Dem Bones
Stairway to the Stars
My name is Molly Dooley. Perhaps you remember my Ma, Polly Dooley, the famed Follies Showgirl, one of a dozen who slept their way to fame and fortune in the '20s. Ma told me she was born in Paris, on the altar of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Of course I have no proof that she was actually born in Paris, and being that there are many cities and towns bearing that name, for all I know, it could have been Paris, Illinois.
Jul 1st, 2009 by Stella Cretek
Peg O’ My Leg
Valley folks assumed she’d been born with one leg (poor Peg! unfortunate child!). She let them go on thinking so, because a birthing accident was way more glamorous than what really happened when she was three and wandered on two sturdy legs straight into the jaws of her Pa’s yellow and green Deluxe #313 John Deere corn picker. And though it was an event of tragic proportions, she took comfort in knowing far worse had befallen her best friend and playmate, Rolly, who’d lost an eye and all of his dimpled left hand in the same week she emerged from the corn picker minus one leg. As a matter of fact, the kin of the boy who lost both his left eye and his left hand (giving him a distinctly right-slanted view of life thereafter) slaughtered the 2,000-pound prize hog responsible for defiling wee Rolly. Those attending the gala Hogzilla Roast (including poor Peg on her lone leg) would fondly remember the smell of pigs’ tails and pork ribs (big ones!), mixed with the pungent mists hovering o’er the Nodaway River. Rolly’s missing left eye and missing left hand put him at a social disadvantage. This changed, however, when he was fitted with a blue glass eye and a hook. So improved was his mood that he eventually led The Valley Republicans, and by age ninety, was a wealthy preacher preaching righteousness and the inherent evil of hogs. Over the years, his hook came in handy when passing pork during Sunday Nite EverLife Church dinners, though mastering creamed corn was another thing entirely. As fine as Peg’s folks were, they somehow overlooked her need for a second leg. She hinted like crazy around Christmas time, but year after year, she was gifted instead with, not the needed new leg, but instead, a pair of Sonja Heine ice skates. Since she could only use one skate (and use it she did, to perfect the Figure 8, no easy trick), her good Christian parents donated the spare to The Annual Rummage-For-Christ at the EverLife Church. Go there today, and you’ll find (in a box in the church basement), ten skates suitable for right feet only, along with gloves suitable for right hands only, and assorted jackets, each with three sleeves. Valley folks cover all bases just in case. Anyway, eventually her uncle, Ed Splinter (a worker of wood, specializing in gnomes), got around to carving her a black walnut crutch. It carried her through her tender teen years when zits are bad, but missing parts are worse, plus it gave her the gumption to try out for the cheerleading squad. She’d already mastered jitterbugging, hurdle-jumping (but only the low ones) and running the 100 yard dash – barefoot on a cinder track – in three minutes flat, with her crutch. Her big disappointment was being cut from the Annual Water Ballet Ensemble, but without the requisite ten toes, she didn’t have a prayer. She aced the cheerleading tryouts, and tonight was the […]
Jun 27th, 2009 by Stella Cretek
The Reunion
Travelers in the area often report that upon entering Porkopolis, it is impossible to tell “what is and what isn’t.” Goose didn’t know the cause of this peculiar sense of confusion. It was easy to point fingers at the ever-present mists hovering over Nodaway Valley, the failing eyesight and upside down memories of the locals, or a factor not easily ignored…God’s Everlasting Will, which carried weight in these parts. As he turned left off Hwy. 71, Goose’s Roadmaster found its way to the town square, where his fiftieth class reunion was in full swing. Was he wrong, or was time already beginning to slip and slide? He parked near a curb lined with dusty trucks, wondering what it was that skittered beneath the left wheel and splattered its guts on the Roadmaster’s grille. Polly Dooley, gone but not forgotten Years ago he’d been a genuine part of Porkopolis, so named because of multiple hog farms and the miles of sweet-sour stench rising from the pens. Porkopolis wasn’t a unique name by any means – in fact, Cincinnati laid claim to it sometime around the Civil War – but all in all (and despite the stink), his hometown stuck in his mind as a place filled with perfumed lilacs and bluebirds and generous girls eager to sprawl on the football field under a harvest moon when Homecoming was over. Lucky for him, his sperm had failed to precipitate a hasty marriage at The Valley Church of Life. He gave thanks that the targets of his sweaty efforts weren’t doomed to spend nine months in the farmhouse of a distant cousin. Porkopolis had more than its share of distant cousins. Goose reckoned that peddling bibles was a sure way to repay the Lord who had steered him clear of trouble during his years at PHS. After graduation, he’d have preferred tending bar at the VFW, but bible-selling was profitable and he’d been able to buy the Roadmaster, with change to spare. Not exactly new, it wasn’t exactly old either, and the holes punched in its chromed sides made a fine statement when he kicked up dust in the driveways of farm ladies. His luck held during his bible hawking rounds, and now and then, a few regulars found the means to scrape together enough to purchase a seven-volume set, bound in fake white calfskin stamped in gold. Goose had a soft spot for extending credit to 18-year-old ladies who promised to pay one way or the other, however, he did not accept Master Card or Visa, and in his long career had never accepted a package of pork tenderloins in exchange for his services. The closest he came to selling out was when he accepted a plate of elderberry cobblers from a Hacklebarney lady, in the days when his ribs were poking through his shirt. What was left of the town where Goose stood with others bent over paper plates of slabs of steaming ham and red-eye gravy wasn’t much. Most everything […]
Jun 16th, 2009 by Stella Cretek
The Reunion, cont’d
As he navigated through the masses of sagging arms and lagging butts and bottle-glass spectacles askew on generic faces assembled for the festivities, Goose felt woozy and disoriented. He was having trouble focusing on folks talking about the house down the road, east a bit, where eight sleeping were felled by an axe. Just across the street from the dusty path leading to the swimming pool, where he once got hopelessly tangled in the lane ropes during a regional swim meet, was where it happened. No one was ever brought to trial, but a few males with darkish skin and squinty eyes were rounded up by bloodhounds trucked in from Omaha. Goose read in the news that whoever did the deed propped a slab of bacon near a bedroom window, an odd detail, to say the least. Memory is tricky though, and Goose’s memory was no exception (yesterday, he actually forgot to wear shoes), so the bacon-slab may have been a misfire. The house, refurbished in the 70s by a well-intentioned farmer obsessed with saving stuff, still offered tours during reunions, and Goose figured he’d be bound to follow the printed schedule of activities, including a tour of the town’s “museum.” Formerly the site of a furniture store and coffin-making venue, it had been converted by the same farmer, and was now a dumping ground for crumbling collections of salt & pepper shakers from state fairs, heaps of cherry pitters and apple-corers, and specimens of wicked barbed-wire mounted on dampish cardboard. He prickled at the thought of going there, though truth tell, he felt a certain fascination in viewing the hide of a bear formerly caged at the Conoco on Route 71. It reminded him of Dooley. Whatever the connection, Dooley-in-the-flesh trumped the pelt. She’d had ample flesh and he’d seen all of it. Getting through this day would be a bitch, especially with the sun beating down on his itchy, almost-real hair. Despite his gel-filled arch supports, his feet throbbed, and the moist crotch of his seersucker pants ripped as he reached for his third helping of ham. The towering elms of his youth had died in the blight of ’55, so there wasn’t an inch of shade anywhere. The lilacs had disappeared, replaced by pots of plastic roses. No birds were in sight, except a crow pecking the remains of whatever was sticking to the wheel of his car. Had he only imagined the lilacs and bluebirds? Come to think of it, when was it he’d floated face up in the Nodaway River, pretending the cool water laced with hog shit runoff would carry him all the way south to New Orleans? He regretted (God damn it to hell!) that he’d never even seen the Big Easy. He and the Roadmaster needed to plan a trip south, soon, before his knees gave way, and he bulged out of his seersucker suit forever. Considering all the woes down South, his bibles would surely sell like hotcakes, and anyway, he’d […]
Jun 16th, 2009 by Stella Cretek
The Bluebird of Happiness
Stella pens the ultimate poison letter to the love of her life. But does she really mean goodbye this time?
Jun 3rd, 2009 by Stella Cretek
What’s In Your Yard? Part 3: Resting Buns in the Sun
In part two of “What’s In Your Yard?” I included uber-artist Jeff Koons (who once was a guard at Chicago’s Art Institute) and an image of his much-praised “Balloon Dog.” It costs way more (millions more) than a concrete doggie from a garden center, but is it more fun because it’s bigger and heavily hyped by the powers that guide specific artists to stardom? Is it any secret that Koons has an entire staff just to pump his name?
May 27th, 2009 by Stella Cretek
What’s In Your Yard?
Anyway, all of this set me wondering: is a modest pink flamingo less or more interesting than one of the gigantic art sculptures visible along N. Lakeshore Drive? You know … the ones that shout “Look! I’m art!” I can envision a gigantic gnome in a conical hat standing near Wisconsin Ave., can’t you? If you go to Burns Park on Prospect Avenue, there is a Beverly Pepper sculpture some claim resembles a giant spade.
May 20th, 2009 by Stella Cretek
Flamingo Flap
Stella's been up all night wondering why we can't stop decorating our lawns with weird junk. Flamingos are one thing, but the Virgin Mary in a bathtub?
May 18th, 2009 by Stella Cretek
A fairytale of jelly and betrayal
My name is Henry O. Lundstrom, and I regret to say I’m spending my last moments on earth upside down in a big batch of dough.
May 6th, 2009 by Stella Cretek
Fluff Me, Stuff Me
Stella takes on Whoopie Pies, Fluffernutter sandwiches and urban chickens.
Apr 29th, 2009 by Stella Cretek
Around town with Bones – 4/22/09
Don't miss it: Michelle Grabner’s show wraps up soon at Green Gallery East. It’s entitled “Black Circle Paintings: Metalpoint Drawings and Monoprints”, and is a collaborative piece twixt Ms.Grabner and spouse Brad Killam.
Apr 22nd, 2009 by Stella Cretek
Gallery Night & Day April 2009
There’s no pulling punches when Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy writes his weekly “Murphy’s Law” column. A recent one gave a full and lucid explanation about the Janet Zweig saga, i.e., how ideas for that particular public sculpture evolved and where (more or less) the project is going, if anywhere. I laugh when writers “take ownership” of what they deem to be hot stories, and laugh even more when readers are laboriously reminded that a particular writer developed (you read it here first folks!) a particular story. Murphy was correct when he compared much of today’s journalism with kudzu growing rampant. All surface and no depth, with windbags, bozos (Murphy’s word) and other folks who like to see their name in print checking in! And now, wow! A star is born, courtesy of the Haggerty Museum, which put the eccentric works of Peter Bardy on display in Current Tendencies, running through June 14. Eccentricity isn’t a bad thing. In fact, we have several locals who fit that mold: Bob Watt and Jimmy Von Milwaukee are two, but they’ve been stars for years. Bardy shot himself dead last summer, leaving behind a west side home filled with items he’d fashioned from scavenged stuff, and voilà! The formerly unknown is now known. Is the Haggerty making a run to roust the rather exclusive territory carved out by the Kohler Museum in Sheboygan, the realm of Outsider Art? (But don’t call it that, because actually Outsiders are more Insiders these days.) The curator of the Haggerty exhibit, Lynn Shumow, came to Milwaukee from the vaunted Kohler. Every curator loves a good back story, and Bardy’s is apparently hers. But does that make it “art?” Stella thinks that of more import is the possibility of the green ash borer decimating the green ash grove on the north side of the Haggerty Museum itself. It’s frightening to imagine, but a group of In:Site artists (including Mike Brenner) are preparing to present plans on temporary art for the Park East land, long vacant and more or less a cause for concern. This may be an even bigger boondoggle than the Zweig flap and the Lincoln Park sculpture madness, whose flames were fanned by Pegi Taylor, noted for nay-saying everything and everyone but herself. Shameless self-promotion: Stella has a feature story (“Fleecing”) in the current issue of INFO magazine, about how American taxpayers are getting shorn. It looks pretty cool alongside all those hot shots of babes and studs. The taxpayer is wearing a barrel. And as the grandkid of a major rancher of sheep, she’s an expert on the subject. John Riepenhoff and a host of other young artists and Milwaukee-based gallerists are in Cologne, Germany for an exhibition. Painter Peter Barrickman’s work, installed in a booth, made the trip packed in a big suitcase which Riepenhoff lugged along to its final destination. Meanwhile, Green Gallery East and West remain open for action. My personal pick for this weekender, Gallery Night and Day, is a small […]
Apr 16th, 2009 by Stella Cretek
