Monthly Archives: March 2017

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story Chapter Ten

Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely made his mark in big bands before serving in World War II. He then graduated from University of Southern California and was hired by Allied Record Manufacturing. He went on the road to find new customers and met Syd Nathan.

Obscene, loud, greedy, and crude—those are just a few of the words used to describe Syd Nathan. Also expansive, fun-loving, joke-telling and charismatic. What a combination.
Nathan was born in 1903 in Cincinnati, Ohio.1 He dropped out of school after the ninth grade because he had respiratory ailments and weak eyes. “I couldn’t see, so why bother?” He failed at several businesses including running a pawn shop, bussing tables, managing a shooting gallery, playing drums, operating an elevator, selling jewelry, and promoting professional wrestling. In 1938 he was arrested after he refused to pay off winners at one of his shooting galleries. The charges were dropped, but Nathan was fined $50 for “promoting a scheme of chance.” Later that year he opened “Syd’s Record Shop” on W. 5th St. in Cincinnati. His inventory was 300 old hillbilly, Western, and race records which he bought for two cents each from a jukebox operator. The first afternoon he made $18 which he used to buy more records from other jukebox operators.
Nathan sold the business in 1939 and moved to Miami where his brother Richard was a doctor. He tried his hand in the photo-finishing business but failed again. He returned to Cincinnati and started another record shop on Central Avenue, again getting his inventory from jukebox operators. This time Nathan’s luck changed when country music musicians Merle Travis and Grandpa Jones came into the shop looking for new material.2
“Down on Central Avenue there was a little used-record shop run by a little short Jewish man with the real thick glasses,” Travis recalled. “He had asthma and a scratchy voice, and his name was Syd Nathan. We got acquainted with him, and we had to go down to Syd’s used record shop and find all these great records by the black spiritual quartets. We learned the songs and sang them on the air.”
“Syd got all het up wanting to start a label, a country label,” Jones said. “He came over to radio station WLW where we were doing the Boone County Jamboree and wanted to sign some of us up to make records.”3
The only problem was that Travis and Jones were under contract to the radio station which would not allow them to work for anyone else. Nathan talked them into driving to Dayton, Ohio, in September of 1943 to a makeshift studio above a Wurlitzer piano store. Travis and Jones changed their names for the record and between the three of them they came up with the name of King Records. The first record was a major flop.4
“Some of those early King records came out worked so badly you could use them for bowls or ashtrays,” Jones said. “Watching a needle go around one was like watching a stock car on a banked race track.”
Travis added, “When I got the record, I took it home and put it on my player. It went round and round and round and I sat there and watched and thought, ‘Well, there ain’t nothing on this record.’ It got way over to the end of the record and directly you could hear me and Grandpa. It sounded like we were recording in Dayton but the microphone was in Cincinnati, way off in the distance. It wasn’t much of a record.”5
Every record made between 1898 and the 1940s was 78 RPM, meaning it revolved seventy-eight times per minute. They were generally made of a brittle material based on a shellac resin. When World War II occurred, shellac became scarce and record manufacturers substituted vinyl instead. The term “78 RPM” actually was not used until after new forms of record technology were introduced in the 1940s to distinguish the older style of records from the new.6
The failure did not keep Nathan from trying again in the record business. He went to the local public library where he checked out a book about “gramophone records written by an Englishman,” he said. “I didn’t catch on. I didn’t know what he was talking about.” He then went to the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville and talked to the pressing plant engineers. Eventually he hired one of them, George W. Weitlauf, to work for him in Cincinnati. By 1945 Nathan acquired a building on Brewster Avenue and remodeled it into a record plant.7
From there he created a string of hits in his first five years selling “race” and country music. He was known for signing both black and white artists in the late 1940s and had no patience for racism. King Records had integrated Christmas parties and company picnics. During World War II Nathan hired Japanese Americans to run machinery keeping them out of internment camps. He hired Henry Glover as an executive, making him one of the first African Americans in the music business with the power to make creative and business decisions.8
Syd Nathan was not a great humanitarian or social activist by any means. He ran a tight studio schedule and if white country music performers had to wait in the hall until the black R&B were finished recording, well, that was just the way it was. If a back-up musician would fail to show, Nathan would grab the nearest player whether he be black or white to fill in. “We work at it as if it was the coffin business, the machinery business, or any other business,” he said. “It has to pay for itself.”9
By the end of 1948 King was the top-selling race label. Among the 25 major hits was Bullmoose Jackson’s “I Love You, Yes I Do”. According to historical reports compiled by the public library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, King converted to the 45 RPM record format in 1949. King Records credited Neely with the switchover. As noted in his memoirs, Neely as a sales representative of Allied Record Company, was in Cincinnati calling on Allied client ZIV, which manufactured radio transcripts. In an interview with a representative of the Cincinnati library, Neely said he made it a point to “check out this character” Syd Nathan while he was in Cincinnati.10
“I was in town to see a client and as it turned out I was about six blocks from King over on Brewster so I went over to see this guy for myself. I walked into his office and he said, ‘Who are you?’
“‘You don’t know who I am but I know who you are,’ I said.
“‘I know who you are,’ Syd quickly replied. ‘You’re a smart ass.’ By that evening I was having dinner at Syd’s house and he had sent for my bags at the hotel. I stayed for three days.” In Neely’s memoirs he left out the part of the story where Nathan had called him “a smart ass.”

Chapter Ten Bibliography
1Fox, John Hartley, King of the Queen City, the Story of King Records, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2009, 6-10.
2 Ibid., 7.
>3 Ibid., 8.
4 Ibid., 9.
5 Ibid., 10.
6The History of 78 RPM Recordings, library.yale.edu.
7Fox, John Hartley, King of the Queen City, 55.
8Smith, R.J., The One, the Life and Music of James Brown, Gotham Books, New York City, 2012, 79.
9Ibid., 80.
10Powers, Brian, History of King Records, Public Library of Cincinnati.

Grandma’s Bedroom

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Author’s note: This is a long short story so I am breaking it into three parts.

Grandma’s bedroom reeked of indefinable stench that made me want to retch.
It was not always that way. My earliest memories were of fragrances of jasmine or lilacs. When I mentioned how nice it smelled to me, my father lectured me little boys were not supposed to notice girly things. I think that was why I liked to sleep in grandma’s bed with its feather mattress, sinking into the middle as though enfolded by her large flabby arms. Love–warm, safe and free from anger and hatred—surrounded me.
I never liked to hug Dad. He never hugged back; besides, he smelled like a toilet that hadn’t been flushed for a week. He was a plumber, and he did not like to take baths. Water cost too much for him to be in the tub all the time, he explained, rubbing his big hand across his mouth.
Sometimes I sneaked out the backdoor of our tiny house down the street to scamper to my grandma’s big old place with a wrap-around verandah. Most of the time, she was pulling cookies or pies from her oven. When she made cakes she let me help ice them. Other days she was sweeping when I bounced through the door. I knelt down to hold the dustpan steady as she pushed the dirt on to it. Then I ran outside with the pan, tossing the dust balls into the air, and watched them float away. Just like my problems did when I visited Grandma. Mom and Dad were all right, but sometimes the angry tones in their voices frightened me. My young mind could never understand why they were so mad.
When I sat next to Grandma, either on her big cushy parlor chair or in her bed, she told me stories about how she grew up and met my grandpa. He made her laugh right up to the day he died. Whenever she didn’t feel like laughing, she’d remember something Grandpa said or how he looked as he read the newspaper. She could see every word he read etch itself on his face. Just the thought of his sweet old face made her laugh.
“There should always be something to chuckle about, Eddie,” she told me. “Or else what’s the use of living?”
“Then why doesn’t Dad laugh? It seems like you and Granddad tried to teach him to laugh? Why didn’t he learn?”
“Some things folks have to decide to learn on their own.” Then she laughed and changed the subject.
Other days she read from a big book of fairy tales which had lots of pretty pictures to look at. Every so often those stories worried me.
“Why did Jack have to fall down that hill?” I asked her. “And why did Jill put brown paper and vinegar on his forehead? Wouldn’t that sting?”
“Eddie, you worry too much,” Grandma lectured with an impish tone. “It’s just a story.”
“Did Dad like to have you read to him when he was a little boy?” I asked once.
Grandma looked over my head, as though searching for something she lost a long time ago. “Your father never liked to sit still very long.”
She also read from her Bible. It also had pretty pictures and fancy letters that started each chapter. The language in it, however, was hard for me to understand. I didn’t know why it had to have “thee” and words that ended with “st” and “th”.
“You’ll understand them soon enough,” she explained, “and when you do they’ll make you feel good all over.”
That changed late one evening when I sneaked out the back door. Dad was fussing about why he could not live in the house where he grew up.
“I work hard,” Dad fumed. “I deserve to live in a nice house.”
“Why, this is a nice house, George,” my mother replied merrily. “I work real hard to keep it nice and clean.”
“That’s not what I mean, Judy, and you know it,” he retorted.
He complained about our home all the time, but nothing ever changed. I ran to Grandma’s place to get a good night’s sleep in her big feather bed. I snuggled close to her as she read from the Bible by a dim flame of her kerosene lamp. She had an electric light hanging by the ceiling, but she said the light bulb hurt her eyes.
“Besides,” she added, “the smell of the kerosene reminds me of my childhood.”
“When someone asks me when I grow up what my childhood smelled like,” I told Grandma, “I’m going to say it smelled like you. Jasmine or lilacs.”
She smothered me in her big arms and began to read again.
The shade was drawn, but it quivered. A cool breeze pushed through the open window behind it. I did not comprehend a single word she said, but her soft old voice lulled me to sleep. Almost nodding off, I sat up when a loud crash startled me.
Grandma, in her white nightgown, bounded out of bed and stood between me and the window. The shade pushed its way into the room. As it crashed to the floor, I saw a large dark figure towered over us. Grandma swatted at it.
“Eddie! Get out!” Grandma screamed at me.
They bumped into the bed stand, knocked over the lamp, and the flame jumped to her nightie. Turmoil erupted. A lot of shouting. A lot of thrashing about. A ball of fire hurtling out of the window onto the lawn. I don’t know why but I ran toward it. Instinctively I knew it was Grandma. Then I felt a burning pain on my forehead followed by the sensation of two powerful hands grabbing me and dragging me away. It was all a blur which became darkness. The darkness saved me.
I awoke the next morning in the hospital. Mom and Dad stood by my bed. A thin layer of gauze hindered my vision. The pain on my forehead was unbearable. I was never any good at controlling my emotions. Tears streamed down my cheeks.
“What happened?” I managed to ask through the sobs.
“Why, nothing happened, Eddie.” Mom leaned over to smooth out my hair. All she did was to make the pain worse, but I didn’t want to tell her it hurt. I could tell she was doing the best she could to make everything better. “Just a little fire, that’s all.”
“Grandma has gone on to her reward,” Dad added, sticking his hands in his pockets. He forced a smile on his face which looked like it didn’t belong there. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
I squinted at his hands. They were awfully red. I looked away when he pushed them further down in his pockets. My attention went back up to his face. That smile looked mean. I remembered he had told me something about Grandma going on to her reward. Not sure what that meant, I replied in a soft voice, “Yes.”
“You have to stay here in the hospital another few days,” Dad continued, his smile finally going away much to my relief. “The doc’s going to give you some medicine to kill the pain.”
“Yes, then all those bad thoughts will go away too,” Mom quickly added.
“What bad thoughts?” I asked. My brow would have scrunched up, but my forehead hurt too much. “I don’t remember anything. Grandma was reading to me and then everything went blank after that.”
“Of course, you don’t. There’s nothing to remember,” she replied with a nervous giggle.
“For God’s sake, Judy, shut up,” Dad barked. He glanced down at me. “Can’t you see you’re scaring the boy?”
A few days later, the doctor removed the bandages. The pain seemed to be going away slowly.
“There now,” he announced. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
Mom leaned over again and brushed my hair. It didn’t hurt much anymore.
“Don’t worry. We’ll let you grow your hair out a bit and comb it over your forehead.” She smiled and wiped tears from her eyes. “Don’t worry about those few little scars. They just look like wrinkles. And your eyebrows will grow back before you know it.” She paused to nod with optimism. “The girls in school will think it looks cute.”
“Dammit, Judy, stop rambling,” Dad grumbled. “The boy don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He cleared his throat and stuck his hands in his pockets again. They didn’t look as red as they did the first day in the hospital. “Anyway, Grandma gave us her house to live in.” He put on that strange smile again. “Won’t that be nice? It has a lot more room than our house. It was a waste for that old woman to have all that space by herself.”
“George,” Mom whispered, putting her frail little hand on his strong arm.
My stomach tied up in knots, and I didn’t know why. By that afternoon, we pulled into the driveway of Grandma’s house. Looking out the car window I saw a charred spot in the grass under Grandma’s bedroom window.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the burned area.
“It’s nothing,” Mom replied. She got out of the car and opened the back door. “You know, if dogs pee a lot in one place they can kill the grass.”
I was going to mention there weren’t any dogs in Grandma’s neighborhood, but Dad pushed me toward the front porch before I could make my observation.
“We got a big surprise inside there for you, boy.” Again he sounded like he was forcing himself to be cheerful. He needed more practice.
I stopped in the front hall way when I realized he was shoving me toward Grandma’s bedroom. It seemed like they had been working hard on moving in our furniture and getting rid of Grandma’s things they didn’t like.
“It’s a nice big bedroom all to yourself,” he announced.
My feet were planted in the hall and didn’t want to move. Dad placed his large rough hands on my shoulders and coerced me.to walk into Grandma’s room. Clean curtains framed the window. My old furniture looked small in the large space. I stopped when I first went through the door.
“This place stinks.” Grandma’s jasmine or lilac was replaced by a foul smell, something evil.
“Oh, how can you say that? Your father worked so hard to make it nice for you,” Mom chided.
“It’s the new paint smell,” Dad explained. “That will go away before you know it.”
“But this is grandma’s house. It always will be” I mumbled.
“Well, it’s my house now!” Dad retorted. “The deed’s in my name and you have to sleep where I tell you to”.
“George, you don’t have to be mean to the boy.”

Toby Chapter Ten

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Previously in the book: Harley bought his own show to travel the plains of West Texas. Their daughter Gloria was now a beautiful teen-ager, and Billie was sinking into alchoholism.

On the stage Harley was in his full regalia as the old Southern gentleman sitting in his rocking chair and reading the newspaper. If members of the audience had been able to read the front page, they would have seen that it was the Sweetwater publication which would have been at least a month old. Even if they could have seen the writing, they would not have cared. It was Harley they came to see.
Billie, made up like a sweet grandmother, rocked and concentrated on her knitting. The telephone rang and Harley answered it.
“Hello, Byron!” he exclaimed. “Byron, is that right? You don’t say, Byron. Well, Byron, see you later. So long, Byron.” He hung up and turned to Billie. “You’ll never guess who that was. It was Byron.”
The audience had heard that joke many times before in different plays and by the many characters that Harley had created. Still they laughed and applauded. Even the family who had fussed a bit as they rode in its wagon on the way to the tent was relaxed. The husband and wife held hands. The children sat still, their mouths agape. The parents didn’t know how they were going to pay the bills tomorrow, but they laughed tonight. It was Harley.
After the show and when most people made their way home, a few desperate farmers lingered to talk to Harley in his dressing room. In the outer room Charlie sat at his desk. He shook his head when Jim Bob shyly stepped into the dressing room. Billy and Sammy, the same boys who had tried to sneak into the tent earlier in the evening, wandered over to Charlie.
“What’s your papa saying to Harley?” Charlie really did not have natural grace around people. He knew how to count money and how to save money. He did not know how to make small talk with children nor did he have any desire to acquire that ability.
“I don’t know.” Billy looked over the desk.
“I can imagine,” Charlie muttered. “Things pretty rough on the farm?”
“I don’t know,” Sammy echoed his brother.
“Well, what do you know?” Charlie demanded.
“Somebody told us you keep gum in one of the drawers in your desk.”
Charlie grunted. “I guess you wouldn’t want any, either, would you?”
“Yes sir!” Sammy answered with a smile.
Charlie opened a small drawer and took out a stick for each of them.
“Thank you, sir,” Billy whispered.
After squinting at the boys a long moment Charlie reached back into the drawer and pulled out two packs of chewing gum.
“You can have a pack each if you promise two things.”
“You bet!” Sammy grinned.
“First,” Charlie began ominously, “Only chew one stick a night. That’ll make it last longer.” He paused to make sure the boys understood. “And second, don’t tell where you got it.” He looked up to see Harley and the boys’ father come out of the dressing room. “You two better skedaddle. I got a feeling Harley wants to discuss business.”
“Yes sir!” Sammy saluted and then dragged his brother outside.
Harley ambled up with a hand carelessly draped across Jim Bob’s thin shoulder.
“How much?” Charlie kept his head down.
“Oh, I think three hundred, don’t you think, Jim Bob?”
“Three—“Charlie froze, flabbergasted, shook his head and counted out the bills from the till. “Three hundred.”
Charlie began to write out a loan agreement, but Harley grabbed the pen from his hand.
“Don’t bother with that, Charlie,” Harley muttered. He took the cash from the desk and thrust it into the farmer’s bib overall pocket. “We don’t need any paper with ol’ Jim Bob here.”
The farmer hung his head and shook Harley’s hand. “Harley, I don’t know how…” his voice trailed off.
“Now don’t you worry about a thing.” Harley guided him to the tent flap. “We can settle up when we come through next fall.”
Jim Bob tried to speak again, but Harley shook his hand and turned back to his dressing room.
“Saw your two boys earlier tonight,” Harley called out over his shoulder. “Really growing like weeds.”
Shaking his head, the farmer left the tent and disappeared into the night. Charlie tightened his lips in disapproval and went into the dressing room. He marched over to Harley who continued to take his makeup off.
“And do you mind telling me, Mr. Loan Officer,” Charlie began in his best sarcastic voice, “how are we going to bankroll that show in Dallas now that you’ve given away three hundred more dollars?”
He rubbed a towel over his face. “Aww, he needed it more than we do.”
“Nobody needs it more than we do, Harley. Do you know how many unsecured loans we have out there on these dirt farmers?”
“Oh, a couple of thousand, maybe.” Harley concentrated on looking in the mirror as he combed his hair.
“I stopped counting at $80,000.” Charlie paused hoping the amount would sink into Harley’s skull. “I figured it wasn’t worth keeping up with anymore.”
“That much?” Harley began to wrap his tie around his collar. “Oh well, Sam and I are going to a hot poker game tonight. We’ll win enough to bankroll Dallas.”
“And what if you don’t?”
“Why, Charlie!” Harley exclaimed with a laugh. “Don’t you read your Bible? Those who do good unto others have good things done unto them.”
Charlie raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever read the book of Job?”
“Never heard of it,” he continued with a laugh.
“And—and it isn’t just Dallas.” Charlie stammered as he tried to find the courage to confront his boss with the cold hard facts of their financial situation. “It’s our other debts.”
“What other debts?”
The bookkeeper could not tell if Harley was feigning innocence or if he had submerged himself into the fantasy world of the theatre or if he consciously chose to play the role of savior to the floundering farmers of the dust bowl.
“San Angelo, for one,” he whispered.
“Oh.”
“Remember last December?” Charlie decided to forge ahead. “You took off to Big Spring where Goff’s Comedians—our number one competition—was stranded, and you gave them the rent money we owed the San Angelo civic auditorium so Goff could move on.”
Harley put on his coat and checked his wallet for poker money. “Aww, the civic auditorium people understood. Said we could pay it back a little at a time.”
“And that’s what we’re doing every month—a little at a time.”
“Well, Charlie,” he replied with a sigh, “I guess I’m just not as tough as you.”
“You can say that again.”
Harley turned and was about to leave when he stopped. “By the way, did the boys get a full pack of gum each?”
“What’s the use of trying to reason with you?” he growled as he returned to tote the numbers for the night. “Hmph. Don’t remember.”

Cancer Chronicles

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I found this photo going through some old boxes. We had only been married about a year. Not only did I take the picture, I also developed the film and printed it. So that explains the poor quality. Janet wore the coat I bought her for first Christmas. There was a picture of one of the Nixon girls in the paper wearing one that just looked like it, although we were sure it cost a lot more than Janet’s. I always thought poofy polyester fibers brushing a woman’s cheek looked sexy.
Before I finish this story of the photograph, I have to explain that we had bought a dog a few months before this session in front of my camera. We paid a few dollars to a lady who lived in one of the posher sections North Dallas. It was the scandal of the neighborhood. Her purebred poodle had an unfortunate affair of the heart with a neighbor dog which was half poodle and half cocker spaniel. She wanted to get rid of the love puppy and move on with her respectable life.
Janet fell in love with the little dog. Its front end was cocker, the back end was poodle, with a distinct dividing line. The long tail was gloriously cocker. Janet decided it was a cocker-poopoo. We realized how appropriate that description was when he got his head stuck between the seat and door jamb of the car, panicked and pooped before we got home. Janet named him Shag Nasty because he made our shag carpet nasty. Also, he never caught on to lifting his leg to urinate, like other boy dogs his age.
Now that we’re caught up, I’ll continue the story about the photo session in the kitchen. It had a sliding door so there was plenty of natural light. Janet sat there, looking out the window staring at the dead Christmas tree waiting to be picked up by the garbage truck. I had a hard time getting her to smile, then her eyes lit up and her hand went to her mouth. I clicked. She told me Shag Nasty had just sniffed the tree, lifted his leg and christened it.
As long as I have memories like this I will always have Janet.

Lincoln in the Basement Chapter One

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Lifting his Remington revolver, its deep blue finish catching the late afternoon sun over the Potomac River, the young man smiled confidently as he looked down the wide sight groove at the coarse, unruly black hair of Abraham Lincoln, convinced his actions would save his country.
“Mr. Lincoln,” said Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, causing the president to glance up from a file of Justice Department papers.
A quick smile flickered across Lincoln’s broad lips when he first focused on the short, thickset man with the pharaoh-like beard, but it faded when his shadowed, hollowed eyes noticed the slender, rusty-haired army private holding his .44 caliber cap-and-ball pistol.
“Mr. Stanton, I see you brought company with you today,” Lincoln said.
“Please come with us, Mr. President,” Stanton said.
“It’s for the best, sir. You’ll thank us eventually. Trust me.” The young man grinned broadly.
“Please come with us, Mr. President.” Stanton turned sharply. “Private Christy, shut up.”
“Yes, sir.” He quickly looked down at the worn carpet and shuffled his shiny new boots, which were partially covered by baggy dark trousers.
Putting a long, bony finger to his forehead, Lincoln surveyed the secretary of war. “For what will I thank you, eventually?”
“The boy spoke out of turn, sir.”
“Well, then, Mr. Stanton, may I inquire as to where you are taking me?”
Stanton removed his glasses, squinted, and took a deep breath, but before he could speak, Mary Todd Lincoln, wearing a flowing black brocaded silk dress over a rustling crinoline, swept into the room, waving a swatch of blue flowered-print cotton. The private concealed his revolver in his tunic.
“Father, Mrs. Keckley says I should move to a blue print from black but—” She stopped abruptly when she saw Stanton. Her eyebrows arched, and her lips pursed. “Oh. Excuse me. I didn’t know you were here.”
Stanton bowed.
“I suppose we can make Mrs. Keckley wait.” Mrs. Lincoln focused strictly on her husband, who was putting his personal effects aside, ready to rise.
“Please inform your dressmaker, Mrs. Lincoln, that she must return tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? I go to Anderson Cottage tomorrow,” Mrs. Lincoln said, slapping the billowing folds of her dress with the blue cotton swatch. “This is totally unacceptable!”
“Now, Molly,” Lincoln said, finally making it to his feet and going to his wife’s side, his long, gangling arms around her soft shoulders. “I think it’d be best if you kindly suggest to Mrs. Keckley that it’d be more convenient for us if she visited you at the Soldiers’ Home tomorrow.”
“But, Mr. Lincoln—”
“Blame it on me, if you wish, Molly.”
“I certainly will!”
“Tell her it’s a matter of state, dear.”
“It’s a matter of foolishness.” Mrs. Lincoln sniffed and nodded curtly.
After his wife swirled from the room and down the private hallway to the oval family room, Lincoln returned his gaze to Stanton. “As you were saying?”
“Oh yes.” The secretary of war put his small pebble glasses back on his pocked nose. “The basement.”
“Not to review the kitchen staff, I presume.”
Stanton smiled and shook his head. “The billiards room.”
“These are desperate measures to round up competition for a game of billiards,” Lincoln said laconically.
Their eyes were drawn to the door as the sound of stomping female feet echoed through the hallway. Eventually Mrs. Lincoln emerged and placed her hands on her ample hips.
“Now Mr. Stanton,” Mrs. Lincoln said, “will you explain yourself?”
Private Adam Christy noticed Lincoln stepping back, glancing up at two cords over his desk, and slowly moving his hand up to the cord on the left.
Lincoln asked Stanton, “What are those cords?”
Stanton turned. “Don’t involve Mr. Nicolay and Mr. Hay.”
“Well,” Lincoln replied with a shrug, “I thought they’d enjoy a nice game of billiards.”
“Billiards!” Mrs. Lincoln shook her head and moaned in exasperation. “What depths of insanity is this?”
This is not insanity, Adam thought. Ending the war is not insanity. The good of the nation called for Lincoln’s temporary removal, Stanton had told him, so the correct decisions could be made to win the war.
“It’s time to go,” Stanton announced.
“Go where?” Mrs. Lincoln asked, edging toward hysteria. “Will someone please explain what’s happening?”
“To the basement, Molly.” Lincoln put his arm around her shoulder again and whispered, “Mr. Stanton wants to talk to us in the billiards room.”
“Why?” Mrs. Lincoln looked at the secretary with bemusement.
“Lack of interruptions, I assume,” her husband said. “The office is hectic.”
No talk, Adam thought, just sit down there until Stanton wins the war. He would have informed the president of that, but he did not want another withering rebuke.
“Mr. President, we must go,” the war secretary said.
Lincoln nodded as he eyed Stanton, then guided his wife through the door into the office waiting room. When they entered the president’s office vestibule, Stanton raised his hand.
“Wait.” He motioned to Adam. “Check the hallway and grand staircase landing.”
Adam hurried down the hall, noting every door was shut on each side of the board corridor. He stopped in his tracks as a tall, dignified black woman, modestly well-dressed, came from a door on the left, carrying a large carpetbag. Making eye contact with the woman, Adam dropped his jaw before composing himself and nodding to her. She examined the young man and crossed the hall to the door leading to the service stairs. Continuing to the end of the hall, Adam looked down on the landing covered with Brussels carpeting. He saw no one and hurried back through the ground-glass doors to the office vestibule.
“The way is clear,” he said, huffing with excitement.

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story Chapter Nine

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Hal Neely was a tall man. According to his Army enlistment records from Nov. 11, 1942, he was six foot eight and weighed 198 pounds. No wonder the basketball fans in his hometown of Lyons, Nebraska were upset when he decided to forego playing hoops his senior year in high school for trumpet lessons in Omaha. He had completed one year of studies at University of Southern California while making a nice living as a society band leader playing the Statler and Hilton chains up and down the West Coast.1
His enlistment was for the duration of the war plus six months subject to the discretion of the President. After the war he returned to Los Angeles and put out the word he was back in town and ready to make music.
Jack McVea heard that Hal Neely was back in Hollywood, and, wasting no time, he called Neely to play trumpet at a recording session of his band for Black and White Records in October of 1946.
McVea was a well-known musician with many bands in the Los Angeles area during the 1930s and 40s, performing with Lionel Hampton, Nat King Cole, Les Paul, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker.2 He was the baritone saxophonist on Hampton’s 1941 recording of “Flying Home,” which has been noted as the first rhythm and blues hit. By 1946 McVea led his own group and recorded for Black and White Records. Black and White Records originally operated in Brooklyn, New York, in 1943; but, Paul Reiner and his wife Lillian bought it and moved operations to the West Coast, specializing in recordings of black musicians, what was called at that time “race music.”
The October 1946 session took place at Radio Recorders studio on Santa Monica Boulevard, which was acknowledged to be the best recording facility in Los Angeles.3 Among the artists who recorded there were Charlie Parker, Jimmie Rodgers, and Louis Armstrong. During this same time Radio Recorders recorded many radio shows for delayed broadcast.
Neely said in his memoirs that Black and White Records employee Ralph Bass was supposed to produce the session but Bass was not there. However, Bass was credited as producer.4 Neely claimed Reiner had picked out the song to be recorded, and only four minutes were left in the session for the last song. He said he suggested replacing the last song with a number he had heard the group perform in nightclubs called “Open the Door, Richard.” Since they had such a short period of time, Neely said he told the musicians they had one take, as they were familiar with the piece, one take should be enough, and he would use a fade out at the end of music.
The original recording of this song was the first time a fadeout was used on a commercial record.5 All other records up to this time had used a “cold” or final note. This comment independently corroborates Neely’s claim that he was the actual producer of the record. The McVea recording made Billboard’s bestseller chart in February of 1947, reaching the No. 7 spot.
“Open the Door, Richard” made the charts in 1947 by other artists including Count Basie, the Three Flames, Louis Jordan, the Charioteers, the Pied Pipers, and Dusty Fletcher, who originated the song as a vaudeville routine in black theaters. It was not unusual for a song to be recorded in many different versions in the late 1940s because fans cared about the song more than the performer.6 Writing credit was divided among Fletcher and John Mason for words and McVea and Don Howell for music. Howell, incidentally, was entirely made up, so that an unnamed (and fabricated) businessman could take some of the royalties away from McVea.
McVea recorded several other songs but none were as popular as “Open the Door, Richard.” In 1962 he began playing clarinet in a strolling Dixieland band at Disneyland where he stayed until he retired in the early 1990s.
Neely’s next producing project in 1946 was with Slim Gaillard of Capitol Records. Gaillard was also a well-known performer during the 1930s and 40s in swing music, though never as famous as Duke Ellington, Count Basie or Cab Calloway. Gaillard was mostly celebrated for creating his own musical language called “Vout-O-Reenie.”7 From this Neely session came Gaillard’s biggest hit “Cement Mixer Putti Putti.”
“We were recording on Sunset Boulevard, across from a television studio. After we did three sides, the A & R (artist and repetoire) man sent us out for some air. I was glad to get out because I didn’t have a fourth song and figured we’d improvise something,” Gaillard said. “Just outside the studio, they were repairing the street and one of those cement machines was going putt-putt-putt. When we were back in the studio the A & R man ask for the fourth side. I said Cement Mixer Putti Putti. Everybody in the place broke up. I started to sing “putt-ti, putti-hootie, putti-vooty, macaroonie, that’s all.”
Once again Neely did not receive record credit for the recording, but one might assume he was the A & R man to which Gaillard referred in his statement. Gaillard continued a successful career with his own small ensemble and on rare occasions with larger groups. At the time of his death in 1991 he was performing in London, England.
Neely also said in his memoirs he produced a record for a “Little Esher;” however, the only performer from that time period was “Little Esther Phillips.” Her first record came out in 1950, which is slightly out of the timeframe mentioned by Neely. Herman Lubinsky signed Little Esther who grew up in Galveston, Texas, to a contract with Savoy Records of Newark, New Jersey, in 1949. In January of 1950 the California Superior Court ruled Esther’s mother to be her legal guardian, upholding her new contract with King Records. Perhaps Neely produced one of her records during her time at King. Esther enjoyed a 25-year career with honors from Rolling Stone and Ebony magazines and receiving an Image Award from the NAACP in 1975.8
Among his other jobs he took to finance his college education, Neely produced a NBC radio religious program. His announcer was Oral Roberts who went on to dominate the evangelical air ways and establish a self-named Tulsa, Oklahoma, university. Neely also wrote scripts for the program. In his future career as a record producer Neely would write liner notes for albums. One of his scripted ideas for Roberts was to tell his listeners to put their hands on the radio during a prayer.9 Listeners would feel an actual vibration coming through the speakers because Roberts was blessed with a very deep voice which created the pulsation.10
Neely also originated the line, “The family that prays together stays together.” He also came up with the product of Jordan River water in a bottle for $2-$4. The water came out of Neely’s own tap at home. Who knows how many relatives going through the personal effects of deceased loved ones would find a tiny bottle of water glued on a cardboard picture of the Jordan River and would wonder what it was and why their family member would even buy it.11 He considered but rejected the merchandising concept of “healing cloths,” which were bits of 2 x 4 inch strips of material which were placed on any part of the body that hurt, and a miracle was supposed to occur. His short radio stint gave him a good education on how payola worked—a tactic he used when he was promoting James Brown and other acts.12
During his studies at the University of Southern California, Neely met nuclear physicist Albert Einstein when he was chosen to participate in a series of lectures conducted during a three to six week period. While the students sat around the professor for informal chats, Einstein once said, “When I am dying,” and he paused to point up, “I hope I see friends.”
Neely said Einstein asked him if he believed in God to which Neely replied that he did not know, but he thought he believed there might be a God.
“I don’t care what you believe, Hal,” Einstein replied, “as long as you believe in something.”13
Neely also became involved with the development of the tape recorder in the United States by Bing Crosby and the company Ampex, according to Roland Hanneman who had spent many hours listening to Neely’s stories about his early career.
Neely first met Crosby during his pre-war days as a band performer in Hollywood. They became friends and often played golf together. Neely did the first pressing of a stereo recording which was classical music. Because no one in the record industry understood stereo very well, records were released with Mono on one side and stereo on the other, which canceled the sound through any compatibility of musical waiver lines.
Fritz Pfleumer invented the tape recorder in the late 1920s in Germany where it was marketed under the name “Magnetophon.” He used paper strips that he coated with carbonyl iron particles suspended in lacquer. In 1938 German radio stations replaced relatively high-quality wax and lacquer discs with the magnetic tapes adding flexibility to broadcasting. During World War II the story began circulating that the Nazis ordered engineers to create the tape recording system so that Allies would not be able to locate where live-sounding speeches by Adolph Hitler were being made. Reality was that the technology had been developed more than ten years before and that Hitler preferred using the tape recordings so his live-sounding speeches could be aired without interrupting his odd sleeping habits.
Major John Mullin of the U.S. Army Signal Corps discovered the Magnetophons at the Radio Frankfurt substation at Bad Nauheim in 1945 and sent them back to his home in San Francisco broken down into 35 small packages. After he left the military he joined with audio engineer W.A. Palmer to reassemble them in a new configuration to create an American version of the machines. The first musical artist to be recorded on Mullins’ redesigned recorder was Merv Griffin in 1946. By 1947 Mullin and Palmer had created the small company of Ampex and introduced the system to Bing Crosby who used it for his ABC-sponsored radio program “Philco Radio Time.” The broadcast was such a success that Crosby talked ABC into buying all their tape recorders from Ampex and invested $50,000 of his own money in the small company.14
Neely made a major step crossing over into the business side of the music industry when he joined Allied Record Company after graduating from the University of Southern California in 1948. The president of Allied was Dakin K. Broadhead, a distinguished businessman who was a member of the War Food Administration during World War II and later served as an assistant to Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson from 1953-55. Broadhead began his career as a manager with Safeway stores. He was president and principal owner of Allied Records from 1945 to 1986.15
Allied was the largest independent record pressing plant in Los Angeles.16 In the 1940s customers were limited to the manufacture of just 200 records a week in accordance with rationing policies. Because Allied wanted to keep its record-pressing methods secret, no one was allowed inside the plant. Allied did not have any advanced technology, and its method was comparatively simple, being the reproduction of a surface, similar to that used to emboss leather.17
Neely was, of course, introduced to this new world of record manufacturing after college graduation. The exposure to the technology served him well when he met the volatile president of King Records, Syd Nathan, in 1949.
Chapter Nine Footnotes
1Billboard Magazine, May 5, 1958.
2de Heer, Dik, rockabilly.nl
3radio_recorders historic.php
4Talevski, Nick, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: Rock Obituaries, Omnibus Press, London, 2010, 22.
5Snow, Arnold, Honkers and Shouters, The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues, MacMillan Publishing Company, New York City, 1986, 226-227.
6 Weisbard, Eric, This Is Pop, In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,2004, 75-89.
7Purl Roadhouse 1940s Music and Dance, yuku.com
8Home.earthlink.net/~jaymar41/Lesther.html.200.
9 Roland Hanneman Interview.
10Buddy Winsett Interview, July 2012.
11Janet Cowling Interview.
12 Roland Hanneman Interview.
13Buddy Winsett Interview, July 2012.
14Hamman, Peter, The Birth of Tape Recording in the U.S., historyofrecording.com.
15findagrave.com
16Broven, John, Record Makers and Breakers, Voices of the Independent Rock ‘n’ Roll Pioneers, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2010, 37.
17 Ibid.
(This is the first of the chapters I researched and wrote to which I am adding footnotes. Instead of the elevated number I am using italics. I am covering the same time period Neely wrote about in his memoirs but with slightly different results.)

The Backyard

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It was the world back then. A garden to be tilled, a home for rabbits and chickens and dogs. Oh yes, cats too.
The backyard was longer and wider than I had the breath to run around. But, of course, I was always a puny kid.
Half of it for many years was a garden—corn in the back, then okra, many rows of potatoes and tomatoes, then radishes, mustard greens and onions. Sometimes a few petunias if my mother was in the mood. They made adequate trumpets, I recall.
To keep the garden alive during those scorching, drought-tinged Texas summers of the mid-fifties, my father and mother put the garden hose at the end of a row and let it run. Much to their chagrin, I often decided to dam up the works and create a lake, with branches seeping from one row to another. This also provided plenty of mud for various products like bricks, walls and pies. It also substituted for blood for my re-enactment of the Saturday matinee war movie. Then the hose was turned on me before I was allowed in the house.
But the garden isn’t there anymore. Not since my mother died.
The other half of the yard was for play—with my dogs. I always had a couple; then when one was run over and killed—which seemed altogether too common an occurrence—I still had one. They chased me, nipped at my heels, until I fell down and covered my head. They licked at my neck and I squealed with delight.
I learned the facts of life from cats. Kittens were as common as the rain was not in those days. I can think of no better education than the excitement of gingerly crawling under the house, softly calling out the mother cat’s name and have her return with a pleasant meow. I crawled closer, she proudly rolled over to show me her babies, their eyes still closed. If I dared pick them up too much they were gone the next day. The mother moved them.
My father built a hutch in the back and tried raising rabbits once. But that was a futile venture because he wanted to eat them and I wanted to play with them. Bantam chickens were safer. We both agreed only to eat the eggs. One day, however, I came home to find dead chickens over all the yard. One of the dogs acted sheepishly. I cried and then decided to grant amnesty. The law of the backyard was based on mercy.
And the playhouse. I could never forget that. It began as one small room with tin Royal Crown Cola signs for sides and roof. That didn’t seem large enough so I added another room with a wooden roof and a second floor.
To celebrate the expansion I invited a friend over to spend the night with my brothers and me. We watched “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” and drank a concoction of mine made of Nehi orange, grape and strawberry and Upper Ten. Then we ventured out for the night. The sky was clear and the moon full. It was joyous. We danced and frolicked in our underwear at midnight. My friend’s shorts had monkeys on them. I teased him but secretly I was envious.
Somehow two rooms and a second floor didn’t seem enough. I doubled the bottom, and more lumber for roofing and even had a perch on top of the second floor.
A few years later my interest waned and my father wanted me to tear it down, but I didn’t have the heart. He relented and took it down himself. At one point he pushed apart two main posts and he bore a strange resemblance to Sampson, I thought.
Now I come home occasionally and the yard has changed. As I said, there is no garden. It is now an expanse of grass. I only vaguely spot where the rabbit hutch and the wonderful playhouse sat.
The only things that are the same are the honeysuckle vines and mimosa trees I planted for my mother many years ago. The trees are quite stout now.
It makes me feel old.
The smell of the honeysuckle is still sweet and brings back the memories, though. I have honeysuckle growing outside the door of the home I share with my wife and son. It makes me feel good. I want a large yard for my son to have adventures in, to learn responsibility in, a nice place to grow up.
But this yard, for all the world events that transpired within its reaches, seems so small now.
(Author’s note: I was twenty-seven when I wrote this commentary of growing up. I’m now sixty-nine. My father, brothers and wife have died. I haven’t seen my friend in almost fifty years. My son is forty-two. We have shared adventures and he has learned responsibility. The last time I drove past my childhood home another man was in the yard. He looked none too happy that I had slowed down to stare. How odd I felt old forty years ago. Now I feel age has no meaning. Being happy, making others happy. Being loved, loving others. That is the meaning of life.)

Toby Chapter Nine

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Previously in the novel: West Texas farm boy Harley grew up to because principal comedian in a traveling tent show, married the prettiest girl in town and eventually owned his own show. The Great Depression hit, and the dirt farmers needed him more than ever to make them laugh and to give them hope.
Years slipped away, but Harley’s fans stayed faithful even though the Great Depression had ravaged their businesses and the dust storms had destroyed their farms. Each evening, as the sun went down over the many villages of the plains, wagons and rickety old cars with lights flickering made their way to Harley Sadler’s Own Show tent, a place of safe haven from the cruelties of life.
In one particular wagon pulled by a lanky old mule, a family with dirty, hungry bare foot children in the back crested a rolling hill. In the distance they could see the lights of the tent show.
“Here we are, don’t have enough money to feed the children or the chickens, pigs and cows, but you waste our money on some silly tent show,” the farmer’s wife complained.
The farmer clicked his reins. “I butchered a pig and sold it for enough to pay for flour and sugar with a few cents leftover for the show tickets.”
“And those few cents would have paid for thread so I could patch the holes in the children’s clothes. But as long as you can have your fun you don’t care if your kids wear rags.” Her face reddened with resentment and anger.
“Do you know what today is?” he asked softly.
She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Just another day.”
“It was ten years ago tonight we went out together. We went to see Harley playing Toby.” He paused. “Sure, all our dreams are dead, but as long as we can still see Harley and laugh, we can remember happy times. As long as we can laugh and have hope, we have life.” His eyes filled with tears.
She reached over and patted his hand. “Well, let’s not be late. I want to see what kind of new outfit Billie is wearing.”
After they hitched their mule and wagon to a post, the family stood in line for tickets. The mother continued to crane her neck to find Billie. The tent flap went up, and Harley appeared, beaming and shaking hands with the fans.
“Thanks for comin’ this year,” the farmer with the wife and kids said.
“Why, it wouldn’t be a tour without a stop in Wimberly.”
“Is Billie here?” the farm woman asked eagerly. “I haven’t seen her yet. She always wears the prettiest clothes.”
“She does, doesn’t she?” His eyes wandered over the woman’s head. “No, I haven’t seen her yet this evening either.”
“Are you Toby in this one?” The next farm wife stepped forward. She looked like she wanted to give him a big hug but she restrained herself.
“Nope. I’m old gramps. But I think you’ll like it.” He continued to scan the crowd for his wife.
Gloria and Louise—now grown into pretty teen-agers—ran up to stop Harley in the middle of his usual greeting of the folks waiting to buy tickets.
“Daddy,” Gloria said in her best “please let me have my way voice”, “Can we do our new dance tonight? We rehearsed all day and I think we finally got it down.”
“Yes,” Louise giggled. “I stopped bumping into Gloria as I came out of my spin.”
“Fine, fine. That’ll be good, girls. Hm, Gloria, have you seen your mom?”
“She said she had to go into town.”
That was what Harley feared. Billie went to buy another bottle of whiskey. It was not that Billie was a loud, obnoxious drunk who hurt people when she opened her mouth. She did not become loud and giggling. Nor did she pass out in her bed. Instead she was the same sweet person she always was, but she did forget her lines more easily. What bothered Harley the most was the fact Billie was so terribly unhappy she had to seek solace in alcohol.
Harley did not know what created that soul-killing void nor did he know how to fill that void with happiness. That made him feel helpless. After all, he was the man who lived to make people laugh and he was unable to help the one person he most wanted to be happy. He stuck his head into the women’s dressing room where Faye and a new actress Sue were almost dressed.
“Have you ladies seen Billie?”
Sue, a few years younger than Faye and Billie, laughed and threw back her head carelessly. “Oh, Harley, you worry too much.”
Faye narrowed her eyes as she assessed the new ingenue. “I see you picked up how to toss her hair just like Billie. Now if you could do it with a little bit more innocence, you’ll have it made.”
Harley laughed nervously. “Oh, Faye. Sue doesn’t know you as well as I do. She doesn’t know you’re just kidding.” He left before either one could come up with a snappy response.
On the other side of the tent from the ticket crowd, two boys tried to crawl under the tent to see the show for free. Burnie found them as he was on his trip to check the stakes. Gently he pulled their legs to bring them out.
“Hey,” Billy screamed. “Let me go!”
“I will as soon as you quit squirming,” Burnie told him.
“Aw, it won’t hurt nothin’ if we got in free,” Sammy groused.
“No, it wouldn’t,” Burnie explained patiently, “if you asked for tickets and don’t sneak in.”
Harley rounded the tent corner, recognized them and ambled up.
“Why, Billy and Sammy Arrington,” he announced with pleasure. “You two sure have grown since last summer.”
“Oh.” Billy ducked his head. “Hi, Harley.”
“Your parents are looking for you at the front gate.”
“Let’s go!” Sammy mumbled, then he and Billy scampered off.
Harley watched them until they disappeared. “Burnie, let me know when Billie gets back from town.”
“Sure enough,” Burnie replied.
Thirty minutes to curtain, Billie was still missing. Everyone else in the company knew better not to wait so close to show time to check in. Harley did not try to hide from the audience. He stood by the stage, staring at the tent opening, waiting for Billie’s grand entrance.
He heard buzzing in the back of the room. The audience saw Billie appear. She wore her usual self-assured smile, walking down the aisle as though she were a model on a runway in New York City. That was, of course, until she saw Harley glaring at her.
She rushed past him, not making eye contact but went to straight to her dressing room. Harley followed her closely, not saying a word. Billie sat at her makeup table and took off her hat and gloves. “I’m sorry I’m late. Time got away from me.”
“Where were you?”
“Shopping.”
“You know I get worried when you go off without telling me.”
Billie forced herself to laugh. “You’re beginning to sound like a daddy.”
“May I see what’s in the sack?” he asked softly.
“Of course.” She pulled out a shampoo bottle. “You see, it wasn’t what you thought.”
“Curtain’s in half an hour.” Harley turned to leave.
“Aren’t you going to say break a leg?”
“Break a leg.
“And a kiss?”
The tension in Harley’s shoulders faded as he remembered how much he loved Billie. He crossed over to her and kissed her on the cheek, wrapping his arms around her.
“That’s a Toby kiss.”
Gently he took her face in his hands and kissed her on the lips. Embracing her for a long moment, he finally pulled away, patted her cheek and left.
Billie stared into the mirror while tears formed in her eyes and gently dropped from her lashes.

Cancer Chronicles

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My son and I took a major step this last week. We got a friend to help get rid of two big nasty-looking sofas in our family room. We had gotten them second-hand a few years ago, and they had enough stains on them to start a whole new strain of microbes. Now this breakthrough has occurred, perhaps we will get up off our behinds and clean the rest of the house.
This is a side of mourning that may not be discussed enough. It’s one thing to get on with your life and go out in the world, but it’s quite another not to clean up the house you come home to. It’s not like I want to get rid of things that remind me of Janet. It’s the junk covering up the memories that’s the problem.
I watched my father go through this almost sixty years ago when my mother died of pancreatic cancer. He continued to wash her panties, fold them and put them back in the drawer for weeks. Finally one of my brothers took all of Mother’s clothes out, asked her sister and my father’s sister-in-law to come over to pick out what they would like. My father blew his top, mostly at his sister-in-law. I tried to tell him my brother gave her the clothes.
“She should have known better,” he retorted.
My father was always my role model. Anything he did I did the opposite, and it’s worked out pretty well. (I know, I should be more respectful, but I’m almost 70 years old and if I want to be a jerk about my father I think it’s my own business. Anyway, that’s another story.)
Janet’s clothes moved on to benefit other people a year ago. Everything else is piling up and I am in fear of becoming a hoarder. It should be simple. Create four piles—what I want to keep, what I want to sell, what I want to give away and what I want to throw out. After throwing out the two monsters, we moved a sofa from the living room to the family room, and each room looks better for it.
What’s holding up the sale of much of the stuff is that my cell phone can take pictures but I can’t e-mail them to my computer and thereby post them on local rummage sale websites. I either have to get a new phone or a digital camera. This should not be a major stumbling block, but it has become one for me. It’s part of the painful yet simple process called thinking. Even now it’s hard to think about anything but the fact that Janet isn’t here anymore.
There’s no deadline, however. I suppose everything will get done in its own good time.

Lincoln in the Basement

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FOREWORD

Lincoln in the Basement began as a dream in 1989. I often dream stories in which I am an observer. This particular one was from the point of view of the Executive Mansion janitor, who was in the basement of the Executive Mansion when President and Mrs. Lincoln were escorted in at gunpoint by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Because he had seen too much, he had to stay in the basement with the Lincolns, and, after a period of time, began to believe he was the president.
As I began writing the story, I realized the poor janitor could not be the main character because he was basically incapable of change. I instead focused on the plight of the young soldier given the task of holding the Lincolns captive. He, indeed, changes from a naïve, eager servant of Stanton’s cause to an alcoholic disillusioned by the abuse of power.
As a caveat, I want to make clear that I have taken historical figures such as Secretary of War Stanton and LaFayette Baker and used them to create fictional characters with qualities of greed, lust, and corruption. While some historians have theorized that Stanton may have been a conspirator in Lincoln’s assassination, others maintain his innocence. I concur with this conclusion, and have fictionalized his personality to portray the danger of believing oneself to be infallible.
Lincoln in the Basement is meant as entertainment and as fodder for intellectual debate on political power, not as a strict interpretation of history.

(Author’s Note: I was born backwards, so it makes perfect sense to me to post on my blog the sequel before the first novel. And if you haven’t viewed my blog before it doesn’t make any difference. If you did read the sequel, now it will all make sense after you read about what happened first.)