Fragile flowers: the dust of memory

It's hard to believe it has been 35 years since the wildly-popular, Emmy-winning TV miniseries The Thorn Birds first aired. TTB was one of those programs that broke the gender barrier - guys actually watched this "chick flick", all eight hours of it! I don't know if they soaked as many kleenexes as the women, but they watched it simply because it was a ripping good tale.

A story of thwarted love, a young woman's hopeless passion for a Catholic priest (hungry for power in the Vatican, though he makes her pregnant anyway) played out against the wild and tempestuous outback of Australia - who could ask for anything more?

Accuracy, maybe? The sheep were all wrong (so Australian viewers claimed), the accents were all wrong - there was only one Australian in the main cast, and it showed. Everyone else sounded American. It was shot in California, and people recognized it, but who cared? Father Ralph and Meggie ran across the sand on their deserted little island, etc., etc., and then he broke his vows and made her pregnant. Hoo-ha!

But there is a lot more to The Thorn Birds than schmaltzy romance. It's one of those vast family sagas that covers several generations. I too was transfixed by the miniseries, though the last time I tried to watch it I bailed at about the 15-minute mark, in disbelief that I was once so mesmerised by such movie-of-the-week-ish stuff.

But then there's the novel! Colleen McCullough wrote a right ripping good tale, with a hundred times more dimension, depth and complexity than the miniseries (though women still refer to it wistfully: I was amazed when, about ten years ago, I mentioned TTB at a choir rehearsal, which was then ruined when everyone's focus was sucked away to Richard Chamberlain and Rachel Ward running along the beach). Read the book if you want to get your teeth into the real story.

I wanted to read the book, or re-read it for perhaps the third time, but where was my copy? My copy went the same way as a dozen pairs of crystal earrings, several paperbacks and even a tshirt or two: the black hole of Shannon. When she was a teenager, long long ago, she had a habit of filching my stuff and never giving it back. I would notice these holes in my wardrobe and jewelry box. What she did with the book is anybody's guess, but I knew I no longer owned a copy of The Thorn Birds. Amazon provides great used copies for one or two bucks, so I went with that, and got a nice hardcover with lovely brown paper and that old-book smell which can't be replicated.   

                             

But you will not believe what I found at about page 50. It was the beginnings of something I never expected to find in a book, or anywhere else.

A garden. 

A garden from so long ago that its roots could never be traced.

Every 50 pages or so, I found sprigs of lovely dried flowers, so completely flattened and delicate that they crumbled under my fingers. I had to quickly preserve them in some way, so I got one of those double-pane glass frames and applied tiny dots of contact cement to hold the frail blossoms in place.

These pictures are views of the light shining through the frame. These delicate things may not survive for very long, and really can't be touched or moved. For now, I have the frame propped inside a book case where I can see it. Watch the video above, and you'll hear my feelings about making this unlikely, oddly beautiful discovery, and why I think it's one more strike for the paper book over the electronic reader. Who can hide such a magical gift to some unknown future reader inside an electronic device?

I can't be totally certain, but I don't think anyone has ever found a perfectly-preserved 40-year-old garden hiding inside a Kindle.

POST-BLOG. The musical score was one of the best things about the series. It just hit it right on the button. Written by Henry Mancini, the music captured the hugeness of the outback overlaid with the delicate intimacy of hopeless romance.

Another little note, an odd one. I just remembered something: I ordered two Thorn Birds. The first one never came. That was the paperback. So I sent a complaint, got a full refund, and ordered another one (the hard cover). So if the first book had not gone missing, I never would have ordered the second, the one with the perfectly-preserved garden in it.

Then, something even stranger. The first book came.

Subdural hematoma

If you can remember this, you're old. Yes, OLD old. But given how dreadfully hackneyed TV dramas could be in the '60s, this one was fairly memorable. It's hard to forget the chalkboard symbols, with Sam Jaffe intoning those five whatdaya-call'ems, the great fundamental truths of Whatever.

And this startling opening, which they changed after the first season (unfortunately!). It gave the whole show a sense of dynamic tension, of emergency, of things happening, a no-nonsense kind of environment echoed in the snarky cynicism of Vincent Edwards: he of the world-weary pronouncements, hairy forearms, sweaty scrubs and shiny Italian greaser hairdo. And the diagnosis of subdural hematoma which he gave every week, to everyone.

Of course I was far too young to Get It about Ben Casey, or Dr. Kildare either, for that matter. Back then, you were either Casey or Kildare: you couldn't be both. To be both was to be gutless, to be sitting on the fence, to be bisexual, or even asexual, and that simply wouldn't do.

There was no doubt in my mind that I was Casey, though I was just a kid when the series began, maybe not even ten years old. I certainly didn't sit there watching it every week. In fact, I only began to watch it attentively about six years later, when a channel in Detroit began to rerun them after school. Then I began to realize that I'd been right all along, Casey was it, he was The One.

I had some idea by then about the hairy forearms and Easter Island impervious mug and smoldering eyes, how that might appeal to someone sexually. Richard Chamberlain had fallen into some sort of void at that time, only to emerge years later in the '80s in The Thorn Birds. And yes, I fell right into it, even though when I tried to watch the series a few years ago on DVD I could not believe how lame it was.

I must have watched Dr. Kildare at some point, though all I can remember is one episode about a brain-damaged man who could only utter one word: "Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn." This was considered extremely provocative for the era. By the end of the show, he could also mutter, "Wife", which must have placated the censors somewhat.

The Kildare show was just too soft. It wasn't just Chamberlain, it wasn't his fault he was beautiful rather than handsome. Like the hyper-romantic theme song, the one with the strings and the chimes, the show just had no dynamism about it. It was too sentimental by half. Raymond Massey did a good job as his mentor, though he was no Sam Jaffe. Sam Jaffe always charmed me, because he looked like something straight out of Dr. Seuss.

So! Casey and Kildare. They stir strange, disparate, completely meaningless memories. For some reason I remember an odd little song from the schoolyard, something about Dr. Kildare sung to the tune of Take me Out to the Ball Game. A girl named Nancy sang it, because nobody else knew the words. As is always the case with these things, I remember about two lines. "It's boo, boo, boo for Ben Casey. .  .And it's one, two, three vaccinations with Dr. Kildare!"  I haven't heard a trace of this song since, and I now think that Nancy must've made it up.

There was this other thing, oh this one other dumb thing, and I don't even know who the two singers were, I just remember the ONE line: "With Ben Casey and Kildare, you have a PARADOX." Ay. Paradox indeed.

There's just one more little bit and I'll stop. Bill and I seem completely different on the surface - temperament, interests, etc. etc. But I will tell you that underneath that surface, we are identical.

One day, some 40 years after I married him, I looked at him across the dinner table and asked him the question that would determine whether I had married the right man, or made a big mistake.

"Casey or Kildare?"

He looked at me with a surprised expression on his face and said, "Casey."

I think he was a little hurt that I needed to ask.

POST-BLOG BONUS! The facial expressions of Vincent Edwards. Some sort of knockoff of The Method, obviously, but he missed the class called "emotion".