Author Archives: Lois DeSocio

Herman Hupfeld: A Jersey Boy From a Time Gone By

06 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Concepts, Men

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Herman Hupfeld will never be forgotten.

Herman Hupfeld will never be forgotten.

By FRANK TERRANELLA

It’s one of the most famous songs ever written because it is the centerpiece of one of the most famous movies ever made. But its author is largely unknown – the answer to a trivia question. The movie is “Casablanca,” and the song is, “As Time Goes By.”  But who wrote it?

Earlier this year I attended a screening of “Casablanca” at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra providing the music. Max Steiner’s classic score never sounded better. But Max didn’t write the song that people remember most from “Casablanca” – the song that Ilsa asks Sam to play again. Max Steiner, for all his musical genius, did not write “As Time Goes By.” A man by the name of Herman Hupfeld did that.

Who, you may well ask, was Herman Hupfeld? He was the son of a church organist in Montclair, New Jersey. He began his career in 1912 singing his own songs in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic. This was the after-hours entertainment that Florenz Zeigfeld staged after the Zeigfeld Follies on the roof of the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street. Hupfeld went on to serve in World War I as a saxophonist in the United States Navy Band. In the 1920s, he wrote songs for various Broadway shows. He was the “go-to-guy” for what they called “additional material.”

In 1931, Hupfeld provided additional material for a musical called “Everybody’s Welcome.” The show had a book by Lambert Carroll, lyrics by Irving Kahal, and music by Sammy Fain. Fain and Kahal wrote, “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella,” and Fain went on to write, “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.” But “Everybody’s Welcome” did not produce a hit for the duo. The hit of that show, which ran for 139 performances, was the additional material provided by Herman Hupfeld – “As Time Goes By.” Rudy Vallee had a successful recording of it.

Fast forward to 1942, and Hal Wallis is producing a movie inspired by the 1938 Charles Boyer, hit “Algiers.”  It’s based on an unproduced play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison called, “Everyone Comes to Rick’s.” The screenplay adaptation by Julius and Philip Epstein has as a key plot-point, a song played by Sam, Rick’s pal and piano player, that used to be Rick and Ilsa’s favorite when they were in Paris together before World War II. Max Steiner tells Wallis that he would write a song for the movie. But Wallis feels that the song should be something old and familiar, a song that Sam actually would have played in the late ‘30s. The choice was Hupfeld’s, “As Time Goes By.” And the rest is history.

While the song became world-famous, Hupfeld remained in near obscurity at his home at 259 Park Street in Montclair, a short walk from the Watchung Avenue train station. Reports say that he rarely left his hometown. He wrote many other songs with titles such as “When Yuba Plays the Rhumba On the Tuba,” A Hut in Hoboken,” and “Let’s Put Out The Lights (And Go To Sleep).” He died in 1951 at the age of 57. He’s buried in the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Montclair.

While few people remember Herman Hupfeld, his creation lives on in film history. It’s safe to say that a century after his death, people will still be echoing Ilsa’s request, “Play it Sam. Play,`As Time Goes By.’”

The Cicadas are Dead and Gone, But They “Leave” Behind …

31 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in News

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

cicada main

… Dead Leaves.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Almost as fast as this summer’s coming of the cicadas came and went, so did all news about it. But thanks to Victoria St. Martin’s article in The Star-Ledger a few days ago, I have an explanation for the mass of brown, dead leaves that hang from the trees in my yard – not unlike Christmas ornaments made out of paper bags. The cicadas did it!

I noticed this weeks ago. At first I thought it must be a weather-thing. The poor trees. We’ve been living in the extremes for a while now – alternating heat, cold. Drenching rain; whole-tree-toppling winds. And the trees must be suffering for it. But there’s something about the synchronicity of the brown deadness, and the resulting, natural, designedly-spaced, dark tips – like freckles. There is also a hint of a reddish hue to the leaves. And they’re not falling off the trees, despite a few doses of “tree-toppling winds.” cicada 3

Turns out these leaves aren’t really dead – the cicadas just sucked the life out of them.

According to Ms. St. Martin:

The swarms of cicadas that infiltrated New Jersey have pretty much died off, but the eggs they laid in their short stay are now beginning to hatch — the precursor to their offspring setting an alarm clock for 2030 … Experts say that just before adult female cicadas die, they poke several holes in the end of tree branches and lay up to 600 eggs. The act cuts off the water and food supply to the tree, causing the leaves to turn brown.

The article continues to explain that these holes are made, “with tubes that are attached to their bodies … they can lay 25 eggs in each of the holes, which are as small as a pinprick, and the nymphs that emerge from them are as tiny as a grain of rice.”

Apparently, the nymphs then jumped out of the trees and bore down into the ground for the next 17 years – until 2030 – when they will return in, perhaps, even bigger numbers than this year.

So, in my backyard of six or seven said trees – each dead leaf, in each cluster of 30 or more dead leaves, means that those branches were drilled with dozens of pin-prick size holes. And each female cicada (remember there were billions of them this year – so I’d guess half were female), can lay up to 600 eggs. Quite remarkable.

I don’t know where I’ll living be in 2030, at the ripe old age of 75. But I hope all my trees are still here, and ready for the onslaught of those grounded nymphs, when they bore up, climb up, grow up, propagate, and eventually “leave.”

Having My Cake and Wearing it Too

30 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, ,

frank belly

Frank Terranella Presents.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

You may recall, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” Alfred Hitchcock’s television show from years ago. It started with a silhouette of a man with a large stomach, and Mr. Hitchcock coming onscreen to fill out the silhouette. Hitch was not ashamed of his girth. He flaunted it. It was his trademark.

sweets

No gym needed. I do enough heavy lifting.

I have come to understand that point of view. It’s sort of like, “I earned this large middle from years of good living. I don’t apologize for enjoying food and hating exercise. That’s just being human.”

Personally, I would prefer to be slim. Clothes fit better, and it’s certainly a lot healthier – or so my cardiologist tells me. But the reality is that I love sweets, and I have not seen the inside of a gym since high school. Years ago, when I was 123 pounds, I was talking with a guy from Georgia who had migrated north. He had a huge gut, and when we kidded him about it he said that when he went home to Georgia, his family was pleased with his size. They would tell him, “You look like you’re doing well up there in Jersey.” His girth was the look of prosperity to his family.

The truth is that I was a skinny kid, and never had to worry about my weight until I hit 40. Then my metabolism slowed down, and my appetite for candy, cake and ice cream did not. Soon I was 20 pounds overweight, and it was up to 30 pounds by the time I had a heart attack when I was 47. That got my attention weight-wise, and I lost 20 pounds. But after a few years, I put it back. I found that all diets were like that. You lost some weight, and you put it back. The whole diet thing seemed unhealthy to me.

So now I have forsaken diets. I have taken to the treadmill to burn off calories, and I have cut back on sweets. Notice that I say cut back, not eliminate. I still enjoy my cake and ice cream occasionally, but it’s now a special occasion. My weight goals are more modest than they used to be. Losing one pound a week is the plan. But I have come to accept the fact that for now I have a stomach to rival a pregnant woman. But I know that someday that will change. For now, I am embracing the Hitchcock look.

License to Age: The DMV Has Digitally-Enhanced Me

26 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by in Concepts

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

License Digital Enhance

Amended license.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

I’m not curious in the least as to how I will look in four years. It helps to not really know what I look like now. I only glance at certain parts of me in mirrors – mostly to make sure there is no food in my teeth, and that my hair is having a good day. I try to be in the background, or look down, when a camera is in my face. I believe it’s tonic to have a light-hearted approach, across the board, when it comes to getting older.

How old I look is better reflected by how young I feel, and ultimately what I exude, rather than that stark reality offered by a mirror (Mom?). I choose to believe that I don’t look a day over … um, 43. My mirror-image will certainly fall short of my mind’s eye, so I try to not mess with my head.

So, props, and a, “Gee – thanks a lot,” to the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles (NJDMV) for reminding me that I’m getting older, and for giving me a hint, ala milk-carton fashion, as to what they think I will look like when I’m 62.

In November 2012, the NJDMV initiated a driver’s license renewal program called, Skip the Trip.

If you were born before December 1, 1964, you don’t have to make the trek to the local motor vehicle agency to renew your license. Which means, you don’t have to take a new picture. Which means that my last photo for my license was taken in 2007, when I was 52. My new license expires in 2017, when I’ll be 62. I did a double-take when I opened my new license that came in the mail. Through some DMV digital-manipulation (can’t really call it enhancement), they have, albeit gently, aged me.

I’m still wearing that jean jacket that I tossed years ago. Even though my 2013 hair has lost its red-and-brown hue, and looks instead like a bad, black dye-job, my 2007 perfectly-placed bangs have not so much as moved, much less grayed. But I see no wrinkles! Just one eye bigger than the other, a smooshed nose, and a set of hollow, saggy, sad cheeks. And all of me is more oblong, sallow, and encircled (eyes included) by dark, bluish hues.

I called the NJDMV. I wanted to ask them: How’d you do this? What parameters do you use to age someone? Is it a standard formula, or do you investigate lifestyle, income … gene pool? Do you have forensic artists in a back room? I could find no information through Google, or on their Web site, and after 20 minutes on hold, I gave up.

But it could all be part of New Jersey’s exclusive, nifty, new facial-recognition software (which apparently doesn’t work if you smile too much for your license picture), one of a number of states that employ this system for security purposes. Our driver’s license photos are now all in national databases for the FBI and the police. And the State Department.

So a sense of humor is in order here. I figure that when I really am 62, even if I gain 35 pounds, am all gray, with circles under my eyes as dark as Eye Black, topped with saggy, saggy lids, or, even if I have a plastic surgeon do some heavy lifting that makes me look laminated and waxy (like the shiny sleeve that now comes with a driver’s license), I will most likely look better in that driver’s license photo than in any other photo, and for that matter, than how I will really look. Rather than reminding me that I’m continuing to age, my 2017 driver’s license could potentially serve as a feel-good, pocket-sized rear view mirror.

Baseball Hits Home Run for Bridging Gaps, Bonding Males, and Recollecting Past

22 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

arial view of stadium

Photos by Frank Terranella.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

As we move past the half-century mark, it’s natural to be bit by the nostalgia bug. More and more of our sentences begin with, “Remember when …” and “Years ago …”

It occurred to me recently while at Yankee Stadium that baseball is the nostalgia sport. The lords of baseball go out of their way to try to make us remember that long-ago September when Bucky Dent shocked the Red Sox, or the October when Reggie hit three home runs in one game. In my family, we all remember the April opening day in 1996 when we sat in the cold, and watched Andy Pettitte pitch in a snowstorm. The team went on to win its first World Series in 18 years. Yankee stadium

Because baseball is a sport that worships its past, it’s a great generational gap-bridge. It’s not unusual for three generations of a family to go to the ballpark together. During the Vietnam War, baseball was often the only way that many fathers and sons could have conversations that didn’t end with, “You’re an idiot!” Or “Get a haircut!”

Baseball kept the lines of communication open just long enough for mature and cooler heads to prevail. Back then, fathers could take their families to the ballpark, and the entire day would cost less than $100 – including hot dogs and beers. Today, two tickets will usually put you over $100. Add $12 beers and $7 hot dogs, and a trip to a major league ballpark has been converted from a regular pastime to a special occasion.

family sign

They spelled our name right.

My family recently planned one of those special occasions to Yankee Stadium. We had 22 people with us, so we qualified to buy tickets from group sales. That also qualified us to have our name on the scoreboard for a few seconds as the Yankees welcomed the Terranella family and friends. It was neat. In keeping with baseball’s mission of glorifying its past, Yankee Stadium features a full-blown museum in addition to Monument Park. This is like a mini hall of fame where plaques commemorate the legendary players of Yankee history. Grandfathers walk through, and point to Joe DiMaggio’s plaque and say, “I remember seeing him play in the 1949 World Series when they beat the Dodgers.”

Fathers point to Mickey Mantle’s plaque and say, “There was nobody better. Ever.” Sons look at Don Mattingly’s plaque and say wistfully, “If only he had played a few years later, he’d be in the Hall of Fame today.”

Now please don’t get me wrong. I know that women love baseball as much as men. My mother has been a fan for as long as I can remember. But I mention fathers and sons because I think that baseball is a key component of male bonding. But more than that, it fosters family bonding. Oh sure, there’s always one contrary family member who refuses on principle to root for the home team, but the ribbing that ensues is all in good fun. Baseball itself takes a lot of ribbing over being so slow. But I prefer to look at it as leisurely. Along with golf, it’s age-appropriate for those of us old enough to remember when there were only 16 teams, and pitchers batted in the American League. But it’s also age-appropriate for a five year old, who comes for the Cracker Jack and cotton candy. Come to think of it, I can’t think of a better way to spend a summer’s day.

No Matter How You Frame It …

19 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by in Concepts

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

frames 001

Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

… an anniversary is an anniversary. And worth noting, whether it be with a big bash, a gift, a clink of flutes, or simply – a few sentences.

The Write Side of 50 turns eight months old today. So, we thank you again – contributors, readers, commenters, “likers” (and “dislikers”). We started out with an empty frame; a periphery: “We’re getting old,” we said.

Let’s write about it. And paint it, and take pictures of it, and ruminate, and celebrate. And ask others to chime in. So, we hope that bit by bit, and month by month, we’re successfully painting, snapping, and chronicling an engaging, more-to-come narrative; a picture of middle-aged life.

Memories of Worms, and “Gamma’s” Sauce, Bloom with My Apple Tree

18 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by in Food

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

apple 3 margo

This is a banner year for my apple tree. All photos by Margo D. Beller.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

Every year, when I make apple sauce, I think of two people. The first is a former coworker whom, upon being given a pint of my sauce, said, “Remember, the only thing worse than biting into an apple, and finding a worm, is biting into an apple, and finding half a worm.”

apple 2 margo

There’s something in those apples.

He said this after I told him how I have to carefully peel and chop a lot of apples just to make a pint of sauce because I don’t spray my tree, and most of the apples have something in them I must remove.

I have the one tree. Some years, such as last year, it gives me few apples, and I must race outside to get them before the squirrels do. (Being sloppy eaters, what squirrels drop often draw deer, which leave their unique calling cards behind, in bulk, under the tree.)

apple 4 margo

Enough this year for applesauce.

But this year I have a lot of apples, and that means I am standing at the counter, peeling and chopping, and making a lot of sauce.

I also do a lot of thinking.

That’s why, besides that former coworker, I think of my Gamma – which is how I pronounced grandma when I was a toddler, and the name stuck.

Gamma was not the easiest woman to live with. She was the only daughter in a large family. She lost her mother when she was a teenager, and was expected to take care of her father and brothers. She refused. Her younger brothers never forgave her. She got married, had two children, and threw out her husband. Those children spent a lot more time with their aunts and uncles than with her.

And yet, somewhere along the line, my grandmother learned how to cook the traditional Yiddish foods. She made a wonderful tsimmis of sweet potatoes and carrots and other seasonings. She made a great kugel. She made chicken soup by boiling a chicken, and adding vegetables and little bits of dough known as knadlach. Her matzo balls were airy and light, without using seltzer.

For some reason I got along with her much better than her children, my sister or my cousins. When she came over, I couldn’t wait for her to cook. My parents and sister couldn’t be bothered, but I would ask how she made it. She wouldn’t tell me, most likely because she didn’t know. She just did what she always did, a bit of this and that, nothing written down.

She also made applesauce. My mother would bring us over to her house, and she served the delicious applesauce she had made. Unlike me, she would go to the store for her apples.
Sometimes the sauce was red; other times it was yellow.

Her recipes died with her. I should’ve watched what she did more carefully.

So I have had to find my own way, and try to duplicate what she did. I’ve yet to do it. However, the applesauce I make, as I think of her, comes close.

My Former Tot, and His First Tattoo

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Bob tat

BY BOB SMITH

My older son, 28 years old, got his first tattoo the other day (I say “first” because he’s already talking about the next tattoo.) Now I’m going to sound old, but it’s true – it seems like only months ago he was a chubby, cheerful toddler. Now he’s grown up and tatted up.

His tattoo, he tells me, is the Smith coat of arms. That seems right – it pretty much coats his right arm from approximately mid-bicep to the shoulder. He assures me it’s designed to be fully obscured by a short sleeve shirt in the event he’s in a non-tat friendly crowd someday and wants to keep his ink to himself.

It features in the center a shield with three extended arms – one holding a vertical sword and the other two together grasping what appears to be a torch. At the top of the design, like the crest on a helmet, is yet another arm holding a sword perpendicular to the sword below. It looks as though the bearer of that second sword is buried in the intricate scrollwork and curlicues that adorn the top of the shield, and may be trying to hack his or her way out.

There’s also a banner across the bottom with the Latin words, “Tenebras expellit et hostes,” which means, “He expels the darkness and the enemy.” My son didn’t even like high school Italian, and completely skipped Latin, but now he proudly displays some of that dead language on his very living arm. Go figure.

But I must say that overall it’s an impressive piece of artwork. That’s particularly true considering that it took five painstaking (and pain-giving) hours to etch the lines into my son’s skin, with the artist having to continually wipe away blood and excess ink in order to see where the next line of color should be laid in. Bob Jr. is thrilled with it.

I’m less thrilled, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the tattoo. I think it’s a generational thing. When I was a kid, people with tattoos fell into three general categories: carnival gypsies in movies (think Anthony Quinn with dark makeup and a bandanna on his head), crusty Navy veterans sporting a Popeye-style forearm anchor with the name of some rusty old tub emblazoned on a banner below, or criminals. My earliest memory of prison tats is of the LOVE and HATE tattoos on Robert Mitchum’s fingers in the film “Night of the Hunter.” The tats were simple and crude, yet effective, and we were terrified of Robert Mitchum in that role.

Then there were the “naughty” tattoos: the mermaid inside a scallop shell, with wide saucy hips, folded scaly tail, and large breasts jutting proudly from her chest amidst a cascade of wavy hair. The breasts could be confirmed to be anatomically correct, or not, depending on the placement of the locks of hair. Or the religious tattoos: a pulsing red heart encircled by a crown of thorns, and an inscription such as, “Dear Jesus” across the front. This design also came with an optional vertical dagger through the heart. In that iteration, this tattoo bore the inscription, “Born to Die.” Or sometimes, with roses substitued for the thorns, the heart said, “Mom.”

And then there were the super-religious tattoos where the person’s entire back was covered with an image of Jesus in the repose of death, as if the tattooee had lain on the shroud of Turin, and the image transferred to his back like a newspaper photo onto a piece of Silly Putty. People with this kind of giant mural tattoo seemed to also go for the “narrative” tattoos: pictures that twirl around their arms, torso, and/or legs, and depict the story of the Old Testament, World War I, or the entire Star Wars series – pick your epic tale.

And it was unheard of for women to get tattoos at all.

In part because of the unsavory reputation of tattoos we saw on the older generation, it seems that baby boomers as a whole never really jumped on the tattoo bandwagon. My son’s generation, however, is different. Girls and guys alike get all sorts of tattoos, large and small, to make a permanent fashion or other statement on the canvas of their own bodies. It’s hip and totally acceptable, and I have no problem with it – as long as you don’t try to stencil a picture onto me with a zillion stabs of an ink-covered needle.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if the trend will skip generations again. When my children and their friends start to have babies, will those kids growing up look at the “older” generation (our kids) and generally shun the idea simply because it’s too status quo?

I can hear them taunting their parents now:
“Tattoos? That’s so millennial. So yesterday. Get with it, Dad.”

Enjoy the tats, kids, but don’t count on passing on a tradition.