John I.John I.

John Isaac Jones is a retired journalist and novelist currently living at Merritt Island, Florida. For more than thirty years, "John I.," as he prefers to be called, was a reporter for media outlets throughout the world. He is the author of eight novels, two short story collections and five novellas. His most recent work is The Bird of Time, the story of life-long friends Johnny and Jesse.

Me and Bob Hope

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I had grown up with Bob Hope. When I was a child growing up in the hills of North Alabama in the early forties, I was an avid reader of Bob Hope comic books. On late night TV, I had watched most of the movies he had made with Bing Crosby and others, and in 1976, when I was working in the Enquirer’s Washington, D.C. office, I met him for the first time.

I was sitting in the Insider office in the National Press Building one afternoon when a man popped his head in the door.

“Bob Hope is down in the press room if anybody wants to interview him,” he said.

I knew I had to meet the great man.

For almost an hour, several other reporters and I posed questions about his personal life and his career, but all we got back were snappy wisecracks designed to produce belly laughs rather than copy. Later, when I worked in Hollywood, I would occasionally see him in Palm Springs at his famous golf tournament or at local restaurants.

Here was a man who, in my opinion, had conquered every frontier of show business. Radio, television, vaudeville, stage, movies, singing, dancing, standup comedy, and his legendary Christmas Tours for serviceman overseas. He was truly “Mr. Show Business,” entertaining Americans for generations. From alpha to omega, this man had not only bedazzled the world, but he had done so in spades.

In the early fall of 1994, I was on assignment in Palm Springs when I stopped by a Long’s Drugstore to buy some toothpaste. As I started in, I saw a man walking toward me, his arm locked in the arm of another much older man to keep him erect. The older man was unshaven, wearing a baseball cap, and appeared to be slightly palsied. As I approached the pair, I could see that the older man was Bob Hope.

For a moment, I stared at the two men moving hop-step across the parking lot, the halting steps of the older man following stride-by-stride of the younger man. As I watched, I felt deep sadness. Great God! I thought. Is this all that life is worth? Here was a man who had bedazzled the entire world and now he required another human being to assist him in remaining erect. Is that all life was worth?

Somehow, I suddenly had a deep understanding that no matter who you are or what you have accomplished in life, this was your ultimate end. I remember thinking, there’s no justice or mercy or goodness on this earth, only despair and nothingness in the end. As always, at times like these, I felt that if I had been more of a religious man, such moments wouldn’t have overtaken me with such a pervasive sadness.

Latest review of A Quiet Madness: A Biographical Novel of Edgar Allan Poe

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A Quite Madness

 

“What made the man?

Edgar Allan Poe sits among the great poets and wordsmiths for his literary talents. The nineteenth-century ‘man of letters’ possessed an assortment of opinions on topics of life, love, amorous congress, and death. He acquired his unique style and aptitude over forty years of life. And what a life it was!

This reader remained fascinated by this down-to-earth, well written biographical novel by John Isaac Jones, who details heartbreaking events, along with Poe’s love of women, writing, successful ventures, and failures from birth to his passing. With the revelation of additional segments of interesting information, the reader is drawn deeper into Poe’s psyche. Jones achieves his goal of illustrating Poe’s development as a writer by including certain poems. We see Poe’s victories, along with his many agonizing defeats. However, Jones also reveals Poe’s powerful resilience to triumph over adversity, no matter how vicious, right up to the conclusion of his rollercoaster life.

This reader and author knew basically nothing of Poe, aside from the poem ‘The Raven’ and the old movie ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’. However, because of the gifted author, John I. Jones, and this fine piece of writing, I vow to read more of Edgar Allan Poe’s work – since now I know ‘what made the man’.

– Author Robert Carey

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733350098 @JohnIJones5 Author John Isaac Jones #Literature #Fiction #GenreFiction #Southern #Biographies #Historical #Kindle #Bookreview #BooksWorthReading #Readerscommunity #readers #Booktok #writing #writingcommunity #bookstagram

Remembering Kukla, Fran and Ollie!

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Kukla, Fran and Ollie

(Editor’s note: As most of my readers know, I spent 30 years working as a reporter with the National Enquirer and other tabloids. This is one of my personal experiences during those years.)

No single story I ever wrote for the tabloids touched my heart in quite the same way as a deathbed interview with Fran Levington, the puppeteer genius who won the hearts and minds of millions of television viewers in the mid-to-late fifties as “Fran” in the beloved children’s television show Kukla, Fran and, Ollie.

One day in June of 1989 while chatting with one of my Hollywood medical sources, the contact asked: “Do you know who Fran Levington is? She was on Kukla, Fran, and Ollie during the early days of television. And she’s dying of bone marrow cancer.”

I was drawing a blank. Finally, we ended the call and I went to lunch. An hour later, sitting over a Chinese chicken salad at Chin-Chin’s on Sunset Blvd., it dawned on me. Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was an early television puppet show that featured Fran, the only human on the show, Kukla, the bulb-nosed, bald-headed, head honcho of a puppet troupe and Ollie, a mischievous, one-tooth dragon.

The puppets said their lines on a make-believe children’s stage while Fran, who played big sister to the troupe and tried to maintain peace among them, was outside the stage. It was a marvelously simple, but highly effective entertainment vehicle.

Instantly, my mind wandered back to the late fifties when I was a student in junior high and, every day after school, I would rush into the house, throw my books on the couch, and flip on the television to watch the KFO show on an old black and white TV that received only two channels.

I was twelve or thirteen years old, but I remember how I would giggle with delight when Ollie would slam his flat chin on the stage in frustration or do a rolling motion on his back to endear himself to Fran and the audience. Although the show was developed for children, often the themes were very adult. With that sudden flash of memory, I knew I had to interview her.

That afternoon, I went to the hospital in Van Nuys. When I entered the room, I explained who I was. She graciously shook my hand and asked me to sit down.

She was dressed in a light-blue hospital gown and her snowy white hair hung loosely about her shoulders. Although I could see she was very sick, she had a quick smile, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, and was eager to talk to me.

She was eighty-one years old.

“Oh, I love the Enquirer,” she said when I announced my affiliation. “They have great recipes and housekeeping tips and I love to read the latest Hollywood gossip. How much time will you need?”

“Probably thirty minutes to an hour.”

“Then we better wait until tomorrow,” she said. “In a few minutes, I’m going in for radiation treatment and I’ll be very tired after that, but tomorrow morning, say around ten, I’d love to do the interview.”

I smiled and said thanks.

“Be sure you’re here tomorrow morning,” she said. “I might not be here tomorrow afternoon.”

“Ten sharp,” I replied.

The following morning, when I arrived at her hospital room, she welcomed me. 

Although she put on a cheerful face, I could see she was near death. Her hair, which had been snowy white the day before, was now a parched brown color and hung scraggily and lifeless about her shoulders. Somehow, the radiation had affected her eyes and she kept moving her head to and fro as if she were trying to keep me in focus.

“Let’s get started. I’m going to meet Archie,” she said, referring to her late husband, “and we’ve got a long journey ahead of us.”

She recalled her early days in Iowa and how she was born for show business.

“When I was a teenager in Iowa, my brother put together a local orchestra and hired me as a singer. From the very first show, I was hooked.”

Later, she worked in Cedar Rapids, then moved to Chicago, where she found work as a singer and comedienne and was an instant hit as “Aunt Franny,” a gossipy spinster on Chicago radio.

“Although I could sing and act,” she said, “it was comedy and puppets that I loved most.”

In 1947, while living in Chicago, she met an old puppeteer friend she had known from her War Bonds tour days and he asked her to put together a children’s show with puppets.

“I had had the idea in my head for Kukla, Fran, and Ollie for almost thirty years,” she said. “It was very similar to a puppet show I did at my school when I was a teenager. I just renamed the characters and wrote new skits.”

It was an instant hit.

“I’ll always be remembered for Kukla, Fran, and Ollie,” she said. “I loved doing that show. You can discuss very serious subjects in an innocent way with puppets and not offend or upset anyone.”

She said her maiden name was Allison, but she later married a music publisher named Archie Levington who had died in 1978.

“We never had any children,” she said. “My children were the millions of kids who watched Kukla, Fran, and Ollie day after day.”

I smiled.

“And I loved every one of them,” she said.

I explained that I had been one of her adoring fans.

“Then you’re one of my children, John,” she said, “and I love you.”

Suddenly, my mind was flooded with all the wonderful memories of the afternoons I had spent watching KFO. The willful, overbearing Kukla, the well meaning, but simple Ollie, and the reasoning voice and the counsel of Fran came roaring back into my mind as if I were suddenly transported back to 1957.

“I love you too,” I said, and from the bottom of my heart, I meant it.

She smiled.

“I think I’ll sleep now,” she said.

“I understand,” I replied. “Thanks for the interview.”

For a moment, I peered at her as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

The following morning, I called the hospital. The operator said she had died at eleven a.m. the previous day. She never awoke from sleep after my interview.

As I hung up the phone, tears were streaming down my face and I wasn’t sure why. I had only known this woman through her television show and our two brief encounters at the Van Nuys hospital, yet somehow, I felt I had been friends with her all my life.

To me, there was always a special sadness in seeing an entertainer die. Here was a kind, gracious, loving woman who brought joy to millions and now, like many human beings, her ultimate reward was to die alone. Probably, more than anything, I was made aware of my own mortality. In my heart, I knew that each of us must face death in our own way. I had watched this wonderful person walk that lonesome valley. Many times, I’ve wondered how I would face my own death.

 

Good-bye, Audrey!

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Audrey McCarver

In the late spring of 1969, I was working as a reporter with The Gadsden Times in Gadsden, Alabama. One morning when I came into work, the city editor said he had hired a new proofreader then, moments later, he introduced me to a smallish, bright-eyed, dark-haired, very pretty, nineteen-year-old who gave her name as Audrey Brooks.

“Audrey?” I replied. “That’s my mother’s name. Why did you come to work at the times?”

“I want to be a writer,” she said.

So, over the next four years, Audrey became a respected member of The Gadsden Times newsroom and I saw her at least five days a week. During those years, I knew everything about her life; whether she was sick, her car in the shop, she was fighting with her boyfriend, she was short on money…. whatever. She became like a member of my family.

The editors would send her out for coffee, to answer the phone and to open the mail, but mostly her job was proofreading. Audrey was an excellent proofreader. Every day, when I had to check the newspaper’s front-page proof, I always had made sure Audrey was at my side. She could spot a misplaced comma, a misplaced typeface or an improperly headline in the twinkling of an eye.

All the editors loved her, but they were always playing jokes on her. One afternoon, the state editor sent Audrey to the composing room to fetch a left-handed monkey wrench. One morning the city editor put a rubber snake in her desk drawer and, upon discovery, a loud scream went up from Audrey. The executive editor sent out a memo on that one and it never happened again.

All the editors had their pet names for Audrey. The city editor called her “Our little elf.” I called her “Tawdry Audrey.” The Sports editor called her “Our Miss Brooks.” The Sunday editor, an Irishman, called Audrey “Our sweet little elf from the sylvan glades of dear old Ireland.”

Audrey would laugh at their playful teasing, but take it all in stride.

During those years, I got to know Audrey’s family.

Every winter, her father Auburn would kill a deer and bring it in his pickup truck to The Gadsden Times so I could make a photo and put it in the paper.

In many ways, I was better friends with her younger brother Auburn, also known as “Bubba,” than I was Audrey. Before I moved to the newsroom, I worked in the dispatch department at The Times. When I left a vacancy in the department, Auburn was hired as my replacement. Naturally, I would visit the dispatch department to see my old friends. As a result, I became good friends with Auburn.

During the fall and winter of 1969 and 1970, I was the coach of the Gadsden Times basketball team. I formed a team of Gadsden Times employees and we would play other company teams in the gymnasiums in East Gadsden, Attalla and Walnut Park. During those years, Auburn played guard on my basketball team. He wasn’t all that good, but he loved to play and we became even closer friends.

Every Christmas, Audrey would bake a huge chocolate cake and bring it into the newsroom. One Christmas, publisher Frank Helderman Sr. asked Audrey to bake a caramel cake just for him. When Audrey brought in the cake, Mr. Helderman came straight over from his office to the newsroom for a slice. Audrey was delighted.

In January of 1973, I left The Times and began working as a reporter with the Birmingham News in Birmingham. When I resigned from The Gadsden Times, I never dreamed I would see or hear tell of “Tawdry Audrey” again. But I never forgot her!

***

Around 2010, I joined Facebook and quickly began reconnecting with many old friends. This included Paul Meloun, who was executive editor at The Gadsden Times during the years I knew Audrey.

One day in March of this year, while I following Paul’s comments on a post, I saw a comment from someone named Audrey McCarver. In the post, she announced that she had been a proofreader during Paul’s tenure at the Times.

Instantly, I knew it was “Tawdry Audrey.”

I sent her a FB message, reintroduced myself and asked what she had been doing over the past 50 years. She said she had been married, raised four children, and was living in Ripley, Mississippi with her husband. I explained I had been a reporter all those years; been a computer tech for a while and was writing novels now.

“You never became a writer?” I asked.

“No. I’ve been too busy with my family.”

She asked about my latest book and I told her about A Quiet Madness, my new book on Edgar Allan Poe. She said she would order it on Amazon.

Four days later, I saw a beautiful review of my book on Amazon and Goodreads. Over the next five months, Audrey would buy, read and review 16 of my books and post glowing reviews on Amazon and Goodreads for each and every one. I was so thankful!

In late July, when I told her I needed a guest columnist for my new website, she was eager to jump in. From the end of July until last week, Audrey wrote a total of thirteen articles for my blog on subjects ranging from Sacred Harp Singing and how to make chicken and dumplings to Alabama’s legendary Goat Man and Noccalula Falls.

Early on, I had to do some light editing on her articles, but after the first three or four, she was writing like a pro.

On Monday night, August 22, she posted an article about her father’s favorite peanut brittle recipe for the blog and said she would send another piece the following morning about Lester Flatt and Early Scruggs.

As part of that message, she wrote:

“John I, you’re brought so much joy into my life these past few months. I’ve finally realized my dream of becoming as writer.”

I told her I enjoyed working with her and was happy to help her. I explained her articles had helped bring traffic to my website.

Then came a stroke out of the blue!

On Tuesday, the following day, just after noon, I received a Facebook message from Liz Sundy Stanford, Audrey’s niece in Brewton, Alabama, who told me Audrey had collapsed at her home from a massive brain hemorrhage. She said Audrey was in the North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo and I could reach her husband by calling Audrey’s cell.

Instantly I called the hospital and spoke with Audrey’s husband King.

“She is unresponsive,” King said sadly. “Doctors say her injuries are not survivable.”

My heart flew into my mouth at his words.

The following morning, on Thursday, Audrey’s niece sent me another Facebook message saying Audrey had passed away.

My soul was weeping as I read her words.

My most excellent friend Audrey Elaine Brooks McCarver will be buried in the morning, August 30, 2022, at 9 a.m. local time at the Beech Hill Church of Christ Church in Ashland, Mississippi.

Me, along with thousands of friends, relatives and Facebook followers will sorely miss her!

Thanks for being my friend all these years, Audrey!

Thanks for all of the wonderful memories!

Thanks for the great love of humanity you carried in your heart!!

You were always happiest when you were serving others.

Good-bye, my dear friend!

Link to Audrey’s articles – https://johnisaacjones.com/way-down-south/

Link to her obituary – https://www.mcbridefuneralhome.com/obituaries/Audrey-Mccarver/?fbclid=IwAR2YOt9HvrL9NyJNDByPi7NL_PQZ-DYTF_SvZ3R58DnVuHhNsNLi42zpti0#!/Obituary

 

 

Honore de Balzac… the Greatest Novelist?

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In the early sixties, a group of well-known literary pundits got together to decide who were the greatest novelists of all time.

Their conclusion was that Leo Tolstoy wrote the greatest novel in “War and Peace”, but they also decided that the French novelist Honore de Balzac was the greatest novelist simply because he produced so many good novels in his lifetime.

It was a well-deserved honor. Balzac not only had an incredibly prodigious output but a fire and ambition as a literary artist which is seldom seen in human history.

Born in Tours in 1799, Balzac’s father was a member of the upper class and had been a regional administrator during the French Revolution. The father had hoped that Balzac would enter the legal profession and, as a young man, he studied law first at the College de Vendome and later at the Sorbonne.

Despite his father’s wishes, Balzac was too restless and ambitious for such a staid profession and, in 1819, at the age of 20, he announced he wanted to be a writer. With that, he moved to Paris and installed himself in a shabby garret at 9 rue Lediguiéres.

As a chronicler for local magazines on social and artistic subjects, Balzac’s early writing attempts met with mediocre success although he did receive some recognition for the novel Les Chouans, a historical potboiler in the tradition of Sir Water Scott, in 1829. During that period, Balzac unfortunately tried his hand at business and bought a publishing house which failed to bring in printing.

After this and several other business ventures failed, Balzac was left with a heavy debt burden which would plague him until the end of his career. “All happiness depends on courage and work,” Balzac once said. “I have had many periods of wretchedness, but with energy and above all with illusions, I pulled through them all.”

In 1832, he began corresponding with a beautiful, wealthy Polish woman (she claimed to be a countess) named Eveline Hanska. Early on, he became enamored of her and asked her to marry him. She replied that she would marry him only if he became rich and famous.

With that, Balzac set off on a furious pace to write as many novels as fast as he could. His work habits were legendary. Balzac wrote standing up, dressed in a monk’s robe, drinking pot after pot of Turkish coffee. Many days, he would write for 15 hours straight, sleep for a few hours and then write for another 15 hours.

Balzac was close friends with French novelist Alexandre Dumas and he often visited their home to discuss literature. In the wee hours of the morning, Balzac, hungry and dog-tired, would visit and ask for food and a place to nap. Dumas’ wife would fix up a concoction of whipped butter and sardines that Balzac loved, then he would lie down for a nap.

Before he started to nap, he would tell Dumas’ wife: ”Now I only want to sleep for one hour, then wake me up.” After an hour, Dumas’ wife, knowing how he had pushed himself beyond the bounds of human endurance, would let him sleep for two hours.

When Balzac would wake up, he would see the time and curse Dumas’ wife and exclaim: ”You crazy woman, you let me sleep for 2 hours. I could have written a novel in that hour.” With that, he would storm out of the house and return to his garret to write for another 15 hours.

Over the next 17 years, he wrote an incredible 90 novels. About the time he proposed to Eveline Hanska, he decided to encompass all of his writings under a larger framework entitled “The Human Comedy”. This massive undertaking would include more than 2000 characters in 90 novels and novellas.

The overall series would present a sprawling portrait of the habits, social customs and atmosphere of bourgeois France during his lifetime. The most famous titles in the series were La Peau de chagrin (1831), Eugénie Grandet (1833), Le Père Goriot (1835, his most famous novel) Les Illusions perdues (1837I, 1837; II, 1839; III, 1843), La Cousine Bette (1846) and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (1847).

By October 1848, Balzac was world famous and wealthy and traveled to the Ukraine to try to win the hand of Madame Hanska again. Finally, after seeing that he was everything she had hoped for, she agreed to marry him. They were married in March of 1850.

Shortly afterward, Balzac wrote a friend: “Three days ago I married the only woman I have ever loved.” Two weeks later, he triumphantly returned to Paris with his new wife.

But the years of overwork and stress had caused his health to fail and, in mid-August of 1850, Balzac lay on his deathbed. French literary greats Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas were at his bedside as he lay dying.

It has been said that, as he lay dying in one room at their Paris home, his new wife–the woman he had spent his life trying to win– was in an adjacent room in bed with some stable boy she had picked up on the street. So much for true love.

At the funeral, Hugo delivered the eulogy. The great novelist noted: “Today we see him at peace. He has escaped from controversies and enmities….. Henceforward he will shine far above all those clouds which float over our heads, among the brightest stars of his native land.”

Review of A Gathering of Old Men

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A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines examines the complex relationships between whites and blacks during the early 1970s in rural Cajun Country Louisiana.

Gaines’ portrayals of his characters come across as earthly, warm and as human as the Louisiana countryside itself.

The title of each chapter names the person who is narrating it and the story unfolds logically and gracefully as a result of this technique.

Each story sequence is plotted completely and the cinematic narrative style is uniquely Gaines. A rich, glorious story of human as well as race relations.

Next I will launch into his Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.

Well worth the read!!

Latest review of The Bird of Time

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“I am a John I. Jones fan!

Okay, this story was so darn good, so full of interesting characters, and so well written, that I’ll never forget it…especially the conclusion.

Jones is a talented storyteller and writer, and his skill shines in ‘The Bird of Time’.

Lifetime friends and brothers from different mothers, John Chance and Jesse Trubble perform their tasks, deal with life’s good and bad, and show us exactly what true friendship is about.

At my age, I recall all of the time periods these two go through. Brought back many memories.

And, Jones concludes this wonderful story with one very special segment, one I fully believe in, that will leave the reader feeling good, warm, and with moist eyes.

As a writer and avid reader, I highly recommend ‘The Bird of Time’ to everyone who’s ever had a truly special friendship. You’ll be glad you read it.

“Thank you, John I, for one compelling story. Please keep writin’…and smilin’…” – Author Lee Carey

(Lee Carey lives at Sandbridge Beach, a suburb of Virginia Beach, Va. and is the author of nine novels and two short story collections. Lee enjoys surfing, writing, golf, and hanging out on the beach with his wife, Kay, and their rescued pooch, Angel. Learn more about Lee at https://www.leecarey-author.com/) 

 

Zora Neale Hurston

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It was once said of Mary Ann Evans (the English novelist who, under the pen name George Eliot, wrote the classics Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner) that “when you read her work, you knew you’re in the hands of genius.”

The same can be said of Zora Neale Hurston, author of “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

From the very first, you realize that she is an extraordinary literary genius. You watch as a miracle unfolds across the pages. The flux and vivid detail of her imagery is not only truly original, but at times, the multi-layered meanings, subtle double entendres and the exquisite use of language approaches that of any writer I have ever read.

I found myself rereading some of her narrative passages seven or eight times to savor their excellence.

This woman is a novelist with a poetess living inside her who rushes to the forefront of the narrative at the most unexpected moments. In experiencing this book, you will be reading a long passage which has been driving forward at a slow, steady pace then suddenly launches into pure poetry.

For example, early on, Hurston describes the porch-sitters, the old busybody black women who huddle together on front porches and gossip about everyone that passes. This is how Hurston describes them:

“These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became Lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouth. They sat in judgment.”

When the book was first released in 1937, the Harlem Renaissance intellectuals objected strongly to her use of dialect. Here’s an example of dialogue in the book:

“Naw, Ah thank yuh. Nothin’ couldn’t ketch dese few steps Ah’m going. Anyhow mah husband tell me say no first class booger would have me. If she got anything to tell yuh, you’ll hear it.”

The Harlem intellectuals felt it was wrong to depict black folks talking in dialect. They felt it presented blacks in an inferior, truly unflattering light. Hurston could have cared less. Unlike the Harlem crowd who only wanted to enumerate and seek justice for the white man’s cruelty to the black man, Hurston wanted to present black people exactly as they were.

She had no interest in sugar-coating the life and culture of her people. She wanted to get as close to the truth as she could. Once you start reading, you see immediately how and why the use of dialect helped achieve this special truth.

If you like muscular, vibrant prose which lays bare the very heart and soul of black culture in the deep South during the twenties and thirties, you’ll love this book. Watching Hurston’s literary genius bend and swing with the rhythm of the narrative is truly a literary miracle to behold!!!

Breath-taking imagery! Great read! I will never forget the love story of Janie and Tea Cake.

Now I know why Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, said: “There is no book more important to me than this one!”

Majestic book!! Absolutely magnificent!!