Tale 27

Mother Waring's Apple Dumpling

as portrayed in The 50th Anniversary Program:
the earliest appearance of Fred Waring as entertainer[1]

The same deep-voiced contralto crooned a sweet, maternal, slow melodious waltz, a dreamy lullaby a cappella and sempre legato, smooth as glass:

Sail, ba-beey, saaaill,... Ou-tu-pon the seeeeeeea...,[2]

She was tracking the conductor’s hands to a T, like a faithful lover, true to the sleeping baby’s slow, inner silent waltz beat.

Betty Ann spoke to hubby Bill like a granny in a rocking chair daydreaming, neglecting her sock, rocking on a sea of memory. "Have you ever seen a picture,” she asked tenderly, “of his father… and mother?”

“Never together,” Bill answered.

The contralto’s voice rolled on like a slow boat, rocking very sweetly.

On-ly don’t for-get to saaail,…

She swooned, wavering near surfside:

Back, a-gain, to meeee....

Betty Ann drifted off. "Well each of 'em? Oh yeh, what was that –?" Amazed at some half-thought, she tracked it down at last: "Remember: at that dinner?!"

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh!" Bill seemed amazed too, though he couldn't remember it either.

It was Freddie Waring's mama and papa, reliving baby Freddie's first years.

"About the apple pancakes," said the mama. "Or what was it, apple pie?"

Bill came to life. "Oh, when he got pissed?"

"Errrr—," mama rocked and wagged a foot.

"You know what he said?" Bill responded. "I was talkin' to 'im. You were there."

"Yeh," she said. "I was there!" She said it fondly, almost singing it.

Bill spoke warmly too. "Oh, y'know, he breaks me up; I'm sittin' down at the other end of the table." He laughed.

"He loves that, though," she said fondly, "when you laugh at 'im."

"Likes what?" Mj was lost. The two of them had floated off in a dreamy rowboat leaving the interviewer in limbo.

"He loves it if he breaks Bill up."

"Ha, HUh, I –," Bill broke up as if on cue, all tickled.

"He deliberately does things to make Bill mad," she said to mj, trying to catch him up to the memory boat, "and to break Bill up. I think he enjoys your reaction," she looked at Bill and her mouth tensed. "He de-liberately does it."

"Yes!" mj shouted with excitement. Five minutes of psychoanalysis, and they’d struck gold together. "He's getting a reaction out of you now. You're threatening to leave!" In Bill’s leaving he saw Freddie's papa packing his bags and Freddie standing there watching him, all upset. Young Dr. Lorenzo’s recent psychoanalyst professors would have applauded such an insight.

"I'm not threatening!" Bill said. "I'm looking. I'm leaving."

"It's the same thing!" clamored mj, suddenly clear where he was headed. When Freddie's papa left, that didn't mean Freddie wanted him to go! "If he ever woke up and realized you were leaving,” he said, “he'd make changes. He’d feel your leaving as a threat to his well-being."

"Nohhhh, not Fred," Bill insisted.

"It's too late!" Freddie's mama sounded resigned.

And the strings cried a gentle waltz. Choristers cooed and mooed at the contralto. A celesta tinkled like a crib-side music box.

Ba-, by's boat, the sil-, ver moooon...

Sai-, ling in, the skaaahy,...

Munchkin music.

Bill ignored her and looked at mj. "Y'know what he said?"

"What?"

You never forced an interpretation on a patient who had rejected it, young Dr. mj’s teachers of psychoanalysis had said. It was another sacred, unbreakable rule of Freudian psychoanalysis. You had to bite your tongue and walk away and come back to it later. In the meantime you got your patient ready somehow, subtly, for the unacceptable truth of your interpretation, and its inevitable return to be heard from you at some later point in time.

Or as the I Ching put it, 'dissemble’, roll over and play dead; then later, let the idea loose, to nip your patient in the ankle when he was least expecting it.

So mj dropped it.

Bill said: "I was talkin' about him doin' the Dinah Shore TV show and they cook on the show," he laughed, "and he says, 'Oh, I could cook Mother Waring's...’"

"Ye-euh," Betty Ann tilted her head, dripping affection for Fred.

"'...famous apple dumpling', or something," Bill laughed again. "And I thought he was sayin' it was his own."

"That it was himself," Betty Ann helped.

"I suddenly saw Fred Waring in a bonnet!" Bill choked up; his veined marble face reddened and puffed until his eyes were slits. "Just like that, instantaneously I pictured him with a bonnet." He fought a laugh enough to stroke out, but the laugh won, and he exploded; yet survived in his chair.

Meanwhile, Fred’s chorus ‘girls’ were way up in paradise, above the shore-hugging boat, which was way down there with baby in it.

Mmmmmmmm-mm-mm -mmSaai-, ling ooh'er, the seea, of sleeep,...

They sang to little Freddie down below them so far, they could barely see him. That was how high and ethereal they sang this lullaby of theirs.

...Whaahile, the claahouds, float baaahymmm-mmmm-mm-m-mmmmmmm...

"And I broke up! And he says," Bill's eyebrows went heavy, "'What's so funny god damn it?' Bill laughed a good long one then frowned; he looked insulted, and he faltered: "'My mother… was famous… f'r her –...'

"And I says, 'I didn't know you were talkin' 'bout your mother." Bill brightened. "I thought you were talking about you'!"

The orchestra and the whole vocal ensemble, all of them Freddie's mamas and papas, at the moment at least, joined the contralto in the slow waltz, sugary as apple pie, and they repeated the chorus,

Saaaaaai- lbay- bee saaaaaaaail,..       (‘Sail, baby, sail…’).

Nineteen voices floated off, sounding ever so heavenly, utterly unaccompanied as they were, yet impeccably tuned. It was impossible to get sound like this from an earthly choir, but Fred Waring was doing it.

Bill uncorked a giant laugh and returned to wounded Fred: "'W'l what's so funny about me cooking!?'

"I said, 'I pictured you in a bonnet, as "Mother Waring".'" The tone was friendly.

"And he said, 'I don't see anything so goddamn funny about that!!' Ha hah and I was still breaking up!"

Bill grew grave: "His mother was a GodAWful power!"

Mj said nothing. He was still back on dad leaving. He wanted the scoop on dad too much to think about mother yet.

Betty Ann sighed with resigned devotion: "That must be where he got it, then."

"Oh," said Bill, "I know where he came from. And for some reason she saw in Fred, 'n she usta tell the kids," Bill breathed reverence: "'He's the brilliant one in this family!!'"

Fred launched the second verse of the lullaby and the glee club floated in on four-part harmony a cappella. During the free-expression rubato they clung to Fred’s hands like sailors floating adrift, hugging the broken mast of a toppled schooner riding a tempest, up and down, small and big musical waves, not a single sailor among them knowing what kind of wave or storm the god of this tempest would send them next, yet every single one of them responding to his every last whim, as a solid, perfectly blended unit.

Baby'sfishingforadreeeeeeeeeeam,.......             (Baby’s fishing for a dream)

FishingNeeeearAndFaaaaaaaaaahr....               (Fishing near and far…)

"Well, then," Betty Ann looked at her shrink pal, mj, "if the other boys, Fred’s brothers, ended up weaker,..."

"Mm huh," mj encouraged her.

"...that could be because the father was a bit –."

"Elusive," mj suggested. Maybe he could get her to bring them back to father.

"So," she said, "they took on the mother." She gleamed a huge Ipana Toothpaste TV commercial smile, a big blonde-bomb stage grin at her shrink pal, then at her hubby.

"Mmmmm," thought mj. But: million-dollar grin or not, her maiden voyage on Shrink Schooner had steamed off course, hadn’t it? If anything, it was Fred alone who ‘took on’ the character of his strong and very present mother, while the other boys may have ‘taken on’ the character of a very absent and therefore weakened father.

His-line-a-sil-ver-moon-beam-ihhhhhhhhhhhhhs,.....   (His line a silver moonbeam is)  

His-bait-a-sil-ver-stahhhhhhhhhhhhhr................. (His bait a silver star.)

Bill resumed. "And what occurred was, the mother usta say, 'Don't argue with Fred! Freddie's right'!" Bill paused. Bill Blackburn never resorted to shrink jargon when telling a story, unlike Betty Ann and mj, He stuck with facts. And metaphors he liked too, now and then, as long as they were good, fitting ones. He said, "He was the apple of her eye, see. And she was his horse."

Mj erupted. If they could mix metaphors (like Bill just did), then he, mj, was a bull-puppy and the bull-puppy was a volcano. Because he tried to see Bill’s mixed metaphor of apple-eye-horse, and succeeded. And it was a vision of small-town America that made him erupt and spew his bull-puppy laughter lava:

The Apple of His Nag’s Eye

(Mother Waring and Fred, age 3)

a nag in a tied bonnet

mom-mom Waring

twists her white horseneck impossibly

attempting to eye

and admire

and with great pink horseflesh tongue

lick

sweet apple dumpling crust

off little diapered

freddie

who rests plunked and gleaming

on mom-mom's vast drooping mid-rump

glistening in home-sewn dumpling getup

with matching bonnet

reeking of poop

Freddie

in said getup

on said nag horse

leads and conducts the town’s brass band

(which marches behind him and mom-mom)

by waving an American flag in his right hand

down pennsylvania avenue

tyrone pa.

u.s.a.

4^th of july

nine-teen

oh

          3.[3]

Sail, ba-by, saaaaillll, Out u-pon the seeeea...

Strings swayed and sopranos oooed.

Bill was fixed on a target. There were facts to prove, and volcanic eruptions of laughter like mj’s could get them nowhere. "So," he said, "consequently, all through his life he was al-ways right. Now, to the point of—: Poley owned their first car; yet when they went to do their jobs, Fred insisted on driving, 'Because he was six months older'."

Mj gulped a guffaw and burped it back, gin and peyote (he thought), and what tasted like some beans, for sure.

Bill was impervious. "'I'm older! I drive'! So Poley let him. They got a job with W. E. Hoffman Ice Cream Company in Tyrone."

Betty Ann cut in, "Butcha know he had a good subject there, Bill, because Poley would give in."

"Yeh," he said.

"Oh, yeh!" said mj. He wasn't spewing laughter lava too much to see Poley giving in, or anyone else that worked for Fred either.

Except Bill, probably.

"And throughout his entire life,” she added with psychoanalytic triumph, "Fred surrounded himself with people that gave in!"

"Yeh!" belched mj. She had it right there, for psychoanalytic once.

Granting her analysis short shrift, however, Bill ignored her and closed his sad chapter on Fred child: "And when he worked at W. E. Hoffman Ice Cream Company, only reason they took the job is Poley loaded the truck with the milk cans, and Fred drove." Bill had been raised on graphic tales, evidently, not analytics.

"Theuhh!!!" mj spewed Lava of Laugh, finding Fred funny as child tyrant.

"And Fred usta go –; and even here's, y'know –: Poley usta have to ride on the back. There was only one seat in those old trucks, y'know, up front. And they'd come whippin' around. Fred drove so fast and so furious over those old bumpy roads, that it was a constant thing, Poley fell off the truck! And Fred would get, like, quarter of a mile down the road and realize Poley's not on any MORE!!" Bill shouted and cried, laughing, and his round belly shook like St. Nick’s ‘bowlful of jelly’ belly, truly and literally. "He's laying back there in some," Bill shook like jello, “briar patch," he shook like jelly-jello and sobbed. "Heh-heh-heh, eahgh!!  !!  !!!XX! X! X! X!"

The contralto and glee club recapped the final chorus while sopranos oozed nectary obligato schmaltz.

Oooh-nly doooh n'tfor-get to sailll..         (Only don’t forget to sail…).

A huge lava-like puddle of musical schmaltz crept across the room toward mj’s foot, bubbling like yeast.

Backa-gainnn to meee...                     (Back again to me.)

But immediately, musical sound classically cool in temper slowed and encased the mucky schmaltz:

Baaack, a-gainnnn...

It condensed the mucky schmaltz puddle into a single lovely crystal of pure iridescent, high-grade musical schmaltz:

...toooo... meeeeeeeeeee!

A celesta drifted dreamily heavenward, ending, with a quiet close, music history’s loveliest schmaltz waltz.

Don Juan explained that his benefactor's strategy required that instead of feeling sorry for himself as he had done before, he immediately go to work mapping the man's strong points, his weaknesses, his quirks of behavior.[4]