Entr'acte

As part of CommunityFest, Neenah's Fourth of July celebration, I served as a Neenah Historical Society guide on a walk through the historic neighborhood surrounding Riverside Park. Here we are in front of the home next to ours and in the same year by Henry Sherry. At one time one of Wisconsin's most prominent lumbermen, Sherry went bankrupt in the 1890s, the result of what we would now refer to as a Ponzi scheme. Sherry's son Ed added to the shock by marrying a professional actress and moving to Milwaukee.  His wife, Laura Case Sherry, was the founder of the Little Theater Movement, which is today essentially community theater. She was also something of a writer and poet, being friends with Zona Gale, Carl Sandberg and Amy Lowell (who her husband objected to having in their Milwaukee home because she smoked cigars).

NOTE: The posts in Chapter II follow the events leading up to my father's return to Neenah as I saw them. If you are just beginning to read this blog you may want to go back and start with the first post HERE. To refresh your memory of  where we left off in the last post, "You Saw Your Duty," go HERE.

CHAPTER II, Entr'acte

First of all, I must begin with an apology for falling so far behind in my account of events. The month of July began for me with a walking tour of the historic neighborhood surrounding Riverside Park. The next week my wife Patti and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary with about 100 friends, followed by a family gathering in honor of Patti's uncle, who was marking 50 years of religious life as a Capuchin priest. Then five days after that we hosted yet another gathering, this time for donors of the Wisconsin Historical Society's  foundation, many of whom were had seen the house in "Wisconsin's Own" or had been following this blog and were interested in seeing it first hand. Through all of the festivities I was also writing six scripts for the Neenah Historical Society's "Oak Hill Cemetery Walk" in Augutst, struggling to get our three-year roof project finished, arranging to have the barn painted, and getting a leaky cast iron drain pipe replaced in the bathroom. Not exactly the life of a country gentleman. 

I hope, in compensation for the delay, you'll enjoy this more personal entr'acte or intermezzo about the events surrounding the first of our three party.  

It all began this past winter when I sent up a marital trial balloon, suggesting to my wife Patti that we invite our closest friends and neighbors to a party marking 2013 as a watershed year in our lives. It was, after all, going to be our 30th wedding anniversary, my 60th birthday, and the 130th anniversary of my great-grandfather's completion of the house here in Neenah. To my surprise, having poo-pooed similar ideas in the past, Patti bought into the plan. Her only proviso was that it could not to be about us, but rather about thanking our friends for being such an important and continuing part of our lives over all these years. With that understanding we talked about who to invite, what would be served, and what the entertainment there should be. As we both often think fondly of the night we spent in New York City at the Café Carlyle, it was easy imagine someone at the piano in our parlor playing "Isn't It Romantic" as friends drifted out onto the verandah with glasses of champagne. Only who would we get? 

The entertainment for our party was the extraordinarily talented Steve March-Tormé  (right), shown here in the parlor warming up with pianist Mike Kubecki and bassist John Gibson. Before the party Patti's nephews came over and helped us to move most all of the furniture on the first floor up to the second floor.  In the background here you can see the little gold ballroom chairs we rented for the evening. I never in my wildest imagination ever imagining myself saying, as I did in preparing for that night, "You know, a ballroom would be a very useful and practical thing to have."

As it happened, I saw online that Steve March-Tormé, son of the legendary singer Mel Tormé, was scheduled to perform at a free concert at Heid Music in neighboring Appleton. With a couple of mouse clicks I learned that that he had moved from Santa Monica to Appleton some years ago, and then logging on to his website I fired off an email to his booking agent. Much to my surprise Steve got back to me personally, and for the next several days we exchanged a number of friendly emails about his coming to sing at our house as an anniversary surprise for Patti. I also snuck out house under some good pretext to hear him in Appleton. At the music store that night, climbing up onto a makeshift stage, Steve had the audience eating out of his hand well before the pianist and bass player finished warming up. He regaled us all with stories of growing up in Beverly Hills (where he was the neighbor of my television mom, Lucille Ball), and of  his love of baseball, through which he met New York Yankee batter Tony Kubek (who as it turned out is also a resident of Appleton and was sitting right behind me in the audience). Steve then apologized for having a cold and not being entirely in voice - after which he blew us all out of the water with a consummate singing ability unlike anything I had ever heard outside a concert hall or in a studio recording.

As I expected would happen, Patti uncovered my plan several days later, but that didn't matter any more. I was so thrilled by what I had heard that I probably would have told her sooner or later. It also turned out to be even better than the surprise would have been, as Steve let Patti have a hand in selecting what numbers he would sing. For weeks she was able to savor the idea of hearing such favorites as "It Had To Be You" and "Look of Love" performed in the parlor, and these along with songs Steve was anxious to perform, like Paul McCartney's "I Will" and "The Folks Who Live On the Hill" by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hamerstein.  It also turned out to be a particular thrill to go out to his website and see "Private Party - Neenah, Wisconsin" in his touring schedule, with ours followed two days later by a return engagement at the Crazy Coqs cabaret just off London's Picadilly Circus.

Words simply can't express what it's like to have a singer of Steve's talent and ability performing in your own home - so friendly and engaging. My goal was for the evening to be unforgettable, and it was all of that and more. Afterwards one of our friends said to me, "There's no way anyone will ever be able to top this."

The preparations, however, proved to be far from easy. The furniture on much of the first floor had to be hauled to the second to make room for the best approximation we could muster to theater style seating. As for the refreshments, I thought we could prepare most of the food ourselves and took off from work the week before to focus on all the preparations. We decided to serve desserts, but in the process changed directions several times, settling ultimately on things that were no more than two bites and didn't require plates or utensils. Drinks hoped to keep equally simple by focusing on champagne, discovering in the last minute that a nice dry brut turned horribly sour when served with anything sweet. In the process of rather extensive experimentation, we finally settled on a rather modest Korbel red rosé champagne that actually proved to be rather a light and deliciously lingering companion on a sultry summer night. In the end all the details and arrangements were like a wedding - much anticipated in the abstract, a nightmare the planning and execution, but ultimately remembered with much satisfaction.

When it came time for Steve to go on that night, I stood up and welcomed everyone once again, and explained that this was not an anniversary celebration, but a thank you for their years of friendship and support, in good times and in bad. Looking around at everyone in the the library and parlor - at those spilling out into the dining room and hallway - I told them that a neighbor had asked if there was anything she could bring, and I said she could bring over her ballroom (and she really does have one). I then introduced Steve, pointing out that he was by one degree of separation a native son (his father raced cars with Neenah's millionaire playboy Jimmy Kimberly). After that Steve's trio turned the house into our own private Café Carlyle, if only for one gloriously perfect summer night. At the end I stood up again and explained that I had originally planned for Steve's performance to be a surprise for Patti, adding that if he hadn't been available I was going to learn one of Patti's favorite songs and sing it myself - which I really had planned to do. This was in the end the ultimate surprise, for in closing I simply read the beginning lyrics to Cole Porter's "You're the Top" to thank Patti for the 30 happiest years of my life. And when I began, our friend Peggy dared to snap the picture you see below (she knows Patti hates having her picture taken). And this made the entire evening and the eight months of planning, headaches, and expense all worth while. Our wedding pictures I never look at. This one I will keep with me always.

Patti has always hated to have her picture taken, so when I saw this one on the disk of photos our friend Peggy took that night I was ecstatic. It is one of less than a dozen that  I have of Patti in our 30 years of marriage, and I think it is the best.

In the week that followed two very strange incidents also occurred. Although most all the glasses and discarded napkins had been picked up, the next morning I went on a tour of the house to assess what work had to be done to get things put back and ready for the next party coming up the following weekend. Being dead tired and not sure exactly how we were going to handle all the work ahead of us, I stepped into the sitting room, which had been largely stripped of its furnishings, and my head was immediately filled with the words (just as simply as if someone standing there had exclaimed), THAT WAS GREAT! I HAVEN'T HAD SO MUCH FUN IN YEARS!  LET'S DO IT AGAIN! Then later at the end of the day, when the rooms had all been cleaned and vacuumed and the furniture put back, I went into the sitting room to pull down all the shades to close things up. No sooner had I started that then I was struck by a long and emphatic NO! NO! DON'T! NOT YET!

That was just the first incident.

On July 20th we hosted yet another party, sandwiched between ours on the 13th and a gathering for the Wisconsin Historical Society Foundation on the 25th. This middle one marked 50 years of religious life as led by Patti's Uncle Tom, a member of the Capuchin priesthood. It was a supremely happy occasion attended by family members from around the country, including several of Patti's cousins from California. In this picture Sam, his brother Seth and their cousin Armella are making butter mints in the kitchen for the party while Armella's mother Sharon, Patti and I look on. These three kids are among the nicest and most engaging people I've ever met, and their parents have every reason to be proud. I was also reminded of how my great aunts felt whenever family came to visit, filling the house with laughter and activity. I was sad when it came time for them to leave and found myself wishing they all lived much closer.

The second incident came a week later while cleaning my Great Aunt Betty's bedroom in preparation of putting it on display for the Wisconsin Historical Society. In picking up a small pile of rugs that I had set on the floor the previous fall, I looked down where the pile had been and saw that what looked like a flattened bottle cap. In fact it was a Victorian sterling sliver luggage tag engraved "Helen Babcock - Neenah, Wis," something that must have belonged to my Great Aunt Nell but I had never seen in all my 40 years in the house. Now, in all those years we've gotten fairly used to the idea that things can disappear and without explanation reappear days, months and sometimes years later. This was the first time, however, that anything previously unknown and unseen appeared out of no where. From it I got the sense that my Aunt Nell wanted to get my attention in the only way she knew how. And as this appeared in her sister's room, I inferred that as the eldest and titular head of the family, she wanted her room on show as well.

As you might expect, I complied with her wishes, a lesson well learned - something you'll hear more about in the very next installment.

I don't know what more there is I can say about finding this luggage tag, except when I told the 11-year-old children of Patti's cousins about it the following week, they were riveted by the story but refused to hold or even touch it.

CHAPTER II to be continued.

You Saw Your Duty

Another one from my little Instamatic, this is Great Aunt Nell's Room. The desk in the tower is where I did much of my initial research, and it is where Aunt Nell's scrupulously maintained line-a-day diaries were kept. Aunt Betty conveyed a certain concern about these diaries, fearful perhaps of what Aunt Nell might have revealed about herself in them, as well as what Aunt Nell may have recorded about her sister (a medium doing a walk through of the house made reference to the diaries in the desk and correctly determined that they had been moved to the attic). Aunt Nell used this room more as a personal retreat, she and her sister sharing another room at the back of the house for sleeping. Towards the end of their lives my Aunt Dot - who was more like a younger sister to them than a niece - badgered Aunt Nell and Aunt Betty so relentlessly about their sleeping in a dark and pokey room while this one lay vacant, that eventually they moved their twin beds  in here. The move made it easier in Aunt Nell's final days to bring in a hospital bed - purchased rather than rented to be in place when Aunt Betty would need it in her turn.

NOTE: The posts in Chapter II follow the events leading up to my father's return to Neenah as I saw them. If you are just beginning to read this blog you may want to go back and start with the first post HERE. To refresh your memory of  where we left off in the last post, "I Just Won't Cook Them Lima Beans," go HERE.

CHAPTER II, Part 10

Having written the biography of my grandmother and identified the old photos Dad had somehow saved from his mother's house, there was only one clear next step for me to take. During the summer of 1971 when I was still only 17-years old, it was arranged for me to spend several days in Neenah with Great Aunt Betty to learn more about our family history. I don't recall how the plan was concieved - or even if it was entirely my idea - but Aunt Betty was glad for the company and agreed to help in any way she could.  In booking the bus tickets, however, I was surprised to learn that neither Alfred nor Louis would be able to pick me up at the station in nearby Appleton, there being no Greyhound service from Minneapolis to Neenah.  I had never traveled anywhere on my own at that point, and in these days before the Internet the inability of determining how I was to catch a local bus from Appleton to Neenah (not knowing how late, how often or even where these buses ran) was more than a little intimidating.  Mom made a fuss about the uncertainty, which made my concern and determination greater, while Dad, in a surprisingly expansive mood, said if need be I could always take a taxi, which in my mind only produced more questions and anxieties. Given that Alfred and Louis had shuttled Nesta Edwards back and forth to Milwaukee, I was more than a little put out by the situation, but in the months to come I circumstances would become increasingly clear to me.

The trip across Wisconsin took the better part of the day, and as it turned out the local bus to Neenah left from the Appleton Greyhound stop and deposited me downtown at a small grimy gas station (today an immaculate boutique Chinese restaurant), where an inexplicably grumpy Alfred shuttled me the remaining five blocks  to the house. Even though it was fairly late in the evening, Aunt Betty was waiting up to welcome me and show me up to Aunt Nell's old room before trundling off to bed herself. I had shared this room in the past with my brother Steve as there were twin beds, one of which had been replaced by the hospital bed in which Aunt Nell had died in 1966. The room was more modern than the rest of the house, having been redecorated in the Arts and Crafts style around 1911 - striped moiré wallpaper, randomly arranged ivory matted engravings and pastels, chintz upholstery, bookcases with leaded glass doors, the ceiling, walls and floor coverings all in the same shade of aquamarine (Aunt Nell's favorite color). For the next several days I would work in the room's tower at Aunt Nell's mahogany desk, the drawers full of her diaries - which I would learn made Aunt Betty very nervous and that I left scrupulously untouched.

The next day I discovered that Aunt Betty had pulled together a dozen or more books and pamphlets for me to read. There were genealogies of the Babcock and Kimberly families, several histories of Neenah and Kimberly-Clark Corporation, as well as printed recollections of the city's early settlement days that involved a host of cousins and other relatives. In fairly short order I was able to follow my English Babcock relatives from their arrival in Rhode Island in 1642, and from there to Vermont's Canadian border and out to the Territory of Wisconsin by 1846. As for my Kimberly ancestors, they in their turn made a similar journey from England to Massachusetts in 1635, and from there to upstate New York and then on to Wisconsin in 1848, where John and Harvey Kimberly were determined to replicate in Neenah the same success their cousin Dr. Edmund Stoughton Kimberly had in the founding of Chicago and Rush Medical College. And while the Kimberlys were by far more consistently successful, the Babcocks were not without their own claims to fame. Dr. Joshua Babcock was a chief justice of colonial Rhode Island and friend of both George Washington and Benjamin Franklin (the Babcock-Smith House in Westerly is now a museum), whereas Brigadier General Orville Babcock was General Grant's aid-de-camp at Appomatox and later President Grant's personal secretary - and as such a key player in the Whiskey Ring scandal. As it turned out both Babcock and Kimberly families also had rather astonishing connections to the Roosevelt family: Dr. Kimberly's son Augustus was the husband of President Theodore Roosevelt's cousin Margaret, while Dad's cousin Anne Babcock was the wife of Theodore Roosevelt III.

The Kimberly Double House was built as a duplex in 1849 for John Robbins Kimberly and his brother Harvey Latimer Kimberly, originally of Troy, New York. Shown here in the 1890s, the Double House was considerably smaller in its original incarnation, being only two stories in the center portion, and with no imposing portico or flanking verandahs. When first married, my great-grandparents Havilah Babcock and Frances Kimberly lived in the west side on the left. After their first child, Aunt Nell, was born, they moved to a house closer to town. Being neighbors to her bellicose Uncle John proved to be too much for my great grandmother, that and the fact that the kitchen was in a detached structure behind the house - a measure intended to reduce the threat of house fires but thoroughly impractical in Wisconsin's harsh winters.

From these genealogies and histories I was able to put together the first pieces of a complex family and community history with which I would continue to be fascinated for the rest of my life, if only because it was embodied in the house in which I was at that moment staying. Sitting down with Aunt Betty in the library, a borrowed Bell & Howell reel-to-reel tape recorder running between us, I learned how her father, my great-grandfather Havilah Babcock, had come to Neenah from Vermont as a boy and become friends with John Kimberly's son Alfred, how the two of them, still in their teens, had been set up by Alfred's father in the dry goods business, and how the two of them had joined forces with C. B. Clark and F. C. Shattuck to form Kimberly, Clark & Company in 1872, the same year Havilah married Alfred's cousin Frances Kimberly. The newlyweds spent their first year of marriage in the west side of the Kimberly's Double House, where my Aunt Nell had been born. The following year they moved to a house on Commercial Street that years later would be torn down to make way for the gas station where Alfred had picked me up. That was where all the other children had been born: Caroline - my grandmother - Harry, George and Betty. An oil portrait hanging on the wall near us came from that house and had been painted using a tintype of the three oldest children. A bust of my great grandfather also looked down from the top of a bookshelf . It had been done years later by Caroline, "Callie," my grandmother, the dark-haired little girl in the portrait when she was a young woman and a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, having become enthralled by sculpture while studying in New York City under Daniel Chester French, creator of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Aunt Betty explained how her father had been particular about every facet of building this house. "The foundations had to sit and settle a full year before he would let any of the work begin," she said. Every available modern convenience had been incorporated into its design: central heat, a flush toilet and plumbing to "stationary washstands" in every bedroom, speaking tubes connecting the working areas of the house with an early form of intercom, and light fixtures - gas and electric - well before the service of either was generally available. "We were the first house in town with electricity," Aunt Betty explained, adding that it was made possible by an Edison generator installed at Kimberly-Clark's Globe Mill downtown, yet never explaining how the wires were run between the two. And while the unexpected success of Kimberly-Clark had made their family rich, they moved into the house in 1883 with bare plaster walls, living that way for all of five years, at which point artisans came up from  Milwaukee to complete his vision of the perfect home, complete with narrative fireplace tiles. "Father told us these were Lancelot and Guinevere," Aunt Betty said of those in the front hall, adding that the library tiles were of Dante, Socrates and Lord Byron, the meaning of which I would not be able to grasp until another forty years had passed.

And when this work was done Aunt Betty recalled how her parents had hosted a glamorous "at home" reception in 1889, to welcome Alfred Kimberly's daughter Helen and her husband W. Z. Stuart back from their brief but traditional wedding tour. I would later learn from old newspapers how 300 invitations had been issued with only a handful of regrets, few being willing to miss a glimpse of the house and the novelty of electric lights. The guests, Aunt Betty said, arrived by carriage at the port-cochere, left their cloaks with attendants stationed in the sitting room,  and then proceeded through the reception line in the parlor to meet the ill-fated couple, after which refreshments were served from the dining room. A small orchestra played on hall landing, and the catering was handled by a firm from Milwaukee. Aunt Betty was six years old at the time, and she remembered that in addition to there being rather handsome African American waiters, a boy some years older than her was also in attendance wearing a turban and running coats from the sitting room upstairs and down again when needed. "I remember standing right there watching him," she said pointing to the doorway into the hall. "I wanted to say something, but he was too busy." 

Although I have no picture of myself on the back porch with Aunt Betty, this one of her and Aunt Nell from the 1960s captures the experience on a hot summer day perfectly. Complete with cloth, sterling and best china, meals would be served with the same formality as in the dining room. When this table needed to be replaced the purchase of another one created no end of problems for Aunt Betty, who eventually settled on one from Sears Roebuck with an unheard of Formica top. What isn't shown in this picture are the surrounding gardens - and the carpets on the porch floor. They were Kimlark rugs, made by Kimberly-Clark of an amazingly durable paper-based twisted cording like sisal. We have two generations of them rolled up in the hayloft of the barn.

As the interview continued Aunt Betty became more and reflective. In her teens she remembered asking her mother if she had many beaux at her age. "What a thing to ask your mother!" was the answer she recalled. "Why do you suppose she said that?" she asked me, genuinely perplexed. At another point she looked down at the tape recorder to see if it was running and asked me to turn it off. When I promised that I would erase the tape after I had taken notes, she looked off in the distance and said, "If my parents made any mistake with me it was that I was always treated as the baby," she said. "I was never expected to do anything." It was at this point that I felt comfortable enough to ask what was a very stupid question, prefacing it by saying that she didn't have to answer if she didn't want to. "Then maybe I just won't tell you," she said with a coquettish smile. Having asked many questions about her father's life and career and work throughout the interview, I followed up this line of questions with asking what her father was worth when he died. And I can see now as clearly as if it this had been asked yesterday, how her smile vanished and her face became inexpressibly sad. "I have no idea," she replied, without a word indicating that the door was closed on that subject. The next day I understood why. She said a representative from some charitable cause would be calling on her, to which I offered to vacate the library. "I won't see him in here," she said. "I'll see him in the sitting room. He says it's a social call, but all he's interested in is money." 

Her father's great wealth had been a blessing and a curse, and while I had miss-stepped I had opened a door and - if only briefly - gained her trust. There had developed a connection of sorts between us, between the pimply fat boy and the grey-haired old lady approaching the end of life. For as old as Aunt Betty was, she remembered and understood exactly where I was in life, and treated me with a respect and humorous affection that I have since found only rarely. In the days that followed she asked me if there was any particular dish I would like Rose to make. As instructed by Mom I insisted that anything would be fine with me, at which Aunt Betty suggested stuffed tomatoes, which I agreed to even though they were something that I hated beyond all reason.  So that very afternoon, seated on the back porch where we overlooked Aunt Nell's garden and were served by Rose on a pattern of Royal Copenhagen picked to coordinate with the simple décor, a tomato was set down before me, not stuffed with a mitigating tuna or chicken salad, but with a mixture of what was then to me a nauseating combination of cottage cheese, chopped nuts and raisins. How I was able to finish this unimaginable horror I have no idea, but when we were done, Aunt Betty smiled and very quietly said, "You saw your duty and you did it." On another occasion, when I came down to lunch in bare feet, Aunt Betty said nothing but just looked at my feet. "It looks like I came down without my shoes on," I said excusing myself. We understood each other perfectly.

And then it was time for me to leave. "I thought maybe you'd stay for Sunday. After church we could take flowers out to the cemetery," Aunt Betty said, her disappointment unmistakable. I had no idea then what this had meant to her, what I was being asked to become a part of with her, and I have regretted not staying over another day ever since.

CHAPTER II continues HERE.