The Electric Egg Cream

Happy Halloween to my massive and silent audience of 2 or 3 readers. Oh, by the way, my name is Michael…sans the “excitement” of that wild and crazy, fun-loving character pictured above.

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Even though I suggested in an earlier post (A Ghost For Hitch: electriceggcream.com/2007/09/22/…) that New York City lacks its fair share of ghosts, one or two may have “squeezed” through the urban blockade of skepticism. Built in 1680, the Billup House in Tottenville, Staten Island (or Conference House, as it came to be known) was the site of the failed peace attempt of 1776. It was here that John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Edward Rutledge met with Admiral Richard Howe who (along with his brother William) commanded British forces in America. The British were already in control of the westernmost portion of Long Island (later becoming Brooklyn), but the Howes were sympathetic to American grievances and offered to end the war and avoid further bloodshed. However, the British would only accept an unconditional peace on their own terms whereas the Americans would only accept unconditional independence. The peace endeavor failed and the American Revolution officially started.

The Conference House played no other role in history but for its long history of reported hauntings. A child who once lived there used to converse with the ghost of a British soldier, describing the apparition with keen accuracy.

On dark nights, a woman could be seen signaling to someone or something by a window; she is famous for a “cold spot” that has been studied by paranormal experts. The ghost is believed to be the servant of Christopher Billup, a Tory who, convinced that the girl was about to betray him into the hands of the Colonists, murdered her.

The house was abandoned in 1895 and wouldn’t reopen until 1937. Vincent and Maureen Malone lived in the house in the 1970s and reported poltergeist-like activity: flashing lights, moving objects, a “cool breeze” that left Maureen feeling “violated.”

My wife and I have visited the Conference House on several occasions. Even I, skeptic that I am, do admit that there’s an eerie ambiance to the place; a feeling that “something” is just WAITING to be encountered there.

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I’ve felt (maybe looked) like this quite often, while riding our beloved NYC subway system.

clipped from www.piercemattie.com

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When H.G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds” first appeared in 1898, the approaching 20th Century seemed to promise peace and prosperity. Major advances in technology offered the world’s inhabitants a hopeful future. A thriving worldwide economy, borne from this technology, offered increased wages and living standards for most people, while the more optimistic envisioned still further breakthroughs. Instead, the new century brought with it the most horrific wars and most insane acts of genocide the world had ever witnessed. The technology that promised to benefit the world would be also turned to a technology that threatened to end the world. Even Wells, despite his prophetic intellect, little imagined how pertinent his novel was destined to become in the next 100 years and down to the present day.

Forty years later, on the night of October 30, 1938, the brilliant and ambitious Orson Welles forever established “The War of the Worlds” as the ultimate tale of terror and suspense… which far surpassed the wildest expectations of its originator, H.G. Wells. The story of that broadcast and the legends that grew out of the ensuing controversy are numerous and astounding… which far surpassed the wildest expectations of Orson Welles. The following are extracts from the New York Times first reports on the “invasion” as New Yorkers experienced it:

Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact
Many Flee Homes to Escape ‘Gas Raid From Mars’–Phone Calls Swamp Police at Broadcast of Wells Fantasy
This article appeared in the New York Times on Oct. 31, 1938.

A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 o’clock last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. G. Wells’s fantasy, “The War of the Worlds,” led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York.

The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams and clogged communications systems, was made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, “The Shadow,” used to give “the creeps” to countless child listeners. This time at least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria

Throughout New York families left their homes, some to flee to near-by parks. Thousands of persons called the police, newspapers and radio stations here and in other cities of the United States and Canada seeking advice on protective measures against the raids.

The program was produced by Mr. Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air over station WABC and the Columbia Broadcasting System’s coast-to-coast network, from 8 to 9 o’clock.

The radio play, as presented, was to simulate a regular radio program with a “break-in” for the material of the play. The radio listeners, apparently, missed or did not listen to the introduction, which was: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in ‘The War of the Worlds’ by H. G. Wells.”

They also failed to associate the program with the newspaper listening of the program, announced as “Today: 8:00-9:00–Play: H. G. Wells’s ‘War of the Worlds’–WABC.” They ignored three additional announcements made during the broadcast emphasizing its fictional nature.

Mr. Welles opened the program with a description of the series of which it is a part. The simulated program began. A weather report was given, prosaically. An announcer remarked that the program would be continued from a hotel, with dance music. For a few moments a dance program was given in the usual manner. Then there was a “break-in” with a “flash” about a professor at an observatory noting a series of gas explosions on the planet Mars.

News bulletins and scene broadcasts followed, reporting, with the technique in which the radio had reported actual events, the landing of a “meteor” near Princeton N. J., “killing” 1,500 persons, the discovery that the “meteor” was a “metal cylinder” containing strange creatures from Mars armed with “death rays” to open hostilities against the inhabitants of the earth.

Despite the fantastic nature of the reported “occurrences,” the program, coming after the recent war scare in Europe and a period in which the radio frequently had interrupted regularly scheduled programs to report developments in the Czechoslovak situation, caused fright and panic throughout the area of the broadcast.

Telephone lines were tied up with calls from listeners or persons who had heard of the broadcasts. Many sought first to verify the reports. But large numbers, obviously in a state of terror, asked how they could follow the broadcast’s advice and flee from the city, whether they would be safer in the “gas raid” in the cellar or on the roof, how they could safeguard their children, and many of the questions which had been worrying residents of London and Paris during the tense days before the Munich agreement.

So many calls came to newspapers and so many newspapers found it advisable to check on the reports despite their fantastic content that The Associated Press sent out the following at 8:48 P. M.:

Similarly police teletype systems carried notices to all stationhouses, and police short-wave radio stations notified police radio cars that the event was imaginary.

Message From the Police

The New York police sent out the following:

“To all receivers: Station WABC informs us that the broadcast just concluded over that station was a dramatization of a play. No cause for alarm.”

From one New York theatre a manager reported that a throng of playgoers had rushed from his theatre as a result of the broadcast. He said that the wives of two men in the audience, having heard the broadcast, called the theatre and insisted that their husbands be paged. This spread the “news” to others in the audience.

The switchboard of The New York Times was overwhelmed by the calls. A total of 875 were received. One man who called from Dayton, Ohio, asked, “What time will it be the end of the world?” A caller from the suburbs said he had had a houseful of guests and all had rushed out to the yard for safety.

At 9 o’clock a woman walked into the West Forty-seventh Street police station dragging two children, all carrying extra clothing. She said she was ready to leave the city. Police persuaded her to stay.

Harlem Shaken By the “News”

Harlem was shaken by the “news.” Thirty men and women rushed into the West 123d Street police station and twelve into the West 135th Street station saying they had their household goods packed and were all ready to leave Harlem if the police would tell them where to go to be “evacuated.” One man insisted he had heard “the President’s voice” over the radio advising all citizens to leave the cities.

The parlor churches in the Negro district, congregations of the smaller sects meeting on the ground floors of brownstone houses, took the “news” in stride as less faithful parishioners rushed in with it, seeking spiritual consolation. Evening services became “end of the world” prayer meetings in some.

One man ran into the Wadsworth Avenue Police Station in Washington Heights, white with terror, crossing the Hudson River and asking what he should do. A man came in to the West 152d Street Station, seeking traffic directions. The broadcast became a rumor that spread through the district and many persons stood on street corners hoping for a sight of the “battle” in the skies.

In Queens the principal question asked of the switchboard operators at Police Headquarters was whether “the wave of poison gas will reach as far as Queens.” Many said they were all packed up and ready to leave Queens when told to do so.

Samuel Tishman of 100 Riverside Drive was one of the multitude that fled into the street after hearing part of the program. He declared that hundreds of persons evacuated their homes fearing that the “city was being bombed.”

“I came home at 9:15 P.M. just in time to receive a telephone call from my nephew who was frantic with fear. He told me the city was about to be bombed from the air and advised me to get out of the building at once. I turned on the radio and heard the broadcast which corroborated what my nephew had said, grabbed my hat and coat and a few personal belongings and ran to the elevator. When I got to the street there were hundreds of people milling around in panic. Most of us ran toward Broadway and it was not until we stopped taxi drivers who had heard the entire broadcast on their radios that we knew what it was all about. It was the most asinine stunt I ever heard of.”

“I heard that broadcast and almost had a heart attack,” said Louis Winkler of 1,322 Clay Avenue, the Bronx. “I didn’t tune it in until the program was half over, but when I heard the names and titles of Federal, State and municipal officials and when the ‘Secretary of the Interior’ was introduced, I was convinced it was the McCoy. I ran out into the street with scores of others, and found people running in all directions. The whole thing came over as a news broadcast and in my mind it was a pretty crummy thing to do.”

The Telegraph Bureau switchboard at police headquarters in Manhattan, operated by thirteen men, was so swamped with calls from apprehensive citizens inquiring about the broadcast that police business was seriously interfered with.

Headquarters, unable to reach the radio station by telephone, sent a radio patrol car there to ascertain the reason for the reaction to the program. When the explanation was given, a police message was sent to all precincts in the five boroughs advising the commands of the cause.

At Brooklyn police headquarters, eight men assigned to the monitor switchboard estimated that they had answered more than 800 inquiries from persons who had been alarmed by the broadcast. A number of these, the police said, came from motorists who had heard the program over their car radios and were alarmed both for themselves and for persons at their homes. Also, the Brooklyn police reported, a preponderance of the calls seemed to come from women.

Meanwhile the New York telephone operators of the company found their switchboards swamped with incoming demands for information, although the NBC system had no part in the program.

More than 100 calls were received at Maplewood police headquarters and during the excitement two families of motorists, residents of New York City, arrived at the station to inquire how they were to get back to their homes now that the Pulaski Skyway had been blown up.

The women and children were crying and it took some time for the police to convince them that the catastrophe was fictitious. Many persons who called Maplewood said their neighbors were packing their possessions and preparing to leave for the country.

Columbia Explains Broadcast

The Columbia Broadcasting System issued a statement saying that the adaptation of Mr. Wells’s novel which was broadcast “followed the original closely, but to make the imaginary details more interesting to American listeners the adapter, Orson Welles, substituted an American locale for the English scenes of the story.”

Pointing out that the fictional character of the broadcast had been announced four times and had been previously publicized, it continued:

“Nevertheless, the program apparently was produced with such vividness that some listeners who may have heard only fragments thought the broadcast was fact, not fiction. Hundreds of telephone calls reaching CBS stations, city authorities, newspaper offices and police headquarters in various cities testified to the mistaken belief.

“Naturally, it was neither Columbia’s nor the Mercury Theatre’s intention to mislead any one, and when it became evident that a part of the audience had been disturbed by th performance five announcements were read over the network later in the evening to reassure those listeners.”

Expressing profound regret that his dramatic efforts should cause such consternation, Mr. Welles said: “I don’t think we will choose anything like this again.” He hesitated about presenting it, he disclosed, because “it was our thought that perhaps people might be bored or annoyed at hearing a tale so improbable.”

 

(New York Times; October 31, 1938)

IN CLOSING
Most researchers who have studied “The War of the Worlds” broadcast have concluded that a full understanding of the prevailing mood for such a panic would be impossible; one would probably have to time-travel back to the night itself for that. While a major panic affected a relatively small minority of Americans, it was a sizable minority that was symptomatic of a broader uneasiness across the land. Most reports of terror-stricken crowds, farmers grabbing their shotguns, attempted suicides, etc., were either totally bogus or played-up by the media. No confirmed death or serious injury was ever attributed to the Martian scare. The psychological effects, however, were a different matter.

While most Americans were cognizant of the growing menace of Nazism in Europe, most felt geographically, socially and even morally protected: by vast oceans bordering their eastern and western coasts; a pride in themselves for managing to struggle through a major depression and the resulting confidence and trust in a President they credited for their salvation; a nationalistic pride, moral smugness and cultural superiority that made them the isolationists they were at the time. This attitude was severely shaken by a Halloween prank gone bad; a trick of devious artistry that may have been a treat of dire warning in disguise: the panic only that in an awareness of America’s vulnerability.

 

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Sunday Morning in Sleepy Hollow

Art Print
Brownscombe,…

Buy at AllPosters.com

“In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee,….” So begins Washington Irving’s immortal classic “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” which has captivated readers for nearly 190 years and made Tarrytown, New York famous with the “drowsy, dreamy influence” of eternal autumn. As with its companion piece “Rip Van Winkle,” this fanciful tale presents settings and characters that are forever ingrained in America’s literary consciousness; a world that often appears to be more factual than whimsical. But nowhere in Irving’s rich imagination has a character seemed so real but in that of the lovable if priggish Ichabod Crane, who WAS REAL…at least his name was, which is currently on a gravestone in New Springville, Staten Island.

Even though the fictional Ichabod Crane was based on a schoolteacher by the name of Jesse Merwin, a friend of Washington Irving’s, the name was taken from a Colonel Ichabod Crane. Irving met Colonel Crane on two occasions and simply liked the sound of the name and dubbed his hapless hero accordingly. Many scholars dispute this because “Ichabod” and “Crane” were common names in the early 19th century; it could have been merely a coincidence.

It’s vaguely noted that the Colonel wasn’t very pleased with how his namesake was portrayed: a lanky, somewhat mercenary schoolmaster who is chased over hill and dale by a “headless horseman” one moonlit night. The fictional Ichabod Crane flees Sleepy Hollow and is never heard from again. Irving concludes his story by saying that an “old farmer” who had been “down to New York” (Manhattan) learned that Ichabod Crane had become successful; but this very same “farmer” is also known to “conjure” things up. Colonel Ichabod Crane is resting in peace in Staten Island and the schoolmaster Ichabod Crane is resting in the imagination. As for the Headless Horseman: he may be just resting somewhere in Sleepy Hollow.

photos:

forgotten-ny.com

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Does anyone know why they need Vista in their lives and on their computers? Microsoft (they of the IE7 snafu and various other pranks) probably does and is laughing all the way to the bank with that knowledge.

Last spring, thirty days into its initial release to an anxious and unsuspecting public, more than 30% of customers were highly disappointed with Vista. Publications like PC World, to the various posts of the average Joe Username, were reporting that users experienced “freezes,” “lags,” and other pc glitches with Microsoft’s latest “modern marvel.” Audio quality appeared to be the single, most common complaint: volume levels were greatly diminished and music was tinny-sounding. Vista’s problems continue to the present day.

Even though Vista is admittedly and undoubtedly “cool” and sleek looking, a giant step above XP, the praise seems to fade there. Along with similar accolades regarding its somewhat better ease of accessibility and general navigation features, Vista doesn’t seem (as far as I’m concerned) to offer much outside of appearance.

However, the crux of the problem (and punch-line of the joke) is that current computer drives are inadequate to handle Vista’s highly complex framework. What it offers in appearance it lacks in functionality and performance. Could it be that Microsoft knew this all along? Did they lull customers with Vista’s appearance, knowing full well that it would ill-perform due to improper drives? (By the way, who do you suppose will be selling the drives?)

There’s the old story about the salesman who sells the housewife on a vacuum cleaner: a steal at $2.50! The clincher is that with crucial and additional attachments, the price tag will be more like $250.00! But that salesman has a profit to consider and competition to outsell. In this much more complex and savvy world of software and related matters, could it be that Microsoft is employing a similar strategy with a different product?

Then again, I’m certainly NOT a computer expert (in fact, I’m something of a pc moron). Who am I to argue with genius? Vista may very well be what everyone needs and was waiting for. As far as I’m concerned, I still can’t get over stereophonic sound and believe it to be a modern marvel too.

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My current fascination is in tracking down and attempting to communicate with former classmates…from long ago. It’s somewhat similar to establishing communication with the afterlife: wandering spirits that hover between and beyond pages of memorabilia and clouds of memory.

What to write by way of re-introduction, after thirty or forty years, without sounding too flowery and overblown? What to write that doesn’t sound too indifferent and formal? I just write and strive to be myself…without (hopefully) too many excuses and only a few lies.

Knocking on the clouded door to the past is a frighteningly daunting experience. The changes that transpire between yesterdays and todays are often difficult to accept… but are, of course, inevitable. We dread to recognize the weed-infested, decaying garden as the very same that was once green and blooming through our presence. And dread to recognize the tired, fading creatures that now inhabit this garden as those we once were and are together with…into eternity.

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Music has always woven its elusive charm throughout my deliriously erratic life. As a child, I was a somewhat precocious but defiantly lovable kid who tended to dream beyond his means. Being born and raised in New York City, my family’s means were indeed limited but creatively hopeful; our middle class daily skating on the thin ice of debt and doom was exceptional…maybe worthy of the Olympics.

It may have been Frank Loesser’s song “Standing On The Corner” my mother used to lullaby me to sleep with that created my love for music. (You CAN’T make this stuff up!)

This was 1954 or so, and the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, etc., were hot…reluctantly but inevitably merging or diverging with music’s latest genre, rock-and-roll. Additionally, my mother (a frustrated soprano) had a sizable collection of opera recordings; these recordings, along with all the popular (and not so popular) songs of that time, I would make my daily playthings. I would spend hours spinning old 78s on the phonograph…even if I couldn’t understand the music (especially the operas), I FELT the music. I could associate people, places, events with a particular song or passage of music. Nowhere did this combination of visuals and music come together as it did (and still does) in movies.

The very first movie I saw in a theatre was “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.” I think despite my cringing dread of the Cyclops and frozen terror of the Skeleton (and all the other thrills of Ray Harryhausen), Bernard Herrmann’s music found its way into my psyche and took root; I more or less judged all other film scores by his standard. Whereas I was too young to see the Hitchcock films of that period (”Psycho” or “Vertigo” for instance), films like “Mysterious Island” and “Jason and the Argonauts” are forever etched in my childhood memories.

Then came the Beatles and the 60s and an age that topped the wildest fantasies of stage, screen, or even insanity. Within this chaotic scherzo as an accompaniment, I grew into manhood: attended school…wound-up studying music and art; found love…found despair…found jazz and the blues. I finally settled on a career in insurance. But I’m still the kid I was at heart…still FEELING, HEARING, and SEEING the MUSIC; in short, I’m still having fun despite the gloom, playing my piano as it “gently weeps.”

(Note: A short something about myself….Thanks for listening.)

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