Around 3:00 AM on January 19th,, a man in a black frock coat and fedora, with a scarf obscuring his face, will walk into the grounds of the Westminster Hall and Burial Ground, at the corner of Fayette and Greene Streets in West Baltimore. He will proceed briskly to a stone at the back of the cemetery, which marks the site where the body of Edgar Allan Poe rested from April to November 1875. There the man in black will toast Poe with cognac--a kind of fancy French brandy--, and ceremoniously place three red roses and a half-bottle of the brandy on the empty grave. Then he will leave the burial ground, not to be seen again until next year.

This man has become known, internationally and affectionately, as the Poe Toaster. He has carried out this ritual every January 19th, no matter what the weather, since 1949.

The great American horror writer, Edgar Allan Poe, was born in Boston on January 19th, 1809, and died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, at the age of forty. He was buried in a family plot, but the stone that marked this original grave was accidentally destroyed almost immediately after it was placed. The grave remained unmarked until 1875, when local schoolchildren took up a collection to buy a grave marker for it. That marker, which now marks Poe's permanent grave at the front of the cemetery, was too large to fit in a tight space; it overlapped the grave of Poe's grandfather. Poe was moved temporarily to an empty space in the Poe plot, where he remained until November 17, 1875, when he was reinterred for the third (and hopefully final) time, and his new grave marked with the overlarge stone. The former site was left unmarked until the 1930s, when it was decided to mark the original again; unfortunately, a misreading of the church records led to the marker, a fine one with a carved raven at the top, being placed on Poe's second grave instead of the original one.

The Poe Toaster goes to this marker, so he obviously knows the story of the second grave. It is not known what the three red roses symbolize, although they may be placed in memory of Poe, his child bride Virginia Clemm (whom he married when she was thirteen), and his beloved mother-in-law, Maria Clemm. As for the cognac, the Toaster (who has left notes at the site on several occasions; see below) has written that "(it is) with great respect for the family tradition that the cognac is placed." Whether this is in keeping, somehow, with Poe tradition or the Toaster's family tradition is up for grabs.

Once, many years ago, the Toaster left a note that read, simply and elegically, EDGAR, I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN YOU. In 1993, one was left that read THE TORCH WILL BE PASSED. In 1999, a note was found after his visit that indicates the original Poe Toaster had died in 1998, and the tradition would be carried on by his son.

A Baltimore SUN article published on August 15, 2007, proclaimed 92-year-old Sam Porpora of Baltimore, a onetime caretaker at the cemetery, had begun the tradition. Unfortunately, much of the material Porpora gave the interviewer was lifted almost verbatim from a 1976 article in the SUN about the Toaster. His claim was dismissed by Jeff Jerome, for thirty-odd years the curator of Baltimore's Poe House and Museum (allegedly haunted by Poe, Virginia and Maria Clemm), who noted that Porpora's account had "holes so big you could drive a Mack truck through them."

So we still don't know the identity of the Poe Toaster, except to say that the original carried out his ritual for nearly fifty years before passing it on, putatively, to his son. Only once, in all this time, has he been photographed; in 1990, in a one-time-only event, Jeff Jerome (who has attended to watch the Toaster faithfully since the 1970s) allowed a photographer to take one picture. It depicts a heavyset man in black.

Thanks to certain details in the story, I wonder if the Toaster was not originally inspired to undertake his obligation by the legendary Lady in Black who for many years has placed flowers by the crypt of the silent film actor Rudolph Valentino. She, however, is another subject for another blog.

Me, I'll be listening to the news tomorrow morning to hear if the Toaster made his visit. Like all rituals, however eerie or arcane, there is some comfort in knowing that someone carries them out, keeping a tradition in a world that doesn't always honor tradition.

And on that hopeful note, fair thee well.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080119/ap_on_fe_st/poe_mystery_visitor

He was there, same as usual, this AM. The above link is from Yahoo News. One hundred fifty people showed up to see him this year.

Hi guys. Willard was up today and, since we're expecting snowy/sleety/rainy/anyway you look at it messy weather we sneaked out to Wal-Mart. After the trouble we got into last time we were there we didn't invite Madame along. With luck she has enough Bud Light to do till the weekend.

About the only things that happened were that we got to dance and sing to the lion playing "All Shook Up" without getting escorted out by security and we found a Scooby Doo that, when we squeezed his paw, was singing "You Sexy Thing," the old Hot Chocolate song from 1975. That was quite an enlightening experience. Guess "Hound Dog" wouldn't be appropriate for Valentine's Day.

I also did my patriotic chore while we were out: early voting in our fair state began today, with our primaries coming up on February 5, so-called "Tsunami Tuesday." With nasty weather in the offing and an inherent dislike of the crowds that turn out for primaries and generals, I went and cast my ballot. I was sorely tempted to vote for a write-in--Stephen Colbert--but couldn't figure out how on our voting machines, computerized and sinister monsters that they are. (Not Diebolds, hopefully.)

Ah well. It's cold and nasty and I think I'll settle in for the PM with my new Ol' Hank and Johnny Cash CDs. Kinda comforting.

Till next time, fair thee well.

I made a mistake recently when I told an online friend I had never heard of Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's most-watched commentator, until about eighteen months ago. In fact, I first watched his show during the dreadful fall of 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when his colleagues Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson were making asses of themselves in New Orleans: Scarborough insisting that no one except "small faith-based organizations" should be allowed to take up the Bush administration's unconscionable slack in dealing with the crises in the city, and Carlson disputing every person with a story to tell of the horrors in the days following the great storm, on the grounds that talk of racism and poverty somehow were responsible for "creating fear and hysteria" in a city where those monsters already lived.

I was one who sat in front of my television, part of the time in tears and part of the time enraged, as President Bush praised inept cronies and government officials from the top on down passed the buck and civilians tried to do what they could to alleviate the suffering until the National Guard finally arrived. I'm not that good with words, but Keith Olbermann is; he delivered his first Special Comment on September 5, 2005, on the failure of the government to act in those circumstances. (Although Olbermann did not mention this particular slip of Bush's tongue in that comment, I recall Bush saying that the government would honor its commitments "to the Iraqis and to the people of New Orleans"--thus laying grounds for an accusation that his war with Iraq is more important than the needs of his own people.)

I have been a more or less loyal viewer of Olbermann's COUNTDOWN ever since. His special comments, collected in his book TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES: SPECIAL COMMENTS ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S WAR ON AMERICAN VALUES, have in large part given a voice to my own inarticulation.

A caveat here: I was not a supporter of Bush's candidacy in 2000. I was not one of those who suddenly became a Bush supporter on September 11, 2001, largely because of that long odyssey by which he was flown in secret around the country rather than doing what any of his predecessors would have done and ordering Air Force One back to Washington on the grounds that he was president and the president belonged at the seat of government in such a crisis. I hold that against him to this day; I'm pretty damned sure that Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Father Bush and Bill Clinton would have given such an order, and the hell with the Secret Service.

I was reasonably sure that no self-respecting terrorist would waste his time trying to blow up my little hometown, although I did wonder a time or two about a great facility some forty miles away--Oak Ridge--but by then, in a buildup to the Iraq war that has since become the Bush administration's bugaboo, a series of laws had been passed in panic and anyone who wanted Osama bin Laden's head on a pike at Ground Zero had been shouted down because the one who needed to be dealt with at once was Saddam Hussein.

For some reason, possibly because I'm rather phlegmatic and hard to impress, I didn't buy that one at all.

Olbermann admits to catching what Barack Obama has since called "9/11 fever." But eventually he too began to have doubts about what the administration was preaching: his official "first" special comment dealt with Donald Rumsfeld comparing those who criticized the war in Iraq to those in the British government who "appeased" the Nazis in 1938. Hello, I have a degree in history; I know how that one fell out, and I know the comparison is an oxymoron so blatant that only the most rabid warmonger could have said it with a straight face.

Somebody in media, someone with a TV show (as for me, I didn't even have an almanac so I could write protests in longhand and send them by snail mail to those in Congress who puff and blow that they represent me), was finally voicing my gripes, and in a disciplined, thoughtful, yet trenchant way.

To reread the comments, in the order in which they were presented and with background information to their inspiration provided, brings back the anger those of us who felt hoodwinked by the government felt at the time, untempered as it was in the beginning. There are several that return to the theme of the Nazi appeasers and World War II, largely because the members of the Bush administration continually return to those analogies and misinterpret them with blatant elan; others warn of, or mourn, casualties of constitutional law that have fallen victim to the hysterical belief that we must give up some freedoms in order to have any sense of security at all (the comments of October 18, 2006, on the Military Commissions Act, which essentially gutted habeas corpus, and November 30 of the same year, in which Newt Gingrich essentially came out in favor of repealing the First Amendment, are especially pointed on that account). Others excoriate the continual exposure of terror threats that never quite materialized; one deals with the Democratic majority in Congress failing to bring their obligation to the people who gave them that majority in November 2006 to fruition, by calling the administration to account on the misconduct of the Iraq war. Too bad that there haven't been more of those.

Thank God Keith Olbermann has a voice and no fear. Much. (I confess, the fake anthrax episodes would have given me pause.)

I took great offense, as a hillbilly with inherited psychic abilities, at the way he expressed himself in the July 12, 2007 comment about Michael Chertoff's "gut feeling" that a major terrorist attack was in the offing, but I dealt with that issue on my blog entry dated July 21; if you have some minor interest in what I had to say at the time, read that. Otherwise, I was and am impressed with every one of the comments, which express, but did not create, my own ornery misgivings.

I do have one question, though: that "Olbermann Broadcasting Empire Inc." business on the publication data page--does that mean that Olbermann is contemplating setting himself up as the anti-Rupert Murdoch?

If so, I'm all for it.

And on that rebellious note, fair thee well.

Believe it or not, all these things do sort of mesh at the end of the day. But let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start, as Rodgers and Hammerstein solemnly assure us):

In my blog about the late Sir Edmund Hillary, I stated that he and his climbing partner, Tenzing Norgay, are credited with being the first pair to reach the summit of Mount Everest. However, there is an admittedly slim possibility that that feat was accomplished some twenty-nine years before Hillary and Norgay, by the legendary British climber George Leigh-Mallory and his partner, Andrew "Sandy" Irvine.

George Leigh-Mallory is a fascinating story in himself, even without the story of how the great mountain killed him after he may have reached the top. Born on June 18, 1886, and a skilled Alpine climber, he accompanied expeditions to Everest in 1921 and again in 1922. On the 1922 expedition, an avalanche killed seven Sherpa members of the group, and Mallory returned to England to sharp criticism and a bout of depression.

By 1924, Mallory was determined to return to Everest and make one last attempt to summit; he was certain this would be his last attempt due to his age and the difficulties of the climb. He chose the younger and relatively inexperienced Sandy Irvine as his partner for the attempt because Irvine was familiar with the very latest, but very cumbersome, equipment for using bottled oxygen.

Mallory and Irvine were last spotted on the ascent by fellow climber Noel Odell on June 8, 1924. Odell would say he spotted them silhouetted against the snow at the fabled Second Step before they disappeared into a cloud bank. Neither of them was ever seen alive again, although an oxygen canister was found at the First Step and a nearby climbing axe was later identified as Irvine's.

In 1986, it was reported by a Chinese climber that a friend of his had found a "dead English" on Everest's North Face in 1975, but the Chinese refused to allow a followup search to determine if this were true. It has been speculated that this body may have been that of Sandy Irvine.

In 1999, a body was found at 26,760 feet and positively identified from tags in the clothing and from personal papers still in the pockets as the remains of George Leigh-Mallory. The climbers who located him left him on the mountain, burying him under a cairn of stones after holding an Anglican funeral service for him. (This was the second such; in 1924, a state funeral had been held for Mallory in London's Saint Paul's Cathedral and was attended by the royal family--then headed by George V--, the prime minister, J. Ramsey MacDonald, and many other dignataries.)

In order to prove definitely whether Mallory and Irvine summited Everest, the camera they were known to be carrying to document the event needs to be located. It was not with Mallory's body.

I confess to a certain romantic notion, myself; it is known as well that Mallory was carrying in his pocket a picture of his beloved wife, Ruth, which he intended to leave at the summit. That photograph was not on his body when it was found in 1999, and I like to think that was because he left it precisely where he intended: atop the great mountain.

Mallory most likely died of exposure after breaking a leg, very badly, in a fall. There is some evidence to suggest that he was roped to Irvine at the time, and therefore Irvine's body must be somewhere nearby, but it still has not been located.

I've heard that Edmund Hillary, with typical humility, did not find the idea that Mallory and Irvine summitted in 1924 so outrageous; his attitude seemed to be that it would simply mean that he and Norgay were the first to summit and live to tell about it.

Now, the tie-in to Mel Tillis. In 1963 Tillis wrote a song called "Matterhorn", about an Alpine expedition of four climbers attempting to summit the Matterhorn, on the border between Switzerland and Italy. The song was recorded, most famously, by the bluegrass group The Country Gentlemen; they are currently led by Randy Waller, the son of founding member Charlie Waller, and I heard them perform it recently.

Although "Matterhorn" is a ballad about a totally different mountain and a fictitious expedition, there's a couplet at the end that always makes me think of George Leigh-Mallory and Sandy Irvine and what their last thoughts might have been as they lay dying on Everest:

The {king} would surely knight me if I could get back down
But it's closer here to heaven than it is back to the ground.

They're still there, closer to heaven than earth, Mallory with a proper burial and Irvine still lost.

Until next time, fair thee well.

When I was growing up, we had one Ray Price album in Dad's collection. It was one from the late 1950s or early 1960s, and my favorite song from it remains to this day a lilting shufflebeat love song called "Sweet Little Miss Blue Eyes":

I'm walkin' a line
Cause I'm glad that she's mine
I'm livin' in paradise
And I know I can't go wrong
By just stringin' along
With sweet little Miss Blue Eyes.

Today, January l2, is Ray Price's eighty-second birthday.

Born in Perryville, Texas, in 1925, Ray Noble Price came from a broken home; his parents divorced when he was four, although his mother later remarried. He served in the Marines during the Second World War, and began his singing career after a short stint in veterinary school. He performed live for radio station KRBC in Abilene in 1948, joined the Big D Jamboree in Dallas the following year, and made his first recording for Bullet Records in late 1949 or early 1950.

In 195l, he was picked up by Nashville-based Columbia Records, whose major country star at the time was another legend, Lefty Frizzell. Price became a protege of Frizzell's; in fact, his first recording for Columbia was a Frizzell composition, "If You're Ever Lonely Darlin'." A more fateful meeting came in the fall of 1951, when he met Hank Williams Sr. For awhile, while Hank was between marriages, the two were roommates. Hank gave his song "Weary Blues From Waitin'" to his young friend; there's a story that Hank also wrote "I'm Sorry for You, My Friend" for Ray but told him, "I'm gonna keep this one for myself, it's too good for you."

Ol' Hank died in the early hours of New Year's Day, 1953, and Price, with another hit ("Talk to Your Heart", 1952) under his belt, "inherited" Hank's band, the Drifting Cowboys. For a couple of years thereafter, his sound was vitually identical to Ol' Hank's, and in 1955 he finally broke ties with the Drifting Cowboys and began working with the earliest lineup of his own great band, the Cherokee Cowboys. Over the years the Cherokee Cowboys have been a virtual Who's Who of country musicians; at various times Roger Miller, Johnny Paycheck, steel guitarist Buddy Emmons, Johnny Bush, and Willie Nelson played with Price's band.

With the formation of the Cherokee Cowboys, Price truly came into his own as arguably the greatest of the 1950s "honky tonk" singers. Many of his hits had the rhythm that has been immortalized as "the Ray Price shufflebeat," a 4/4 immediately recognizable if you've ever once heard it. Between 1956 and 1966 he had twenty-three Top Ten singles, beginning with "Crazy Arms" and including Bill Anderson's "City Lights" (1958) and a plethora of great Willie Nelson songs, including "Night Life" (1962).

In 1967, Price alienated many of his hardcore honky tonk fans by recording the traditional Irish ballad "Danny Boy" backed by full orchestra. Over the next few years he continued in this pop vein, being the first to record a number of Kris Kristofferson's songs, and following that run with several Jimmy Webb songs so schmaltzy they could be described as "groaners."

His sales declined in the late 1970s, and he changed record labels several times. In 1980 he and Willie Nelson, then as now the ringleader of the so-called Outlaw movement, made an album together called SAN ANTONIO ROSE; in 1981, he had two major hits, including "It Don't Hurt Me Half as Bad", which harked back to his honky tonk days.

During the 1990s Price was active at a theater he owned in Branson, MO, as other great singers no longer valued in Nashville did. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996.

In 2007, he made an album with Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard called LAST OF THE BREED, from which his duet with Willie of Ol' Hank's "Lost Highway" has been nominated for a 2008 Grammy for "best country collaboration with vocals"--IMHO they should win, but the Grammys are funny things; we'll wait and see.

To bring it full circle, we only had one Ray Price album when I was growing up, but his great old songs from the 1950s and pre-"Danny Boy" have provided hits for many country singers, from Johnny Cash to Mel Tillis to Gail Davies. He nurtured the careers of many great songwriters as well, from Roger Miller and Willie Nelson to Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard; they all wrote hits for him.

I was listening to Willie's Place on DirecTV today, and Catfish played "Lost Highway." Willie sounds like--well, like our beloved Willie Nelson--and Ray Price, at eighty-two, still has what was in the 1950s arguably the greatest of honky tonk voices. I sat there in astonishment, with an idiotic grin on my face. It was wonderful to hear him. I also spoke recently with a friend who was fortunate enough to see Ray, Willie and Merle in concert; he too was astounded by the power and clarity of Ray's voice.

So let me add my foolish meanderings and birthday wishes. Happy birthday, Ray Price, and may you have many more.