It sure would be nice to see a little Christmas magic right about now

This is me waving a magic wand, Christmas morning, 1972.  I’ve shared this story a few too many times with family & other loved ones, but I’m guessing I’ll probably go to my grave saying this was the best Christmas I ever had.

It actually began several weeks earlier, the day after my 11th birthday.  I was with my mom at SA Meyers Jewelry where she was picking up a wristwatch she’d had repaired, when I spotted a pair of musical note cuff-links in the display case and told her she should get them for Dad for Christmas.  (He was a musician on the weekends.) 

Mom said “No, YOU should.”

I looked at the price tag and my jaw dropped.  “I can’t afford these, they’re $7.99!”  She said “Yes you can.  You get $1.50 weekly allowance, if you put them on layaway today and make a dollar payment every week, you could have them paid off by Christmas.” 

To be honest, I withered a little inside—that money was already budgeted for candy & comic books!  But at the same time I felt nervous & excited at the idea of getting my Dad something so dressy and mature for Christmas, so I said I’d do it.

(And for the next seven Mondays, my mom drove me to town after school where I made my dollar payment.  I picked them up exactly one week before Christmas.) 

That Friday before Christmas, no sooner had we gotten to school we were handed red boxes of Redstone candy and told we were being sent straight home; it was snowing pretty heavily, and the forecast said a couple feet of the good stuff was heading our way.

Can this Christmas get any better? 

When our bus pulled up to the red-dog road leading to our old farmhouse, we saw Dad pulling into the driveway with Grandma Morris in the passenger seat.  Now I was thrilled to have Grandma spending Christmas with us this year more than anyone, but that wasn’t until Monday and it was still Friday morning.  As we ran to hug her, Dad said “I figured we’ll be snowed in by Christmas, so I talked your grandma into spending a couple extra days with us.”     

Christmas just got even better.     

My sisters Donda-Lin & Shawn, and Grandma Morris on the couch

So of course it was a wonderful weekend, blustery and cold, the snow piled high in blue drifts with no signs of stopping. 

But inside was warm and cheerful and noisy with three adults and five kids (our youngest sister Courtney wouldn’t be here for another 3 years yet), the livingroom smelling of pine tree and old decorations, our kitchen table & every inch of counter space filled with platters of cookies and fudge, bowls of fruit and nuts and boxes of assorted chocolates.  This year had Grandma’s fresh baked bread and pies as well.

I was very excited with the gifts I’d gotten that Christmas morning—a snazzy red bathrobe, a magic set from Grandma, an ant farm and my “big gift”—a metal desk & chair, it’s drawers filled with drawing paper, pencils & markers.   What I enjoyed most though, was my gift to Dad—as he opened the small round jewelry box containing the cuff-links, Mom told him how I was the one who saw them, and made weekly payments.  When he said “Doug they’re beautiful” and hugged me, I busted out crying! 

I can only remember my dad hugging me a couple times in my life, and this was one of them.

I suppose I treasure these memories like I do, and hold onto them so tight, because I never really made new ones of my own.  I’ve gotten a lot older, but can’t help but feel like I never made a real effort to grow up.  For reasons even I can’t explain, I never pursued getting married or having kids of my own… some years I feel some regret over that. 

I suppose this year is one of them.  

A few weeks ago, my TMJ (jaw disorder) returned with a vengeance.  I walk around my half empty apartment in Waynesburg (why did I move, ugh) with these small white patches on my jowls from a portable TENS unit that zaps electrical impulses into my jaw muscles.  Some days the pain isn’t too severe and I can chat with my neighbors and talk on the phone some and pretend I’m half normal. 

Then there are days like yesterday & today, where all you can do is sit & stare, and wonder.  (Not a very cheery message, I know!)  I have to believe I’m going to recover from this, be my old self again and make some new holiday memories.  Until then, for what it’s worth… 

Merry Christmas

A whole lot of lovin’ is what she’ll be bringing… c’mon Doug, get happy

I finished this memoir a couple hours ago and was smacking my lips like I’d just finished a tasty meal.  Shirley Jones autobiography hit the bookstores in 2013, but as much as I loved my second-favorite tv mom I couldn’t bring myself to pay $15.99 for another celebrity autobiography—even if she did play a very happy part in my childhood as Shirley Partridge on The Partridge Family.  Nope, wasn’t gonna happen.

And then the reviews came in, and fans cried foul over Shirley’s raunchy sexcapades.  Wait, what?  No!  I’m still not forking over all that dough!

Cut to the present, and the day after the Presidential election I went on barnesandnoble.com looking for something to take my mind off things and Shirley’s book popped up with a reduced price of $7.99.  And for a 55 year old “70s kid” like myself, who lived for Friday night television and the Brady Bunch & Partridge Family, Shirley Jones: A Memoir does not disappoint.

She starts out innocently enough, a small town girl from Charleroi, PA (about 30-40 miles from me) who dreamed of being a veterinarian.  But she liked to sing too, and was told by her church’s choir director she had a good voice so her beloved dad drove her to Pittsburgh weekly for singing lessons. 

Her singing teacher convinced Shirley to enter a local pageant to win a 2 year scholarship to the Pittsburgh Playhouse; she did, and won the title of ‘Miss Pittsburgh’ in 1952

Then in New York one weekend visiting the former Pittsburgh Playhouse director, he invites her to sing on the empty stage of the theater he’s with, and who overhears her song?  The casting director for Rodgers & Hammerstein, who informs her that Richard Rodgers is right next door, would she sing for him?  She does, he likes what he hears & sees, and casts her in his new show Oklahoma! 

A star is born.

 

Shirley in Oklahoma!  "Being a Broadway star would be nice, but I wanted to be a vet.” 

Her rise to fame in Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals isn’t anything new you can’t read on Wikipedia, but I knew things were going to get interesting when she writes of meeting the sauve & debonair Jack Cassidy and was warned by her agent Selma he was a skirt chaser—and married:

She meant so well, Selma did.  She just didnt know that I was—and always would be—the kind of girl who would always do exactly the opposite of what she was asked, a headstrong girl who flew in the face of advice and went against convention, with her eyes fixed on the next adventure!

Shirley then tells us that even though she’s always known she was very sexual, it wasn’t until her early twenties when she met Jack that she lost her virginity (and then some).  On their honeymoon, when Shirley teases him about all the women he’s been with, he nonchalantly adds that he’s been with men too—including famed composer Cole Porter. 

Hey, a struggling actor’s gotta do whatever it takes—especially if you’re a sex-addict like Jack Cassidy.

Married from 1956 to 1974, Shirley says Jack was an absentee father to their three sons Shaun, Patrick & Ryan.  He cheated on her constantly, once left her for Yvonne Craig (Batgirl), got her to participate in a threesome (she details who did what to whom) & made her life a living hell.  She adds “Jack will always be the greatest love of my life”

Shirley’s film career waned in the 1960s, but she claims it didn’t bother her at all as she loved being a stay-at-home mom to her 3 boys and stepson David Cassidy.  She also tells us that David was well-endowed, so much that his brothers called him “Donk” and Jack once commented “Where did you get that thing?” 

(You can’t help but wonder how this became known, let alone a topic for discussion.)  Shirley sheepishly admits that things might’ve been a little too open when her son Patrick came downstairs one morning while she was fixing pancakes and excitedly told her he just had his first orgasm.  All she could think to say was “That’s nice, dear.”

We then get to the 1970s, when Shirley lets Hollywood know she’d like a television series.  (It was virtually unheard of then, a Broadway performer & movie star wanting to do tv.)  She happily accepted the role of mom on The Partridge Family.  She adds that a year prior, she’d been offered the role of Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch, but turned it down as she didn’t want to play another bored, smiling housewife.  (How did I not know this?) 

But the idea of being television’s “first single working mother” on a show about a musical family excited her.  “Originally, I thought I was the one who would be singing the songs, but when David’s star took off, I didn’t mind at all.”

Shirley shares a lot of Partridge lore that we’ve heard over the years.  (Susan Dey’s crush on David, his many female conquests, etc.)  She adds that when the ‘first Chris’ (bottom left) was let go after the first season for behavioral issues and replaced with Brian Forster for the remainder of the series, “we didn’t receive a single letter of inquiry or complaint”

She also writes of favorite guest stars (a very professional 11 year old Jodie Foster, Louis Gossett Jr, Rob Reiner as ‘Snake’) and guest stars she didn’t like--a drugged up Richard Pryor, Dick Clark of American Bandstand & Ray Bolger (the scarecrow from ‘Wizard of Oz’) who played her dad—and was a real diva.

What really surprised me though was her favorite episode, ‘Whale Song’—because she finally got her own solo.  Sorry Shirley, but this has to be the least favorite song of the series!  You can watch it here.

Shirley writes that Dave Madden (who played their agent Reuben Kincaid) was closest to Danny Bonaduce, but teased him constantly.  Dave once asked Danny if he knew why the two of them were even on the show.  “For laughs” Danny answered.  Dave said “No, it’s because we’re so ugly… look at Susan Dey, David Cassidy, Shirley Jones.  They’re the beautiful people.  They need us uglies to balance things out.” 

After the end of The Partridge Family (and Shirley’s marriage to Jack Cassidy) in 1974, she met & married Marty Ingels in 1977—much to all her son’s dismay.  Hmm, they don’t look so distraught to me…

Shirley ends her book by telling us that she & Marty are still very happily married; sadly, this book was published in 2013 and Marty Ingels died in 2015.

There’s a lot I’m leaving out of course, but here’s two things that kind of surprised me.  For one, towards the end of the book Shirley explains the importance of “self love” and not only when she does this (daily) but how she does it as well! 

Just when you thought you’ve seen and read it all... 

And finally, an amusing story Shirley shares from 1979, when she was given another television series Shirley.  She wasn’t expecting success on the scale of The Partridge Family, but was excited about being on weekly television again.  Famed producer Fred Silverman owned the show, and as filming began he excitedly told her on a daily basis how great she was and how thrilled the network was with what they were seeing—so she was surprised when she drove to the studio one morning and the guard at the gate told her to go home, her show had been canceled.  No calls, no nothing—I found out I was fired from a studio guard.

Soon after, Marty & I were having dinner at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel when all of a sudden I noticed Fred Silverman having dinner in one of the booths with three women.  I turned to Marty and said “That asshole!  I’m going to go over there and tell him exactly what I think!”  Marty turned chalk-white and said “Please Shirley, please don’t do that.”   But that’s exactly what I did!  And for once in all my years of marriage, I finally got to be the crazy person!

It was her only swear-word in the entire book.  Love you, Shirley!

Thinking out loud: Where do we (and where do I) go from here

A couple days ago, I did something on here I once promised I’d never do again—I deleted my last post.  And then I deleted the one before that.  It was a couple days after Donald Trump won the Presidential election and I was feeling stunned and angry (still am) but also naive, arrogant & despondent.  I just couldn’t stand looking at these posts anymore.

The first is from November 5 with a wink-nod to the ‘obvious’ victor (Hillary); and the second from the night of the election when the writing was on the wall

I confess I’ve been looking at this from two different viewpoints.  I worry what Trump and the GOP have in store for this country, but I’m scared for myself too.  If it hadn’t been for accessibility to affordable health insurance, I never would’ve left my job with UPMC.  (Though at the time, it didn’t feel like a choice.)  There’s a lot of talk about ‘repeal & replace’ of Obamacare, but no one knows what that means.  I don’t care what Trump claims, I have a feeling the repeal will come a lot sooner than the replace. 

I have a feeling there IS no replace.

(And after the year I’ve had with kidney stones & TMJ, with trips to 2 emergency rooms, I just can’t imagine going without.)

Frankly, I’m exhausted with all of it.  I’ve been trying to stay off Facebook, where a couple former classmates are overjoyed and happily rubbing Democrats noses in it; meanwhile, other Trumpeteers are giving long, tiresome speeches on how we should all be thinking and behaving.  Even the Hillary supporters are wearing me down, angrily pointing out over & over how we’re all fudged and “look what Trump is doing NOW”  as if it will make a difference.

I will say I’m trying my best to understand why things happened the way they did.  The more I hear & read of former miners, autoworkers & other blue collar workers not just wanting change but desperate for it, I get why they voted the way they did.  It helps with the anger some (mine, at least).  I just hope they’re not the ones who get punished most for choosing who they did. 

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