Where have all the phone booths gone?

By Jim Heffernan           

Here’s an old limerick:

There was an old maid from Duluth,

Who wept when she thought of her youth,

Remembering the chances

She had at school dances,

And once in a telephone booth.

Telephone booth? Telephone booths today are as rare as referring to women who choose not to marry as old maids.

Last week the New York Times reported that only four outdoor telephone booths remain in Manhattan, concentrated on the upper West Side. A technology company maintains them, apparently because residents of the neighborhood like them and because they are the last ones.

I don’t suppose most in the Millennial Generation have ever seen one or that Generation Xers have ever used one, having seen them only in old Superman movies showing the Man of Steel transforming from suit-clad Clark Kent into the caped crusader in telephone booths. How handy that was.

Let me say for the record, though, that even in Duluth, telephone booths were once more ubiquitous than old maids. You could find them all over the place in the downtown, and in outlying areas as well. Before cell phones, pay phones, most often found in aluminum booths, were the only way to call someone when away from home.

Because the phone in my family home was located right next to the living room, where others could easily overhear, I used to make some personal calls from telephone booths, often to make dates with young maids. It cost a dime then.

Leave it to New York City to be the last bastion of the telephone booth in America. At one time, there was one on every block, at least in Midtown. But good luck trying to use one.

Once, years ago, when I was in New York for an extended period, I got word of the death of a relative, and wanted to call home to learn more about it. Roving around Midtown, I went to a nearby phone booth only to find it had been vandalized – probably robbed – and didn’t work. No problem, there was another booth a block up the avenue. Oops, same thing. Receiver torn from its wire too. Well, there was another booth nearby, a ways up the street. Unfortunately, same thing. I couldn’t find a functioning phone in a half dozen booths, and finally gave up. 

So now New York is down to four and Duluth has none that I know of. I don’t carry a cell phone and recently I looked for an indoor pay phone at Miller Hill Mall here. There used to be a couple in the main corridor. Gone.

Fortunately I ran into a woman I know who carried a cell phone she let me use. She’s a widow now, but has no reason to weep when she thinks of her youth, having had plenty of chances at school dances, but probably never in a telephone booth.

Infamous Thompson murder case had associations with Duluth...

By Jim Heffernan 

T. Eugene Thompson in 1963 (Source: CBS News, Minneapolis)

T. Eugene Thompson is dead. If that means anything to you, you are getting along in years. I am getting along in years.

I had a couple of unlikely run-ins with the case of the St. Paul attorney who was convicted of arranging the murder of his wife in 1963. I was reminded of the infamous murder case reading Sunday’s New York Times, which ran an extensive obit on Thompson, who died on Aug. 8, his 88^th birthday. (Read story HERE.)

Thompson had been accused of arranging the murder of his wife, Carol, in their home in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood. He had paid a college friend, Norman Mastrian, to do the job, but Mastrian sub-contracted the actual murder to another man, Dick W.C. Anderson, who botched the killing in the Thompson home. Mrs. Thompson escaped from Anderson after being bludgeoned and stabbed and ran into the neighborhood crying for help, but she died a few hours later in a hospital.

 The motive? Thompson had taken out a $1.1 million life insurance policy on his wife, which it was revealed he had planned to use to start a new life with a girlfriend, his secretary. Thompson started a new life, all right. He served nineteen years of a life sentence for first-degree murder in the state penitentiary at Stillwater before being paroled. Anderson and Mastrian were also convicted, the latter after a trial in Duluth under a change of venue from St. Paul due to the extensive publicity connected to the case.

The Mastrian trial resulted in one of my contacts with the case. The first involved an unexpected encounter with Thompson himself.

Taking last things first (the Thompson encounter), I should point out that all this was occurring right when I was starting my career as a reporter with the Duluth Herald and News Tribune in October 1963. By then the Thompson trial was going on in St. Paul, having no direct connection with Duluth.

However, Thompson had posted bail and was free during the trial. One night, heady with my newfound role as a journalist but knowing almost nothing about journalism, I stopped with a couple of friends at an all-night eatery after an evening on the town, and there sat T. Eugene Thompson, taking a weekend break in Duluth from his St. Paul trial. I’d seen his picture often.

Ohmygosh, I was thinking, here’s the biggest news story in the state, the Midwest, even the country, right here in my lap. Should I try to get an interview? What a feather in my cap that would be.

A seasoned journalist would have no such thoughts, and been content to let Thompson be. The accused murderer wouldn’t be inclined to give an interview under such conditions. Studying him from across the room, I hesitated, not knowing what to do.

Soon, I knew exactly what to do: Nothing. From out of the nearby restroom strode the publisher of the Duluth Herald and News Tribune, Eugene McGuckin Jr., my ultimate boss, who proceeded to join T. Eugene (that’s how everyone seemed to refer to him) at his table. The two of them chatted warmly as I sheepishly looked on from a booth some 20 feet away.

So much for my first “scoop,” a term reviled by seasoned journalists, who know there are almost no “stop the presses” moments outside of the movies. I found out later that McGuckin had met Thompson at a nightclub bar, struck up a conversation with him, and the two decided to join each other for coffee after their evening out.

My second contact with the case came a year or so later when Mastrian was brought to Duluth for his trial. Unlike Thompson, Mastrian had not posted bail and was still in custody when the trial was about to begin. At the newspaper, we’d been tipped that he was to be brought to Duluth by train and housed in the St. Louis County jail.

I was dispatched to the Union Depot, still in active use in 1964, to cover the arrival of Mastrian. Duluth police were there in force to assist whatever law enforcement personnel would have ridden the train with the defendant.

At the time, the Duluth Police Department had a large van known as a paddy wagon, capable of holding maybe 15 or 20 miscreants at a time. This time it was poised for just one, accompanied by a couple of cops, backed up to the curb at the track level of the depot.

In a matter of minutes after arrival, Mastrian was hustled from the train, an officer on each arm, and into the paddy wagon for the short trip to the downtown Duluth county jail. He was housed there throughout his trial, in which a Duluth jury also convicted him of complicity in the murder of Carol Thompson.

One more brief anecdote connected to this case: The jury returned a guilty verdict for Thompson on Dec. 6, 1963, just two weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. On Nov. 22, the day of the assassination, the wire service United Press International (UPI) had been carrying an account of the Thompson trial on its national wire when it suddenly ended in mid-sentence with the words URGENT…URGENT and reported that shots had been fired at President Kennedy in a Dallas motorcade.

A bigger story than the T. Eugene Thompson trial had broken – one that did stop the presses. 

St. Patrick's Day Memory...

When money was scarce and whisky was plenty

 By Jim Heffernan

My father, a lifelong Duluthian, was half Irish, a side of his ethnic heritage he favored over the other 50 percent: German. He felt the Germans were starting too many world wars in his lifetime, the first one of which involving him, but he loved his mother. She was the German.

But it seemed that the Irishness of the Heffernan family in his formative years dominated the German, and George, his name, always honored St. Patrick’s Day in some way, even a big way.

On other occasions, the Irish background could come up, too. Somehow – possibly from his 100 percent Irish father James Hugh Heffernan? – George had learned to dance the Irish jig. The Irish jig is a quick-stepping tap dance performed with a lilting and lively Irish tune.

My mother was Swedish. One hundred percent. But she could play anything on the piano (and pipe organ) from Bach to any random melody in her head. She could play an Irish ditty I know as “The Irish Washerwoman” as though she herself had come from Tipperary or Cork or OIney Cliath “in the sunny land” (where my father believed his ancestors had come from).

At times when the extended family gathered – aunts, uncles, cousins – there would be a moment when George would be inveigled to dance the Irish jig, my mother of course accompanying him on the piano playing “The Irish Washerwoman.” Always that.

A narrow strip of maple floor in our home separated the living room Oriental rug from the piano room carpet – just wide enough for George to set his feet a-tapping on a hard floor. My mother, Ruth, would sit down at the nearby piano and out would come “The Irish Washerwoman,” in very spirited fashion, as George valiantly tapped his way through the traditional Irish jig in his black dress shoes.

At some point, the words to “The Irish Washerwoman” would be sung to, or even possibly by, the mostly Swedish relatives in the room. Here are the words:

Ooooooo, I wish I was back in my Irishman’s shanty,

Where money was scarce and whisky was plenty,

A three-legged stool and a table to match,

And a door in the middle without any latch.

Three-legged stools and tables were difficult for me to picture in my young mind, all stools and tables in my experience having four legs. Must be an Irish thing, I always thought.

This weekend as St. Patrick’s day approaches, the New York Times opinion section included a column referring to the great Irish famine of the 1840s (which I assume brought my great-grandparents to Canada), and to illustrate it they ran an ancient wood engraving of a dejected Irish girl guarding her last few possessions after eviction from a thatched roof cottage for nonpayment of rent. And there, at her feet, is a toppled three-legged stool.

 But no table to match, and you can’t tell of the door in the middle of the cottage has any latch. That three-legged stool, though, brought me back to warm places in my memory I seldom visit, but value so much.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. 

Twin Ports–Duluth Minnesota and Superior Wisconsin–politics reflect national divide...

From "Twinned Cities Now Following Different Paths" by Monica Davey, New York Times, January 12, 2014: 

• "But these days, when residents cross the bridge, they enter starkly different political territories. Since Republicans in Wisconsin took control of the State Legislature and governor’s office in 2011, and since Democrats gained full dominance in Minnesota last year, people here have watched essential elements of their daily lives — their savings plans, job expectations, personal relationships and health insurance — veer apart."

• "The states did not always seem so different. Animosity between Packers fans and Vikings fans once seemed the widest divide. Both Duluth and Superior lean Democratic. Both have their share of Lutheran and Catholic churches. People buy their clothes in Duluth, their cigarettes in Superior. They ride mountain-biking trails and join book clubs in Duluth, then cross back for a burger at Superior’s Anchor Bar."  

Today's front page of the New York Times  includes an interesting story by Monica Davey (read HERE) about the political dilemma now facing our own Twin Ports, Duluth Minnesota and Superior Wisconsin. The political divide between the two states' politics has grown wider since the last gubernatorial elections and the divides in our nation as a whole. Minnesota returned to a Democrat governor by electing Mark Dayton and Wisconsin voted in Scott Walker who soon after brought war on labor unions and changed that state's politics drastically.

Interestingly enough Times reporter Davey did not consult Mayor Don Ness of Duluth or Bruce Hagen of Superior–or any the usual political leaders. Instead she relied on tapping into the culture of the communities by interviews with owners of the Flame Bars (located in both communities), teachers living in Duluth but working in Wisconsin and a Duluth business executive.

A video in the Times web site does give a more positive perspective than the print story interview of the business executive. The executive shared that while faced with what is assumed to be temporary added business taxes that has hurt his company, Minnesota did give his company incentives initially for expansion and also discussed the high quality of life these taxes afford.

This dilemma facing our Twin Ports reflect the conflict in our nation. The story is well done and definitely worth the read.

Thoughts of New York City during deer season...

By Jim Heffernan

It’s firearms deer hunting season in Minnesota and my thoughts are drifting to…New York City. Not a lot of deer hunting in the Big Apple.

Dear me, I do not deer hunt. I prefer not to kill mammals with big brown eyes. I don’t judge those who do – my own father hunted deer – it’s just that I don’t.

Carnegie Hall, NYC

So my thoughts are apt to drift off to New York City, not just during deer season but quite often, actually. It’s been almost a year since my last visit to NYC, and I wouldn’t mind going back already. Then there are the daily reminders in the New York Times, which I read.

Great paper, containing occasional brilliance. Like the other day in the middle of a long obituary for a 101-year-old woman, a well-known portrait photographer I’d never heard of, who until recently resided in Carnegie Hall. Until they evicted all of the residents of the towers above the famous concert hall three years ago, I didn’t know anyone lived there at all.

Turns out my favorite pianist, Don Shirley, was a resident. Shirley combined a classical sound with jazz in a way no other pianist I’m aware of ever has. He died earlier this year in relative obscurity, although The Times included a nice obit on him.

Shirley had been interviewed when the operators of Carnegie Hall decided to eliminate the residential apartments and use the space for studios. That eviction also involved the portrait photographer, whose name was Editta Sherman, who fought it but lost, sort of. They ended up giving her a nice apartment with a view of Central Park –  rent free.

Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall

In her obituary, the Times writer, Robert D. McFadden, included a paragraph describing what it would have been like to actually live above Carnegie Hall, one of the world’s premier concert halls. He wrote:

“The building was alive with the anvil chorus of New York: a cacophony of orchestral horns, midnight string quartets, the tap and shuffle of dancers and a serenade of shouting actors, shrieking sopranos, pounding typewriters and street traffic drifting up with the nightly concerts from Carnegie Hall.” 

Music to my ears.

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.

Grand Central Birthday...

"One hundred years ago, on Feb. 2, 1913, the doors to Grand Central Terminal officially opened to the public, after 10 years of construction and at a cost of more than $2 billion in today’s dollars. The terminal was a product of local politics, bold architecture, brutal flexing of corporate muscle and visionary engineering. No other building embodies New York’s ascent as vividly as Grand Central. Here, the tale of its birth, excerpted from “Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America,” by Sam Roberts, the urban affairs correspondent for The New York Times, to be published later this month by Grand Central Publishing." As quoted in the introduction of Sam Roberts' historical account of this majestic emblem of New York City in the January 18 New York Times (read it HERE).

Surrounded by so many historic buildings in our own Duluth, I'm always drawn to those beautiful old buildings that capture the essence of their times. My recent New York City trip right before Christmas gave me the opportunity to see the grandest old building of them all, Grand Central Station in Midtown Manhattan. Grand Central is truly something to behold. This major transportation hub of NYC  turns 100 on February 2nd and I feel privileged to have spent some time there to see it in its restored glory.

Grand Central concourse

Our hotel during our NY visit was not too far away and we often used Grand Central to hitch a subway ride to destinations, to eat in the vintage Oyster Bar and to walk around and gawk at the famous clock, the skylit ceiling and other architectural wonders. If you click onto the Times link to read the story, check out the link to view the video (The Secrets of Grand Central) of Sam Roberts' tour of the building. That video demonstrates a corner located in the lower level where someone talking in a whisper in one corner can be heard by others some 30-40 feet away in the opposite corner. At the guidance of a native New Yorker friend who dined with us, we were able to prove that this is indeed a fact... the walls can talk! I remember another such phenomenon in the halls of the US Congress witnessed during a Washington DC vacation years ago.  

Grand Central, as so many buildings of old, was set to be demolished but thankfully saved by a dedicated preservation committee spearheaded by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Today this restored and timeless beauty is a hub of activity for New York by serving as a transportation hub with restaurants, the big Apple Store and other shops and so much more. It sure was worth the save and well worth putting on a sight seeing stop for any out of town visitor.

Happy 100th birthday, Grand Central!

Florida woman speaks up for respect in politics

I give Meredith Schultz credit for her clear thinking and important message in her letter to the editor printed yesterday in the NY Times. Ms Schultz, from Boca Raton Florida, speaks out for the need for respect for a future president's constituency and for "loving our neighbors." The letter is included with three other letters responding to a November 10 front page story, "Christian Right Failed to Sway Voters on Issues." Read her letter HERE.

U.S. cursing problem on rise; Lutherans have handy remedy...

By Jim Heffernan

The New York Times has reported an alarming increase in swearing by public officials, a trend that tells me that these men (they’re all men) are not Lutherans.

Just recently, the Times reported that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, making a speech that didn’t sound right, blurted into the microphone, “Who wrote this s—t?” The word is so vulgar I don’t even dare to use it on the Internet, although the Internet is well known for its pornographic offerings. The Internet is not Lutheran.

I was reared in the Lutheran church back when swearing was frowned upon almost as much as dancing, beer drinking and card playing, not to mention a whole host of other mortal sins, many of which are described in “The Ten Commandments” starring Charlton Heston.

Yet public officials or others in sensitive positions needn’t fear blurting out undeleted expletives if they’d just follow a few substitute curses that nobody cares about, especially their minister or other spiritual leader. Also voters. But before I explain how easy it is to avoid swearing, thereby assuring eternal salvation (provided certain other commandments are strictly observed), let me also mention a few other examples of public swearing by politicians cited by the Times.

There was the time that Vice President Joe Biden didn’t realize that President Barack Obama apparently had a microphone hidden behind his ear (he has pretty big ears), leaned into the chief executive and used the F word, which is actually worse than the S word used by Mayor Bloomberg if I am any judge of swear words (and I should be, I grew up in Duluth’s West End). The F word is the king of swearwords, it should go without saying.

Then there was the time when Dick Cheney, back when he was vice president of these United States, said “F (word) You” to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., right in the chambers of the U.S. Senate.

And way back when, devotees of President Richard M. Nixon (he had devotees, honest) were shocked, shocked to hear his cursing on the White House tapes that later were his undoing. Nixon was a Quaker and should have known better.

We Lutherans do not need to resort to such utterances because over the years we have developed a dictionary of euphemisms to stand in for actual swear words, both the ones rooted in religion (taking certain divine names in vain) and simple vulgarities that are often scatological. Years ago I worked with a kid who was adept at combining the two in one utterance, sometimes adding an intimate body part as a third element. He died some time back and I’m sure he is frying in heck.

Anyway, the most popular euphemistic phrase that helps a Lutheran avoid similar fate is, of course, “gosh darn it” or sometimes “garsh darn it” or even “gull darn it.” Now we all know what that stands in for. And “Jeez” is a sly way of avoiding using the name of Jesus Christ Superstar. “Cheese” works, too. At least it always has for me. “Cheese and Rice” if you want to go formal.

For reasons I have never understood, it is considered vulgar to utter the complete words for SOB, which stands for son of an unwed female dog in its literal translation. I once moved in circles that substituted “son of a sea biscuit,” handy if heaven is your destination (and it better be, gull darn it!). “Som bitz” is a little too close for comfort.

Oh, there are so many euphemisms to cite and so little time. I heard one in a TV commercial just recently. A frantic woman raged, “Shut the front door.” So I think I will.  

Me and Dmitri and Vladimir and Luciano

By Jim Heffernan

I frequently think in terms of degrees of separation between people. The reigning theory is that everyone is about six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on Earth -- the famous “six degrees of separation.” Within the United States only about four people stand between you and, say, George Clooney.

Clooney is a good example in the Duluth-Superior area. He visited Duluth a couple of years ago promoting a movie, so quite a few people in our midst met him. The chances are you know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who met Clooney. That’s four degrees of separation. It might be less for some.

But enough introduction. Now for the meat. Dmitri Nabokov died recently in Switzerland at age 77. He was the son of the famous writer Vladimir Nabokov, author of “Lolita,” on every list of the greatest novels of the 20^th century. When you read it you know why.

How many degrees of separation lie between you and Dmitri Nabokov? And why should you care? If you have met me, only one person – yours truly -- lies between you and Dmitri. I, having met Dmitri, have only him to count between me and Vladmir.

That was very much on my mind 35 years ago or so – it was in the mid ‘70s – when Dmitri Nabokov showed up in my office at the Duluth News Tribune where, at the time, I was in charge of arts and entertainment coverage.

Aside from being the son of Vladimir Nabokov, Dmitri was a classical singer, appearing in operas and oratorios in Europe and America. He was in Duluth to perform with the Duluth-Superior Symphony in one of its big choral presentations; I can’t recall which one. Symphony management wanted to drum up ticket sales, so they sent their not-so-famous bass soloist to the newspaper for an interview.

I recall almost nothing about what we talked about, but I do remember sitting across from him and thinking how amazing it was to be chatting with the son of Vladmir Nabokov, one of the greatest writers in English after an earlier career as a writer in Russia, where he was born.

Dmitri was quite tall and thin, in contrast to the images of his portly father in photographs. I recall, too, that he sang reasonably well, but nothing special. He was a well-trained singer who could hold his own on any classical stage without setting the world on fire.

So, I met him, and if you’ve met me, then… Well, you know the degrees of separation.

In its obituary for Dmitri last week, the New York Times (byline: Daniel S. Slotnik–read here) opened another degrees-of-separation door to me. It said as a young singer, Dmitri made his operatic debut in “La Boheme” in Italy with Luciano Pavarotti early in Pavarotti’s career.

Well now, let’s count those degrees of separation: You, me, Dmitri Nabakov, Luciano Pavarotti. Three for you, two for me.

With just two degrees of separation between me and both Vladmir Nabakov and Luciano Pavarotti, I can say I’ve gotten pretty close to one of the greatest writers of the 20^th Century and one of the greatest tenors.

How can I miss?