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Post by elisabeth on Feb 8, 2008 9:41:29 GMT -6
A minor bombshell from Charles K. Mills' Harvest of Barren Regrets. He says that when Benteen was courting his future wife Kate Norman, his father was courting her older sister Anita.
Anybody else find that faintly weird? Father and son wooing sisters? If papa had succeeded, Benteen's sister-in-law would have been his stepmother.
Just wondering if this may have contributed at all to the tensions within the Benteen family. Or indeed stemmed from them to any extent -- son competing with father? Obviously that wasn't young Fred's (sole) motivation, as if ever there was a love-match it was his and Kate's. But might it have strengthened his father's reaction to the lad taking the "wrong" side in the CW?
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Post by harpskiddie on Feb 8, 2008 10:08:36 GMT -6
"My wife is now my mother-in-law, and I'm my own grandpa." Old song lyric, more or less. I don't find that faintly weird at all - I find it exceedingly weird. My daughter would find it disgusting. I'm a bit more tolerant of age differences and associations, being a DOM. How old was the sister? How old the father?
Gordie
MC
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Post by gocav76 on Feb 8, 2008 10:23:59 GMT -6
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Post by elisabeth on Feb 8, 2008 10:29:22 GMT -6
The father would have been in his early 50s -- born in 1809. Kate, b. 1836, would have been in her mid-twenties; no idea about Anita. She could easily have been in her 30s, which wouldn't be that big a gap for two persons of adult years. But even so ...
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Post by harpskiddie on Feb 8, 2008 11:25:50 GMT -6
Thank you both. I see I had the lyrics wrong. Strange how it all makes sense, in a nonsensical way. BTW, that is not the version I remember. It was from the 50s, or perhaps earlier, and really hillbilly music at its best.
Gordie
MC
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Post by gocav76 on Feb 8, 2008 11:31:35 GMT -6
Gordie, I bet you remember the Grandpa Jones version.
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Post by harpskiddie on Feb 8, 2008 11:38:32 GMT -6
You're probably right, Larry. I have no idea who it was. I also loved Grandmother's Lye Soap - "good for anything all over the place. The pots and pans, the dirty dishes, and for your hands and for your face...."
Sorry, Elisabeth - we seem to have turned this thread into a paean to hillbilly music!!
Gordie
MC
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Post by Diane Merkel on Feb 9, 2008 0:12:19 GMT -6
That song was a hoot! I'm not sure I followed it completely, but it's funny.
In the February NL, there's a letter from Myron Steves (widower of Benteen's granddaughter) that references "Auntie Anita." I'll admit I'm not up on my Benteen genealogy, but Myron says she was Anita Benteen Mitchell and was still alive around 1955. I'll bet she was named in honor of Kate's sister, who would have been her great-aunt. BTW, Anita Mitchell was married to the brother of Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind.
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Post by Tricia on Feb 9, 2008 0:30:24 GMT -6
Gordo .. isn't that a pikkie of Johnny Rivers, or am I mistaken? As Diane has mentioned, one of his great songs was "Memphis." Great suggestiveness as well as a surprise ending. Who'd have thought the song was about a daughter who's only six years old?
I will soon post a photo of my main character at the LBHA thang. "Prettily unbalanced" is a the most accurate term I'd employ for a to-the point and direct description of the fair Alexandrina Pavlovna Valenya. I am quite interested in your take upon my first chapter!
CSS loved it ... he even praised my even-handedness when it came to employing an empathetic look at GAC. That said, why the heck am I still considered a Custer-hater?
Whatever.
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Post by harpskiddie on Feb 9, 2008 0:53:36 GMT -6
Trish:
That's actually Rick Nelson, who also had some success as a singer. Poor Little Fool, Hello Marylou, Traveling Man, Believe What You Say, and like that. Diane was good enough to put up the avatar for me. Gocav tried to help me, but I was hopeless. The whatchamacallit at the bottom is something I put up all by my ownself. Diane told me how to do it.
Johnny Rivers is alive and well, last I heard, and was still doing limited touring last year. We go back a long way, but I haven't seen him in a few years.
Larry:
Two of my other old favorites in a humorous vein were "The Old Philosopher" - you say you tell your girl that you've run out of gas, and you really have, so you start off down this dark road in a windstorm, when all a sudden ten feet of barbed wire hits you smack in the face. You say your girl has got stuck in the mud and is slowly sinking and screaming for you, and all of a sudden she ain't screaming no more. Is that what's bothering you, Bunkie? [something like that - the moral being never give up the ship].
And The Invasion of the Flying Saucers [or something like that] which interspersed clips from current songs with supposed commentary - This is John Cameron Cameron Downtown. The spaceship has landed..............
Think you can find something based on those descriptions?
Gordie
MC
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Post by gocav76 on Feb 9, 2008 1:11:30 GMT -6
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Post by gocav76 on Feb 9, 2008 1:31:46 GMT -6
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Post by elisabeth on Feb 9, 2008 1:58:35 GMT -6
Oh, my. How that takes me back.
Wonder what happened to that Janice girl? Her "Oi'll give it foive" line became a national catchphrase. She's probably a grandmother by now ...
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Post by clw on Feb 9, 2008 7:57:19 GMT -6
Ricky was my teen heart throb and I've never completely recovered. Must discuss a CD, Gordie! I should have the new computer in a couple of weeks, at which point my first order of business will be to watch the youtube links to Ricky that Larry offered.
But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself.
Sigh.
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Post by BrokenSword on Feb 9, 2008 9:32:26 GMT -6
Yeah, I liked Rick Nelson better than the Big 'E' as well, Larry.
My favorite song was 'Teenage Idol' or something like that. You probably guessed it though. Being as I could so totally relate to the lyrics and all. At least the papparazzi aren't as thick around me as they once were.
Thanks for the memories, Gordie.
M
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"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they