BLESS THIS HEARTH A-BLAZING THERE...¹

Bill leaned forward, laid his tape player on the narrow end of the golden oak coffee table nearest him and sat back in his storyteller’s chair satisfied. He stretched forward and pressed PLAY, looking at no one, wrapped in the moment of the thing.

An alien-sounding voice entered the Blackburn living room, a voice tedious and boring. It lacked command. It sounded administrative-but-attempting-to-sound-human and was the same dehumanized voice that protestors of the Vietnam War had loved to mock. It was the same dry and dull, officious functionary’s voice that had announced recently, in August, that the owner of the voice was resigning from the Presidency of the United States to the relief of God and man.

The nerdy voice on Bill’s tape was not from 1974 though, but from Christmas ’72, twenty months before the resignation; which meant it came from a time when its owner might have had a little sense of humor left, still. The owner of that voice still must have been able to look forward to four more years in which he could make a lot more Nixon Mischief for himself. He could make Nixchief for rice farmers: like the 100,000 innocent Cambodian rice farmers he had already secretly and unconstitutionally bombed until dead, sending them secretly to Nirvana so the United States of America, without permission of the U.S. people’s Congress, and in breach of the sacred U.S. Constitution, therefore, could hopefully more easily save the Cambodians’ neighbors, the South Vietnamese, from the USA’s number one enemy on the planet at the moment, the atheistic, totalitarian Communists. And he could make Nixchief for as many other innocent bystanders on the planet as possible who got in the great and supposedly-godly Calvinist-Protestant USA’s – led by Nixon – way:²

The highfalutin dinner guests of older age and higher rank, all dressed up in fancy colorful evening gowns and old-style black and white tuxes, obeyed with a long crescendo of clapping hands that said ‘Thank You’ to the teenagerish after-dinner tagalongs in nice college garb who had supposedly accomplished victory in the re-election of President Nixon a month before. After which these very same ‘Young Voters for the President’ applauded back their ‘You’re Welcome’; and wilted abruptly.

"Now... on such an occasion... when we have a dinner honoring the... members of the Cabinet... all of those who have served in this Cabinet and... some going back to the Eisenhower Cabinet... and also... a number of representatives of... ‘Young Voters’... that –. And they're eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, y'know. That all seems very young, but, uh, even up to thirty... you wonder, now..."

The U.S. President tried to find a single one of his seven senses. Even one would have been a starter, but not a single one answered his call for help; and so he tried posing a sense of wonderment:

"What possible group could you get that could bridge the generation gap'?!!!!???”³

‘Generation gap’ was a term mj lorenzo and his young generation had personally spawned by letting their hair grow disgustingly long, then parading in the streets in rankled bands to protest their parents and old guys like HIM, ‘Tricky Dicky’ Nixon. Because: the latter wanted to keep U.S. American troops dying in South Vietnam, and killing the Vietnamese as many as it took, to prevent South Vietnam from falling to communism. Nixon and his backers wanted to put a stop – regardless of cost, moral or monetary – to the ‘domino effect’ of having one country after another fall to Communism and Communism’s agenda of global atheistic, extreme, non-democratic, state-totalitarian socialism. Nixon’s goons had slain a few of mj’s youth generation two and a half years before, killing their New Age revolution with a massacre at Kent State University in Ohio. The two generations had been at war, all out, mostly non-violent war, as everyone realized by December of ’72, and it was a huge political hullabaloo. An entire generation of young people had fallen prey to extremely liberal causes and more and more were ‘falling’ every day of the week, including many children of very nice Republican parents; and the Republicans HAD to woo these ‘kids’ back to classic, classy conservative American causes, as conservative Republicans like Nixon saw it. Meanwhile, the very few ‘kids’ who had remained in their parents’ conservative fold, like the ‘Young Voters for the President’, some of whom were in the concert audience, were still, nevertheless, a world apart from their parents’ generation in their musical tastes, for they loved Rock and Roll, not Waring and Big Band.

Mj looked at Bill. Everybody at the White House had known exactly what the President was alluding to when he used the expression ‘Generation Gap’.

The voice was breathy, trying to sound super-sincere:

"And so we thought a lot about it. And uh... naturally uh... as is no secret to the people in this room uh, I am somewhat of a... traditionalist uh..."

Sufficiently prodded by now, the people got out a laugh, finally, some of them because they thought the man a dunce, and believed they had drunk enough to get away with showing it.

Nixon inhaled on a chuckle, convinced he had scored with young voters everywhere in the country by mocking himself:

"Uuaah... I, I... enjoy all kinds of music 'n... that sort of thing and can... en-DURE almost anything, but ah..."

Young future leaders of America in fine college suits and pretty dresses coughed up more laughter, realizing the President meant he could ‘endure’ their Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison and the Doors.

"On the other hand uh I must say that uh..."

Boorishness mounted apace:

"...I naturally think back to... the great years that I... admired uhh the great performers 'n... the American stage and theater and the rest an'... also the new years when the new stars come along."

The half-dead party emcee looked for a way to spark:

"But there's one very unusual man and his organization who is with us tonight, and he bridges this 'gap' in a very remarkable way."

The emcee could have built momentum from the ‘unusual man’ idea; but chose to fall into a stupor of wordy-ness, and to lead humanity into nodding out:

"Uhhh... Mrs. Eisenhower... who was one of our very special guests tonight, was telling us when we were having coffee in the back that... that uh... Fred Waring... had appeared twice... during the eight years that... she presided here as First Lady... for after-dinner entertainment. One of those occasions was the occasion of the visit of... Queen Elizabeth... incidentally which was the last visit that was made by the Queen to the United States in that period."

Elizabeth Windsor of England was important in terms of the frequency and the timing of her visit, it was revealed. But what did English royalty have to do with Fred Waring and this moment right now, anyway? Nothing! It all just meant that the U.S. President felt insecure (for some unnamed reason), and had resorted to name-dropping.

And in disgust mj had forgotten to meditate. He jumped on the wave and hung on:... UP.... DOWN.....

"And uh... when we think of Fred Waring –."

The country’s head honcho otherwise known as president came back to life for ‘remembering’ Fred Waring. It was sort of understandable, since Fred was the kind of man who stirred reaction, good and bad:

"I remember that night how much he captivated the audience! And then I checked on Fred Waring today! We've invited him several times over the last four years and usually, he has some other engagement that he... was unable to come. But here is a man –...."

The President finally drew spirit from his subject, Fred Waring, a man who, if you thought about it, though not a bit more perfect than anyone else, morally speaking, was more respectful of the office of the Presidency than the President himself, and far more worthy to party hardy in the White House for that reason alone (when you considered it for a minute, as mj had):

"....who not only has created a great musical organization... has built... according to the Vice President... one of the most difficult golf courses in the world, which means not a lot,..."⁴

Dick Nixon caught fire now,

"...because all are difficult to the VICE President!..."

Young and old spewed true hullabaloo.

"...and to me... but, mm...!"

President Nixon now built momentum thrillingly for a second, as if maybe he truly comprehended what kind of man was about to appear on stage, a Renaissance man, a combination of Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo de Medici: a consummate artist; scientist; high-level politician; king-maker; money-mover; family man; businessman; lady lover; Boy Scout; you name it:

"In addition to that who is uh... is... a scientist... and inventor! An' y'know what! Somebody one Christmas gave us one of these,..."

The President tried to appear playful:

"...Waring Blendors! and... I never thought of the same thing... 'Waring...' the 'Waring' Pennsylvanians... the 'Waring' Blendor. Could it be the same thing? Yes! He invented it!"

The poor man at the mike sizzled like a fuse on a pack of Chinese firecrackers, all the way down to a contrived punch line which finally sort of fizzled in the mouth on his face:

"Now anybody who could invent something which you could use for the purpose of creating a concoction where one who is a total abstainer drinks something and doesn't know what happens to him has got to be a genius!"

This got a punchy response from the drunk White House drones and the sober White House sisters, both.

"'Nother words, if he can bridge that gap he can bridge the Generation Gap!"

Now the string of firecrackers sort of popped at last, because you could see an intended connection with something, finally; and that unlikely and illogical connection got applause, surprisingly:

"And so Fred Waring is here tonight to do that for us!"

The audience caught fire. Applause popped and exploded here and there in the room, swelling and spreading as Fred Waring entered stage right toward the mike, elderly and elegant, a white-haired legend splaying light like an alchemical vision. And the vision shook the President's hand; and the country’s highest leader faded away finally, thank Heaven, smoldering with gracelessness. And he took a chair next to a pretty feisty First Lady whose legs showed she received him politely.

WITH SMOKE ASCENDING LIKE A PRAYER....

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #3:

White House Tape (actual White House security tape; NOT an Oval Office transcription tape), which contains the actual continued dictation of the President’s letter to Mr. Waring, taking up where Exhibit #2c left off. (The President must have forgotten he was being recorded on transcription tape AND on security tape, BOTH. The Oval Office transcription tape for the subsequent sections of the letter, if such a tape existed, has never been found.)

Ho HO, Fred! You should have seen it! The whole blinking Administration grinding to uh, frigging halt for, forty-five minutes, after I issued that, order to Blackburn to 'supersede all documents'! Hka hka hka hkaaaaghn! buuhrrpp! until the Chief of Transcription got Ping and Pong, I mean Haldeman and Ehrlichman, to clarify that not 'all' hee hee documents 'past present and future' but only those pertaining to Fred Waring were to be 'superseded'. Whooooh!

IN TO THE OVAL OFFICE ROAR Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Haldeman & Ehrlichman: "Erase that tape!" Ho hka hkaaaaaaaghn! and then we lose another thirty minutes breaking up over this damn letter to you, Hko hka. Whoa, hko hkoooooghnn!  #@$%$#@%XXX"

Now, do you suppose anyone might have thought to hassle me like this in China? Nooooooooooh! They were polite as Chinamen. So, why hassle me here? Because:

'A prophet is never honored in his own oval office’!

BUT. Maybe it’s a good thing they bothered me, Fred. We could have erased the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, NATO. "All PAST DOCUMENTS," get it? Hkaaaaa-aaaagghn! And future! For A WHOLE HOUR nobody accepted a written order from me! I wandered around the White House without work! I thought I'd retired to Capistrano oh hoooooooghhhhrrr Fred, we've had some good ones.

The tape of the pathetic Christmas Concert which had been thrown together at the last minute for the President by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians rolled on inexorably. Mj could picture the great Americana music-maker, Fred Waring, as debonair, even electric, with occasional asides of slight alarm. He did a throaty,

"Mister President,...."

And his ‘golf buddy’, Dick, flinched.

"Mrs. Nixon,..."

And poor Fred blinked nervously and managed a smile with which to greet the First Lady by addressing her; but actually he saw Pat Nixon as he had seen her the last time he saw her, a few months back, hanging out next to Bill Blackburn at the telethon after listening very interestedly to Bill’s tales about his impossible boss, Fred Waring.

"Mr. Vice President and Mrs. Agnew,..."

And finally he warmed to something, however:

"And beloved Mamie!....

And all of you. Thank you very much for those kind words, Mister President."

You could tell he loved Mamie Eisenhower in reality; while the rest, including the silly ‘Mister President’, barely hid a distaste that Fred Waring tolerated with sporting grace.

"We do a lot of trying to bridge the 'Generation Gap', and you see behind me a number of people, and you wonder about their ages. We are in our fifty-sixth year in this business, and you wouldn't believe it to look at our girls, but just take a closer look!"

This horrible joke, right in the king’s court at the expense of beautiful women like Betty Ann McCall Blackburn, got too many guffaws.

"That Bridge that you want us to worry about,..."

Fred chuckled:

"...is all there in one bundle. And we will do... aaah,..."

The once great Fred Waring tried to exceed the President in peevishness:

"...the only part of our... concert...which we are now vacating... for the Holidays... it's a two-and-a-half hour show... and the only part of it we're doing is the theme, the opening theme.  So, just to get a little practice we'll do the... opening theme... if you don't mind."

He turned to the band; but such peevishness wanted explanation, he realized, and he turned back:

"The kids are on vacation since last Sunday, and they sat around on orders from the White House and waited for this!"

A general is NOT a soldier soonly made, in other words. And he added with a throaty laugh:

"And then we got here and discovered we hafta do all Christmas music! So we're gonna read it, if you don't mind!"

The temporary great king who was living at the White House, also known as ‘President’ Nixon, at the very last minute, had ordered all Christmas music and not a single Fred Waring standard. And Tricky Dicky hadn’t even had the decency to mention this little tidbit in all of his stupid ranting correspondence sent to the holy conductor.

Fred Waring turned around to his Pennsylvanians and raised two exquisitely expressive hands which Michelangelo would have loved to paint. And a graceful arpeggio filled the Blackburn living room from Betty Ann's electronic reed-stop:

I Hear Mu-sic, I hear MUOoooooo-ZICK!

Betty Ann gave Fred her blue eyes and fed him a chord. He calmed down and led the ensemble into the second half of the theme, a dreamy, slow-slow waltz:

Sleep (boom shhuh)

Sleep (boom shhuh)

Sleep (boom shhuh

Boom) How I

Love (boom shhuh)

You (boom shhuh)

True (boom shhuh

BOOM)....

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #4:

(On White House letterhead, hand-signed by 'Connie Muggins'.)

Dear Mr. Waring,

The President's outburst went five minutes more. I've spared you the rest of it. He forgot to say 'Off the record', I guess. He's done it before. Mr. Haldeman tells me that tapes of all kinds are the President's 'nemesis'. Please see Mrs. Nixon's note for an explanation.

Yours truly,

Chief of Transcription for the Oval Office,

Connie Muggins

The orchestra did a blustery winter snowstorm and followed that with sleigh bells. The glee club came on now as very tender. They crooned with deliberate romantic hesitancy:

O-ver  the  ground  lies  a  man-tle  of  white (......)...⁵

A pregnant pause followed every group of words:

A hea-ven of dia-monds shines down through the night (......)

Two hearts are thril-linnnnn' (......)

In spite of the chill innnn (......)

The wea-ther.

Boompa-boompa-boompa-boompa.

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #5:

(On Communist Chinese souvenir stationery.)

Dec. 8, 1972

Dear Bill,

Your friendship meant so much to me that night at the Bob Hope Telethon. We helped each other out and became friends, don't you think?

Things have gotten hectic here since. I can't tell you all the childish nonsense. Dick has been so utterly impossible about your sitting by me that night, that if I had wanted to forget our moment together it would have been impossible. Honestly, I have enjoyed the memory of our few minutes, and I've just learned that you're coming here with your favorite boss. I'm delighted!

Please don't think I tattle on my husband to Mr. Haldeman and Mr. Erlichman every day, but they and I are hoping desperately you will get Mr. Waring to talk to Dick about his terrible tape problem, when you all come here for the concert. Fred is an elder and maturer friend of Dick's and more of an outsider to this Administration than he was to Ike's. Fred was so close to Mr. Eisenhower, whom they both worshiped, that we hope on that basis alone he might talk sense into him. We've tried to get the President to take every single tape in the White House seriously, but he forgets they are running everywhere and all the time, and that his Whittier locker room mouth is reporting straight to posterity. THE WAY HE HAS BEEN ACTING LATELY THERE WON'T BE ANY POSTERITY! Please ask Fred to talk to him. Dick is under so much strain, he thought the 'minor debacle' of erasing the Constitution funny! He giggled ALL DAY! And I? I was fit to be hog-tied!

Love knows no sea-sonnnnn (......)

Again the over-long pauses, which this time were filled up pleasantly by Poley McClintock's sleigh-bell percussion:

Love knows no climmmme (..*..*..)

Ro-mance can blos-sommmmm (.**...*..)

A-ny old timmmmme! (..*.*...)

Here in the o-pennnn (.*.*.*...)

We're wal-kin' and hoh-pinnnn' (..*....)

To-geh-ther!.

( * = Poley’s sleighbells )

Boompa-boompa—...

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #5 cont’d, pg. 2:

Thank you so much, Bill. God knows what will happen to us all, if someone doesn't get through to The President. Please don't breathe a word.

Yours, Pat

The Pennsylvanians slipped into a danceable two-step.

BOOM, sleighbells

RING, jingle

JINGLE, areya

LIST', nin'...

JINGLE,...

Poley McClintock’s sleigh bells jingled and tingled without relief the entire chorus through. Finally the audience applauded politely.

Fred Waring turned and addressed the highest and best of the land with a personal note:

"I want to identify the sleigh bells. They are by Poley McClintock, who... well... Poley and I have been together all his life. We were born next door one another within a few weeks, he's back there, he's our original drummer! Poley McClintock, ladies and gentlemen!"

Soft and spotty applause met 72-year-old Poley as he stood up creakily and shuffled forward to a music stand and bowed with a comic smirk that faltered then held. And he returned and found his seat again among an armory of drums, chimes and sleigh bells without falling off the risers drunk and breaking his arse. And that was the thing which Fred had really wanted applauded, as more than a few of the Pennsylvanians comprehended.⁶

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #6:

(Handwritten inside a twenty-five-dollar donation-to-homeless-people’s-charity Christmas card of Michelangelo's "Creation of Man," God's hand nearly touching the extended hand of a man starkly naked:)

P.S. Merry Christmas!

Pat

Fred said,

"Now we're into Christmas. Ready?"

He spun to the band and Betty Ann did a rhythmic bell-toll on her magic cordovox. The unpracticed throw-together chorus followed with a drastically ragged "Twelve Days of Christmas." It was horrible. A disgrace to Fred’s faded reputation.

But the audience was a paragon of group patience and rewarded it politely, sitting in their black tuxes and fancy schmancy evening gowns..

"Well... ah... you're very kind... and I'm sure they're encouraged... but actually,..."

Fred's throat tensed:

"...ah, most of them had never seen the music until... this afternoon."

Dick Nixon’s fault again, not Fred’s. The Mister President of the United States was obviously to blame for inadequacy in the White House chorus and orchestra this night, as he was for anything that had gone bad in the country anywhere you went. And it made sense to mj as he listened to the tape now, in the fall of ’74, two years later. Nixon was a bugaboo from way back when. He had had to go.

"Now we'll do one familiar one, and this is because,..."

Fred Waring was trying to relax:

"Mamie suggested it. Well, it's about the season, "Joy."

JEReremIah wAAAhs a BULL-FROG! CRACKSH CRACKSH

The Doors!

No, Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians!

How could Mamie Eisenhower, such a fine old-fashioned lady who loved Glenn Miller and the Big Bands, have dug Rock and Roll? She had meant the version of ‘Joy to the World’ that was a Christmas church hymn, hadn’t she?! Certainly she must have, Fred. Yes.

JOY TO THE WORLD!

EEEeeeeh-very BOY and GIRL!

Joy to the fish-es in the deep blue seea!

JOOoy to YOou and MEe!

This meant that Fred Waring was teasing his favorite First Lady; whom his real buddy Ike had left a widow three years before. She lacked a man-partner’s input for livening her life any more, so it was Fred Waring’s job as Entertainer Laureate to tickle the former First Lady, to tease her, and make her remember what it used to be like, having a real man like Ike Eisenhower – or Fred – around the house all the time.

And she comprehended the tease and laughed; though it must have hurt her, poor thing, to laugh in a gown that tight, with 49 struts poking her ribs; and at 76 years old, worse yet.

Bill clicked the tape player off, detecting a question on mj’s face:

Tklukk!

¹  From the song, ‘Bless This House’, words by Helen Taylor, music by May H. Brahe.

²  Dr. Lorenzo always maintained that the American world-view, or ‘Weltanschauung’, had been essentially Calvinist since 1620, when the Calvinist ‘Puritan’ and ‘Dissenter’ ‘Pilgrim fathers’ of what was to become the USA first began setting up their North American colonies. Since during the Dr.’s lifetime the term ‘Calvinist’ had come to be largely replaced by the term ‘Evangelical’, critics said he was wrong, because ‘Evangelicals made up less than half the U.S. population’ by the year 2000. But he argued that a group did not have to be in the majority for its world-view to dominate. And to support his argument he referred to the historian Arnold Toynbee, whose Study of History had shown that in most civilizations and societies, down through the ages, the governing view of the world had been laid upon the whole of the population by a ‘dominant minority’; just as the world-view of a few Italians from the Tiber valley had been laid upon the entire Roman Empire from Persia to Britain. He stressed this point whenever he could, in his writing and lectures, because, as he said, unless and until the people of the USA understood who they themselves were, in reality, they would never be able to comprehend why the rest of the world reacted to them as it did, and they would continue to design foreign policy in a way that put not just themselves, but the whole human race, at risk. To further support his argument he cited Dietrich Schwanitz’ description of the American world-view in his cultural history of the Western world, Bildung. And he cited the authority whom Schwanitz cited, Max Weber, the social scientist, economist, historian and father of German Sociology, who had rather scientifically laid out the major points of the Calvinist world-view in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. For more discussion of Dr. Lorenzo’s conviction that the USA world-view always has been and still is essentially ‘Calvinist’, ‘neo-Calvinist’ or 'modified Calvinist', please see Question #23 in the final chapter of the present work, the chapter entitled “and yet another kind of propundity’s ‘look at’ mj lorenzo’s fourth book.”

³  ‘Generation Gap’: a term that originated in the Sixties when conflict between generations reached an all-time high. The mowing-down of Ohio’s Kent State University students by U.S. National Guard troops’ rifles two and a half years earlier, just because they were peacefully demonstrating on campus against the Vietnam War, was still a horrifying and sad memory for most of the country, old and young alike. Four young college students had died and ten or so had been wounded. It was an excruciating shock to the psyche of U.S. Americans, practically all of whom believed religiously in the sacred right of peaceful protest granted by the U.S. Constitution. Cf the very brief article, “Kent State Shootings,” in Encarta, which states: “Kent State Shootings, anti-Vietnam War confrontation between National Guardsmen and police and Kent State University students on May 4, 1970 following President Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia. Four students were killed in the shootings and 11 persons were injured.” See also the Encarta articles, “Secret Bombing of Cambodia,” “Vietnam War,” “Cambodia,” “Anti-Vietnam War Movement,” “Protests in the 1960s,” and “United States (History): The Youth Movement.” Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

⁴  A few of Bill Blackburn’s famous tales regarding Fred’s periodic costly reconstructing of the holes at his Shawnee Inn golf course (to make them harder for others and easier for himself) may be found in Part II of mj lorenzo’s Tales of Waring.

⁵  ‘Winter Wonderland’, a song by Felix Bernard and Dick Smith.