MISS UNIVERSE, TEARS AND A DONUT HOLE

poor georgie’s almanack 

GRUNT WORK, SOARING GLORY, GLITZ, MISS UNIVERSE, TEARS, AND A DONUT HOLE

Mexico City. 7:17 AM, September 19, 1985:  

A violent earthquake demolished buildings, killed at least 5,000 people, and injured untold thousands.  

As a veteran Pan American Development (PADF) board member, I loved how a small professional staff and a few highly placed volunteers could jump into disasters and do really important stuff, like changing lives for the better and keeping lots of people from dying.

When the earthquake hit, PADF, had:  

• A Florida warehouse full of useful tools to excavate people from fallen buildings … like saws that cut through concrete … and a stockpile of basic medical equipment.

• And a board member who was an exec at a major oil company.  He quickly corralled a corporate plane to move equipment from the warehouse to Mexico City and another board member Miguel Aleman Velasco, high among the entrenched political and business elite of Mexico.  His father had been the FDR of Mexico.  When I knew him he was a co-owner of Mexico’s largest TV network and rather serious.

Fast forward a few years.  The city leadership decided to honor PADF and its board for what it had done.  Aleman sent his network's corporate jet to pick some of us up.

By far, I was the poorest board member, but for years had been willing to do grunt work.  Because my office was nearby, I usually could show up when a board member was needed for some seemingly important function, like signing a document.

PADF, essentially, is an operating arm of the US State Dept., the Organization of American States (UN for the hemisphere), and a few corporations that donate executives to be board members along with some money.  I was on the board because the PADF founder liked work I did at the USAID agency and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  

Upon arrival in Mexico City, I was immediately, and embarrassedly, taken in by the glitz, the pomp and ceremony of the official reception, and all the usual self-congratulatory stuff that goes on when governments are patting each other on the back.  For instance my seat mate at the luncheon was the Foreign Minister.  I’d seen it before in places like Kenya, and Washington, but this one swept me into the stratosphere.  

It started in the hotel room.  On the coffee table was the usual elegant all-you-need-to know-about-Mexico-City book.  On its cover was a high quality reproduction of a painting by the world famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. 

A few hours later, as the door to Miguel Aleman’s mansion swung open, the first thing that caught my eye was that very painting … the real one.  

Nearby was a large weird-looking floor lamp.  I learned it was an incarnation of the trophy Señora Aleman received as the second Miss Universe.  Seeing the lamp and its inappropriate lamp shade, I immediately wanted to meet her because she certainly must have had her stuff together.  Luckily, my seat at the long dining table was next to the Italian girl, Christiane Martel Magnani, who somehow morphed into Miss France, then Miss Universe, and then a movie star, who had caught Miguel’s eye.  Or vice-versa.

We spent a couple hours being serenaded by a very loud mariachi band and talking about her life and hard times raising kids.  Not surprisingly, she was a terrific story teller.

The house sat upon an immaculately landscaped golf-course-size property.  It was an oasis near the teeming, highly polluted center city.

She told me about a teenage daughter and her boy friend.  His birthday present to the girl was a lion cub.  Apparently, it pretty much had a free run of the estate.  One morning while the Italian/French/Mexican Señora Aleman still was in bed, sipping coffee and reading the paper, the now not-so-small lion cub took a running jump through an open bedroom window and landed, plop, on Miss Universe’s bladder.   

Lion deportation papers arrived soon thereafter. 

As delightful as the mayor’s pomp, Sra. Aleman’s home decorations, and her family stories, were, the most memorable image that lingers from the visit was much more sober.  It brought me back to Earth and made all those volunteer hours worth every minute I missed billing real clients, and making real money.

Our meager band of visiting board members were at a small neighborhood hospital that had been devastated yet flooded with patients after the earthquake.  It’s equipment was either buried or useless.  Somehow a supply of the most simple medical instruments and almost primitive hot water sterilizers from the PADF warehouse quickly showed up.  

As nurses explained how they and the sterilizing steamers helped save lives they became emotional.  Even without translation their message and emotions were clear.  Tears flowed down their cheeks, and soon we all were crying.

At that moment I was reminded of the poem on the wall of the old Mayflower Coffee shops.  

“As you go through life brother, what ever be your goal, keep your eye upon the donut, and not upon the hole.”

###

PART TWO ... EGOS/INSECURITIES

 poor georgie’s almanack  

Part #2.  Egos and insecurities boot camp.      May 25, 2018.   300 words

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diller.

Chicago, 1960.  Occasionally the famous comedienne Phyllis Diller appeared on Phil Lind’s WAIT radio interview program.  I was his booker (corralling and scheduling guests).  I loved sitting in the studio with Phil and Phyllis because she really was fun.

Some background … Mrs. Diller came to showbiz later than most, she was almost 40.  Phyllis raised five kids in the days before disposables, so she washed untold loads of loaded  cotton diapers.  Apparently, some ladies in the launderette liked her off-kilter takes on real life.  They encouraged her to come up with more stories.  During World War 2, Mr. Diller (she called him Fang on stage) worked in a factory making bombers.  I am a bit older than their eldest son. 

On two occasions she asked if I’d care to go shopping with her after the the Lind interview.  You bet I did.  

Both times we wandered up and down touristy streets in Chicago’s Rush Street area, stopping to browse in hat stores.  Hats were an important part of her stage persona. 

Off stage, Phyllis was neither frantic, nor funny, nor wore a hat.  We mostly talked about our families.  Her kids, it turned out, were not perfect, and that really bothered her.  

The two of us looked like a lot of the Midwest tourists passing by.  It was as if I was hosting one of my sweet aunts from Sioux City, Iowa.  But, the middle aged woman at my side was a certified star.  Millions followed her relatable antics on TV.  They showered love and other kinds of affection upon her, and her wacky hats, and hairdo.  And most must have thought she lived an ideal life. 

I saw an insecure lady from Lima, Ohio without any real friends in the big city, and lonely.  

###

Chicago 1960: Boot Camp for Egos and insecurities. Part #1.

poor georgie’s almanack      George Kroloff   May 24, 2018.   410 words. 

Egos and insecurities boot camp.  Part #1.

Without Checks There Would Have been No Balances.

Chicago, 1960.  I was 25, a Depression baby, working for myself with no savings and, more than anything else, I feared going broke.  My dad was sick.  My mom was a full time care giver and I was contributing to their nearly depleted living expenses.

Most weekday afternoons people turned their radio dials to 820 and listened to station WAIT’s Phil Lind Show for a dose of show business gossip.  I was Phil’s booker, the guy who sought out and scheduled guests for in-studio interviews.  

Lind, a balding, former professional singer, sometimes came close, but never reached the line of fawning over celebrities.  Many of them (Carol Channing comes to mind) seemed to genuinely enjoy reminiscing with him.  Phil spoke in a conversational tone.  His career depended on being liked and I liked him.  His checks didn’t bounce.

Separately, I promoted a small, somewhat seedy, gangster-run nightclub that was cover for an illegal gambling establishment upstairs.  It smelled like the lions’ cages at the Lincoln Park zoo.  The club featured insecure singers and comics who were long, long past their prime.  One act was a silent movie star who peaked in the mid 20s.

Fortunately, no worry about checks bouncing there.  The two hulking knuckle-draggers who claimed to run the joint would not sign anything on paper, like a check.  They dealt in cash.  At about 2 am the second Tuesday each month, one would methodically count out $300 in fives and tens and shove the wad into my eager outstretched hands.  

It doesn’t matter that I can’t remember their names, they probably were aliases anyway.  I never knew what demons lurked behind their steely, piercing eyes.  To me, they spoke softly and carried a fearful big stick.

At the other end of my press agent spectrum were assignments from Harry Zelzer, the legendary Chicago impresario who booked only the toniest halls.  Supposedly the publicity I generated helped fill seats for some of the biggest stars in the showbiz firmament … Leonard Bernstein, Harry Belafonte, etc.

He paid me peanuts, but I had free tickets to distribute and usually the shows in his office were as good as the stage performances.  The diminutive Zelzer's normal-sized wife totally lorded over him.  In turn, Mr. Zelzer had his own big schtick to threaten me.  He yelled.  

“Kroloff,” he’d bellow, “When your grandparents were in the shtetl eating borscht, my father was playing violin for the Tzar.”  I just quaked and kept my mouth shut, knowing that, unlike some of my other clients, his checks also wouldn’t bounce.

I learned a lot about how peoples’ hidden fears manifest themselves that year.  It was “Ego Boot Camp” for a much later gig on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff where I scheduled experts to be interviewed by the Senators on topics dealing with war and worse. 

It didn't dawn on me until much later that Harry knew that stars like Belfonte, Bernstein, Judy Garland and the like would fill the house no matter what I did ... but his contract said there must be a press agent.  So he found the cheapest in town who wouldn't embarrass him.  And I never did.   ###

poor georgie’s almanack:

History, flawed as it is, hints that things may get better.  

Right now, an alien 65 million light years away may be looking at our Earth through a super-duper telescope. What it sees is dinosaurs.  

(This works whether you interpret it through your scientific or psychological lens. And, yes, I know the God's Eye nebula is, or was, more than 65 million light years away and probably no longer exists. But the visual works in this context ... please ... I'm trying to find something positive on this sad, dreary day.)

There Is Hope

poor georgie’s almanack:

HOPE:

When it seems your life, your country, or your world is beyond saving, you might turn to booze, drugs, food, prayer, or all of the above. I find solace in this deteriorating T-Shirt. It is swag from a Presidential Bill Clinton, George Bush and Ross Perot in East Lansing, Michigan, USA.

Here is the back story. Since 1980, I have been behind the scenes at many of those Presidential and VP debates that are broadcast the month before America’s national elections. I've been part of a non-partisan team that produces the world’s most important TV reality shows. Each debate generated totally unexpected events that deeply touched my heartstrings, that scared the daylights out of me, or tickled my funny bone.

In October 1992, for instance, I was a liaison with news media at the debate hosted by Michigan State University. After a long C-SPAN interview in the auditorium where the debate was to occur, I checked on the crowd outside waiting to enter the building.

Outside a ferocious, freezing, high-velocity Midwest blizzard raged.

The doors were about to be opened for a couple hours so "locals" could shuffle in, see the candidates

podiums, the moderators desk, the cameras and then look up into the balcony where the networks temporary anchor booths with flimsy walls of drapes were getting their finishing touches.

Then, the doors would shut, so the Secret Service and their dreaded, drooling dogs, could “sweep” the area and hermetically seal-off the site from anyone who didn’t have a very heavily-vetted access pass.

Bundled up to, and over, my gills, I was figuratively and literally blown away … both by the howling wind and by the blocks-long line of people of all ages waiting for hours to enter.

An elderly woman was clutching what looked, through my foggy and rapidly freezing glasses, to be a bundle of rags. Actually, she was clutching an array of baby blankets sheltering her nearly-new granddaughter.

Why, I asked, do you punish yourself to bring out this infant who would never remember the moment?

Because, she said, "This is important. This is history. And when the baby is old enough to understand, I will show her news stories from this day and tell her that she was a part of America's continuing story."

“It is important. It is history," she emphatically repeated.

I don’t know her name. But, I do know she made me cry, right there on the Michigan tundra. There is hope, I thought, always hope. And always it is for and about the kids. They embody our hope.

Thus, for a quarter century when, just like tonight, doom and gloom darken the moon, I’ve been donning this fading battered T-Shirt and hoping that it, and the hope it represents, lasts much longer than I will.

May 14, 2018.

A memory

poor georgie’s almanack: 

In the late 1960s I was on a panel that judged art work submitted in a perfectly meaningless  contest that had something to do with kids and the US Postal Service.  Our little group’s first and only session was in the bowels of a fabled, rusting, yet strangely dignified, former queen of the oceans.  She was either the USS America or USS United States.  

Having never seen such a ship, I fixated on nothing more than how to board early, and ogle as much as possible before being caught and marched to the meeting.

The ship met my already soaring expectations.  It blew me away.  Eventually, I joined our group in a tiny ornate room for lunch and the business at hand.

Seated next to me was a slight, older gentleman whose name I had trouble remembering.  His cigar, an extension of his body, ala Groucho Marx, was his major attraction until I spotted an eye-popping four stars on each shoulder.  Our small-talk must have been boring and totally irreverent because it, along with his name, didn’t stick.  

Yesterday something clicked.  I did some research.  The admiral’s namesake and son is the more famous, John McCain.  Our panel met before his son had been shot down over Vietnam and tortured … before his name would rest on the bow of one of the world’s highest tech warrior ships.  Incredibly, he was the son of yet another admiral with the very same name.  

All three McCains are national heroes.

good old daze?

poor georgie’s almanack: 

When politicians were young and America was great.