No Entry

Nothing from Papa today. Perhaps he’s exhausted from all the attention he’s been getting from women over the past couple of days. If he had enough energy to look at the papers, here’s what might have caught his eye in the New York Times:

POLITICS NEVER POLITE. — Remember, there was a Presidential campaign underway in 1924. Even though the Democratic nominee, John W. Davis, had no real chance after his party’s contentious convention back in July, he was still out there campaigning. This editorial takes the Republicans to task for complaining about Davis’ tough language on the stump.

ARGUE FOR HANGING OF FRANKS SLAYERS; State Prosecutors Call Leopold and Loeb Fiends, While the Youths Listen Unmoved. — I admit this might be more interesting to me than to Papa since I just finished Compulsion, Meyer Levin’s excellent, thinly fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb saga. Still, the trial was a national sensation, so perhaps Papa was following along.

MOVIE OPERATORS VOTE TO STRIKE; Union to Collect Defense Fund of $200,000 for Strife to Begin Sept. — As a labor activist and movie lover, Papa must have been intrigued by the prospect of a movie operators’ strike (I think projectionists called themselves movie operators in those days). Negotiations broke off a week later, but theater owners apparently had no problem finding operators from outside The Motion Picture Operators’ Union, Local 306.

Today’s Radio Program – The Times radio listings (they appear to be a new innovation in August 1924, but I need to figure out when they first started appearing) show that Papa might have heard some of the following if he spent the evening at home with his headphones:

• WEAF: Vladimir Karapepoff, Piano; “Modern Children’s Crusade,” by Jackie Coogan
• WNYC: Jascha Gurewich, saxophone; Sam Perry and Herbert Clair, piano duets; “Physical Examination of Food Handlers by the Occupational Clinic,” by Dr. Rudolph Rapp; Police alarms, stolen automobiles, missing persons, weather forecasts.
• WJZ: Gotham Hotel Orchestra; French lesson; Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra

[no entry]

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Nothing from Papa today, so I thought I’d share this photo of him, in which he seems to be a little older than in his photos from the early 1920’s. It looks like it was taken in a photo booth, perhaps on the Coney Island boardwalk, some time around 1930. Had he already met my grandmother? Had he, at this point, finally overcome the forces of stasis and dispatched the unfulfilled longing he suffered from and wrote about in 1924?

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And here are some notable New York Times headlines that might have caught Papa’s eye on this day:

• Henry Ford Defends Klan As a Body of Patriots

• Ohio Democrats Denounce the Ku Klux Klan, Putting Davis’s Statement Into Their Platform
• COOLIDGE STUDIES KU KLUX KLAN ISSUE; President Reads Many Letters to Him Giving Various Views on the Klan.
• Flier Going 105 Miles an Hour Broadcasts to Nassau County — Looks like radio communication from a moving airplane was still a novelty in 1924.
• RADIO CONFERENCE CALLED BY HOOVER; Better Regulation of Wireless to Be Discussed — Public to Be Represented. — The explosive popularity of radio, and the crowding of the airwaves, demanded some kind of government action. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce and a friend of big business (as was his boss, President Coolidge) was loathe to regulate anything but called a bunch of conferences to ask broadcasters, many of them large corporations, how they’d like to regulate themselves. Not surprisingly and despite Hoover’s occasional rhetoric to the contrary, commercialism and the influence of corporations dictated the development of the broadcasting industry during this period.
• ASSAILS ALIENISTS OF FRANKS SLAYERS; Prosecutor, in Last Argument, Scores ‘Twaddle’ of the ‘Three Wise Men of the East.’ — The Leopold and Loeb trial was wrapping up. In his summation, defense attorney Clarence Darrow had made an eloquent plea to save his clients from the death penalty. Prosecuting attorney Robert E. Crowe now attempted to counter Darrow’s arguments, and ridicule the psychologists who helped support them, in a strident, passionate speech. Darrow prevailed, and Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life in prison plus 99 years.

[no entry]

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No entry from Papa usually means he’s unhappy with his life and feels like nothing is worth reporting. I think this is the case today; yesterday’s entry signaled a darkening mood even though he’d been on a mild upswing before the Labor Day holiday.

I would assume he stayed home and listened to the radio and read the newspaper. Here are some New York Times headlines that might have caught his eye:

• MEMOIRS PLANNED BY FRANKS SLAYER; Leopold Makes His Will on Jail Paper — Is Prepared to Live or Die.
• Flies From Boston to New York in 58 Minutes; Round Trip Made in 2 Hours and 12 Minutes
• THREE TO DIE FOR POGROMS.; Red Court in Ukraine Sentences Dereschtschik and His Aids.
• SAYS HYLAN TRICKS PUBLIC ON CONCERTS; People Pay for Music for Which Mayor Takes Credit, Harriet Blair Williams Asserts.
• TEXAN PLANK NAMES KLAN.; Democratic Convention Adopts a Resolution Condemning Order.
• RADIO PLANE CONTROL GAINS; Secret British Tests Include Launching of Winged Bombs.
• ASSURE COOLIDGE OF BIG MAJORITY; Party Leaders Report Bright Prospects in All Sections of the Country.
• DEMOCRATS ELATED BY REPORTS IN WEST; National Leaders Confer Here on Having Davis Continue His Trip to the Coast.
• YANKS GAIN IN RACE BY BEATING RED SOX; Take Final Contest of Series, 11-6, and Advance Half a Game on the Senators.
• Child Is Born With Two Heads.

When Papa says nothing it is because he thinks his day was worth nothing. He goes to work, he comes home to his radio, he thinks about his father, he feels no closer to whatever should happen next than he did ten years before. He is flooded by the past, he can barely stay afloat, he is so tired from the effort he cannot lift his eyes and make for what’s ahead. He becomes a ghost in his own body, a guest so courteous he remains unseen, too polite to even mark a page. Some days I wish I understood him better; some days I wish I didn’t understand him so well.

Yet:

Empty

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Matt’s Notes

Papa feels his lowest when he’s alone or unoccupied. I suppose he sat home on this strangely cool Sunday evening and surrounded himself with dreamy images of a life not his own: a wife near at hand, a child standing by his chair, asking him questions and trusting his answers, the room bright and warm and filled with the trappings of a life well-lived, ever changing, evolving, surprising. In this daydream he is very much like his departed father, a gentle, steady presence who has survived his days of loneliness and boredom and doubt and now wonders: Did that really happen? I cannot be so happy now when once, not long ago, I sat alone with my radio headphones and newspapers and plate and cup, surrounded by ghosts of what might never be, ghosts who seemed more alive than I, bragging ghosts who flaunted what I did not have, noisy, distracting, so brilliant in their spite I was unable to mark my diary with anything but a single word: Empty.

It really happened, but still, Papa, this was you: