"Penny George"....Teacher

It's an early morning in July, 2011 and my thoughts have turned to:  What has God done in my life lately?  Some of you may read into that, that I am being... selfish (perhaps) contemplative (definitely) appreciative (most assuredly), self-pitying (not allowed) but mostly, number one on my "top ten" list:  Why?

Jeremiah "The Weeping Prophet" and reputed to be the author of "The Book of Lamentations" spoke loud and clear to me upon my retirement as a church and preschool secretary fifteen years ago this month.   Before then, not too many of the church sermons I rough-typed or heard from the hearts of four Quaker pastors were based on "Lamentations" except in a quick off-the-cuff reference.

I will never understand (except that it is 'mysterious') the reason God's Words  were given to me through Jeremiah to repeat in my "So Long, It's Been An Adventure!" remarks at the end of the Retirement/Recognition Day the members of the Arcadia Friends Community Church so beautifully planned for my family and me. 

"I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."   Jeremiah 29:10-11.   Well, you could have knocked me over with a peacock feather!

Now, generally speaking, we Golden Seniors are supposed to "lament" in our twilight years, from what I have always been led to believe.   Words left unsaid, trips not taken, that random act of kindness left for someone else to fulfill, or "tomorrow",  not bidding one more dollar on a Norman Rockwell collector's plate at the Thursday night auction...good stuff like that.   Myself, I "lament" not carrying a notebook and a No. 2 pencil around when I was on my way to where I find myself now, at my desk blogging away!  (Little did I know there would be an arcadia.patch website one day and that any (hopeful)  future rested in My Editor's hands!)

I should be out in my patio area weeding around the newly-planted succulents and tangerine tree (a birthday gift) but here I sit...with a heart leaning towards telling you about a "lowly" citizen of my hometown, one from whom I have learned a lesson or two in my search for what God would have for my life.  If I had had a closer relationship with Jeremiah in my "salad days" I might not be lamenting today that I do not know more about a man who has become another life-changing force in my life as I grow a tad wiser with the advancing years.  Here is what I do know....

During the days of my early youth in Atlantic, there lived a person (and there is hardly a man or woman now alive in Atlantic who will recall this man of whom I write) just up the street on Birch from my family. George Whitcomb was born into a well-respected family as much as I can remember from hearing Mom and Dad speak of this "lowly" citizen, but George was not quite "right in the head."

George's misshapened body could be seen at any time of the night or day roaming the neighborhood, and to any kid seeing him for the first time, his appearance had to be frightful, as it was to me. His long straggly hair and clothes that appeared slept in and never changed only added to the strong desire to cross the street when he approached. His "gibberish" mutterings never ceased as he went from place to place in his loping gait. He became a sometimes target of less-than-understanding kids and adults as the years went by and grew older at the same pace we did; but, alas, as George grew older, his manner and actions only intensified and the good-natured teasing continued long after I left 210 Birch.  About this my lovely friend, Colleen, told me  that "I like to think that he thought people were being truly wonderful to him and that it brought him joy!" 

I hasten to add that there was sympathy and never malice towards this man who bore the countenance of a truly most unhandsome man...jutting chin, no teeth nor dentures, eyebrows that needed a good plucking and the perpetual scowl that happens when the face has been "scrunched" like a dried apple. (Here starts one of those lessons I learned from and about God in a most unlikely way...there is beauty in all God's creatures!)

His fellow citizens threw copper pennies at his feet waiting to see his absolute delight in picking them up and socking them away in his torn overall pants' pockets. "Penny George" was his name long before I was born, and that is how we all referred to him in conversations in the most natural of ways. Some will not know his last name until they read it here. (And I learned about how God knows how many hairs there are on our head and He knows our name!)

Noah Webster would have us call "Penny George" an "imbecile" to whom nothing much can be taught and from whom nothing much can be learned.

Probably my way of thinking, too, then when I was young and foolish, of course, but now that I have reached the great age of 86, I am of the persuasion that perhaps I have learned God's greatest lessons in living in this small town of Atlantic, Iowa, where "Penny George" was sometimes the object of misguided scorn and pity, to be avoided and certainly not to touched in a loving embrace other than by his Mom and Dad.

I have come to know that God loves His creatures, one and all, that "Penny George's I.Q. testing" is as honored as Einstein's, certainly mine; and I know this most frightful-appearing of human beings is as "handsome as any movie star I have ever "mooned" over!" today where his once-restless soul sits quietly in the very presence of God.

On a note of whimsy and if I could speak for "Penny George" to his sometimes "playful taunters" and to the people who truly sympathized with his private torture (and I am only now guessing as to what they said), I would have him say in his own gibberish way..."and the same to you, too!"

(With Agape Love, of course!)

Working title: "Life has a way of happening...!"

Let's set the Scene I, Act I in Des Moines, Iowa, in the year 1934, well after the "War to End All Wars" and before "The Greatest Generation War" was begun...

Principal players are four young men-about-town... in their twenties, athletic, handsome, charismatic, sartorially well-dressed, all established in their fields of business endeavor and on their "way up" to use a Midwestern slang term of the time.

Story Plot: Meet the "right girl"...marry...join the Hyperion Country Club...meet at Babe's (a famous to near-infamous nightclub in Des Moines in those days owned by Babe Bisignano, where only the best food and drink were served according to newspaper clippings) on Friday nights after a hard day at the office. The good life!

Characters names: Rich Barnes...Louie Eubank...Harry Frohwein...and, let's name the fourth one..."Dutch" Reagan, just for the heck of it.

In any good story line, there is always the protagonist, and here is where it gets to be more difficult, for me, in telling their story. Where is Tyler Perry when I need him! One thing for sure: there are no "bit players" in this telling!

(Well, shoot...there goes my Monday Schedule! Three of you posted "comments" for this page, and you know by now that it takes only a "wink, wink" about anything I write to get me back at this old computer once more. The truth be known, I want to finish this story, too, so that I will know how it ends....hang on tight, here we go!)

The four comrades were inseparable for those few years in Des Moines, earning good money for the times and enjoying a lifestyle made famous by the likes of Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, John Wayne, John Payne and other like-minded swains on the silver screen. This particular "band of brothers" were parted by the days and years of World War II, all serving admirably and coming home to have another Sunday dinner at 210 Birch Street in Atlantic, Iowa. Well, one did not and that would be the other "Dutch" in my life...he ended up in Hollywood! in the company of Jane Wyman, the sassy little blond chick from the state to the south of Iowa, Missouri.

I think I have found the "protagonist" for this story!

For a while I was going to go with Harry because he ended up being my brother-in-law by virtue of his marriage to my sister, Trudy in 1939. It will take a book to completely cover the "Story of Harry," the only non-Cranston-by-birth person who captured the heart of my Mom and could do no wrong in her eyes. He had only to enter the back door of our home (having traveled with Trudy from Des Moines with Rich and Louie) and shout "May-meeeeeee!" ... we kids could actually see her "melt!" (It is from her, no doubt, that I inherited the gene-reaction-response formula for selected members of the male gender at the bowling alley!)

Then I considered Rich, the catalyst for the story I am about to reveal about "Dutch" (the protagonist).

Louie would have been a fine choice 'cause he earned a piece of my heart and adoration when I was all of 14 as he sat across the dining room table from me eating with his fingers pieces of chicken, using a fork like a gentleman does, for the mashed potatoes and gravy, asparagus, wilted lettuce salad, and two slices of Mom's dark chocolate cake. He fit right into the Cranston mold! I now realize that I had the makings of a "stalker" at 14 but sought no professional help as all my girlfriends told me this was one more stage of growing up and so I have continued with this practice and will, until the end of "my story!"

But, back to Rich...he was cuter than the "protagonist" of this telling, in my mind's eye, and a bit shyer than the other three. He was the closest to "Dutch" during their single-stage years and, therefore, he was the one who decided to go to Hollywood to seek employment with the Bank of America, as he had been in Des Moines. Now, remember, this is all prior to World War II and before the four entered the service.

The "Dutch" Reagan (you may have guessed this by now) yes, the WHO sports broadcaster who went to Hollywood in 1937 to broadcast a Cubs baseball game but caught the eye of a savvy film mogul who, in turn, signed him for a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers. His velvet voice won my heart and admiration during the hot and humid summer months as he skillfully called the Cubs games over WHO. There were no more fanatical baseball fans than my family, and we could be found sitting on the floor in front of a couple of fans semi-circling a big pan of ice to cool down the room any time there was a game to be heard.

Harry and Trudy shared this story with me as we left the Veteran's Hospital in Des Moines, the last time I would see Rich, on my first visit to Iowa after I had moved to California with Del in late January of 1948.

Having been invited to stay with "Dutch" and Jane until he found his own living quarters, Rich arrived in the land of movie stars, palm trees,The Brown Derby, the Paladium, Catalina Island, Earl Carroll's Vanities, and all that enchanted the common man in the land of "make believe."

Rich had always known "Dutch" as kind and gentle, not subject to using profanity in the company of the opposite sex. Not a bad recommendation, huh?

Now as for Jane.... It took me a long time to forgive this cute blond chick from Missouri for her transgression where "Dutch" was concerned. That came about in 1950, and I will end this story with how that all came about, but this is what actually happened during Rich's first visit to their home. Rich had told the story to Harry and Trudy in earlier years, and Trudy told me this story back in August of 1948.

Rich, with a straight face in telling this to Harry and Trudy, said that the Reagan home was spic and span, dinner was delicious and the evening was spent in hashing over the "good old days in Des Moines." Jane, along with her ability to enchant her public by her antics on the silver-screen, was a great housekeeper, the bar by which most women were judged in that era and, a penchant for profanity, we will come to learn. Almost perfect, except she had a moment of forgetfulness which has never been shared with her adoring fans until now...I get to spill the beans, once more!

Rich, in using the nicely-appointed bathroom that evening, discovered a note pinned to one of the lace-edged towels: "Do not touch these towels, you S.O.B." and that could only mean one person, my "Dutch!" See why I harbored a long-term resentment all those past years? Jane forgot the one and most important tenant of housekeeping duties before guests arrived: "Remove all damning (even if instructional) evidence!" and how could she call that darling man an "S.O.B."? And, why was I laughing as heartily as Harry and Trudy? (The truth: that was their purpose, to cheer my soul.)

For sure, in his own words, Rich, too, did not touch the towels and they were left in the pristine condition they were in prior to his arrival. Intimidation by association, if there is such a condition!

And it came to pass that I forgave Jane Wyman eventually. It came about in this way.

Del and I had recently moved into our home at 5529, a new tract of homes that became a target for every vacuum, carpet, insurance, forced air system, fencing material and grass seed salesman alive. And, visiting church preachers!

The day I finally forgave Jane was the day I did the "delicates" by hand-washing and it was before I had a Kenmore-Sears dryer. It being an overcast kind of day, I elected to hang these "delicates" in the doorway nearest to the floor furnace. And did...just as the doorbell rang for the umpteenth time, another salesman.

I scooted to the door and opened it to find the nice looking, salt-and-pepper haired Visiting Pastor of the local Presbyterian Church and his companion, the Youth Minister, more my age. Ever being hospitable, after a few words spoken through the screen door, I invited them in and sat them down on our new Chinese-modern sofa and listened intently to their enthusiastic words of why my hubby and I would feel at home in their church. While listening to them, I noticed their eyes straying to the doorway and I wondered to myself..."what's with the attraction to the doorway?" It was then that I forgave Jane Wyman for her transgression of which we have written. I, also, was guilty big-time of "failing to remove the damning(even if pretty-in- pink) evidence!"

And therein, my three dear readers, lies the moral of this story...judge not because, delightfully and purposefully, "Life has a way of happening.."

* * * * * *

Post Script: You will remember Bus of "Four Little Indians" storyline. Harry became the beloved stepfather of Bus and Peggy Ann (of the misplaced baby storyline) when he married my sister, Trudy. Bus became the stepfather of Babe Bisignano's three very young nephews when he married Nancy Neal Rizzuti. The three Rizzuti boys went on to become well known in the advertising, teaching and film-producing fields. Babe lived to a great age as a revered and honored citizen of Des Moines, active in community work, always a "character" and a friend to all.

The picture heading up this story is an exact replica of the WHO-DES MOINES table at which "Dutch" Reagan broadcast the Cubs games and is located at the President Ronald W. Reagan Museum in Simi Valley. There is also a large statue of my "Dutch" standing guard at the entryway of the door leading into the Museum (or was about six years ago when I visited)...I reached up and slipped my hand into his.