Great Gatsby got his start in Duluth...

By Jim Heffernan

The Great Gatsby movie poster

You’d think it would have been great to be Gatsby – millionaire, big mansion, partying all the time, beautiful women, fast cars, servants galore. But life was not so great for Jay Gatsby as portrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his novel “The Great Gatsby”, now once again adapted for the movies and showing everywhere, including Duluth where Gatsby got his start.

How’s that again? The Great Gatsby got his start in Duluth? How come we’ve never heard that before?

Read the book. Once Fitzgerald gets around to telling Gatsby’s backstory, we learn he grew poor in North Dakota, the son of  “shiftless and unsuccessful farm people.” His name was James Gatz, and at age 17 he fled the Dakota farm for Lake Superior where he “loafed along the beach,” and where he met an eccentric yachtsman, whom he saved from dashing his vessel on the rocky shore.

It was then that young Gatz imagined himself as the man who became Jay Gatsby. The yachtsman took him under his wing and also “took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white duck trousers and a yachting cap,” before embarking for “the West Indies and the Barbary Coast,” in Fitzgerald’s words.

Split Rock Light House

Some of this is portrayed in the latest Gatsby movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. One scene shows the rough waters besieging a yacht on Lake Superior, with what looks a lot like Split Rock lighthouse in the background. No Duluth in the movie, though. Only in the book, early in Chapter VI.

Fitzgerald was a native of St. Paul, where he spent is childhood and youth in the early years of the 20^th Century. It is conceivable that at some point in his Minnesota years he came to Duluth, as most Twin Cities people eventually do from time to time.

Anyway, he put the Zenith City in his most enduring novel.

Duluth spring 2013–Happy Holidays?

By Jim Heffernan

It’s beginning to look a lot like holiday time...

I still wasn’t fully awake when I opened the shades this morning (May 4) to be greeted by a study in gray – skies, trees, streets – with a dusting of white from overnight snow, blades of gray grass poking through.

Because I hadn’t yet gained full consciousness from a long “spring” slumber, my mind immediately recognized the scene before me. I perked up right away. Thanksgiving is upon us. The scene so resembled late November I began thinking turkey, dressing, the trimmings, the family gathering for the holiday.

It took perhaps two milliseconds for me to adjust. Hold it. It’s not that Thanksgiving time of year. There’ll be no Black Friday shopping (yeah, right!) the day after.

It’s not fall it’s spring. It’s the merry month of May. Not so merry this year.

I shared that thought with others in my family, and they had the same thoughts as they looked out on this dreary May day. So I think we should just go with the weather’s flow and have Thanksgiving now.

We’re going to do it. When several members of our family, including three grandchildren 6 years old and under, gather on Sunday night for one of our occasional weekend dinners, here’s what’s on the menu:

Turkey, dressing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, corn, biscuits, salad and, what the heck, I’ll pick up a pumpkin pie for dessert. (Brief caveat: We won’t roast a big, stuffed turkey. We’ll roast a few drumsticks, prepare stovetop dressing, supplement the juices with store bought turkey gravy, and zap microwave mashed potatoes. Yummy.)

Why fight it? I can’t wait until the Fourth of July when we get to put up the tree, decorate the house, exchange gifts and, of course, welcome a jolly old saint from the North Pole.

Hold it! We’d better get started on our shopping before everything is picked over.

Happy holidays. 

How not to engage Scandinavian kings...

By Jim Heffernan

Pity those poor Scandinavian monarchs. Sometimes they get no respect.

Of course the current Norwegian king, Harald V, got plenty of respect when he visited Duluth recently to rededicate Enger Tower. But his father, King Olav V, experienced an indignity so egregious when he visited the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, that it was mentioned again last week in a New York Times obituary for a former Calgary mayor. (Read it HERE.)

Ralph Klein, 12th primiere of Alberta 

The obituary for Canadian politician Ralph Klein, whom the Times described as a “rambunctious Canadian politician” who also became Alberta premier, recounted the incident. Here’s how the obituary put it:

“At the Olympics, Mr. Klein (then Calgary mayor) mistook the King of Norway (Olav V at the time) for his driver and asked him to fetch the car. The startled king explained who he was as he pulled out his silver cigarette case. Mr. Klein apologized and bummed a cigarette.”

It brought to mind the famous gaffe 100 years ago at the Stockholm Olympic games when American decathlon gold medal winner Jim Thorpe was introduced to King Gustav V of the host country. Addressing Thorpe, the king said, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”

King Olav V of Norway

“Thanks, King,” responded Thorpe.

The athlete apparently didn’t know that nobody calls a king king to his face, “your majesty” or “your highness” being the most common commoner way to address royalty.

I don’t know how Duluth Mayor Don Ness addressed King Harald last year when the monarch and his queen visited Duluth, but I’m sure it was all very proper.

Duluth's West End roots...

To my loyal readers, especially those not seeing this on Facebook, I want to share this column I wrote for Zenith City Online that tells about my W. End roots and my parents. Guess the story tells it all...
Read it HERE.

George Heffernan, at work in the  engraving department
 at the Duluth Herald and News Tribune
in the mid fifties.

Ruth Heffernan playing the
Bethany Lutheran Church
pipe organ, circa mid 50's

Springtime in Duluth Minnesota...

As many of you blog readers know, we've been taking a winter vacation break in the Panhandle of Florida for a bit. We just returned home on Sunday and were greeted by springtime in Duluth. Here's the then (beach scene in front of our rental condo) and the now (our snow pile by our Duluth home. 

HAPPY SPRING!

THEN

NOW

The envelope please...

So... how did you fare with your speculations about this year's Academy Award winners? I didn't do well, missing the boat on quite a few categories including that of Best Picture. I selected Beasts of the Southern Wild to win as Best Picture but Argo, of course, was the big winner.  I watched the ceremony Sunday evening and was pleasantly surprised to learn that Duluth East High School graduate, Abe Diaz–now an 18-year-old DePaul University student, was among the six college students selected to participate in this year's ceremony! Check out Peter Passi's article in Monday's Duluth News Tribune HERE  to learn more about Abe and how he turned up on the Academy Award ceremony stage this year.

Way to go, Mayor Don Ness and Duluth

Duluth does seem to be in the midst of revival and our young Mayor is leading the way. Here's a link to a recent piece on Minneapolis/St. Paul's Kare 11 TV lauding Mayor Don Ness . Check out that story and video HERE. Way to go, Mayor Ness, and way to go Duluth!

A ghost from my past...

I've been doing a lot of writing... but not so much here. I've had a deadline to meet for Tony Dierckin's Zenith City Online for my March "Denfeld Boy" column and sent it in today. Look for my recollections in the March edition online in Zenith City Online. I wrote a piece on the old Lincoln School that now sits fallow in Duluth's West End and my recollections about the infamous former principal, Dr. Carl T. Wise. Tony found this photo advertisement (above) from an ad in an old Duluth News Tribune newspaper as he was doing some research at the Duluth Public Library and sent it to me. I was a lot younger then... and had a lot more hair. Enjoy this ghost from my past....

OF POPES AND GIRL SCOUTS AND VIKINGS: Lack of authenticity is what’s ruining the world today

By Jim Heffernan

Just when I was thinking about going ahead and popping for a box of Girl Scout cookies from my granddaughter, the Pope resigns? Holy smokes.

Pope Benedict XVI
2010-in St. Peters  Square

You might not think these two happenings are related, but you’d be surprised to learn that they are – as far as I’m concerned.

We were all surprised to hear that Pope Benedict XVI, 85, has decided to step down and not step up upon departing the Holy See HoHHoly(that would be heavenward) like popes have been doing for the past 600 years when the last resignation took place, I’m told.

I spend more time thinking about popes than your average casual Lutheran. If you have ever been a Lutheran, you know that the pope in Rome does not loom very large in your religious life. I have seen Lutherans sneer at the sight of the pope, not that very many have actually seen one other than on TV or, in the olden days, in movie newsreels.

That’s where I saw my first pope, Pius XII, who became pope the year I was born and reigned – or whatever they do – until passing away the year after I graduated from high school. He scared me. Pius XII was very severe looking, and – I mean no disrespect here – really skinny. I think popes should be fat, in the spirit of Fat Tuesday. Devils should be skinny.

The newsreels used to show Pope Pius XII being carried around the Vatican on the shoulders of male Swiss Guards wearing skirts. Somehow this pageantry struck this young Dulutheran as, well, odd but fascinating. We Lutherans didn’t have anything like that to show for us.

Catholics have this whole pope scene and we have an ex-priest trying to lose weight on a diet of worms? Didn’t seem fair to me.

Years later, after I had sort of grown up, I finally made it to the Vatican only to be informed, on a hot Rome July day, that I couldn’t wear shorts in St. Peter’s Basilica or the Sistine Chapel. Cripes, a guy could get hot knees.

Anyway, I solved the problem by wearing those khakis that have zippers just above the knees so you can shed the bottoms, turning them into shorts after coming back out of the shrines. Ever since, I’ve called them Vatican pants, meaning no disrespect to the Swiss Guards whose knees are pretty obvious under their tights.

What this has to do with Girl Scout cookies is a question one or two readers might have asked by now. Well, here goes: I think each Girl Scout should bake her own cookies to sell. Where are they baked, China? All they sell are cookies mass produced somewhere and shipped to the troops.

I’d feel a lot better about putting out my good hard-earned money for Girl Scout cookies if I knew the scout had baked them. And shed the mints, girls, for heaven’s sake.

This opens up a broad subject of authenticity that goes all the way to Rome. I think the pope should be Italian, like Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.

Resigning Pope Benedict is German. His predecessor, John Paul II, was Polish. It’s time we got back to good old Italian popes like Pius XII and John XXIII, to whom Fat Tuesday seemed particularly appropriate.

As an aside, isn’t it nice that the Super Bowl honors the papacy by using Roman numerals?

Continuing, let’s address a few other authenticity concerns. Let me just state without equivocation that I think the Minnesota Vikings and Minnesota Gophers should all be from Minnesota, also Wild and Timberwolves. The same should apply to other teams, like the Dallas Cowboys. They should all be cowboys.

Authenticity. There’s so little of it these days.

Finally (and it’s about time) let me say I’ll miss Pope Benedict, especially at breakfast time. How often, as I’m choosing between Wheaties and Shredded Wheat, do I think about how easy it would be for the current pope to decide what to have for breakfast?

Of course he has a cook, and can’t you just hear him or her, as the pope settles his morning robes at the table, ask, “Eggs Benedict?” Now there’s a Catholic dish this old Lutheran can sink his gums into. 

Buddy Holly and the Winter Dance Party in Duluth three days before "the day the music died"

Today is the 54th anniversary of three days before "the day the music died" when Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens died in a plane crash in Iowa. Three days prior to their death–January 31, 1959–these pop stars of the fifties performed at the Duluth Armory in a memorable appearance from my youth. A small private plane carrying these performers crashed following their final performance in Clear Lake Iowa, claiming their lives. The plane was heading to Fargo, North Dakota. As Don McLean wrote in his classic music parable, American Pie, the plane crash resulted in "the day the music died."

I, Bob Dylan and other area youths packed the Duluth Armory on January 31, 1959 to take in the performances of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, three of Rock and Roll’s most promising musicians of that era. “The Winter Dance Party Tour” began on January 23, 1959 with performances scheduled for 24 cities. The Duluth appearance took place three days before the tour tragically ended.

My friend, Lew Latto, was the producer and MC of the Armory show that also included Dion and the Belmonts. Lew was a precocious teen who became a popular disc jockey as a youth and continued on with a successful career in radio until his death in 2011. (The poster advertising this Armory event is above and on your left left.)

I've written about my recollections while attending that event in the past and you can read about it HERE. Also check out Zenith City Online HERE for more about that memorable event, some fun photos and some interesting comments from readers.