
When Wilkins lost his coaching job, Tom left the game. He had a “hard transition from professional sports. Ran a bookstore for three years, painted houses, rock work.” To pick up a little extra money, Tom “got hooked up with the poets in the schools—a week gig here and there, elementary, middle, high school, take over an English class. I just loved it. I really liked high school kids. They were on the verge of being mature, at the same time they were still wonderfully naïve, full of piss and vinegar.”
Tom earned his teaching credentials at the University of Nevada, and, while waiting for a teaching position, he spent six months coaching in Africa, where he had made previous trips for the USIA during his playing days.
Republic of the Congo
Entering the airport, the soldier guarding the passport booth can’t be more than fifteen years old. He’s holding a rifle at port arms a cigarette dangling from his lips. Above him, a banner in red print reads: A Bas Les Americains! Down with Americans! "Don’t worry,” the Embassy man says, “They don’t mean basketball players.”
Given Tom’s subsequent success as a teacher, one might expect him to have developed a love for coaching, but his competitive fire had no outlet on the bench, especially when his players didn’t approach the game with the same intensity he had. “The blindness that I have felt so often when I become enraged was beginning to cloud my eyes,” he wrote in Caught in the Pivot. Before one game, he “tried something different. I walked into the locker room and told the players to discuss the game among themselves and to come out when they were ready to play.” This didn’t turn into a transformational moment when all the swearing and cajoling take hold. Instead, “They came out all right and we got bombed…”
Teaching high school English provided Tom with an “intensity of experience” without the warfare. He has said, “In basketball you always have to be on. I think that's also true as a teacher. Every day is like a new game. The game starts at 8 in the morning and the final buzzer rings at 2:10.”
Tom was known for his tough exams and generosity of spirit. “It was the advice for life, beyond English, that was by far the greatest gift Tom gave me,” posted one student on Rate My Teachers, and another wrote, “I like all the poems we read, he's really flexible too he puts his big leg up on his desk while he's standing it’s cool.”
Now retired, Tom says, “I miss them terribly.” He kept seating charts and is “pondering putting together a project to find out what happened to 20 or 30 kids.”
Tom and His Father
[from] Reasons to Teach
…And my father, old immigrant, believer in misery, could not believe they did pay good money for a game, for work you didn’t hate and come home weak from drudgery. “Sport.” The word flew from his mouth like spit.
Tom and his father had a strained relationship and, after Tom was drafted in the first round by the Warriors, “he just said to me, ‘What kind of work is this for a man?’” His father died while Tom was serving a stint in the Army and he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. “That always stayed with me. I always carried my father around in me, so I wasn’t surprised that when I started to write about myself as a basketball player that it translated very quickly into a poem about my father.”
Working Man
I admit sleeping in late at the Hilton, ordering room service, handing out big tips while your kind of men were opening their lunch buckets. You would have scolded me: "Что это за работа для человека?" “What kind of work is this for a man?" Old immigrant, I admit all of this too late. You died before I could explain sportswriters call me a journeyman. They write I roll up my sleeves and go to work. They use words like hammer and muscle to describe me. For three straight years on the job my nose collapsed. My knees ached and I could never talk myself out of less than two injuries at a time. Father, you would have been proud of me: I labored in the company of large men.
An earlier version of the poem ends with “I labored in the company of tall men,” but Tom changed it because “When you think of Chamberlain and Moses Malone, they weren’t just tall they were really large,” as was his father.
Tom didn’t let his father impede his basketball career, and he gives him credit for instilling in him a love of poetry. “In my childhood I learned many verses by heart. My father liked the old poetry which had to be beautiful, with rhythm and rhyme. He did not accept either Mayakovski or Esenin. For us, the Russians, poetry is a part of our soul. My father, a huge and strong soldier, recited verses for me and there were tears in his eyes.”
There’s no way of knowing if Tom’s father would have come to appreciate his son laboring in the company of large men, but Tom is certain he’d be impressed with Tom’s induction into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. “He'd be pleased with his son.”
Tom Now
Tom lives in Sacramento with his wife, the painter Melanie Marchant Meschery, and he maintains a blog called Meschery's Musings on Sports, Literature and Life. He is also writing fiction, including a series of young adult novels about basketball. Tom had “kind of drifted away” from basketball when he was “teaching hard,” but has reconnected with the sport due to the combination of having more time in retirement and the welcome from Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber. The team won the NBA championship last Spring, and Tom rode in the Victory parade ("I can’t stop writing little haikus about Steph Curry").
Tom has also rekindled his friendship with Robert Hass (former U.S. Poet Laureate), who was an undergraduate classmate at Saint Mary’s. The two recently read together at their alma mater. According to one account, “Throughout the evening, the respect the two men felt for each other was evident.” Hass told “a story about a memorable college soiree where Meschery was seen hanging out of an upper-floor window in Dante Hall reciting” Rimbaud.
Hass has written about Tom’s poetry: “My only regret is that William Carlos Williams isn’t alive to read it or for me to read it to him. One of the things he wanted was a poetry like a clean jab, straight through, all force and grace…”
For an image that would have delighted WCW, let’s go back to "The 100 Point Game." Tom, Wilt, and their co-workers are headed home, when Tom sees a fellow working man at the end of his shift.
Later, on the bus driving back to Philly I watched a farmer in a horse and buggy trotting through dark Amish countryside following the brief light of his lantern home.
465: I can’t operate a phone in a dream. I misdial on buttons too small, can’t retrieve messages, am unable to phone home to tell my dead parents I’ll be late. And, I can never get a taxi in a dream, no matter how far I walk or where I turn. Call for an Uber? Double Nightmare.
466: In the ‘80s, I could wave my arm on West End Avenue at 8:10 and make the 9 p.m. Shuttle to D.C. One night, pressing it at 8:20: a cab slows down, the driver sees my suitcase and speeds off. I mime taking down his number. He screeches to a halt and backs up. “You gonna report me?” I shake my head and he drives off, once again without me.
467: “So, what brought you here?” the cab driver in Binghamton asks on the way to the airport. “I gave a talk at the college.” “You gotta be really smart to do that.” “Not really,” I say, modestly. He frowns. “I’m not smart enough to do that.”
468: Long before Uber and Lyft there is 777-7777 for all your car service needs. Commercials inundate the airwaves, pronouncing each 7 again and again. We call 777-7777 to get a car for my mother-in-law, Esther. Before she’ll get in, Esther asks the driver: “777-7777?” I turn away, slightly embarrassed. The driver responds, “666-6666!” A neighbor gets into 666-6666, and a few minutes later 777-7777 comes up the hill.
469: “Like taking candy from a baby,” meet “Like taking a gun from Peter Lorre.”
470: “Stand up sit down fight fight fight,” goes the cheer. But if you sit down after you stand up you may not get a chance to fight fight fight.
471: Old West dreaded announcement: The Pony Express will now be running on Local trails.
458: Louvre Pyramid aglow, flat on my belly angling the camera with my wallet, my cheek to the ground to peek through the viewfinder. A tug on my feet—must be security I’m always doing something wrong in Paris, fingers wagging at me. But it’s just a young guy laughing with his friends. “Vous rude!” I blurt, and he says Frenchly, “It is a joke.” I reply, “Do you want to hear a joke? ‘A Frenchman pulled my leg.’ That’s a joke.”
459:Live it up now. Live it down later.
460: The elevator door opened. I didn't get in because it was occupied by a baby in a stroller and her mother. I waved and smiled behind my mask. The baby—about a year—stared back expressionless. As the door was closing she grinned and waved. It occurred to me that no child born in the last year has likely experienced a complete stranger smiling at them. I stood alone in the hallway, as if on a deserted platform having just missed a train.
461:I never think about you sexually. Except when I masturbate.
462: 463:Party at Gary Giddens’ apartment. I ask a young critic with an academic appointment how he would define bebop. The critic starts to answer then realizes that the jazz musicians surrounding us have gone silent. "I'm not going to answer that in this room."
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later to the greatness of Teddy Wilson "After You've Gone" on the piano in the corner of the bedroom as I enter in the dark