Cure for Happiness

Is this beautiful spring making you unusually happy? Too full of life's good cheer? The smell of honeysuckle and lilac in the morning making you giddy with joy? If your life is a beer commercial and you're happy as a clam about it, come back tomorrow, but if all this sweetness and light is just a bit too much for you, and you are in the US, there's hope.

Turner Classic Movies has the medicine to drop kick you into a four day funk. Tune in tomorrow, April 26, from 6am EDT while TCM airs back to back to back... adaptations of several Tennessee Williams' classics, some he even had a hand in adapting for the screen, although it's unlikely he remembered.

Scheduled are:

Night of the Iguana

Period of Adjustment

Sweet Bird of Youth

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Baby Doll

Not a laugh, nor hardly a smile all day. Set your TIVO to record and you can self medicate anytime.

Toad

Tennessee

Today is Tennessee Williams 101 birthday. After a celebratory brunch Mrs. T and I explored our city searching for Tom's boyhood homes. Born in Mississippi, he frequently ranted about how much he hated living in St. Louis. He softened as he aged, believing he probably gave the town a bad rap, and concluded by saying he probably would have hated wherever he lived. Many an ambitious lad feels the same.

When his family moved to St. Louis they lived on the third floor of this apartment building.

In my youth, the building was known as The Glass Menagerie. An update and conversion to condo's in the 1990's rated a new name, now it is called The Tennessee. Space is available.

As the family fortunes fell, the Williams moved into an apartment house, in a seedier neighborhood, several blocks west. The neighborhood is now a mix of rundown public housing, student housing and gentrification. Williams' building was torn down and replaced by a eyesore, now part of a public housing complex.

Tom's brother Dakin, who could be cajoled into saying anything in print, so long as you spelled his name correctly, described life there as the setting for "The Glass Menagerie". It must have been grim.

Tom escaped family life by enrolling at the University of Missouri. He lasted three years before family support stopped. In 1935 he enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis and moved into this house. William James Smiths "My Friend Tom" describes life in this house well. I'd live quite happily here in a minute. It's a lovely neighborhood, but the nearest grocery store is miles away.


Williams now lives around the corner from my grandparents. They say he doesn't get out much any more.


Toad

Roots

I once heard said that one thing that distinguishes Southerners is they know where their grandparents are buried. That hurt. I barely claim Southerness, but there are a few things every man should know, this is one and I don't.

I know where my parents are buried. I know where my paternal grandfather is, but hadn't a clue where my other 3 grandparents were. I became a man on a mission.

Beginning with the obvious, I went to visit Grandpa, hoping for clues. My parents didn't talk of their parents. Their mothers died much too early, their fathers sad, old men before their time, working too hard, for too little.

My paternal grandfather is buried in a cemetery which was formerly a family farm owned by Henry Clay. After a 1848 cholera epidemic, church yards in the city were closed, and new cemeteries were built taking advantage of the then new, garden plan, outside city limits. Today, it's a neighborhood few would linger, but I did, and am glad of it.

Although I hadn't been there in 40 years, I found Grandpa pretty quickly. Unsurprisingly, his wife and parents are there too. While I always think of myself as the oldest sibling, my parents had a son before me who died soon after birth. He too is buried there. We have the exact name. Looking at your name on a tombstone is eerie at my age. Little Toad is buried next to my great grandmother.

On great grandmother's other side is lies my first wife's, the mother of my children's, great grandmother. A coincidence more likely found in a small village than in a once thriving metropolis. Are marriages made in heaven?

Nearby, lie my kids maternal great grandparents as well.

That part was easy so I took a stroll to see who else lived in the neighborhood.

A few steps away is birthday boy, Tennessee Williams, who is celebrating his 100th today.

and his mother, sister Rose and brother Dakin. Dakin was a neighbor in our old 'hood before we moved.

I always thought of him as his generation's Ringo. He'd attend an envelope opening if money passed.

I much prefer his brother. TCM has broadcast several movies made from his work this week. Is anything creepier than Baby Doll?

Dear to any Southerner's heart, a short walk up the road leads to the final resting place of General William T. Sherman, scourge of Georgia, along with his wife and children.

Directly across the road lie 2 other Generals from the war of Union aggression, 1 from each side.

General Daniel M. Frost,CSA

and General John Wesley Turner, USA

You pass Dred Scott on your way out.

Keep walking and you run into Charles and Ray Eames. I had forgotten they were local kids.

Male that I am, what may surprise many, is that while there I did ASK the concierge about my maternal grandparents. Turns out they too are here and doing well, although they don't get out much. Proof positive I know where my grandparents and half of my great grandparents are buried. Can one become Southern? I passed the test.

Toad