Asbury’s Father: Asbury Harpending, Sr.
Born: 10 October 1790, New York State
Died: 7 October 1873, Princeton, Caldwell County, Kentucky

Asbury’s Mother: born 1808 as Nancy Wright Clark. Later, she was known as Nancy Jones; a prior marriage is speculated. She was Asbury’s second wife, of three. Asbury Senior remarried in 1843, so Asbury Junior’s mother died (not divorced) when he was quite young. He was the youngest of three from his mother. He had seven half-siblings from Asbury’s first wife, Mary Prickett Ogden who died in 1833. There were no children from Asbury’s third marriage to Sarah. We don’t know the relationship Asbury had with his step-mother Sarah.

Asbury’s Wife: Ira Anna Thompson
Died: April 26, 1917

Asbury’s Children:

(Gertrude died in infancy)

—

Asbury Harpending, Jr. was my father’s maternal grandfather. Dad remembered being with him in New York when Asbury died. Dad was then nine years old. My memories of Asbury are those of my father and Asbury’s daughter Genevieve, Dad’s aunt, transmuted by time and the nervous systems of the three of us.

Asbury’s official life is well chronicled in his autobiography, The Great Diamond Hoax and Other Stirring Incidents in the Life of Asbury Harpending, in many books and periodicals during and after his days, and in the archives of the Online Archive of California.

In addition I have written a brief biography, Notes for a Memoir: Asbury Harpending, Jr.

What I record in the following is the picture I have of the man and his relationships with his children and their spouses.

He was full of himself, irascible, explosive and difficult to live with. He was driven by ambition and achieved most of what he yearned for as a youth: wealth, influence and some degree of respectability. He fancied himself as a southern gentleman, but he was not.

His memoirs barely mention his wife, about whom my father and Great Aunt knew little; I know next to nothing. Both of his sons left home never to return. He doted on his two daughters, and indulged them to the point of supporting them and their husbands until he died.

He left home in Kentucky at age 16 to the promise of California during and after the Gold Rush, and returned slightly before or after his father’s death in 1874 to present himself to his former community and family as a successful and wealthy man. Another motive was that he suffered public humiliation by his still murky role in the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872 and he wanted to start afresh. This was not to be. Although he had built a marvelous house in his home county, after the child Gertrude died (within two years of her birth) he moved to New York City. I speculate he found Kentucky slow and boring and that he was not accepted socially.

It’s not clear to me how he raised a family in Marin County (Mill Valley) and Alameda County (Oakland) while living in New York, but I have heard many stories from Dad about his life in Mill Valley and the “Fruitvale House” (now gone) in Oakland. It seems apparent Asbury relied on his two sons-in-law to manage family affairs. They were business partners with each other, as well as connected through the sisters.

Asbury was a promoter and plunger and, in the end, died with his fortune almost depleted. His sons-in-law spent 12 years after his death trying to recover Asbury’s assets in New York, California, London, and Mexico.

(More Text Follows the Three Images) 

“Old Harpending House”, Princeton, Kentucky

Fruitvale House, Oakland

Lucille Harpending Pavellas at the Mill Valley house.

Harpending’s son-in-law George D. Papageorge-Palladius was also a promoter and in him I believe Asbury saw a natural son. Papageorge died in his fifties from complications of diabetes and other diseases, having depleted all the Harpending assets in the middle of The Great Depression. Papageorge’s son, Nestor Palladius, was also a promoter/salesman but was not successful and, in the long run, died in poverty at age 83 with no natural children.

Harpending’s other son-in-law, Alexander Konstantin Pavellas, was the respectable and professionally educated “son” (lawyer and diplomat) who married the oldest, peculiar, and theretofore unmarriageable daughter, Lucille, several years older than Alexander. He died similarly to his brother-in-law, the same year, 1935.

These two sons were good husbands and did their duties, thereby cementing their access to the Harpending assets (tangible and intangible) which they used to advance their various enterprises together, including especially newspapers and other publications and activities aimed at the Greek-American community and Philhellenes of the West Coast.

Asbury was imperious and prone to impulsive betting on the future.He was a Californian of the 1800s, but his way was not profitable in the 1900s. He died a disappointed man, as did his sons-in-law who were inextricably in his orbit. His daughter Lucille was a mystical and  unhappy soul who died within months of her husband and brother-in-law. His daughter Genevieve was altogether different. She enjoyed life, in whatever manner it presented itself, to the fullest until her death at age 90, then living with a rather punchy ex-boxer, Frank.

Asbury’s legacy is memories, a few mementos, and a great number of descendants, amazingly, through only one grandson, my father.

Diane loved to be the hostess for gatherings of family and friends. Here she is hosting a birthday party at her home in San Jose for brother Ron, 6 January 2002

Diane Helen Pavellas was born at Children’s Hospital in San Francisco, 27 August, 1942. We were then living in the new Sunnydale Housing Project for war workers at 1822 Sunnydale avenue, San Francisco, near the “Cow Palace” in Daly City. Mother Artemis Pavellas was 23 years old. Father Conrad Pavellas worked at the Kaiser Richmond Shipyards as a rat-proofing foreman in building “Liberty Ships” for the U. S. Navy. Diane, along with her small family, began life in humble circumstances., both in San Francisco and, beginning 1946, Brooklyn, New York.

The Sunnydale (San Francisco) Housing Project (click on image)

Our father, Conrad Pavellas, was (falsely) promised a partnership in a printing firm by his cousin George Pavellas, so the four of us moved to Brooklyn. Dad preceded the rest of the family to arrange housing, and the three of us arrived, by train, on New Year day, 1946.

The area surrounding 3rd Avenue and 48th Street, Brooklyn (click on the image)

We escaped back to California in the summer of 1951 when Diane was age 9.

1948: Diane Pavellas, age six years, in Brooklyn, New York

Perhaps Diane’s natural appreciation and talent for arranging things and events of beauty were doubly encouraged by her memories of the Brooklyn slum we lived in, but it doesn’t matter. Our aunts Angie and Bee in California supported Diane and me (brother Ron) in our taking piano lessons and, for Diane, ballet lessons. She was a good and enthusiastic dancer. She enjoyed entertaining the neighborhood children by dancing in the street, beginning her career as someone who attracted people and who brought them, and herself, joyful experiences.

Diane remained in California for the rest of her life until early 2008, when she moved upon retirement from the real estate business to Rosarito Beach, Mexico. She died there, suddenly and apparently from an acute attack of asthma, on 8 July 2011.

Diane married twice, was blessed with a daughter Victoria and a stepson, Rick, both of whom have children of their own.

As stated at the head of this eulogy, almost 300 pictures from Diane’s life can be seen in chronological order here, each picture accompanied by some descriptive text. At the end of this photo album, there is a short video of Diane giving me a visual tour of the El Descanso housing development in which she lived and worked.

Hail and Farewell, Diane Helen Pavellas: daughter, sister, niece, aunt, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend.

I don’t go around thinking of myself as Greek, although I easily indentify myself with this ethnicity. Three of my grandparents were born in Greece. The fourth was born in the USA of mixed northern European heritage—Dutch and “Scotch-Irish”, by family names. My sister and I were not raised in the Greek tradition or culture.

I was slightly nonplussed but pleased by this surprising greeting, after which the man and I warmly shook hands. As usual when among Greeks, I had to explain that I never learned the language except to say kala, efcharisto (good, thank you) to the standard greeting ti kaneis (how are you), which is disappointing to the Greeks I meet, whether citizens of Greece or ethnic Greeks from elsewhere.

The man, whose name was given too quickly for me to catch, is the husband of the artist with whom I exchanged greetings immediately thereafter. She is American with a German surname, and a professor of art at UCLA. We swapped cards and have since communicated briefly by email.

The greeting this Greek fellow gave me has stayed with me in a pleasant way, now several weeks since. This feeling and associated thoughts wandered around in me and finally settled on another event, long past, when I was proclaimed “Greek” at the funeral of my Aunt Bee’s husband, my Uncle Tommy.

The parents of Thomas Anthony Thomas were from Greece and had four children born in California. His father’s family surname was Efthemiou; his mother’s was Andritsas.

Bea and Tommy Thomas, Center, surrounded by family at the baptism of Tom, Jr., around 1950

Tommy Thomas and Beatrice Pagonis married in the mid-1940s. Uncle Tommy became a mentor to me, as he was to others.  He was a short and powerful man who, with an 8^th-grade education, rose from worker to foreman and eventually partner in the main business, then, of Newport Beach, the fish cannery. It is now “The Cannery” restaurant.

Tommy was brash, generous, argumentative, loving. He was full of life and good, if biting, humor. He was always a challenge to talk with and to satisfy. I loved him and still do. He was the first of the older generation to die.

When I was not yet nine years old Uncle Tommy took me on a tour of the fish cannery. I saw the boats come in and saw the fishermen unloading the tuna, swordfish, crab and other catches, but mostly the tuna.

I listened as Tommy bantered with the fishermen, immigrants from all over southern Europe: Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, Jugoslavs. The comaraderie among these hard-working men was different and more exciting than that of my father and his friends in the Socialist Labor Party of San Francisco.

In all the back-and-forth between Tommy and the others, Tommy was the benevolent leader.

"The Cannery" by Jane Hill of Jane Hill studio

Around twenty-five years later I was living and working in the Los Angeles area and could visit Tommy and Bee more often. By this time the tuna had almost disappeared from California’s waters and the cannery was reduced to canning pet food. Despite Tommy’s deep disappointment in not being able to successfully lobby the state legislature to limit the catches as is now done in Alaska, and in no longer being able to be a man among other men in the fishing business, he continued to be as cheerful as he could be. But I could see that it was a great burden to carry the old times with him and radiate these to the others who were similarly disappointed, even wrecked, from the collapse of the local fishing industry.

He told me of the fishermen with whom he maintained connection. One in particular stands out in my memory, one who Tommy pointed out to me as we were together in town doing some errands. The old fisherman walked with a cane. He lived alone, so Tommy checked up on him every few days to see how he was. One time Tommy was overdue on his self-appointed rounds and found the old man collapsed on his kitchen floor. Tommy got him to the hospital where he recovered. Tommy simply saved the man’s life.

Not long after this telling, Tommy had a massive stroke and was dead within a year. The formerly powerful and dependable man was now a helpless mumbling person, bed-ridden and fully dependent on everyone else. His face was contorted, one half of it fully immobilized from the stroke, as was half his body. It was horrible.

Tommy was a 33^rd-degree Mason and wanted his funeral according the rites of this fraternity. He also had roots in the Greek Orthodox Church. Aunt Bee asked a Greek priest to be present with the family at the rites.

The funeral ceremony was held in large building (I think it may have been the Masonic Lodge in Huntington Beach) where the general public was admitted, but the family was off to the side in a covered area where we could see out and not be seen. We saw Tommy’s many friends and former associates pass by his closed coffin to pay last respects. As I watched this sad and solemn procession, I was electrified to see the old man whose life Tommy had saved. He was, with the help of his cane, walking stiffly and straight as a soldier, slowly toward Tommy’s coffin. He was dressed in a sharp gray suit and held a flower. As he laid the flower on Tommy’s coffin I burst into tears and uttered a loud noise that I tried unsuccessfully to quash—thus making it all the more strange sounding. I was the only one in our family gathering, including the priest, who was crying, as far as I could tell, and I was embarrassed.

Aunt Bee had a reception at her house afterward. It was crowded and noisy, old friends greeting and socializing. I held back, not familiar with everyone and still somewhat embarrassed. The priest came over to me, grabbed my arm tightly and said to me: “you’re a real Greek.”

I feel blessed by fortune, fate and circumstance to be relatively free from concern about food, clothing and shelter and, for the higher needs, books, music, the beauties of Nature, and access to the Internet. Of course all this would be quite dry and thin if I were not also enveloped and nourished by the love of family and friends.

Circumstances can change at any time, to any degree, but one gets used to things appearing to remain the same, at least in the short term. My short-term thinking is a few years. The longer-term, which I think about more often, I see as 20 to 25 years, barring accident.

I will pass through the seventy-third anniversary of my birth sometime on 7 January, 2010. Many years ago I aspired to reach age 63, just to experience living beyond the year 1999.

I “retired” at age 65½, exactly, although I prefer to say I have had no boss since then. I need to feel useful and have, therefore, been employed in a number of activities, some even remunerative. All have been of my own choosing and, having completed many, I have moved on to others.

My father lived until age 87, my mother until age 90. Actuarial tables for “white” male persons living currently in the USA tell me that I will probably live until around 84.5 years. By virtue of having moved to Sweden seven years ago, that figure may well increase to 87.5 years. Other than my inherited tendency toward hypertension which is easily controlled, I have no major chronic diseases or disabilities. I think it reasonable, therefore, to expect to live until age 90 or 95.

But, since I like prime numbers, let’s round that up to 97.

See you around.

Ron Pavellas
2 January 2009

One cannot successfully describe (literally, put into writing) the sublimity of the graceful, intricately simple, competent and just plain beautiful movements of dancers who are so fully integrated in their movements they often appear as a single living organism.

There. I tried to put the experience into words, anyway.

Here is a Youtube presentation of a rehearsal of “Position of Elsewhere” by the Cullberg Ballet.

Diane Pavellas, a student of Ephraim Geersh, around age four, Brooklyn, New York

It has been too long since I have seen ballet performed by professionals; that is, dancers who have as a basis for their art the movements and other attributes of classical ballet. Members of my family have appreciated classical ballet since I can remember. My younger sister, Diane, took ballet lessons for eight years in Brooklyn, then in San Francisco (with the Christiansen Ballet) when the Pavellas family moved back to their home town.

A cousin through marriage, Christine Sarry, influenced by Diane’s love of ballet, began lessons also and eventually was a major dancer with at least two ballet troupes in New York: The Eliot Feld Ballet and the American Ballet Theater.

Christine Sarry

Christy was a principal dancer in Aaron Copland’s Rodeo, choreographed by Agnes De Mille.

“…producers were hard-pressed to replicate the skill with which de Mille had portrayed the lead (‘Cowgirl’ in Rodeo). De Mille retained veto power over any casting of the ballet, which often sent companies to extremes in order to find a worthy Cowgirl.” (Source)

Here is Christy dancing as “The Cowgirl.” Agnes de Mille’s will provides Christine Sarry exclusive rights to approve dancers for the role of (or for a certain dance of) “The Cowgirl”.

This reminiscence has value, perhaps, in establishing a small measure of authority in my remarks here about the Cullberg Ballet.

Members of the Cullberg Ballet taking their final bows at the performance of August 24, 2009 at Parkteatern, Vitabergsparken

From the Fall schedule of Dansens Hus (The House of Dance), I see that the Cullberg Ballet will perform “Matter of a Maker” in Stockholm in November, the 21st, 22nd and 24th. The music will be by Owen Belton and Beastie Boys.

They will also perform “Xpectacle” by Crystal Pite November 25-27.

I’ll be sure to get my tickets early.

I started smoking cigarettes at age 11 and smoked two packs per day by age 12. This was an attempt to prove to the guys I hung around with in Brooklyn that I could possibly advance to manhood someday. This was in 1948.

My dad was also smoking heavily then. When my little sister ratted me out to him he said “you’ll be a man before your mother.” Nonetheless, I continued to smoke steadily. We moved back to California in 1951. (I don’t remember when Dad quit smoking, but it was many years before he died at age 87. Mom never smoked and died at age 90).

Smoking a cigarette at age 17, Navy Boot Camp, 1954

I quit cold when I was 19, in the US Navy. I was concerned for my health, having been born with a mild, genetically-inherited anemia, Alpha Thalassemia. I was also, and remain, a bit of a hypochondriac due to having been quite ill as a child and having had a hypersensitive nurse as a loving aunt. So, it was probably easier for me to quit than for other people, including a dear member of my family who still smokes and cannot shake the habit.

I started again at age 27. I had finally got into the graduate curriculum at the School of Public Health of the University of California, Berkeley. This was 1963. The School was housed in Earl Warren Hall at the northwest corner of the campus. Graduate students could smoke in class! My then wife, Patricia, thought a graduate student ought to smoke a pipe. She bought me a nice one and I happily took up the tobacco habit again. The pipe led to cigars and then back to cigarettes. I inhaled them all. At around age 38 or 39 I started to cough up black stuff, so I was scared into quitting again and felt much better, immediately. No more clearing of the throat and bronchi for half an hour every morning, and much more energy. Now, more than 30 years later, I cannot stand the smell of cigarettes, but I do occasionally find the smell of a pipe or a cigar intriguing.

In year 2006 I read The Importance of Living, a book by Lin Yutang which I recommend to anyone wanting a good read.

…Now the moral and spiritual benefits of smoking have never been appreciated by these correct and righteous and unemotional and unpoetic souls. But since we smokers are usually attacked from the moral, and not the artistic side, I must begin by defending the smoker’s morality, which is on the whole higher than that of the non-smokers. The man with a pipe in his mouth is the man after my heart. He is more genial, more sociable, has more intimate indiscretions to reveal, and sometimes he is quite brilliant in conversation, and in any case, I have a feeling that he likes me as much as I like him. I agree entirely with Thackeray, who wrote: The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouths of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.”

Lin Yutang’s essay goes on in this vein at some length before he then explores the virtues of Chinese incense, and it convinced me to try the pipe again. I went to a smoke shop in an upscale neighborhood of Stockholm (Sture Galleria) which had advertised a sale on specially made pipes to commemorate a major anniversary of the store’s business life. I bought one, along with the basic accouterments and the store’s special brand of tobacco. I sat on the balcony of our apartment to light up after more than 30 years, my fingers remembering all the little movements required to fill the pipe properly with tobacco. I felt a jolt when the nicotine got to where it affects the nervous system. It was a bit alarming, my body not remembering this aspect.

Practicing pipe smoking in California, 2006

I was on the verge of a trip to see my California family for an extended period, so I packed the pipe and paraphernalia in my luggage with the intention of practicing proper pipe smoking in the backyard patio. After my arrival in San Jose, I tried my best to achieve the pleasures so wonderfully described by Lin Yutang, but I concluded that the fussing with lighting and relighting and cleaning the pipe, not to speak of the dizziness and borderline nausea, was not worth the professorial image.

John Robinson, third husband to my first wife, Patricia and a heavy smoker, died of complications arising from emphysema at around age 55, having lived connected to an oxygen bottle for the previous several years. Patricia continued to smoke.

Patricia Robinson, former wife, died, age 68, neck and throat cancer. She had a tracheostomy for the last several months.

Nestor Palladius, my cousin, died age 83 of lung cancer.

Len R., old friend, died age 71, lung cancer. On oxygen the last few years.

Brian B., dear friend, died, brain tumor, age 68.

Recquiescas in pace

After living and working in Los Angeles for four years I got a job in Modesto, in the Great Central Valley, less than two hours by car from San Francisco. I waited until my wife and I had settled in our new home before we made the first trip in some years to visit my home town; the year was 1975.

As we broached the final pass over the ranges of hills separating the Valley from the City, I eagerly scanned the horizon for the beloved hills. There they were, poised above the fog—but I was stricken with horror!

Dwarfing everything on the skyline was an immense steel structure standing tall, rigid and ugly on Mt. Sutro, next to Twin Peaks, its three towers standing far above the peaks of the hills. It interrupted and obliterated the contour of the gentle ridge, overpowering it and diminishing its hills into insignificance.

I was in a state of disbelief, then anger and anguish as I realized and was forced to accept that the Great God Television had commanded the city fathers and mothers to erect this excrescence without regard to the beauty it destroyed.

I fell out of love with San Francisco, my anchor in the physical world since I began traveling away, back, and away again since age nine.

I no longer vest my soul in any one geographical setting. It isn’t a particular hill or mountain, or forest or seashore I love, it is any of them I may visit.

The beach between Anchor Point and Homer, Alaska

But I have made an exception for that place named Alaska, where I have lived for eight winters. I have allowed myself to believe it is too vast and too harsh for man to destroy its primitive beauty, at least in my lifetime.

I return to find
The old place now imperfect.
What did I expect?

Hear the foghorn on the Golden Gate bridge

Younger men tend to have shorter beards than older men. In some portions of the younger set it is fashionable even to appear merely unshaven for a few days. One sees advertisements, usually for women’s apparel and accessories, which show young men with three-day, untrimmed beards hanging around attractive young women looking, variously, concupiscent, unfulfilled and depressed. They usually have dark beards. I guess those with blond beards are too happy and satisfied looking.

Not too many older men currently have the long beards sported by the generation of my great-grandfathers, contemporaries who never knew each other: Konstantin Alexander Pavellas and Asbury Harpending, Jr.

The following generation of men, around the 1900s, preferred waxed mustaches which, for me, have too much vanity associated with them, as shown by my two grandfathers, Alexander K. Pavellas and George Pagonis:

I think the most attractive of beards worn by a public figure, currently, is that of Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, which is on a par with that of my friend George Wegler.

I see, everywhere in Stockholm, men of a certain age displaying beards in the style of Ben and George, and I feel a kinship with these fellows, especially those with partially or fully-silvered beards. This is how I have now grown my beard, as best as I can with a few little baldish spots on my right side.

I grew my first beard upon achieving, at age 38, my goal of becoming the chief executive of a community hospital. This was in the City of Modesto, California, in the Great Central Valley. I shaved this beard after a while, thinking it not reflecting the inner Ron. Twenty-two years later I visited the land where three of my grandparents were born, Greece, and grew what I then considered a Greek beard, sort of unruly, but with the area under my nose, my philtrum, scraped clean.

When visiting Afghanistan in 2004 as a volunteer hospital consultant, I once again grew a beard and, to appease some remaining vanity, shaved my philtrum. I have since shaved it all, and now have regrown my beard similar in length to what you see below, but without bothering with the area under my nose.

If I look tired and hot, I was, and not too good in the guts, as well. It was July, 2005. Dr. Husman’s beard is a glorious thing, however, and I envy him his hirsuteness.

I feel, now, part of a fraternity of older men who are comfortable within their own skin and hair. It is a great pleasure to admire the beards of others. My only mild regret is that I never had the courage to let all my head hair grow out ‘naturally’ as did two people I admire, in the 1970s:

John Hartford and Allen Ginsberg

He’s dead nine years now, but he and his stories, his life story, are still with me.

He seemed to intend that I and my younger sister Diane should carry his memories with us. We have. This was how his mother raised him, to remember her memories and fantasies. She died before I was born, before Dad and Mom married, in a state mental hospital—of malnutrition secondary to “melancholia.”

So here I am, and was earlier this morning, remembering Dad’s memories, or at least my version of them.

There are many, so many that I can no longer distinguish among what were his stated memories or my version of what he said, or my own memories and imaginings. These memories could possibly be interesting to others if told well as a story, but this is not where my thoughts took me as Eva and I walked, slowly, in the quiet, sunny morning under the trees along the lake.

Here is what I thought: Dad’s memories will die with my death and my sister’s death. He will then, and his mother will then, be truly dead.

Such melancholy-seeming thoughts were probably elicited by the death, a few days ago, of the last remaining relative we knew in the older generation: Mom’s sister, our Aunt Bee. She was 96.

Nestor, Genevieve, Conrad (Dad)

Gone are Mom and Dad, Dad’s aunt Genevieve and her son, our cousin Nestor and his wife Timmie, Aunts Bee and Angie, Uncle Harry. Diane and I are the oldest now, and not too old: 67 and 72. We remember things, especially about Dad and his life that no one else can remember.

I thought earlier this morning of how I, following my father’s pattern, tried to inculcate family memories in my five children and the older of my grandchildren, to no apparent avail. I do not have what Dad had—an almost violent need to relive the past and make sense of it. My need is not as strong; and, my children were not trapped in the household as Diane and I were in Brooklyn for five years, away from all other family members and from the safer neighborhoods in California just after the end of World War Two.

How we got to Brooklyn and why we stayed there for five years before returning, happily, to San Francisco is another story that will die with Diane and me.

That’s the point of this ramble. All these memories we try to preserve through storytelling, documents, photographs and sometimes moving images are not really interesting or useful to those who follow except, perhaps, as fantasies or academic exercises.

“This is it!” as Alan Watts insists, as do others of a philosophical bent. There is no past, there is no future. There is only Now. We continue to learn primarily through our own experiences, if at all. We are condemned to re-live history. And, the ability for a person to transmit memories over the generations to promote a legacy for oneself dwindles, inexorably.

So, I allowed these meandering thoughts about the value of memories to rustle through my gray matter for a bit, then I got back to the business at hand—to enjoy each moment of my walk with Eva, along the lakeside path under the trees, on this beautiful sunny morning at latitude 59 degrees North, in Stockholm, Sweden.

26 April 2009

From The Road to Oz, by L. Frank Baum, 1909: In which is related how Dorothy Gale of Kansas, The Shaggy Man, Button Bright, and Polychrome the Rainbow’s Daughter met on an Enchanted Road and followed it all the way to the Marvelous Land of Oz, encountering strange people and interesting adventures along the way.

My father read to me and my sister Diane, and we later read for ourselves, all 14 Oz books written by L. Frank Baum. There were more written by others after Baum died, but they didn’t come up to the standard his books established, according to both Dad and me.

I often think of Johnny Dooit when I am engaged in manual labor; he provides inspiration. I also learned to appreciate the value of tools and a can-do attitude through him, later buttressed by real life experiences.

The first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the unforgettable movie made of it in 1939, are essential parts of my childhood. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” sung by Judy Garland, never fails to evoke tender feelings in me.

But, there is so much more to the full story of Oz. Here are the 14 books, in publication date order:

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) Ozma of Oz (1907) Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908) The Road to Oz (1909) The Emerald City of Oz (1910) The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913)

Tik-Tok of Oz (1914) The Scarecrow of Oz (1915) Rinkitink in Oz (1916) The Lost Princess of Oz (1917) The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918) The Magic of Oz (1919, posthumous) Glinda of Oz (1920, posthumous)

You can access the text of all of these books online, here.

In addition to The Road to Oz another favorite of mine is Rinkitink in Oz, King Rinkitink of Gilgad is a Falstaffian character who rides a surly billy goat who talks, of course, and in a most disrespectful manner to everyone, including especially the king. There is a young man, the Prince of Pingaree, who accompanies the King to Oz, in order to escape his kingdom’s enemies and to seek help from the ruler of Oz. The Prince has three magic pearls that figure in his ability to overcome great dangers on his trip to Oz.

Prince Inga’s father, King Kitticut, had told him, before the King and Queen were captured by enemies: “Each of the three possesses an astonishing power, and whoever is their owner may count himself a fortunate man. This one having the blue tint will give to the person who carries it a strength so great that no power can resist him. The one with the pink glow will protect its owner from all dangers that may threaten him, no matter from what source they may come. The third pearl — this one of pure white — can speak, and its words are always wise and helpful.” To add spice to the story, the Prince has trouble hanging on the the pearls as he, King Rinkitink and Bilbil the goat search for the the safety and the help of the Land of Oz.

A major point in this book is that Dorothy Gale of Kansas is not the main character, as she is in so many others–and he is a boy. There is another book where the main character starts out, from our view, as a boy but is later transformed back into his original condition as Ozma, The Royal Princess of Oz. This occurs in the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, the only book in which Dorothy Gale does not appear.

One of my favorite characters is introduced in this second book: “H.M. Wogglebug, T.E.” whom you see lecturing the assembled characters in the image on the left. H.M. stands for Highly Magnified (he escaped from a professor’s magnifying apparatus) and T.E. means Thoroughly Educated (after all, he was a living specimen for students and therefore lived at a university). This character exhibits all the pomposity and windiness of the quintessential caricature of a professor. I think Dad and I saw ourselves in him.

Dad started the tradition of collecting, keeping and passing along the Oz books to the generation that follows. Some of the books I held as a young boy (and my sister, as a younger girl) are now in the possession of my niece Vicki and her two daughters Shawna and Megan; and, also my youngest daughter Analiese and her nieces, my 7- and 11-year-old granddaughters Sydney and Sonya.

As you may sense, I could go on and on about the many and surprising array of characters in the Oz books, not all of them nice people, or even people at all.

I urge to read one to see if you can resist reading others, no matter what your age.

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