| WorkThere's a Cow in Manhattan Part 04 There's a Cow In ManhattanPart FourThere is no right way to enter Chicago. It has been said that driving into Chicago was the most pleasant, but it’s a horror going in along the Lake from Indiana, it’s panic driving in from the West side and no one goes into Chicago from the North, you must live there first. Everyone speaks of Cicero, which seems to be the West boundary of Chicago, and I’ve been on Cicero, it’s a street and it’s like all the others and certainly Chicago continues after Cicero. It always pleased me that Chicago had no East. It is the most Midwestern city that could be imagined because it has nothing to do with East and that is such a Midwestern delight. When I went to Chicago that Sunday, I didn’t know this, I thought New York and Chicago were made from the same thing, then cut into by a knife and some was put on Lake Michigan and some was piled on the island of Manhattan. I did not get off at the 63rd Street Station like I did when with Aunt Renie, I was told that I should go on to Dearborn Station and found that Dearborn Station is the end of the line, the trains go no farther in the world than Dearborn. The conductor told me I had to get off there because from there the trains go back. In order to go further north you have to go to Northwestern Train Station, which is somewhere else in Chicago.
Aunt Renie told me to check the time of how long it took to walk from the YMCA to the Art Institute. I checked into the Y and unpacked most of my things, put my new alarm clock into a paper bag and walked to the Art Institute, it took twenty minutes. I adjusted everything so that I would be in time for my Art History class. The next morning I took my "Art Through the Ages" book by Helen Gardner walked to the Art Institute in plenty of time, even had time to have a cup of coffee. While drinking coffee and sitting with three older women who looked friendly, I asked them if I could sit with them. I told them I was new and had no friends. They said I could sit with them, but didn’t talk to me, there was nothing to say. One finally asked if I was taking First Year History of Art, if so, I’ve missed half the lecture because it's nine-thirty now. I thought it was eight-thirty and no one had told me about Eastern Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time and I was in a complete new time, all alone, with no one to figure it out for me. It figured itself out as time can only do. It can allow one to know all about where he is if he only stays in one place long enough to know. I stayed at the YMCA until Christmas and learned about going to Art school. A special school is different from a University in that I didn’t go from building to building for different classes. The classes all lasted three hours, there were two classes a day. It didn’t matter which classroom one was in any longer. They all looked alike and they all were quiet and very dull. The new school activity about this school was you were able to get up and leave a class for a few minutes. You couldn’t necessarily stay away from the classroom, there was a tradition in which any art student could have forgotten some material which he needed. Art school is made up of material. We had no books, we didn’t need "Art Through the Ages" because Kathleen Blackshear helped write the latest edition and she was Miss Art Through the Ages. The student did not need to recite, he had no homework, all he had was material and three-hour classes to investigate and arrange that material, so the student could be in the school anywhere at any time looking for material.
My first class after Art History was life drawing and a huge woman climbed up on a large gray platform dressed in a quilt. She turned around rather quickly and let the quilt drop as she continued to set down. She was so fat that many valleys of flesh rolled and shook for moments after she had done her landing. The first year students were very quiet, some got white and looked sick, others, me included, broke out in a sweat because we didn’t know what to look at and certainly didn’t know what to draw. The lady who posed was the wife of one of the instructors and prided herself in throwing off robes to show her huge body especially to new students at their first class. After three classes a week of life drawing each lasting three hours, an art student can find out what to look at and what to draw. The difference between an artist trained at an academy and an untrained artist is that the untrained artist is conscious at all times of who is looking at his work. The academically trained artist doesn’t even find it necessary to be there when his work is looked at. This comes about because of his schooling. At Chicago every class lasted three hours. If you remained in class for three hours, finally you were never conscious of where you were, you were only involved with what you were doing. I do not mean what it looked like or what the thing you were working on was doing, but what you were doing, putting materials together; charcoal drawing cannot be seen, it cannot be kept, it is worthless, except to the artist who can spend hours and hours working with charcoal, scratching with it on paper, completely interested in the process. When he wakes up from this close inside communication he has no idea what he did when he looks at it. Other people must look at it for him or he will never know what he did. He’s not interested, he’s interested in doing it. Primitive artists are not interested in doing, they are interested in having done something and that is what an Art school does. I was an excellent student.
I met Shel Dorf a big Jewish boy who looked like an old man, but had a little bitty person inside him. However I needed him and didn’t know why until he asked me if I wanted to get a room out of the YMCA. I was very interested in moving out of the Y. People who live at YMCAs are only one kind. There are variations but basically they are one kind: they have nothing and arrange their lives to have nothing. All they want is their room at the Y. These people are commonly seen traveling on buses especially nowadays. They are equally pleased with their one possession of a seat, as they are with their room, but they cannot talk nor see nor walk and I couldn’t live among them anymore because I was not interested in living alone. Shel Dorf found a boarding house on the South Side in the University of Chicago Campus area. A place where every student should live at one time when in Chicago. I had to take the I.C. train which was very exciting because you are not really a Chicago local until you have need for the I.C. The elevated is for people who don’t know where they are except for where the elevated leaves them off. The I.C. people know all about different sections of Chicago and read better books and magazines. The steady elevated passengers don’t even know about the I.C. at all. The boarding house was on Blackstone Avenue. Here the world of Chicago was shady and dark. I think moss grew on any side of a tree or house and didn't know about north side. Fred Rogers owned and ran the boarding house and besides Shel Dorf and me there was Wyn who was a middle-aged man and practiced castanets every evening. There was Hazel, a middle-aged woman who dyed her hair and ran a cleaner's which I passed on my way to the I.C. train going to school. It was very exciting knowing my first store keeper and even where she lived. I used to always wave at her when she was open. There was Earl who was about thirty. He looked like Marlon Brando and was just as dumb. He had a television set which he allowed Shel Dorf and me to watch on Sunday afternoons when “Omnibus” was on. He slurped his soup and cut up his spaghetti with a knife and didn’t know how to keep his knife from scraping the plate and squeaking. Shel Dorf was always deciding not to go to classes at the Art Institute. He said he knew how to draw but I kept saying the point is drawing not knowing how. Oh, I was really being a student. When Shel Dorf did draw he always drew Dick Tracy and he could draw Dick Tracy perfectly doing anything. He often lectured to me on the astounding compositions Chester Gould drew in his daily Dick Tracy cartoon which we read each morning at breakfast. Finally he went to the Chicago Tribune offices to have an interview with Chester Gould. He had no appointment and when the secretary said he should go back another time with an appointment, Shel Dorf took out a pen and drew a Dick Tracy then and there and told the secretary to give this to Mr. Gould. He spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with Chester Gould.
Fred Rogers had one dusty eye that I don’t think he could see out of. He smoked a pipe all the time and had a gray mustache and kept his front door locked. I asked him why he kept the door locked and he said, “Naturally.” Fred Rogers had been involved with bootlegging during prohibition and knew Al Capone and all the gangsters of that era. He said that New York City was frightening and dangerous, but Chicago was very safe. In New York City they will scare you and threaten you and make your life very miserable, while in Chicago you don’t have a worry if you are in the criminal business. The big boss would just kill you dead right away, so there was never any worry nor danger in Chicago during those times. When Al Capone rented three floors of the Blackstone Hotel for a week to give his sister a party on her marriage, Fred Rogers was there. Fred cooked all the meals and cleaned all the rooms and made a pleasant life for us boarders who didn’t want to be alone. Shel Dorf knew for sure that Fred Rogers was the model for Chester Gould’s character Mr. Crime, Dick Tracy’s favorite enemy and was actually frightened of Fred.
The most delightful time at Fred Rogers’ was when Dad came to visit me in Chicago. Fred said he could stay there because there was an extra room. I had never entertained Dad before and was very uninterested in trying. It was interesting and great fun plowing melons or painting the barn with Dad, but never interesting going anywhere with him. I didn’t really know how to act with him when we were away from the farm and always felt it was a mere waiting process. Shel Dorf and I went to the Dearborn Station to get him on Friday afternoon, which was my free period from school. Upon seeing Dad walk from the train to the gate I could see in his face that perhaps he wasn’t too interested in visiting with me. When he got closer I could see him more clearly and was suddenly joyful to have him get off that train and walk up to me and be in Chicago. He was short and thick with a very long torso but short legs. His big face was tired and his eyes were dusty and not clear and looked to me they had seen lots of sorrow. Shel found him very warm and friendly and he was delighted with the I.C. train and saw how proud I was being able to show him my Chicago. Fred Rogers saw Dad and immediately knew all about him. I didn’t expect Dad to understand Fred’s Chicago way of talking, but there was no difficulty. That night after supper, Fred invited Dad and me into his living room where I had never been before. It was a large dark room but this night all the lights were lit. They were heavy floor lamps with huge dome-shaped shades that made light only on the floor and on chairs. We sat there for hours and talked of bootlegging and Dad and Fred found that they knew some of the same people from those days because Fred’s territory of picking up bootleg whiskey had gone all the way down to southern Indiana. Dad was in top form and when they both had gossip about the Indiana Johnsons I knew this visit was a delight for Dad. We went to the Art Museum, to the Museum of Science and Industry but spent a great deal of time walking all around Chicago just seeing how the sky and earth met there. I hadn’t known how special this man was and he was my father too. Saturday night Fred had more stories. He told of Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck both being hoofers and strippers at Minsky’s in the early days, as he put it. He supplied them all with liquor. He knew Jean Harlow’s past. Her mother once lived on Blackstone Avenue and was involved with a popular prostitution chain. Her daughter had entered a contest to become a movie star and mother cornered the politicians and influential men who were her customers and made them promise to give her daughter the Hollywood prize or she would blow her guts and reveal all the dirt about her customers. Jean Harlow won the Hollywood contest.
Seeing my Dad so clearly made it possible to see Indiana and the farm where I had gone to Chicago from. The farther away I was the more acreage I could see. It was riding on a plane and looking down. I had never been able to realize what a little life I had left. We were surrounded by a family named Ellerman. The main Ellerman farm was across the road from our farmhouse. Our lane continued on to two more houses where more Ellermans lived. Eventually the farm that was on the other end of our farm was purchased by another Ellerman.They were so everyday during my childhood I had never bothered to think of them until I moved to Chicago. Otto Ellerman was the grand old man. He had two brothers that I knew of Enos and Herman. Enos lived a bit farther away, you had to skip Aunt Hootie’s farm to get to Enos, but Herman and Otto touched our farm. Otto had Herb, Don, Arnold, and June, plus his wife Bertha and their daughter Harriett. This family was very similar to ours except they were Lutheran. Herman had Hiney, Earl, Royce, his wife Mame and their daughter, Selma. I always told Selma, my sister, that she was named after Selma Ellerman who was crazy. I wish it were possible to explain that the words “Selma Ellerman” meant despair, stupidity, and hopelessness. Herman Ellerman’s whole family meant these things. The one name Ellerman meant Otto and Enos and that was fine, but when Herman or any of his family were connected with Ellerman, everyone knew it was a weird situation. They were actually hillbillies, and how they got to be this way no one knew. They could not make a living by farming although their farm was as large and as fertile as the brothers'. The Herman Ellermans were losers and there was no other way to consider it. Aunt Hootie went to visit Herman and Mame once to give them some meat. We always gave them meat after we butchered. Aunt Hootie had to use their toilet, which we called privy when it was out of doors. She discovered that Mame had dumped a great deal of bread dough down in the privy and it was rising. She told Mame and Mame told her she did not know what to do with all that dough. She had seen Aunt Hootie coming and threw away the dough because she didn’t want her to know she had to bake bread. Once Dad gave Herman and Mame a calf. It was a runt calf which we could not sell for any profit, he thought Herman would jump to the idea of butchering the calf, so they could have meat for the winter. When he went to visit there about a month later, the calf was still alive, tied to a tree where there was a bucket of milk for it. The calf was very skinny and Dad asked why it was so thin. Herman said it would not eat nor drink very much. Dad told Herman that he didn’t give him the calf to raise, but to butcher. It’s more expensive having it drink all that milk. Herman said it was not milk in that bucket, it was flour and water, how could a calf know the difference. Mame and Herman's oldest son was Hiney and he married Carrie and they had Loretta, Frances, and little Henry. One Saturday morning Hiney's house caught fire. He had built a little house next to Herman and Mame. Dad and Uncle Can ran to help. as soon as they could. Hiney had got burned very badly and died the next day. Herman found his fingernail that dropped from his thumb while he was being driven to the hospital. He carried it all the time and showed it to me a lot. Carrie didn’t know what to do, so that Spring she married Royce, Hiney's brother. She said she didn’t want to move back to town.
Herman, Mame, Royce and Carrie, Selma and Earl all moved to town one day and another Ellerman took their farm. I began remembering all these things that made up the map where I come from because I was in Chicago now and could see all of the spaces I had lived in. Painting is like shucking corn more than any farm work I can think of. You are doing something that you must see to do and must be conscious of everything that is around you to touch. You walk in the middle of two rows of corn and shuck both rows, then pitch the clean ears into a wagon that has a bank board on the far side so it is easy not to miss. Painting is being in the middle of a canvas where you take care of all the things you are doing. The most similar part is not talking nor singing even if you’re shucking corn with someone. You are alert but by the time you are in the middle of a corn field you no longer are thinking of each ear of corn but go into a trance. It’s unnecessary to remember where your mind has been and you just shuck corn. Painting does the same thing and the act of painting puts your mind away and there you are nowhere, just painting. When you quit either shucking corn or painting you are always very happy. I went home a few times from Chicago and saw Aunt Renie and Dad in their house in town. Aunt Renie was tickled with all her town life and remembered how to live in town. She said it was an easy life and she loved it, compared to city life in Chicago, city life in Vincennes was a real joy. She knew how to do it so well it was so refreshing to see her. She went uptown every day just to look around. Dad always looked like he was visiting. Without his farm shoes he just looked restless. The first time I visited we went out to the farm. Thelma and Emmett were happy there. Aunt Renie and I looked at one another from the corners of our eyes whenever we saw how Thelma had rearranged everything. We thought our arrangement was classic and any new arrangement of any furniture was young and amateur. Kitty Loox came bounding from the corn crib towards me screeching with a delight. He was a part angora cat, coral colored that Dad found in the pickup once after having seen a baseball game. We never knew where he came from. He was four years old now and my great friend. He was the first cat allowed in the house and on my bed. Kitty Asshole had died one day while I was studying history and going to Vincennes University. She was about twelve. Aunt Hootie had a Bantam hen named Grenadine Etching who lived to be sixteen years old. Buck sent me a letter edged in black color crayon saying she fell from her roost dead. I made a sympathy card for him and Bill Updike, who was in Indianapolis, wired flowers. Kitty Loox died a week after I had visited the farm. Emmett said he just quit eating. I visited Aunt Hootie and Buck. Uncle Can had a heart attack or stoke and his right side was paralyzed and he couldn't walk and he could hardly talk. All he could say was God Damn and God’s Mercy. He never was very interested in anything else so I think he was very happy sitting around all day. It got so that each time I visited Aunt Hootie I took her a drawing of a fat nude because it bothered her so much. It thrilled me a great deal because Aunt Hootie is the only one at home in Indiana that has any reaction to my work as an artist. She could not understand why I drew all those naked women with big boobies, as she put it. She often became sad thinking about how sad those girls must be carrying all that weight, and how can they show their bodies to all you students. In Chicago those drawings were life drawings at Aunt Hootie’s they were fat naked women, and Aunt Hootie would put her hand to her mouth and cry with laughter at the whole thing. Once she told me that she didn’t like that Joan Wissing that I was running around with. She didn’t like that “exotic” name Joan, “everyone knows it’s Jo Ann. Where did they get Joan? Goodness, there’s Jo Ann Crawford, even Jo Ann of Arc. Now where did that kid get the name Joan?” Then she would wrinkle her nose in disapproval. When Aunt Hootie would go to bed and I would stay on visiting Buck, she would say good-by and tell me to be a good boy, “You’ve always been a good boy, I’m not really worried, but when some strange temptation comes to you, just say to yourself, ‘Would Aunt Hootie do that?’” I’ve got so interested in writing this I’ve decided not to go to dance class. There were other classes besides life drawing, there was basic drawing and painting and design. I still don’t understand design. Nobody understands it because it’s a limitation to begin with and has only to do with limitation. The new ideas that come flying into the world of design are only bubbles of limitation and they soon pop and slowly a new bubble growth begins. Within time the complete story of design is understood but it is necessary to take the course to know and then you turn around and find there is nothing that is interesting except things that are not interesting and that is what pure design is and you have to know this to continue on being an art student. Some students disliked the design course so much that by the end of the course they got to be so excited with that new identity of hating design that they set up their courses for the following years to major in flat-pattern design, which is like having dry bread served with dry bread and knowing somewhere there will be juice enough to take care. There is no point where a painting becomes a design or where a design becomes a painting because of the artist who does it. There are artists who are designers and artists who are painters and each does only what he does or he is not an artist. In drawing and painting I met Gertrude Kornfeld, the champion tennis player of Israel. She was a student, she was about forty years old, and had that refugee look of not knowing where she was anymore, which is a permanent look. Her glasses were always corroded with dust. In fact she looked like she had always arrived at class from having run from under a falling wall. She had buckteeth, but buckteeth is a feature that is learned. One is not born with buckteeth, they are pushed out after they become teeth in the same way the parents of the buck-toothed child have pushed their teeth out after they had teeth. Gertrude smiled all the time. She smiled until she drooled. She learned English smiling and knew it only that way. I saw her all alone once thinking Hebrew and she was not smiling and I knew that if she didn’t smile she could not think to speak English. Gertrude Kornfeld was the laughing stock of our class. She could not design nor paint and was so aggressive that when she put her pieces of color-test paper up to the paintings in the museum’s collection and the guard would go over and explain that she could not touch the painting (by this time she has slipped her little wet muddy test papers in between the painting and the frame) she could only scold the guard for being in the way of her seeing the painting, or only speak loudly because the guard had no right to touch her work. She had listening and talking all muddied together like her palette. She was a refugee.
The only artist I ever met was Edgar Rupprecht who taught me drawing and painting. He was European, Austrian or German, and taught because I was there. He told me that flesh was red. If I wanted to paint flesh another color I should know that it’s really red, then paint it a different color. Negroes are only another red. He saw to it that I drew still-life studies with charcoal until after Christmas. When I asked him if I could use color he said he was wondering if I would ever ask. So I said, "Oh, did the other students ask to work with color?" and he said that I was the only one who asked. Edgar Rupprecht wore a suit and a white shirt and a tie. All the other teachers wore ties, but they were ugly on purpose and they matched these ties with colored shirts which worked or didn’t work, and I always looked at them and thought they were very inventive even while they dressed. I thought Mr. Rupprecht didn’t know about strange ties and colored shirts, but then I came to realize he was the only one who did not get design mixed up with painting and he was a painter and not a designer. He knew color by weight: when yellow weighed more than red as if they were tested on a scale. He knew how to make each one light or heavy either by adding more volume or more intensity. He taught this to me in one year. Edgar Rupprecht and Hans Hofmann grew up together. Edgar Rupprecht died soon after my first year at the Art Institute. One day I was in design class and a girl came in from the school office and announced that George Deem was wanted on the telephone on a long distance call. It was Aunt Renie telling me I could not finish my school year unless I got a deferment. We agreed to write letters and do the proper procedure for a deferment and it worked and I finished the first year, went home to Vincennes and waited until August to go into the army. Whenever I go down the subway stairs to catch the subway train it closes its doors just when I am able to see it, or all I see is a green and cream haze of the train moving away. I do all sorts of variations to break the spell, but I can’t. One day I went so far as to go to the token booth, buy some tokens, walk back here to the loft, sit down, get up and leave again, to see if the train could have mixed up this strange habit that it had taken on to irritate me. Sure enough, I heard my train stop just as I bought the token and it was such relief to walk away not interested. I even thought passersby were looking at me strangely for not going through the turnstile after having bought the token. Surely it was going to work for me this time. So, I walked down the stairway trying not to think about the train leaving, even thinking how many more times I would have to do this crazy arrangement in order to break the spell, and when I got downstairs there was my train. I hadn’t heard it come in, I dove toward the door, but it knew all the time what I was doing and closed and left seconds before I could get on. I had the same conclusions about the mail. I love mail. I find it wonderful that it has been arranged by the world that once a month I get coupons and tiny trial specimens in the mail and they are addressed to G. Deem. I use the sample and save the coupons in a fluted vase in the kitchen area and spend them each time I can. Sometimes I get neatsy tidy and throw them away, but still love getting them. If I go downstairs after I know the mailman has been there and find no mail for me, I conclude that if I hadn’t gone at that time there would have been something, even a prayer card that someone slips into all mail boxes or any slot they can find pleases me. I’ve gone so far as not to look in the mailbox on Friday at all, to pass it and not even look at it and plan not to until Monday after mail delivery so that whatever is there could have been there Saturday Sunday and Monday, there is no mail delivery on Saturday here. The one time I did this, there was no mail anyway and it began being the same thing as what was happening with the subway. If I didn’t have a cat I’ll bet nothing would happen like this. I wonder if I should have Mary Alice O’Neal killed so I would be different. I’ve always been involved with cats, maybe that’s what’s different about me. I used to steal and found it very exciting. I was caught once in a grocery store in Chicago and they made me give them ten dollars. They asked me how long I had been stealing and I told them they should not believe me, if I stole I surely lied. I was brave and smart and guess I enjoyed it at the time. I put a hammer up my sleeve once in the dime store in Chicago. I never stole anything valuable, just things I needed. I decided light bulbs and toothpaste were things that should be given to me by the world. Now I forget when it was, but I was in a dime store and was going to steal a toy, a rubber duck because it felt so good and I was going to take it home and bite it. Without warning I forgot what it was in my system that thrilled me so when I stole something. The heartbeat was there, but the loss of breath and the unexpected swallow didn’t make the sensation of stealing that I enjoyed so much. It was like smoking, but this time I couldn’t remember how to get to the sensation. I didn’t take the duck I bought some silly putty instead and chewed it home and still can’t remember yet what it was in my feelings that I couldn’t get hold of. I don’t steal anymore and it has nothing to do with good it has only to do with not being exciting anymore.
Finally the dread of missing subways got to the same end. I was at Macy’s. I never had been to Macy’s before and went once during the Christmas shopping season. It was so interesting seeing how crazy the world is at Christmas at Macy’s but I finished watching and smelling the sample perfumes and got on the subway and came home. Lee Guilliatt asked me if I again missed my train as I got to it, and I didn’t remember. I always enjoyed going on the train with Lee because she made the trains come right on time. We both forgot about timing and trains and I don’t remember if I have trouble or not. I guess not. Once Lee owed me ten dollars and gave me a check for it. I took it to my bank on Broadway and Fulton and gave it to the cashier. He told me I would have to have it OK'ed by an official on the carpet. That was a delight. I always wanted to walk on that carpet and have some reason to do it. The official OK'ed it and said he didn’t understand why a ten-dollar check was to be OK'ed. Together we went back to the teller, a young plump man and the official said it was OK and he went away. The teller quickly counted out ten bills, but they were all tens. He read the check to be one hundred dollars instead of ten and I didn’t correct him and I walked away and left the bank with one hundred dollars in my pocket. I had the feeling that I got when I once stole and couldn’t even tell Lee because I thought she would expect the bank to take the hundred dollars from her account. I love to drink and once I was happy when I had discovered that I had been drunk each night for a week. I like to drink alone. In the winter I paint until ten or eleven at night, then I drink a beer and on an empty stomach, cigarettes and beer make me so excited and satisfied that I continue painting until midnight. After I eat something everything is cancelled and I quit. Drinking has to do with hunger in Manhattan and all over America. Being an alcoholic has to do with hunger. I have gone to bars around here and gotten drunk and come home and be drunk and enjoy it until I go to sleep. It is not interesting doing it in the day because it's so difficult to bridge the rest of the day because you know you can’t keep up the drunk delight very long. That is what makes it so exciting. That’s why cocktail parties. The danger is not knowing when you are no longer excited. This is all such a tiny part of living that makes alcoholism such a problem. Everyone who drinks knows this and wonders how alcoholics can actually make their lives out of it, and that is the way to become an alcoholic. Bluing doesn’t make clothes whiter, it makes clothes blue. Whiter than white is no longer white, but blue. White is nothing and blue is something. Black is everything. It is better to be hungry than full because everything works. Eating is the end and must be done at the end and that’s why one doesn’t like to eat and run. I like the idea of satisfying the inner man. Dad called it the inner man. The inner man tells you when you are hungry and you stop and satisfy the inner man. The inner man tells you when you feel sexy and you satisfy the inner man. The inner man talks to you when you drink alcoholic drinks very well and I like to talk to the inner man, but you and he get all mixed up when you mix the wants of the inner man all together and both the inner man and you don’t know what’s happening. When I went to church and communion I was always very pleased because I was hungry. When the Catholic Church said you didn’t need to fast anymore I started not going to communion anymore. I don’t understand why things that are hard to do are not being done anymore. You always feel so good after you’ve done something hard to do. Painting is so hard to do and I’m so pleased I can do that and feel good. It is hard to think about many numbers at once and I don’t do that and I should. I still count on my fingers when I add and subtract because it’s so hard for my mind to think about more than two numbers at once, when so many people can do it without an effort. I plan to do it without effort one day, but now when I start thinking about many numbers I always think about thinking about it and can only understand where I am thinking, not about the numbers. When I am able to speak another language I’ll also be able to think about many numbers at one time.
Every young man should go to the Army during his lifetime unless of course he has TB. All of my friends have had TB. Jim Zver had TB in the Army and that makes it very difficult for the Army and Jim Zver. Tom Johnson had TB, but he didn’t go to the Army anyway. Ronald Vance had TB and couldn’t go to the Army. Al Ryne had TB and I don’t know him well enough to know about his being in the Army at all, Lynwood McTeer had TB after he was out of the Army, I met him in the Army. I have other friends who haven’t had TB and have had nothing to do with the Army, but the Army and TB do not understand one another. I was in the Army for two years and got to be who I am because of it. I would not have become who I am without the Army just like I would not be who I am without all the cats in my life. I’m glad I didn’t have Mary Alice O’Neal killed because of missing the subway, just like I am glad I am who I am because of the Army. I spent the summer before going to the Army at home in Vincennes. I had a place in the basement to paint, but most of the time I typed. Aunt Renie and I decided if I learned to type I could type in the Army. I hadn’t taken typing in High School from Miss Dick, just bookkeeping, so I rented a typewriter, borrowed Aunt Stell’s typing book (she taught herself to type, but she doesn’t type, but she can speak French) and did learn to type. It is so reasonable to type that I can’t understand how the typewriter was invented. It must have been in known long before it was invented. It has greatly to do with writing and already knowing about writing, which I don’t know about, so naturally I don’t understand inventing a typewriter. I’m writing this book in many little booklets because I don’t have a typewriter. I had one once, but I gave it to Aunt Renie and she types all her letters to me. The morning I left for the Army, Dad and Aunt Renie and I had breakfast in the little dinette in the house in Vincennes. One day while Aunt Renie was taking a nap, I painted the dinette and kitchen Wedgwood Blue and Aunt Renie hung fluffy see-through yellow tie-back curtains. It looked like what Bonnard must have thought. During breakfast no one said anything about my going to the Army. They talked about Mrs. Horsting, a ninety-year old lady who lived across the street and was naturally dying. I didn’t know my going to the Army made them so timid. They took it so seriously. They said good-bye as though I was going to work that morning on the farm. Now I know it was so hard for them because that was the only time they ever did a good-bye that way. Now I know they were saying good-bye and knew they would never see me again like they were seeing me then. They were right, the Army did make me the way I am now, even if it only made that strange good-bye.
I went to Fort Knox on an Army bus and in the barracks met a boy who had been there two weeks waiting for his orders to take basic training. He slept on top of his covers in his clothes all night because he didn’t want to get caught during an inspection with an unmade bed and himself out of uniform. I was there for two weeks and everything was that abstract. I learned how to drink black coffee because the cream tins were either empty or sour. I’m the only one I know who learned that in the Army. Everyone I knew who took cream in their coffee spent many hours of yelling, searching and waiting for some cream to come so they could drink their coffee. I decided that in the Army you do not ever do that kind of thing, you will either be left behind or get into more abstraction and lose the whole plot. There was always sugar, but the cream was never correct. I never used sugar in my coffee.
One day I was put into an airplane that had two propeller motors and was flown to Camp Pickett, Virginia, and began basic training. I had eight weeks of combat training and eight weeks of hospital corpsman training because of my eyes. I am so near-sighted I was almost rejected by the Army, but they thought of the medics and I was put in the medics and given a slip of paper to carry with me that said I should not carry a weapon on the front lines, nor drive any vehicle. It was quite alright with me. Basic training was rougher than picking watermelons in the rain. The men with me didn’t help me understand it in any way because they were like me. No one can tell you what the abstract life army life is, but you know it after basic training and you never forget it even if you remember it with loathing. It is the first time anything like this can happen to anybody, and the only time. There were men who bucked and they took it all with their usual bucking and they were alright. There were men who could not understand where they were and each day understood less because they kept trying to understand. One of them went crazy right before my eyes because his bed was across the room from mine. He got up one morning and just stood there in his underwear. He had done this before, but not like that morning. We tried to make him move but you could see he couldn’t, he was somewhere else trying to understand. We all left the barracks and he remained standing and I saw he was not there in his face. Selma said it was a catatonic stupor. No one saw him again. The other one who was having so much trouble somehow made it through and when basic training was finished I saw him on a bus riding home for his leave and knowing all about basic training.
One little Italian boy named Di Biase taught me how to breathe and hold my hips firm and do basic ballet steps. He was all interested in physical therapy and went to a hospital to teach after the first eight weeks. Lots of men went away after the first eight weeks because they had special training from their civilian life. This left me with conscientious objectors and men who had no reason to be in the medics unless they had bad eyes or something not quite right. By this time I had made friends with everyone. It took a great deal of time worry and disgust, but it made me not worry about the Army. The last night of basic training, right before lights out, one man said, “Why don’t you dance, Deem?” I had been to Richmond, Virginia, and saw my first ballet. Alicia Markova and Frederic Franklin had toured there. Among other ballets they did “Sylphides” and “Streetcar Named Desire.” I had gone and had talked about it a great deal, even though John Di Biase had already been transferred. Well, I danced around the rifle racks and did my split, like in the days I was Carmen Miranda at High School. I held my hips right, knew extensions and made it all work as much as I knew how, and everyone appreciated it and I felt so pleased that we could be just as abstract as the Army. I see I’ve always danced. Once I put slats in my gym shoes and did some pointe work for Dad who thought it was rather good, but made me take the slats out if I was going to milk. Aunt Renie used to yell at me to get out of the driveway with all those blankets because Cy and the boys were driving up the lane and I would certainly look funny flitting around in those blankets. After Herman Ellerman’s family moved away from the upper part of our lane the other Ellerman who moved there was Arnold and his wife. Her name was Lucille and when we bought a cow from her father we named it Lucille. Lucille had had a baby and Betty Marie Neal was staying there helping until Lucille got strong enough to do the housework alone. This was when I was in High School, when I was riding on the bus with Betty Marie each day, but it was during the summer and Betty Marie told me about it the next school year. She stayed at Lucille Ellerman’s for a week and one day at one o’clock in the afternoon Lucille said it’s time for the show, look out of the window and watch for that Deem boy, he’ll give you a show. Betty Marie looked and saw me leap out the back door, my leaps were good even then, and off I ran down the lane to get the mail. “He does his dancing every day at this time and I always watch,” she told Betty Marie. I got to be squat-jump champion of our Company during basic training, but I wasn’t allowed to take my boots off or I would have been able to do more.
Merle Diggs was the best soldier in basic training. He had a head that was very long from the side and very thin from the front. He was Negro and there is a certain type of Negro who has this shape to his head. Sammy Davis, Jr., for one. Merle had a good face, a beautiful, sculpted nose, and an exquisite complexion. He was from Baltimore and knew how to talk that strange Negro language that all Negroes know. He was always sharply dressed and his shoes so extremely well shined, I did favors for him and he would shine my boots. Finally everyone had Diggs shining their boots during our G.I. parties, which is the frightening job of cleaning the barracks. Diggs ran around to each of the barracks in the battalion and stole their brooms and mops, so our barracks would have enough to clean quickly. He knew all about public articles. He kept his own toilet paper because he knew, like I knew about cream in coffee. When we had our Saturday morning inspection, while the inspecting officer was upstairs Diggs calmly walked to the closest door and without anyone noticing, he would walk out on the porch, then leave the area. When the inspecting officer would ask where the missing man was, naturally the sergeant in charge had to say some kind of special duty or K.P., so Merle Diggs never stood inspection, never was noticed and was always the sharpest soldier.
When I first moved to the YMCA in Chicago there was an amateur contest and I auditioned and got into it. I sang “Birth of the Blues” and danced a made-up tap dance that kept time to the music. I didn’t tell any of the students at the Art Institute. It was quite an amateur evening altogether, but I had just got to Chicago and thought perhaps a talent scout was staying at the YMCA.
Richie Grant was another boy I met in basic training. He had a long neck and looked to be average in height, but as you saw him walk closer he got shorter and shorter and when he got close he was terribly short. Richie wanted to be a brain surgeon and had some schooling in medical training, enough to be shipped away after the first eight weeks. I believe he was eighteen at the time and I was twenty. He had false teeth, both sets and was delicate. He was always fainting during some activity. I could never understand fainting especially when he would faint during a lecture as well as during some five-mile march. He made me feel different than I had felt before because I had never become a friend of a person who was younger than me and it made it so new for me for he acted older than me, partly because he was short and partly because he pushed himself forward so well. He went to the commanding officer one Saturday and demanded that I get a weekend pass. I had failed an inspection because I had not shaved that morning. The commanding officer was a tough-enough well-trained lieutenant who was fair about giving passes, but Richie told him that I was one of the trainees who had been left out in the field of training after everyone had been taken in by truck. It was some situation where I and five others had to clean up the rifle range and we had been left, but an ambulance picked us up an hour later and when I did get back to the barracks there was no hot water. I didn’t really care, it was Saturday and I could sleep and drink milkshakes at the PX on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Richie wanted to go to Richmond and wanted me to go with him. It was a surprise when the commanding officer gave me the pass and Richie had done it. He and I talked for hours. He told me all about the brain all the time. He told me about a mentality that could be trained until the mind could do things like make a pencil roll on a table just because the mind could concentrate and give off that much power. He also told me about how he studied bel canto, a singing technique until his sides would bulge out because of the amount of air he could breathe into his lower rib cage. I think Richie lied there, he lied a bit to me because he was short and I was older than him and no matter how many wonderful stories he had, I was still older and taller than him. I had some stories, but they were not as good as his. I liked the way I felt when I was with Richie Grant. He was from Spokane, Washington. He’s the one who telephoned here at the loft one day and Lee Guilliatt answered and explained I wasn't here and the voice asked if Lee was Mrs. Deem. The best part about knowing Richie was the laughing. We began doing variations on anything that came our way and discovered we had the same tickle inside. It’s not funny now, but then it caused hours of continual laughter until the other men around would yell for us to just shut up. We couldn’t and continued our frenzy until we were exhausted. It certainly was hysteria, and my it was enjoyable.
During the eight weeks of basic we were to have a bivouac, a week in the field, when we slept in tents and did maneuvers. The company was restricted to the camp from Thursday until Monday. We could go all over the camp but not into any neighboring towns. Richie was furious because Christmas was in one of those days, and he suggested we go to Washington D.C. for Christmas. We could only go without a pass and that meant AWOL. It was very exciting to be a real tough soldier going AWOL; the penalty being sometimes the stockade, but at the least basic training had to be started all over again. We went to Washington D.C. A.W.O.L. I saw the National Gallery there and on the first floor was a collection of drawings which I got so interested in that the museum was closing by the time I got upstairs to the painting collection. It was two more visits before I found Woman in a Red Hat by Vermeer. We got a hotel and drank pink champagne that Christmas Eve and laughed. It was my first champagne and first visit to Washington D.C. It was like the big military post in the sky. It was such a surprise finding there was no trouble getting back into Camp Pickett that Sunday night. The next morning we were ready for bivouac and no one knew my AWOL experience. At the foot of my bed there was a bushel of apples from Dad for Christmas. It said, Merry Christmas to Company "A." At first it was tough going on the second eight-week stint of basic training without Richie Grant or John Di Biase. John’s bed was a few down from mine. Richie was in Company "B," and I only saw him when we were free. Ernie Debardeleben slept below me and I disliked him so much and he loathed me. During one of my laughing sessions with Richie Grant, Ernie Debardeleben and his buddies walked over, picked up Richie and carried him out high over their heads and threw him out the door. Ernie had only swear words in his vocabulary and he and his friend Kline would sit on my footlocker and tell dirty jokes and watch my face. It was all very depressing until the schooled men were sent away and the unexperienced ones were left behind for training in Hospital Care and Treatment. Everyone called it H.C. and T. Somehow the frenzy faded and it was not so difficult to get along with Debardeleben and finally we got friendly until he decided to tell me about remarrying the girl he divorced, he was nineteen. I told him I appreciated how we had come to be on speaking terms and how we quit fighting one another, but I’m not going to go so far as to give him advice on his married life. Carrying stretchers through clouds of tear gas got to be easy when we saw how few weeks we had left in basic. Everyone began to worry about assignments. Korea was the dreaded spot to go to, so when I was asked where I wanted to go, I put down Germany or Austria. Somehow we were issued a choice: Korea, Japan, France, Austria or Germany. Debardeleben asked me where Austria was. I told him I didn’t know, but I was sure it was not near Japan or Korea. Our orders came and I was to be shipped to Germany after a 21-day leave. I took a train from Richmond, Virginia, to Vincennes but changed trains at Cincinnati. Bud Otts played a lot of poker in the Army. During training there was never time to do anything but run and sleep, but now there was time to play poker on the train. I had never learned to play cards. Selma has spent hours trying to teach me to play euchre, but I never found that kind of abstract game possible to learn. I only play 500 rum with Aunt Hootie because she always wins and laughs at my expression while I’m looking at and translating the meaning of my cards. It was a good idea to learn to play penny poker on the train so I could at least tell Dad I was doing some army-like things. I never played baseball and still cannot throw a ball. Once Dad and Emmett decided to teach me to play catch and I was given a glove and we started our lesson. I saw it was interesting to catch a ball in a glove, especially if it was thrown with a great deal of force, but I couldn’t understand why one stood around repeating it again and again let alone being in a ball game hoping a ball would come to you at some force so it would be fun to catch it. Dad asked me if I enjoyed catching the ball and was very excited about throwing it and catching it with Emmett and me. After a while I told them they could go on doing that if it was so exciting to them, but I was not excited anymore. They had been doing it for me and they had to continue after I had left the pasture because they were so insistent about how much fun it was. At Vincennes University the course in athletics was required and I enjoyed the beginning part where we learned all about swimming. After a while the teacher no longer showed up, but attendance was still taken and we ended up playing basketball which I never found interesting in any way. At least there is a sensation in catching a baseball but nothing happens inside or outside when you throw a basketball through the hoop. It is just as interesting to me not to throw a basketball through a hoop. I went to the office and announced that I had discontinued the gym course. I was told that it was required in order to graduate, but I just told them I would not graduate and they never said anything more. It is all just like asking Mr. Rupprecht when I could use color in Basic Painting. When he said “I thought you would never ask” he was saying that finally I had taken it on myself to do something. A student finally must tell himself that he needs no longer to be bothered with gym class and the school knows that he has become an adult. There are some who find it interesting to catch that ball again and again, or they continue putting the basketball through the hoop and the world goes on by and they never know where they are in it.
I didn’t feel this way when I threw my first and only grenade however. I wished I had learned to throw because my grenade bounced down a slope in front of me as if it had been dropped from a carriage by mistake by a baby. If there had not been a huge concrete block wall built for me and my trainer to lie behind we would have been destroyed. I thought all these baseball and basketball thoughts while I was being taught to play poker and one man told me I would never learn to play the game and they could get along better without me. I had no poker story to tell Dad, but I saw the landscape of West Virginia which I will never forget because of its crude and innocent beauty, and finished "From Here to Eternity." After changing trains in Cincinnati there were no more soldiers in uniform and as I got closer to Vincennes I began to feel I was in costume and whoever saw me didn’t believe I had been through sixteen weeks of basic training and knew how to fire an M-1 rifle or crawl on my belly under machine-gun fire. They didn’t know I had given myself an injection of distilled water as part of Hospital Care and Treatment training. The train got to Vincennes at four o’clock in the morning. Codgie McCoy owns the only taxicab in Vincennes. He is related to the Deems, I believe, in some illegitimate way. Each year he would bring his girl friend out to our farm during melon season and buy some melons. It was a very strange occurrence to see a taxicab driving up our lane. It is fifty cents in Codgie’s cab to go anywhere in Vincennes. I didn’t feel like telling him I was George Deem, George Deem’s son, so had him drop me at Vigo and Fifth Streets. All this time I was lugging a duffle bag. The army has a well thought-out system in everything but luggage. Of course it’s easy to see how hundreds of duffle bags can be dropped from the net of a loading crane into a baggage car on a train or into the hold of a ship, but the one thing that is not possible at the real close-up is the carrying of a duffle bag. Even if you get it on your shoulder you can’t go anywhere because you can’t see. However it seems to be my private concern because all soldiers move everywhere and never lose their duffle bags. Somehow I could see the front door of the house and knocked. Within minutes there was Dad in his underwear. He let me in and I never saw him so smiling and so overjoyed. We didn’t have time for anything but talk. We talked and laughed in a whisper until six when Aunt Renie waddled out of her room exclaiming that there was too much noise.
I enjoyed my 21-day leave because of Dad’s great spirits. He wasn’t doing much work. During the summer he had worked with Emmett on the farm, now he and Uncle Cy were just loafing as was common for farmers during the winter. I spent most of my time with him. We went to movies and often to Bailey’s, which was known as Barnum Bailey's, a beer hall and drank beer and talked. He was so tickled that I was a soldier and was even excited at my going to Germany. One day Aunt Renie said that she thought I looked like I was ready to go back to the Army. She had observed I was restless and not the old calm Gus I once was. It indeed was hard being around the house when Dad was at work all day and everyone I knew was working. She was right, I couldn’t wait to go back to the Army where I knew where everything was. You can sleep all day on an army cot, even with slamming doors, radios, fights, and the sound of boots running on wood floors, then eat the evening meal and go back to bed and sleep more. At home I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t do anything but begin waiting for my leave to end.
It ended. Aunt Stell, Aunt Renie and Dad took me to the train station. Aunt Hootie and Buck were already there. Selma and her daughter Laura and her baby Sara were there too, and they were all looking like they were playing a World War II good-by. The train was going to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where I was to be put on a troop ship to sail to Germany. The train began to move, I had finished my waving and found a seat. The train decided to reverse itself for a while, like all trains like to do. Everyone who had said their noisy good-by were walking back to their cars and had no thought of the train which they had just been so interested in, which was passing them again slowly in reverse. I saw Buck and Aunt Hootie first. He had his arm around her neck and they were talking calmly in the same way I had seen them do many times, they were just returning to their daily lives. Selma had already gone. She had to get to the hospital to go to work. Then there was Dad and Aunt Stell walking toward the car, but where was Aunt Renie? Then I saw her. She saw the train had backed up and she was walking with it, thinking the car I was in was much farther up the track. I had seldom seen Aunt Renie crying, the main memory was when I was wanting to go to the monastery. Now I was older, I could see more and I could see Aunt Renie had said good-by to her Gus and really knew she would never have me around anymore. It frightened me so much that when I got to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, I slept for three weeks, night and day. Oh I got up to eat, but I knew enough about army life so that I had nothing to do and I was depressed and homesick in the most hopeless and lost way because I knew too that I had said Good-by to Aunt Renie. Some people can think around corners, they don’t learn it, they know it from birth. I don’t know if anyone can see around corners, but thinking around corners is something like that. Bill Updike can think around corners so well that it surely frightens him. He is mathematical, most people who are mathematical are merely this way because they can think around corners. I can’t at all. I can’t think of how to get into the position with my mind. Boyd Clopton thinks around corners all the time and he knows it and seldom is interested in doing anything else. I expect he has even met himself this way. He thought his hair straight once, and when it was straight and he was satisfied he forgot to keep up the thinking and it became curly again and he doesn’t mind, but he said now that he knows how it’s really such an effort. If I ever learned to think around corners I would figure how to go into the subway by backing through those strange gates that look like grills that move only in one direction. I'm sure there is a way to think through those gates and go in instead of going out. Boyd Clopton lives in Hollywood, California. When Debbie Lee and I go on a subway we often go to those stations that have only those blind turnstiles that you must put a token in, then push a trip and push very hard hoping it goes. We do that and get in the one section together. People stare at us, but I’m surprised they do because that is what it’s for. I do love subways and always read the most difficult reading on a subway. I’ve gone as far as the train goes in Brooklyn reading Proust, then cross over and come back. I’ve never done it going uptown because I don’t know anything about Queens or The Bronx and I have a suspicion that you can’t cross over, you must pay another fare. It’s not very interesting anyway when a subway goes out of ground like they do finally uptown. In Chicago that’s interesting, but that’s what you are promised.
Picasso can think around corners, but that is not cubism. Picasso thinks around corners when he does sculpture, but that is not cubism. Thinking around corners is mathematical, Picasso’s sculpture is mathematical, but his paintings are cubist. Thinking cubist has to do with thinking transparently, that is thinking through an object, but most people think thinking through an object makes you get on the other side, but that is not it at all. Thinking through an object allows you to go behind each layer that the object is made of. If you think through a cardboard cube you must first think into it, know how you are thinking into it, then think again of what you went through to get in, only in reverse, then you have gone through it, but this does not mean that you can know what is on the other side of the cardboard cube, it only means that you know how it is to get there and that is cubism. Everyone knows how to do that, and they do it all the time now. It happens when you go to a theater that you have never been before. You know where to go, you don’t walk into private rooms and never into hallways that lead nowhere, you always go into the room where the stage is. This is possible because everyone knows what’s on the other side of the layers of walls that they pass by. It’s the glass walls that one can actually see through that mixes one up because we are prepared for solids not transparents. Glass walls are not interesting because there is too much one must do to get by them. This is why cubism is in painting of course, it can’t be in sculpture because it is there and you know the other side mathematically. I wonder if environmental sculpture is cubist. If it is, that’s why it isn’t interesting. It isn’t interesting because you can find your way to the other side of whatever it is physically. In a cubist painting you find your way to the other side mentally and that is why it is so interesting, looking at art, not being in art. Most stairways have seventeen steps. My stairway here has twenty-one steps going to each floor because the ceilings are so high. I usually walk two stair steps at a time to keep from counting the steps. Selma once had a habit of counting her upper teeth with her tongue. One could see her sitting and reading with her tongue moving under her upper lip, starting from the middle going one way, then returning to the middle and going the opposite way. I’ve only had habits of singing a song over and over again and the more I try, the more the song comes back. I try to work each day without building a fire in my fireplace until the end of the day. I’ve a little kerosene burner that looks like a large lantern that I keep in the studio and it helps a great deal. If it gets too bad I can always go to bed. Lee and Jean downstairs have found a cheap way to get gas heaters here into the loft. As soon as they are set up I’ll move my potbellied stove into the studio and that will make it so much more professional looking, although I don’t trust my ability to keep the fire going.
When Lee was living here with me she told me she invited her friend Jean Rigg to come over and meet me and she did. The first thing Jean said to me was, “What’s burning?” I had been interested in making candles and had my wax on the hot plate and it had begun boiling and splashing on the hot plate. Jean was only about twenty-one when I met her and I was surprised at how old she was inside. When I was twenty I looked out through my eyes very squarely, if I had been full of water my eyes would have balanced the surface of the water so exactly that if I had leaned forward the water could pour out. I was that young at twenty-one. Jean Rigg was old enough that she kept her head up and slightly back so that if she were full of water it would never have been seen. She talked with such sense and about such topical subjects. When the two of us got to know one another better I was able to let her know how I talked and she was the first new person I met who listened to the way I talked, who could understand it and talk it too when it was necessary to be clear. Jean Rigg sees around corners. Seeing around corners is religious and Jean Rigg is religious. Seeing around corners is political too. Of course politics is religious because if you are political you believe in God. I don’t believe in God in a religious way, certainly not in a political way. I’ve never voted nor registered to vote because I don’t believe in God in that way. Jean Rigg votes. She reads the New York Times from cover to cover and finds the most fascinating things. I’ve pretended to read the paper like her and look in all the all-print pages for any little blocked-out piece and read them, but they are about how high the East River has risen or something not interesting. Then I give her the paper and tell her there is nothing in it. After a few days and without any effort, I often hear her describing some subject I’ve tried to find information about and she’s read it in the New York Times. Jean Rigg speaks in paragraphs. She spoke in paragraphs at twenty-one and that’s how old she was at twenty-one. One day we were all taken to the Boat Yards in New Jersey and put on the U.S.S. Patton and the next day started our sailing to Europe, to Bremerhaven. When the rumor got round that there was a chaplain’s assistant needed I volunteered for the position, got it, and spent the voyage quite alone reading in a little room where I made appointments for soldiers to talk to the chaplain. No one made appointments, so I closed the door when I wanted and read.
I served mass whenever the chaplain needed me, it was mostly every day, but when it was time for me to feel I was doing myself proud by going to mass almost each morning something else happened. The chaplain was a dusty and personality-less middle-aged man. He was serving his time and that is all. The whole idea of religion in the Army is artificial and becomes a strange dull and uncomfortable hideaway that takes care of nothing. It reminded me of a world all run by musicians, in which there is no interest in seeing, just doing. Musicians are this way, they look, talk and move this way. You can tell a musician by his tie. Now the strangest category of musicians are organists. I know an organist who has a private house and though it is comfortable, there is no appreciation of furniture or color or space. In the main room, attached to the main wall is a huge organ. This organ stops any possibility of anyone doing anything in that house, except the organist. While I was busy being a chaplain’s assistant someone asked me if I were an organist, and I saw to it I would never take up such a job if I had the chance later in the army. Chaplains and their assistants all look like organists even in combat gear. When I could, I would close my office door and dance the cancan. The only treat I had during my three weeks at Camp Kilmer was a chance to wake up and go on a weekend pass to Manhattan. I got away from the other soldiers and walked around the Broadway area and bought a ticket for eight dollars to see Gwen Verdon in “Can-Can.” It wasn’t a very good show, but I knew how to see shows by then and knew the show was all about Gwen Verdon and she couldn’t let me down. I could do a rond de jambe with my right leg, but it was tough with the left leg. A troop ship going anywhere is an awful experience. Most everyone tried to pretend they could stand by the rail and contemplate eternity, because that’s what everyone has always done while crossing the ocean on a boat, but it’s impossible on a troop ship. We got so we just stood in groups waiting and not even talking. At Bremerhaven we were ushered onto trains and didn’t really touch ground until the next day, then we were at Bremen where interviews began right away. The man who interviewed me told me there were no M.O.S. numbers available for any hospital work, that all this shipment of medics would be sent to combat training areas. I don’t know what the letters M.O.S. mean but it is a series of numbers that code anyone’s job category. I told this man that I was not looking forward to running around pitching hospital tents and pushing pills to combat trainees. Aren’t there any other openings. He was patient and looked through my papers. I told him I could type, but I didn’t tell him that when I took the typing test the sergeant in charge waved me through, told me I looked like I could type and since the time was running out he marked me down as having passed the test. The man interviewing me asked where I lived while in Chicago. He smiled when I told him Blackstone Avenue and asked if I had ever heard of Gertrude Kornfeld. That did it. As soon as I said the Tennis Champion of Israel he told me that if I knew Gertrude Kornfeld I had nothing to worry about as far as assignments were concerned. Within a week I had said good-by to the men whom I had trained with. Good-by Frank Kleindienst Good-by Phil Durst, Good-by Debardeleben, Good-by Larry Lezak, Good-by Tom Krauthamer, Good-by Merle Diggs. I stayed on at Bremen for a few more days, then my orders came. Three men were to go to Heidelberg, Germany, me and two Jewish boys, Marty Rothman and Herbert Hopf. Being assigned with these two men naturally brought us to being friends. We were so relieved to be out of basic training and a rather frantic delight developed among us. Marty was heavy and tended to be fat. He was married and talked only of his wife coming to join him. She finally did and I met her, she was the first yenta I had ever met. I didn’t know anything about the Jewish attitude, I didn’t even know how to act in front of a Jew. I had met Arlene Meyer in Chicago and we got along very well. One day she asked me what religious background I had. We were doing research for History of Art at the Field Museum. I told her I was Roman Catholic, and what was her religious background. She said Jewish, as if I had known. I then told her that I was supposed to react somehow but didn’t know how. This same thing came up when Marty Rothman got his wife to Heidelberg with him. He moved off base and I didn’t see him after a while. He finally divorced her and moved back to the barracks. I guess she came back to New York. Herb Hopf was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and spoke German naturally. We bought bicycles and began long bicycle trips. Marty joined us at times but Herb and I enjoyed it more when Marty wasn’t there. One day I was with Herb and Marty joined us. The two of them began talking very quickly about many things which I didn’t understand. This was usual, they both were from New York, Herb lived here since he was nine years old. I tried to join in their conversation and couldn’t and Marty said I couldn’t and they talked on and I realized they were talking their New York way about me and I was with them because they enjoyed me, but I was really very strange and funny. I had never thought I was in any way strange or funny in the dopey sense, but realized they really thought I was dopey. Herb and I continued our friendship, we got on very well without Marty and finally one day he told me he thought I was dopey once but now that he knew me, he thought I was very special. After we were out of the Army and I had just moved here to Manhattan I wrote to Herb. He invited me to his house in The Bronx to meet his wife and have dinner. I was an hour late and they had already eaten. Herb had become a thirty-year-old businessman, very thin, and when he talked, leaned over toward you, like a furniture salesman. His wife was straggly and had a huge hairy mole on her cheek. They were so uninteresting, I couldn’t understand how I knew him once, but that is the Army’s abstract ways. My room was in Patton Barracks in a former German Army Officers Kaserne. It was very comfortable, even with three roommates. We had a small PX, a service club, a movie theater and a nightclub called Patton Lounge where Beck Beer was fifteen cents. Richard Smith was my favorite roommate because he was clever and had a quiet timidity about him. He had false teeth, both sets, just like Richie Grant. Jim Martin was a heavy, a thirty-year man and a sergeant. He slept most of the time and got drunk each weekend. He had a secret hole in the fence where he slipped in and out after hours. He never took his pass when he went out. I don’t know how he got out, I looked for the hole, but there just wasn’t any. Mike Morandi was the other roommate. He had no chin and was from New Jersey. He wouldn’t hurt you, but he was uncomfortable to be with. He drove a car for a General and one day I saw him in his car waiting for his General and understood so much more about him. There was no KP or any duties after work hours. I worked at the Provost Marshal Division in another Kaserne called Campbell Barracks where no one lived, but where all the offices of United States Headquarters of Europe were. It was all called USEURA, and I was assigned as an M.P. I wore Military Police brass and was included in all their activities, but only worked in the Message Center routing all correspondence coming in and going out of the M.P. Division. It was a delightful assignment. I never had to type until very late during my stay and then it was my own ledger of outgoing correspondence. I played business efficiency for fourteen months and enjoyed it so much. Herb Hopf worked with me and on weekends he took me around Heidelberg. Because he spoke German he was treated like a German and learned everything about Heidelberg. There was a Jazz Cave, called Cave ’54 to which one paid to become a member. It was limited to students and G.I.s were not at all encouraged. Herb got me a membership and I spent all my free time there listening to bad jazz and being a European student. It got so I hardly saw any Americans on weekends. I was always in the Cave sketching everyone in my thick sketchbook, which I had made by a bookbinder. It was blue artificial leather and had DEEM printed on it in gold on the bound end only. I still have it and it is like a senior autograph book. My great friends were Reinhardt Goedecke and Dodo Novak. I considered marrying Dodo, but that was just an Army romance. There were many fellow soldiers whom I finally met. One evening I went to the service club and joined a contest called “Sing for Your Supper.” I sang “Row Row Row” and won. It was five dollars and it was so welcome because it was the week before pay day. After I won a soldier came up to me and told me I was very good, and we had coffee and started being friendly. I planned to go with him into Heidelberg to a bar he knew of that was across the river. I met him after Saturday inspection and he told me he got through inspection but was scared they were going to look through his footlocker. No one ever had their footlocker ready for inspection, that wasn’t so special. However, he asked me to look at his footlocker. It was in first-class shape, but then he picked up some piece of military clothing and under it was a blazing piece of bright red satin. He pulled it out and it was a red satin gown. He informed me that he was Elynda McKay and was entertaining that night at the bar across the river. In all my sheltered experiences I never dreamed of anything like this, but I went to the Hirschgasse Hotel where the bar was and watched Elynda McKay do a song and dance in the red satin gown. He danced to Rita Hayworth’s recording of “The Heat Is On” and was very convincing and extremely funny. That’s how I became friendly with Lynwood McTeer, his real name. I could never understand why he wanted to be called McKay if he already had Lynwood McTeer as a name, but he did and he was. Fr. Hilary visited me in Heidelberg. He was staying in Paris, writing a doctoral dissertation on Léon Bloy. I visited him there two times. He showed me Paris and told me much of its history, but I couldn’t understand all this about Europe. All I wanted was to walk around these famous cities and see what I was like in them. It was quite impossible to gain any identification in this situation. Hilary and I talked and walked all around Heidelberg and Paris, supposing where we would meet again, London or Indianapolis, Madrid or Terre Haute. When our visits were through, I always went to the Library and got out Art History books and pretended to read them so I would know a little bit about the styles of a city or the dates of a building, but it never worked, I’d continue walking around staring blindly at big old buildings and not know what I was supposed to know about any of them. I got a letter one day from Aunt Renie, by then Reinhardt Goedecke had helped me to find a room to rent not far from Patton barracks and I always spent my weekends there. It was a close and little room, with the German family who rented it to me living in the rest of the house. I planned to paint there but usually slept or wrote letters and read. Lots of times I saved my mail to read when I was alone in my room. I seldom talked about it to fellow soldiers because it was my German residence. Aunt Renie’s letter was very important. She asked me to consider returning to the farm after I was out of the Army. Dad was not at all happy living in Vincennes and I could do a lot if I returned there and began farming. I was terribly disturbed and didn’t know what to do. All I could do was write back to them telling them that it just wasn’t possible. I tried listing all sorts of reasons but they seemed so shallow. How could I prove to them what an artist I was going to be, how could I prove it to myself? My best idea was to write to Hilary. He has always backed me up. I don’t know what he said, but nothing followed suggesting my return to the farm. Even when I went home no reference was made to it again. I wonder where I would be without Fr. Hilary. He saw to it that I went to the Chicago Art Institute. He pulled me through basic training by writing such consoling letters, and he saw to it I stayed off the farm. Fr. Hilary once played the organ at St. Meinrad, but got too busy to carry it on. While in Europe I traveled as much as I could. Besides Paris, I took my first long leave by going to Italy. I took a train from Frankfurt to Venice and ate shrimp there. I liked Venice but swore that if I ever went back I'd be in love. Venice is for lovers. It did look like the Menafee that we had at home. I was so pleased at seeing the poles in the water that were used for tying up boats. They were painted spiral stripes in many different colors. I went with a friend I had met in the Army, Tom Carbol. We got along well enough, but I found my other leaves would be different, I would go alone. I didn’t see St. Mark’s in Venice because I didn’t know it existed. Everyone laughed when I returned to my office, but I never knew it was there and didn’t even know how to stumble into it. In Florence I kept looking for the Uffizi. Many people pointed to it, but I couldn’t imagine the entrance of the Uffizi could be the one it is, I kept walking past it. I did go into the building with the tower where the statue of David stands and thought it was the Uffizi but couldn’t find the Botticellis. Next, Rome, where I met my first bedbugs. I had read "Lafcadio’s Adventures" and expected them for some reason. Because we were American soldiers we got a special offer to go to Castel Gandolfo to see Pope Pius XII. We went, I don’t know why, and saw him with many Italian people all yelling “Papa! Papa!” St. Peter’s is just like Ryerson Library in the Art Museum in Chicago although much bigger. If you keep going through all the leather swinging doors you come upon Marilyn Fillis, a marvelous, big-eyed librarian I know who wears too much powder. No one knows what happens if you go through all those leather doors at St. Peter’s, but it is probably like the Emerald City in Oz, except it’s Marilyn Fillis at the other end. I went through the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel and saw the Forum and the Colosseum, then went on to Naples. In Naples a man asked me if I would like to go up on the hill with him. I didn’t know what to say, and he told me it was alright because he had a gun, and he showed me a pistol. I didn’t go with him though. After Naples, I insisted on going to Positano and was so glad I did. I understood everything at Positano. I spent the day and swam in the Mediterranean Sea. My other leave was alone, when I went to Amsterdam and London. I saw my first Vermeer in Amsterdam, and in London I saw Margot Fonteyn dance “Les Sylphides.” I took a tour in London but got off at the Tower of London because I couldn’t understand the guide. I finally found out that no one understands guides but seem to think it is the way. There is no difference in missing St. Mark’s in Venice than there is in taking a guided tour. After all my travels about Europe and England I decided the only way I would see any of this was by living there. I understood Vincennes, Decker, and a bit of Chicago. It wouldn’t be impossible to understand London or Paris or Rome one day, if I lived there. Ronald Vance is now in London and he asked me to go visit him. Of course I wont, but I wonder if I ever will. I had many friends by this time in the Army and in Heidelberg. Bill Moss was a Negro sergeant who led my platoon and he stuttered. Whenever McKay, Bill Moss, and I were together, no one could speak, we all stuttered and we all understood one another. Bill Moss and I became very close and he was able to teach me how to walk like a Negro and something about thinking like a Negro. When you are Negro, you always talk while other people are talking because it’s so interesting to hear yourself. Negroes all talk to themselves even when they are talking to other people. Once in a while Bill Moss, who told me to call him “Billy,” would begin snapping his fingers and look at the floor and start a poem. He would walk back and forth with his head up, snapping his fingers, which he snapped louder than anyone can imagine, and go on with a sing-song poem for at least ten minutes, and there was no stopping him. If you listened to it, it was a conversation with himself and every line rhymed. Bill Moss called me “The Witch.” He explained it stood for “The Wicked Witch of the Midwest,” which he couldn’t say because he stuttered. Then he and McKay began calling me “The Country Witch.” I do not know why they decided I was a witch but one day I walked up to McKay and he had decided to call me "The Cow,” he called me The Cow from then on, and that’s what happened to me in the Army. End of Part Four
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