Leslie Green Archives - Page 3 of 9

1972: A Hole In The Bucket

other implements of destruction

My diary notes a fight I had in February 1972 with my girlfriend at the time, the Okie. It involved the song A Hole In The Bucket.

The tune has a bit of history in my family. My father used to sing it, playing both the put-upon Henry and the, er, strident Liza. But by the time we were teenagers, my sister Leslie and I had taken over the song in the Green Family Singers shows. It was our tour de force. I did the cowering bit so well that once, I nearly rolled into a pond at a campground. And Leslie was also very good in her role.

I suspect I had in my mind our version, or maybe Dad’s, or Harry Belafonte and a female singer. Here’s one with Odetta. The Okie’s rendition couldn’t compare. I’m guessing that I was wrong here, overly and unnecessarily critical. One does get a certain version of a song in one’s ear. BTW, here’s a Sesame Street take.

And other things

Besides going to class at SUNY New Paltz and the like, I used to write letters, to Leslie and to several friends I had gone to school with at Binghamton Central High School. I played 8-ball quite often; you’d think I’d get better at it, but not appreciably so.

To no surprise, I listened to a lot of music this month, Led Zeppelin III, Beatles, Donovan, plus whatever was on the college radio station, WNPC.

Feb 4 – read Ms. magazine cover to cover, even the ads
Feb 5 – The Okie tried to teach me to drive her Saab. The manual transmission did me in.
Feb 6 – The Okie, a guy named Steve and I went to see the movie Carnal Knowledge, which I thought was a good film
Feb 7 – the assigned readings to Intro to Black Studies were Before the Mayflower [which I still have], Blues People [ditto; it’s by Amiri Baraka, then Leroy Jones], Soledad Brothers, and an anthology
Feb 8 – I put a check in the bank to put my checking account $4.39 in the black
Feb 13 – Saw the movie Yellow Submarine
Feb 14 – I bought as Valentine’s Day presents two Kris Kristofferson albums, Me and Bobby McGee, and The Silver Tongued Devil and I
The Sunday News (NYC newspaper) editorial thinks this “Women’s Lib” has gone “far enough” and that we need to get back to “normalcy”; no female at Annapolis, e.g.
Feb 17 – Leslie took the bus from Binghamton to visit me; on the 19th, she went on the bus to NYC. [The out-of-focus photo is from that trip.] Later, the Okie’s car got hit, although not seriously. Leslie and the Okie’s roommate slept in my bed, with the Okie and I sleeping on a sleeping bag on the floor. “A lot of laughing and joking for quite a while.”

The snow event

Feb 20 – Digging out several cars after yesterday’s snowstorm. There was a community spirit, but also the more cars we got out of the parking lot, the more additional vehicles could be freed. Where the Okie’s car had gotten stuck the day before on Route 299 was a huge pile of snow. But eventually, we [Uthaclena, the Okie and her roommate, me and my roomie] dig into the pile with our buckets, sticks, and “other implements of destruction.” [Yes, I quoted Arlo.] But we discovered the car wasn’t there after all.

We went to the police station. The older guy there Uthaclena thought was going to keel over, and frankly the Okie and I agreed. He said the car was at Tantello’s Texaco, so the Okie wrote a check for $15.75, but we looked and the car wasn’t there.

It was actually at Uppy’s Gulf. After the woman there told the Okie how to spell Uppy’s, she announced they didn’t accept checks. So we pooled our money to pay the $15 towing fee and the $2 for “parking.” [I have the Uppy’s voided check in my diary.]

The coterie of stuffed animals

Minnesota Twins

What I realized after this post by fillyjonk was that I haven’t spent nearly enough time playing with the stuffed animals. Note that these are MY animals, not my daughter’s. A couple of them technically are my wife’s that I bought for her.

The monkey with the mask is Oscar. He knows he was a replacement for my previous monkey, Ersie, who I lost in the divorce. He’s the most verbal of the creatures and does a great Ersie two-step. His name comes from the fact that my friend Uthaclena found him in a movie theater. I suppose I should get him an N-95 mask except that he really doesn’t get out much these days.

The large white bear in the back, somewhat obscured, is named Mr. Applause. I think it’s the brand of the bear. He’s very cuddly. My sister Leslie gave him to me in the 1990s.

The orange lion to the left is named Lenny, I suppose an obvious name for a lion. But he is really named for Leonard Bernstein, the composer and conductor who had wild and expressive hair. Sometimes he roars, but they are friendly sounds.

The tan bear to the right of Mr. Applause is Gunther. Gunther is so very engaging that my friend Dorothy actually borrowed him for a time.

Genesis

My late brother-in-law John had bought my wife a flower arrangement with came with a bear who was named Genesis, or Genny. Genny got lost on a vacation. I tried to replace her. Both of the dark brown bears, the one behind Lenny and the one to the right were attempts to substitute for Genny. They weren’t quite the right size. But they’re still nice.

There are others that aren’t in the shot. Blanca is a white bear about the size of Jenny to the right. She knows limited Spanish and French. I think one of my former co-workers, Terry, gave her to me.

Twin bears, about the size of Nick, the Santa, are named Minnie and Paula. Minnie’s smile is more Mona Lisa while Paula’s is fuller. Named for two cities in Minnesota, where my late FIL’s favorite baseball team plays.

Stories exist for many of the other stuffed animals, but that’s enough of this. Otherwise, you might think I’m weird or something…

Ellen Green and my JEOPARDY quest

archive.org

My sister Leslie is friends with Ellen Green out in SoCal. Best I can tell, she’s no relation to us. But she has been on JEOPARDY. In her appearance on Show #4074 – Thursday, April 25, 2002, she started strong but ended up in third place. But it’s cool to even get to the stage.

This fall, I got to meet Ellen during my weekly Zoom meeting with my sisters. She seems very nice. Subsequently, Leslie sent me a link to Ellen’s appearance, which is housed on archive.org.

In fact, there are several dozen Jeopardy episodes there, some going back to 1984 when Alex Trebek first started hosting the show. They tend to be items likely originally recorded on VHS tape from the local affiliate as opposed to a pristine copy put out by the Jeopardy folks. Some include the ads, which are entertaining on their own. There is even something labeled as Islamic Jeopardy.

Can I find either of my episodes? Well, not so far. I found specific references to my one win, on services such as Yideo.com and Trakt.TV. Oddly, I did find a sparse reference to Roger O. Green on IMDB, which made me laugh.

Looking through YouTube, I had little expectation of finding anything. Their copyright police are quite vigilant. But I did come across the credit roll for 11/10/1998, my second and final appearance.

DIY

So it gets me wondering. Can I upload the episodes to Archive.org? I have a VHS tape of the shows. It also contains some behind-the-curtain footage. Don’t ask how I got it. Now, this tape has been kindly transferred to a DVD. But can that be uploaded? I have no idea since I own no computer that has a drive where the shiny disc used to go. Any insights would be appreciated.

Incidentally, my sister also has ANOTHER friend who was on Jeopardy, Jim, who was a four-day champion in 1989 and got to the Tournament of Champions. Ellen and Jim recently met, and as Leslie reported, they were “like 2 peas in a pod…could not get a word in edgewise, but it was ok.” Jeopardy folks are like that.

Raymond Cone: biological grandfather

Agatha (1902-1964) was my paternal grandmother.

Raymond Cone.family tree In checking my Ancestry DNA results, I noticed that there were ten people in the database that could be my first or second cousins. One was a Yates (my mother’s mom’s people), two were Scanks (mom’s dad’s people), and three were Walker (dad’s mom’s people). But who were the other four?

As it turned out they all had two people in common in their family trees. Carl Lorenzo Cone (1915 -1992) and his father Raymond Cornelius Cone (1888-1947). It has long been our family secret that my father was born out of wedlock. The stories were sketchy and apocryphal, though. It involved a minister. There was a scandal.

My friend Melanie found this article in the Binghamton Evening Press dated Saturday, January 8, 1927, page 3. “Negro pastor Exonerated of Girl’s Charges.” This alleged event took place on January 6, 1926 at his home, 147 Susquehanna Street in Binghamton and resulted in the birth of a male baby on September 26, 1926.

The first newspaper story was on Tuesday, September 28, 1926 Press on page 1. “Girl Accuses Negro Pastor. Rev. Cone, Arrested on Statutory Charges, Says He’s A Frameup Victim.” He said “a certain element” at St. Paul’s A.M.E. “was trying to get him out of the church” less than a year after he had arrived. “He denies that he was intimate with the complainant.” Her testimony, as noted in an October 29 article, suggests sexual assault.

Shotgun marriage?

Raymond Cone and three church members said he was leading Wednesday prayer services at the time the young woman said the pastor had “vowed his affections.” That according to the Tuesday, November 3 newspaper, p.3: “Defense Tries to Prove Alibi for Negro Minister.”

Rev. Cone testified that “he first heard of the charge… when her brother came to his home and threatened him with a gun.” In a Wednesday, Oct 27, 1926, Page 5 story, there’s the curious sentence. “Efforts have been made, it is said, to settle the case by marriage.” “It is said”? In any case, the minister would have none of it.

Also, there were character witnesses. “I do not know anything of Mr. Cone but that he is a Christian minister in the gospel of Christ” That was from Rev. H.H. Cooper, secretary of African Methodist Episcopal Bishop H.H. Heard. “Complaint against Rev. Raymond Cone Dismissed by Judge [Benjamin] Baker. ESTABLISHED ALIBI. Jurist, in decision, Says That Evidence Was Insufficient.”

The ministry

How did this North Carolina-born tenant farmer become a minister? Between 1918 and 1920, or maybe earlier, Raymond Cone attended Kittrell College. It was a two-year historically black college located in Kittrell, NC from about 1886 until 1975. The school was associated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Kittrell is about 60 miles northwest of Wilson, NC, where he grew up.

Raymond, widowed in 1918, had been in Norfolk, VA as a photographer in 1920. His four children, Lessie, Mary, Albert and Carl were staying with Raymond’s parents-in-law in 1920 back in Wilson County, NC.

Rev. Cone entered the Philadelphia annual A.M.E. conference in May 1921. He served in churches in Salem and Worcester, MA in the New England conference before coming to Binghamton in the New York conference near the end of 1925.

And who was that “Negro Girl”? It was Agatha Walker, 24 at the time of the trial, and mentioned by name in the latter three newspaper stories. She was the superintendent of the St. Paul’s A.M.E. Sunday school.

Mind blown

Of course, Agatha (1902-1964) was my paternal grandmother, who I remember fondly. The child she bore was my father, Les Green. And the denials of Raymond Cone at the time notwithstanding, it’s clear that something happened between him and Agatha. He was my father’s biological father. Meaning he’s my biological paternal grandfather.

THIS IS HUGE. Ask my wife how many times I said, “Holy crap!” when I read that first story. It has been a mystery for so long that I had all but given up figuring it out.

I’m fascinated by how Agatha managed to stay at the church. While Raymond Cornelius Cone moved on to another city after the May 1927 annual conference, she remained at that church, arranging the flowers for special events, something my father did quite frequently.

Expect that I’ll have more to say on this topic. You can find four articles mentioned at Fulton History.com. Search for Rev. Raymond Cone, because searching for Agatha Walker will provide more hits that are less precise.

Leslie Green and Larry Graham

“Dig a little deeper”

As you may recall, my sister Leslie had a terrible bicycle accident on June 4, 2018. In case I had forgotten, she recently sent me a picture of her, taken about day 12 of her month-long stay in the hospital.

After a few more operations and treatments, she is well on the road to recovery. She’s not 100%, but she is SO much better.

Besides the accident being all sorts of scary, that narrative all but obliterated the great time she and her daughter Rebecca Jade had just a couple week earlier. Rebecca was touring on a fortnight of cruises with Dave Koz and his band throughout Scandinavia, starting in Copenhagen.

Leslie participated in the “So You Think You Can Jam” talent contest. She has been singing about as long as I’ve known her, from the MAZET Singers in AME Zion Church in Binghamton, to various school choirs, to the Green Family Singers. She performed in a bunch of gigs in the Northeast – Crystal Ship! – and then for over a half dozen years in Puerto Rico.

She STILL sings in church and occasional local gigs. Every interview that Rebecca Jade has done, she’s rightly credited her mom to get her to sing harmonies as well as the melody.

When Leslie and Rebecca got to jam with Larry Graham, that was very cool. Larry, in case you didn’t know, was the bass player for Sly and the Family Stone. Then he fronted his own group, Graham Central Station.

So, for Leslie’s XXth birthday, I thought I’d link to some Larry Graham music. Happy birthday, sis. Enjoy the tunes.

Sly and the Family Stone

Dance to the Music, #8 pop, #9 RB in 1968 – “I’m gonna add some bottom”
Everyday People, #1 for four weeks pop, #1 for two weeks RB in 1969
Sing A Simple Song, #89 pop, #28 RB in 1969 – “I’m walkin’, walkin’ walkin’, walkin’, walkin’ in the street”
I Want to Take You Higher, #38 pop in 1970, #24 RB in 1969 – “Music’s gettin’ longer too”

You Can Make It If You Try – “Dig a little deeper”
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), #1 for two weeks pop, #1 for five weeks RB in 1970
Everybody Is a Star, b-side, 1970 “‘Til the sun that loves you proud When the system tries to bring you down”
Family Affair, #1 for three weeks pop, #1 for five weeks RB in 1971

Graham Central Station

We’ve Been Waiting
Can You Handle It, #49 pop, #9 RB in 1974

Chart action per Billboard; RB = R&B/soul