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    Up the Road from Tassinong
    Up the Road from Tassinong
    Up the Road from Tassinong
    Ebook204 pages1 hour

    Up the Road from Tassinong

    By Mike Bartholomew

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    About this ebook

    You hold in your hands a poetical grab-bag that contains everything from the products of youthful raging hormones to the uncensored irreverence of advancing age, a total of 125 pieces that span 46 years. Among these you will find a post-9/11 verse for The Star Spangled Banner, a Riley-esque homage to a history-minded Hoosier town poet, the aching tragedy of a life inexplicably cut short, a series of snapshots of a rambunctious child from crib to commencement, tributes to one of the best writers who ever lived, and several unforgiving self-portraits.
    Tassinong was the oldest village in northern Indiana, founded as a French mission and trading post in 1673, according to the historical marker that lists an ancestor as one of those who incorporated it. It is located in the front yard of a farmhouse at the head of Baums Bridge Road near the outlet to Indiana 49 about eight miles south of Valparaiso, Indiana, where I was born.
    If you indulge me, you will discover how much this book owes to a handul of very special people from a girl with forbearance beyond her years to a woman with a dragonfly tattoo. To them and to all the others I apologize for taking too much time to do this.,
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateSep 24, 2013
    ISBN9781491814666
    Up the Road from Tassinong
    Author

    Mike Bartholomew

    Charles M. Bartholomew is a retired journalist and radio announcer. He is a native of Valparaiso, Indiana, and a graduate of Valparaiso High School, Wabash College (B. A., Physics), and the University of Maryland (M. A., Journalism). Except for a number of years in the north and northwest Chicago suburbs, he has spent most of his life in Northwest Indiana, about which he has written extensively of the people and history as a newspaper correspondent. He began writing “schoolyard rhymes” in elementary school and became a serious amateur poet—a Valparaiso tradition, as you will read—at the age of 16, continuing his art for over 40 years. He learned much of his craft at the knee of his mother, an English teacher and mezzo-soprano who instilled in him a voracious appetite for language and all kinds of music. He has written in all styles—lyrics, parodies, blank verse, advertising jingles, “deadline” poetry, inspirational and patriotic verse, humorous and satirical sketches, and protest songs. Most dear to him are the many portraits of family, classmates, and friends on which he honed his skills. He has authored one book, a fantasy called The Sleigh Elf’s Daughter, a clear example of his taste for the outrageous.

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      Book preview

      Up the Road from Tassinong - Mike Bartholomew

      © 2013 by Mike Bartholomew. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 09/19/2013

      ISBN: 978-1-4918-1421-5 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4918-1466-6 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013916284

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Contents

      Before Sign-On

      TALES OF THE GREEN AND WHITE

      Springtime In Valparaiso

      English 4: Haiku

      Teen Time

      Never Borrow A Girl’s Pen

      Judy’s Fragment

      On Poverty

      On Progress

      The Ballad Of Janis Irene

      The View From The Back Of The Room And The Pretty Girl

      The Poet And The Dancer

      Merry Christmas, Janis Irene

      Once Upon A Garden

      Lines

      Jannie

      March Madness

      And Then I’ll Think Only Of You

      The Balls

      Pure Vintage

      Ode To The Green And White

      Epilogue

      Johnston’s Girl

      The Friday Song

      The Last Night Of The Fair

      ONE FINE DAY

      Set No. 1

      November Whimsy

      Dune

      Evenings At Penelope’s Loom

      Murmurs

      Firstcoming

      Brink

      I Do

      Afterspice

      Bunny

      Album

      Funnies

      Winter Child

      Hamburger Dills

      Apostrophe To Christa

      Topsy-Turvy

      Paternity Suit

      Emergency Room

      Daughter

      Reverie For Dusty

      Two Elegies

      Vale

      Postlude

      Only…

      One Fifty-One

      Cause

      My Curse

      Diana’s Blessing

      HALF A MILE PAST THE END OF THE WORLD

      On Rankin Ridge

      Breakfast In Wauconda

      Ascent

      A Crown Point Story

      City Of The Light

      Calumet Manifesto

      First Impressions

      Great Western

      Lay Of The Vale Poets

      Cheesed, With Onions

      Season

      Flag Waivers

      The Indiana Traveler

      I Am American

      PARDON ME!

      R. T. A.

      Big Red Gravel Truck

      Material Guy

      North Shore Hideaway

      Cold War Couplet

      Glass-Nosed

      Reality Bytes

      Evening In Plum Grove Square

      The Cat In The Ħat

      Deluge

      The Road Ahead Not Taken

      Oliver Stone’s 1492

      Undertaking

      To Brandi:

      Good Grief, Ms. M ___ Or He Is More To Be Pitied Than Censured

      Priorities

      52, And Counting

      Purity

      Protestant

      Debbie’s Epigram

      Mr. Hatcher Goes To Town

      Returning To Paradise

      Diversity: An Attempted Rap

      Broadway Lament

      South Haven

      Legion

      The Greatest Generation

      Cops

      Broadsides On The Dodger Song

      A Bethlehem Steel Broadside

      UNBUTTONED

      Marvel Travel :60

      Worder

      Promenodds

      1. Clear The Saloon

      2. Americans In Pairs

      3. Trojan Warhorses,

      Ribbed For Your Pleasure

      4. Köchel Exercises

      5. Bonn Homey

      On Beyond Borders

      The Eighth Habit

      Andante Con Moto

      Two

      Arthusia’s Door

      Poet Unbuttoned

      A Deskbound Wordsmith I

      Melanie

      Heavy Things

      Chele’s Fragment

      Michelle’s Hostage

      Abigal

      Peregrinations

      Equinocturne

      Ephemera Of The Shore

      Thank-You Note

      Thursday Morning, Wyoming

      Solace

      Creature

      Castaway

      Messages

      Sign-Off

      About The Author

      About The Book

      To Fay,

      Almost a countryman,

      But still a true mate.

      I was born and bred a city girl, though my soul is with the land…

      —Eucalyptus in My Veins

               Best of luck (as if you needed it).

               Remember:

               When you make your mark in the world, watch out for the wise guys with erasers.

                                                            Lois

      30471.png

               To Mike:

                  Unbelievable

      Unco-ordinated (won’t you ever learn to snap your fingers?)

                  Underrated

                  Underfed (???)

                  Undaunted

                  Unkind

      and son of an Undertaker (no one holds it against you, really).

               I’m sorry for ya, but what can I do?

                                                            Margaret (Pearl of Wisdom?)

               This year has really been an experience, to say the least! You’ve really been fun, and your with is hard to beat.

               Be good now, and let’s make the next few years really swing!

               Remember me always.

                                                            Love,

      Jan

                                                            Aunt Nettie

      The verse that ends the chapter Half a Mile Past the End of the World was first published in the Post-Tribune, Merrillville, Indiana, in the week after 9/11. It may be freely performed in public without express permission, including the Prologue; if performed as part of The Star Spangled Banner, it should be placed immediately before the fourth and final verse. Permission is given to reprint any or all of it, provided that proper attribution of the author is made.

      BEFORE SIGN-ON

      It all started with my parents—or so author of light verse and numerous humor books Richard Armour might say. I hesitate to compare myself to someone who had the misfortune to be born into the same generation as Ogden Nash.

      My mother was a native of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and possibly the only full-blooded Pole in Northwest Indiana who was not related to any of the others of her heritage here. Having been raised Catholic (see Jean Shepherd’s The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski), she somehow found her way to (Lutheran) Valparaiso University, where she prepared for a career as either a vocalist or an English and French teacher, which allowed her to indulge a talent for tongue-in-cheek composition—such as Joey, a parody on Spike Jones’ 1945 Top 10 hit Chloe in praise of our wartime ally and oppressor of tens of millions.

      She managed to overcome her Down East accent (except when we were visiting her parents), although she never picked up my father’s Chicagoland Warshington. Between the two of them and the indigenous Hoosier drawl, my speech tended to drift widely, according to whatever region where I chanced to spend at least two weeks. (A baffled philologist once asked me when I moved to Indiana and refused to believe my answer. I still say root for route and call roundabouts rotaries.)

      Because of her I was saddled with a writing and speaking style that was rooted in the 1940’s, unless I made a conscious effort to shun it. I also inherited from her a kind of eidetic memory with which I could recall not only times and places, but sounds (I have always remembered sounds better than sights), tastes, smells, feelings, and emotions, good or bad that could come back randomly and without cause at any moment—sometimes intensely and painfully.

      My father’s contribution was buying me a typewriter for my thirteenth birthday and immersing me in our three-generation family funeral home.

      My earliest memories include my mother reading to me, and my sister, from James Barrie’s Peter Pan, Thornton W. Burgess’s Old Mother West Wind books, the stories of Joel Chandler Harris, don marquis’s archy and mehitabel, and A Small Child’s Book of Verse, edited by children’s book illustrator Pelagie Doane. She also made sure that I was imprinted on more single records and long-playing albums, popular and classical, than I could even begin to mention. After years as a fine arts announcer—my ticket into commercial radio after graduate school in journalism at the University of Maryland—people just assumed that I had a college music degree, which was not the case.

      I was reading the Chicago Tribune while I was in kindergarten and doing 300-piece jigsaw puzzles in the second grade (every day before school). Strange to say, I read nonfiction exclusively until about the fifth grade; among the first storybooks that I picked up were the later Oz novels of L. Frank Baum in the fourth grade library at Gardner. School. Not until I was a sophomore in high school was a I concerted reader of fiction, and then my extracurricular interests were science fiction, travel, and folklore.

      My first poem came in Mrs. Steffey’s second grade class at Central School—a valentine to classmate Barbara McDonald. The next

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