an ill-fated way to celebrate war's end in 1945

Digital Montage © Roy R. Behrens 2024

Above One of a series of in-process montages having to do with the Ballets Russes (the Russian Ballet). Copyright © Roy R. Behrens, 2024.

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ART BUCHWALD, Leaving Home (New York: G.P. Putnam ’s Sons, (I993) , pp. 188-189—

I was in New York City on VJ day [Victory Over Japan Day in 1945]. No one can imagine what it was like to be a Marine on VJ night in New York City. People hugged me, girls kissed me, my hand was sore from being shaken. Then I went and did something stupid. I bought a pint of very bad whiskey called “America the Brave." It was even worse than raisin jack [fermented raisin wine]. I drank the whole bottle in four minutes and proceeded to get sick on the curb at Broadway and 47th Street. I presented an awful picture, a disgrace to my uniform, my country, and to the Great White Way. Why, on this night of all nights, I chose to get drunk instead of enjoying the moment is something I have often asked myself, since I could have been dancing in the streets with a Rockette from Radio City in my arms, or a Smith girl like the ones I used to ogle at the Biltmore. I could have been taken to the Stork Club by a divorcee whose boyfriend was a lieutenant on a destroyer off the Philippines. I could have wound up seated on a couch in Frank Sinatra's dressing room at the Paramount Theater. Instead, I put a dagger in my stomach with a pint of the worst rotgut money could buy .

peach brandy / couldn't get drunk until sundown

Above Historic clay jug, as rendered in a painting by American illustrator Bisby Finley, for the Index of American Design (1939).

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Stark Young, The Pavilion: Of People and Times Remembered, of Stories and Places. NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951, p. 77—

Micajah McGhee had many acres in peaches for making brandy. His constitution was such, the history says solemnly, that drink as he might he was unable to be drunk till sundown, once a day; but as the infirmities of age crept on him he was able to be drunk twice a day. The Methodist exhortations converted him to some of sort of reform by which he agreed to limit himself to a daily quart of brandy. In a fortnight he returned to say that he could not endure it, and his advisors said, very well, they would pray for him and he should what he could; the matter was between him and God.

historical scholars / Gould in them there pillows

Joe Gould's Secret

Matthew Josephson, Life Among the Surrealists. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962, p. 273—

Just when the troubles of Broom [magazine] were at their height, the eccentric little Joe Gould [aka Professor Seagull] fell upon me with demands for money—providing Shakespearean comic relief against the tension of our literary tragedy. We had published a few pages of his so-called History [An Oral History of our Time] in one of our last issues, but had announced at the same time that our magazine had no money to pay for contributions. Greatly excited at being put into print at last, Joe Gould refused to believe that he would not be paid an honorarium of some kind, and kept telephoning me at all hours. Beside myself with exasperation, I swore at him; whereupon this tiniest and most impecunious of historical scholars began to address me in a tone of severe formality, declaring that I had grossly insulted him and he was obliged to challenge me to a “duel”—a duel, with the midget Gould! Since it was he who issued the challenge, he requested that I name the weapons to be used.

“Pillows!” I roared into the telephone. “I’ll meet you with pillows at sunset tomorrow.” But he never came.

always in the throes of a long drinking bout

photograph of Amedeo Modigliani

Anon, H. HODIGLIENI in New York Tribune, February 7, 1920, p. 4—

PARIS, Feb. 6—H. Hodglieni [sic] [Amedeo Modigliani], an artist, who claimed to have invented cubist painting, was found dead in a hovel in the Latin Quarter. He used to frequent Paris cafés dressed in trousers with legs of different colored materials.

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Ilya Ehrenburg, People and Life: memoirs of 1891-1917. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1961, p.143—

…no one now can give an exact description of how [artist Amedeo] Modigliani used to dress: when times were good he wore a coat of light velvet with a red silk scarf round his neck, but when he was in the throes of a long drinking bout, ill and penniless, he was enveloped in brightly colored rags.

we drank irish usquebaugh—and fired a volley

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Bell Jar. Digital montage, © 2021.

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John Fontaine, Diary, excerpted in David Colbert, ed., Eyewitness to the American West (New York: Penguin Books, 1999)—

We had a good dinner, and after it we got the men together, and loaded all their arms, and we drank the King's health in champagne, and fired a volley—the Princess's health in Burgundy, and fired a volley, and all the rest of the Royal Family in claret, and a volley. We drank the Governor's health and fired another volley. We had several sorts of liquors, viz., Virginia red wine and white wine, Irish usquebaugh, brandy, shrub, two sorts of rum, champagne, canary, cherry, punch, water, cider, &c.…

At seven in the morning we mounted our horses, and parted with the rangers…

Bill Styron | ah'm goin' home to grow pee-nuts

Peter Matthiessen in Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr, ed., George, Being George: George Plimpton’s Life. New York: Random House, 2008, p. 89—

[In 1952 American novelist] Bill Styron showed up on the dingy fourth-floor landing of our apartment [in Paris] at 14, rue Perceval, with no French and a thick Tidewater accent…Patsy and I gave him a drink, and then took him to…a little Breton café…[During dinner] We were all…sloshing up a good deal of rough vin de table, and at a certain point, overcome by dire homesickness, he fell face forward into his platter and lay lachrymose amongst the oysters, uttering the immortal Styronian words: "Ah ain' got no mo ree-sistance to change than a snow-flake." But by this time, we were were already fond of this well-read, humorous, and very intelligent man. We became fast friends on that first evening and from that time on.

Roy R. Behrens, rice bowl collage (detail), c1992

Ice cream, drinks and the half and half Iowa man

Above An advertising postcard featuring a tavern owner from Bonair IA named John Pecinovsky (1899-1942). After opening his tavern in the late 1930s, he attracted wide attention, was sought after by tourists, and was featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not, when he began to wear an outfit that was dark-colored on one half (bearded) and light on the other (clean-shaven). He was buried dressed the same way in nearby Cresco IA. See our earlier, related post.

Bonair has all but vanished now, but there is an American writer (she teaches writing in France) named Janet Hulstrand, whose relatives were from Bonair, who is in process of writing a memoir about her Midwestern origins called A Long Way from Iowa. See her post from 2014 titled A Little Town Called Bonair. I believe it was in Cresco (or was it Decorah?) that my father (who grew up near Ossian IA) saw Buffalo Bill and his Wild West extravaganza, c1912.

Dylan Thomas | Mistakes Friend's Hat for His

Above Cover of the paperback edition of Dylan Thomas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. New York: New Directions, 1968.

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Dan Davin, Closing Times. London: Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 134-135—

In those days I often used the George restaurant upstairs for business lunches and would usually find [Welsh poet] Dylan [Thomas] and his wife and friends installed when I went to meet my own guests in the downstairs bar. On one such occasion after he had stayed the night with us I was surprised to observe that he was wearing a shirt I recognized as mine, a blue one. But I was appeased on returning home that evening to find he had left behind a dirty one of much better quality after my wife had surrendered mine. On another day I was for some reason or other wearing a hat, a rather extraordinary blue felt hat I had picked up in Paris and one to which I was deeply attached; perhaps because it was the only hat I had ever found which my wife thought suited me. I left it in the bar while I went upstairs to lunch. When I called back again after lunch I was surprised to see it stowed away in an open bag Dylan had with him for his visit that afternoon to London. I insisted on reclaiming it, rather to his chagrin. He explained that [his wife] Caitlin though it suited him and it was the only hat he had. I did not risk asking her if it suited me also but replied that my wife thought it did and it was the only hat I had. I might as well have given in at once. For the next time we met in the George the same thing happened, only this time I didn’t notice till he got away. And when I inquired later about the hat’s fate, with even some faint hope of getting it back, he explained that he had left it on the rack of his compartment while he went to the restaurant car and in his absence some unscrupulous bastard had swiped it; no doubt someone who didn’t have a hat and who thought his wife would think it suited him.

Find the Three Skulls in this Picture | Holbein

After Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors (1533)

Above The pleasures of having a name that means "king"; with apologies to Hans Holbein the Younger (saw the original recently). My official retirement portrait, complete with academic regalia. Can you find the three skulls in this picture?

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Edward King, Anecdotes (recalling his friendship with Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels)—

The last time I dined with [Jonathan] Swift, which was about three years before he fell into that distemper which totally deprived him of his understanding, I observed that he was affected by the wine which he drank, about a pint of claret. The next morning, as were were walking together in his garden, he complained much of his head, when I took the liberty to tell him (for I most sincerely loved him) that I was afraid he drank too much wine. He was a little startled, and answered, that as to his drinking, he had always looked on himself as a very temperate man, for he never exceeded the quanity which is physician had allowed and prescribed him. Now his physician never drank less than two bottles of claret after dinner.

Mary Snyder Behrens | Shroud and Shadow

Assemblage (2003) © Mary Snyder Behrens

Above Mixed media assemblage, large scale, titled Drawn Conclusions No 12: Shroud and Shadow, made by Iowa artist Mary Snyder Behrens, c2003. Copyright © the artist.

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Carl Van Doren Three Worlds. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1936, p. 27—

When he [his grandfather] ran for Coroner on the county ticket, he announced that if elected he would bury Republicans and Democrats with equal pleasure.

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An autobiographer never knows quite which account he is giving of himself. Historian of acts of which he was the actor, he is still inside the self which remembers. No man, with the help of whatever mirrors, can know how he really looks to other men. Nor can he be sure how he sounds to them. Let him tell the plainest truth in the plainest way, he cannot know what else he may imply without suspecting it. Often he must wonder what the plain truth is. His memory has been quietly working his past over, and when he goes back to such unchanged evidence as letters and diaries he finds the story different from that he can come to remember. The man who remembers is not the man who did what the record shows. The man who was is now as strange to the man who is as the man who is would be to the man who was.…[pp. 105-106].

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I had a head for liquor, when I took it, but I was always bored by drinking. Drinkers rarely say amusing things. What they say seems amusing only to other drinkers. The fun of alcohol is less on the tongue than in the ear [p. 256].

Postage & Currency | Tony McDermott

Block of stamps © Tony McDermott (2014)

Above and below Proposals for postage stamps and currency for an imaginary country called Sfumato, designed by Tony McDermott, graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa, in a class called Graphic Design I, as taught by Roy R. Behrens.

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Polly Gardner, quoted in Elizabeth Stone, Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins: How Our Family Stories Shape Us. New York: Times Books, 1988, p. 61—

In town, they called my grandfather Applejack. Do you known what applejack is? It's before moonshine becomes moonshine. If you won't wait for it to ferment, it's applejack. My grandfather just drank a whole lot of applejack. And dated other women. Finally my grandmother said, "Enough is enough," and she left him, which was pretty strange for the 1920s. She raised her six children herself. She did people's laundry by night and was waitress at the Greyhound bus station in the day. The one poignant note: even though she'd thrown him out, she did his laundry for him until the day he died.

Currency © Tony McDermott (2014)

Collections Poster | Evan Seuren

Poster © Evan Seuren, UNI graphic design student (2014)

Frances Kilvert in William Plomer, ed., Kilvert's Diary. London: Jonathan Cape, 1960, p. 298—

One evening she [Dame Matthews] saw one of the farm men [named John] steal a pound of butter out of the dairy and put it into his hat, at the same moment clapping his hat upon his head.

"John," called the Dame. "John, come here. I want to speak to you." John came, carefully keeping his hat on his head. The Dame ordered some ale to be heated for him and bade him sit down in front of the roaring fire. John thanked his mistress and said he would have the ale another time, as he wanted to go home at once.

"No, John. Sit you down by the fire and drink some hot ale. 'Tis a cold night and I want to speak to you about the kine [cows]."

The miserable John, daring neither to take off his hat nor go without his mistress's leave, sat before the scorching fire drinking his hot ale til the melting butter in his hat began to run down all over his face. The Dame eyed him with malicious fun. "Now, John," she said, "you may go. I won't charge you anything for the butter."

Collections Poster | Aaron Van Fossen

Poster © Aaron Van Fossen, UNI student designer (2014)

John Hersey (recalling his summer as a secretarial assistant to American novelist Sinclair Lewis) in "My Summer with Sinclair Lewis" in Kai Erikson, ed., Encounters. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, p. 51—

Lewis's life was in a mess. But I was to have a marvelous summer, oblivious of his suffering. He never took a single drink while I worked for him; I remained in total ignorance of his history [of alcoholism]. I saw a surface that was gentle, kindly, boyish, and vividly entertaining. He treated me as a young friend, insisting that I call him Red. My work was fun. Taking his rapid dictation and reading it back to type it was like doing a crossword puzzle: I caught every fourth word with a squiggle of Gregg [shorthand] and had to figure out what went between. "If you want my autograph," he would dictate in a note to a fan, "you must send me a self-addressed envelope with a postage stamp on it"—chuckling at the idea that I would have to address an envelope and put a stamp on it to send the note.

Wild West Indians in Paris

© Roy R. Behrens, Indigenous Nativity (2004). Purchase online.

I've been reading about Native Americans in connection with a talk I give for Humanities Iowa on Iowa-born Wild West showman William F. Cody. It seems clear that throughout his life, the convivial scout had a propensity for the pleasantries of "firewater" in large amounts. Earlier in the 19th century, according to James Welch in Killing Custer (NY: Norton, 1994), "the white man's water" was a brew of "tobacco, capsicum, molasses, peppers, and alcohol mixed with river water and whatever else could produce a fire in the belly" (p. 26).

In 1889, Cody took his Wild West show (including a number of Native Americans) on a performance tour of Europe, concurrent with the World's Fair in Paris. It was the Eiffel Tower's premiere, and all sorts of celebrities attended, as is vividly described by Jill Jonnes in Eiffel's Tower (NY: Penguin, 2009). The Native Americans enjoyed enormous popularity with the French public. According to Jonnes, their performances were so well known in Paris that—

the clowns at the Cirque d'Été [summer circus] had worked up a parody called Kachalo-Ball. The real Wild West Indians instantly gave it cachet by attending the show in groups each night, cheering wildly as the French clowns satirized their riding and their wars and attacks. When the clowns took to dancing their version of Sioux war dances, the visiting Native Americans laughed so hard they had tears running down their faces.

Sirloin Steak and Whiskey

Mary Snyder Behrens, Trammel: White Wish III (2005) ©

From James Webb Young, The Diary of an Ad Man: The War Years, June 1, 1942-December 31, 1943 (Chicago: Advertising Publications, 1944)—

"Talked with domestic science editor of one of the women's magazines. She told me that she had tested literally thousands of recipes, covering almost every kind of food. Asked her what, after all this, she considered the best eating. She thought it was pretty hard to beat a good sirloin steak, washed down with straight whiskey. Western gal."

Drunk by God!

British poet Samuel Rogers, in Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers (1856)—

Dr. [George] Fordyce [a prominent Scottish physician] sometimes drank a good deal at dinner. He was summoned one evening to see a lady patient, when he was more than half-seas-over, and conscious that he was so. Feeling her pulse, and finding himself unable to count its beats, he muttered, "Drunk by God!" 

Next morning, recollecting the circumstance, he was greatly vexed: and just as he was thinking what explanation of his behavior he should offer to the lady, a letter from her was put into his hand. "She too well knew," said the letter, "that he had discovered the unfortunate condition in which she was when he last visited her; and she entreated him to keep the matter secret in consideration of the enclosed (a hundred-pound banknote)."

Barberism

From Peter Quennel, The Sign of the Fish (NY: Viking Press, 1960), pp. 141-142—

Dylan Thomas [the hard drinking Welsh poet] made no attempt to conceal or excuse the crapulous disorder of his daily life; and I remember that he once advised me to use a barbershop in Soho, adding that the barber was a sensible sort of person who did not at all object should a client succumb to morning nausea while in the midst of being shaved.