My dad was a salesman for Brach Candy when I was a kid. Having your dad sell candy was a pretty cool thing to tell your friends, something that really hit home when they’d come over to our house and see boxes of candy samples in the house. When he was done with the samples, we’d get to eat the candy. Needless to say, our house was a popular stop on Halloween.MISTER Robinson in 1968
Over the years, the names of many of my dad’s colleagues became familiar. I still remember Herb Gibbs, Walt Jorgenson, Bill Slagle, Art Jalove, and others. Early on, though, there was one name that stood out above the rest, MISTER Robinson. Unlike the others, I don’t recall ever knowing his first name. It was always MISTER Robinson. The “mister” was so ingrained in my head as a little kid that to this day when I hear someone referred to as mister, I sometimes flash back to the first mister I remember, MISTER Robinson.
I’m not sure I have the following memory right, and I may find out from my older brothers, especially Scott, the oldest, who would remember best, but I’m pretty sure we would occasionally visit MISTER Robinson at his house. This would be in Omaha, where I was born and where we lived at the time, so it’s pretty early in my life. We relocated to the Seattle area in 1974, just before I turned 11, so I think this is probably in the late 1960s when I was 5 or 6. We’d get dressed up and drive across town, head down a tree-lined street, and pull into what seemed, to me, like a mansion. I remember the house being brick and there being some kind of hired help inside. The only other thing I remember is that MISTER Robinson wore glasses and seemed small in size. That surprised me because my dad was so deferential to him. Somehow I thought MISTER Robinson would be larger than life in size, not just larger than life in his influence in our lives.
Brach Candy Sales Force 1968 (My dad with dark glasses is in the back row / MISTER Robinson is seated in the front, fifth from left)
Recently, MISTER Robinson’s influence took new shape as I began digitizing 30 years of newsletters my dad and mom created to keep former Brach employees connected. Among the Brach-related papers my dad saved, I discovered several specifically about MISTER Robinson. And now as an adult, I think I finally understand why my dad regarded him with such reverence.
“The person who trained and taught me the candy business was Edward ‘Brach’ Robinson.”
Candy Bar Gazebo (click to enlarge)The first paper I found was an article my dad wrote about his relationship with MISTER Robinson that was printed in the Winter 1991 issue of a magazine called Candy Bar Gazebo. I learned that MISTER Robinson’s full name was Edward Robinson. He was Brach’s Western Division Manager and in December 1959 he interviewed my dad in Denver, where my parents and baby Scott were living. My dad was 25 at the time. Scott had been born in August so my dad was looking for something more stable than the traveling sales job he’d been doing. MISTER Robinson hired him. The article also mentions that MISTER Robinson retired from Brach in 1970 and that my father succeeded him as Division Manager in 1971.
Next in the documents were things related to MISTER Robinson’s death. These include the bulletin from his memorial service, a typed copy of the eulogy, and a one-page summary of the service itself. There was also a small newspaper obituary. I learned that he died in his home in 1992 and it sounds like he had suffered from Alzheimer’s for quite some time. His wife Lida had died in 1985. From the papers, I learned that after Lida died, “Eddie went downhill real fast.”
The Robinsons did not have any children and the one survivor listed was MISTER Robinson’s sister, Anne. I did some digging and found that Anne died in 1998, leaving me to wonder who remembers MISTER Robinson. Obviously, I do, hence this blog post. Given how important he was to my father, I feel the desire to honor him. In a handwritten draft of a letter my dad sent to someone named Mr. Randall, I found this paragraph:
“Ed Robinson was the second most important man in my life, second only to my father. He was my mentor for many years. He painstakingly taught me the candy business during my eleven year apprenticeship. In so doing, he taught me a great deal about life.”
The respect my dad had for MISTER Robinson must have gone both ways. In among these papers is a letter addressed to my father from Jack W. Marer, Attorney at Law with the heading: “Re Estate of Edward Robinson.” The closing paragraph states: “With his usual generosity, Eddie remembered many people, including you with a tax free gift of $5,000.00. This will be paid in due time.”
Thanks, MISTER Robinson. Your influence lives on. On Saturday, I’ll tell a boy I mentor about you and my dad.
POSTSCRIPT: MISTER Robinson died in 1992, 25 days after turning 89. I mention this because my dad also died at age 89, albeit just 17 days after. I can easily picture MISTER Robinson and my dad sharing old times at some heavenly candy sales convention, MISTER Robinson telling my dad that he outlived him by 8 days.
Clifford Lane was born in Crystal, North Dakota, on April 25, 1893, and died near Gesnes, France, on September 29, 1918, one of 53,402 Americans killed in action during World War I. His obituary states:
“Private Lane acted as a message carrier, and it was while performing this duty that he was killed by shell fire on the 29th of September at Gesnes, France.”
Clifford was Melinda’s great-granduncle, the brother of Mattie Lane Erlandson, who was the mother of Melinda’s maternal grandmother. On this Memorial Day 2026, I want to take a moment to honor his life and sacrifice.
Before being drafted, Clifford spent nearly his entire life working on his father David Lane’s farm near Crystal. He registered for the draft there on August 21, 1917, entered military service on May 27, 1918, and trained at Camp Lewis, Washington (present-day Joint Base Lewis–McChord south of Tacoma). He was assigned to Company A, 362nd Infantry Regiment, 91st Division, and after only a short period of training sailed for France in July 1918 with the American Expeditionary Forces.
During World War I, Clifford served as a message carrier, one of the Army’s most dangerous and important assignments. Before reliable portable radios, armies relied on runners to carry orders and battlefield reports between commanders and front-line units. Telephone lines were often destroyed by shellfire, making message carriers essential during combat. These soldiers moved on foot through trenches, mud, smoke, and open ground under machine-gun and artillery fire. Entire attacks could depend on whether a runner successfully delivered orders or requests for reinforcements. Because they constantly crossed exposed terrain while battles raged around them, message carriers faced extraordinary risks and were regarded among the bravest soldiers in the infantry.
Clifford was killed during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest and deadliest American operation of World War I. Beginning on September 26, 1918, more than one million American troops attacked heavily fortified German positions in northeastern France. Clifford’s regiment fought near the village of Gesnes, where German forces held strong defensive positions protected by machine guns, artillery, and barbed wire. By September 29, conditions had become especially brutal. Rain and mud slowed movement, communication lines were repeatedly destroyed, and American troops suffered heavy casualties advancing across open ground under constant fire. Despite these conditions, the 362nd Infantry captured portions of the ridge beyond Gesnes at severe cost. It was during this intense fighting that Clifford lost his life near the front lines.
(click to enlarge)Although no eyewitness account of Clifford’s final moments has been found, the available records make the circumstances of his death fairly clear. As a message carrier during the assault near Gesnes, he would have been moving between front-line positions and command posts while artillery shells struck continuously around him. His obituary states that he was killed by shell fire while carrying messages, suggesting he was struck by exploding artillery or shell fragments while crossing exposed ground. During the Meuse-Argonne fighting, runners were forced to move through mud, smoke, shell craters, and active enemy fire to keep units coordinated. Clifford likely died while delivering orders or battlefield information critical to the attack, carrying out one of the war’s most hazardous duties.
After the battle, Clifford’s body was recovered near Gesnes and buried in an American cemetery at Cierges, France, on October 6, 1918, only a week after his death. Graves Registration records show that he was positively identified and buried in a marked grave, something that was not always possible amid the chaos of the Meuse-Argonne campaign. In June 1919, his remains were moved to the larger cemetery at Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, and on November 19, 1921, he was permanently reburied in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, where he rests today among more than 14,000 American soldiers. The cemetery remains the largest American military cemetery in Europe.
(click to enlarge)From what I can tell, the family did not receive official notice of Clifford’s death until January 1919. His mother, Mary Ellen McIntosh Lane, died after a long illness on July 21, 1919. Her obituary does not mention Clifford’s death, noting only that she was survived by her husband David and five children. David appears never to have fully recovered from the loss of both Clifford and Mary Ellen. He eventually returned to his native Canada and died on February 11, 1933, in Franklin, Manitoba. His body was brought back to North Dakota, where he was buried beside Mary Ellen in Crystal City Cemetery in Crystal.
For those interested in the family connection: David and Mary Ellen’s daughter, Martha Evelyn “Mattie” Lane Erlandson, was born on December 29, 1889. Known as “Mom Erlandson,” she married John Erlandson on October 26, 1910. Their daughter, Janet Erlandson Stangl, was born on February 6, 1911, and married Leslie Stangl on June 17, 1934. Janet and Les had two daughters, Michele and Margo. Michele married Dwight Shaw in 1958 and is Melinda’s mother.
(I’m in the midst of another surge of reviewing family archival material. I get much joy from this, both from the physical touching of items held by my ancestors and from feeling like this brings them into the present. Opening a box is like accessing a time machine. For this one, it’s a story my dad wrote in 1991 about a car he owned as a teen. –Andy)
The “Black Beauty”
by Al Smallman
I found the “Black Beauty” at a used car lot in East Dearborn, Michigan one late winter afternoon in 1951. The car glistened in the thawing snow sunlight as it occupied a spot of honor in the corner of the lot. I fell in love with this ’37 Ford Coupe immediately. What sixteen year old could resist a car that had:
a sleeved 1941 Mercury V-8 engine
shiny black paint
dual straight pipes (no mufflers) that were made even noisier because the tail pipes were made from flexible tubing
fender skirts
chrome wheel covers
a three-toned horn
a spotlight
a late model radio
I gladly parted with $285 to the ubiquitous used car salesman. The money for the car had been earned through part-time jobs as a paper route supervisor and by selling Mason Shoes.
The car quickly acquired a negative neighborhood reputation. Because the “Black Beauty” lacked mufflers, everyone in the vicinity knew about my comings and goings. After several “next-morning” confrontations by neighbors that had been awakened by the beauty’s loud purrings in the early a.m., I learned to cut the engine as soon as I turned the corner from Cherry Hill Road onto Franklin Street. We coasted the last block and a half home in silence. In this manner, the nocturnal adventures I shared with the car remained our business and not the fodder for neighborhood gossip.
The “Black Beauty” improved my social life markedly. Girls that had been nodding acquaintances, if that, suddenly were my friends and wanted rides to and from high school, or to the drug store soda fountain winter hangout, or to the quintessential summertime early fifties drive-in, “The Sip And Nip,” often over parental admonishments. In a pinch and with a squeeze, six could ride inside the coupe, since it had a very small back seat. If six were inside, they got to know each other very well if the ride was of any distance.
1937 Fords had mechanical brakes which meant that stopping or slowing down the “Black Beauty” was an adventure, usually slowing down was accomplished by shifting into second gear and letting the engine’s compression do much of the braking. This downshifting also meant that the motor noise, sans mufflers, would back off, making a sound reminiscent of a basso profundo machine gun.
My favorite adventure with the “Black Beauty” took place during the 1951 football season when Dearborn High School played Jackson High School there, a trip of almost one hundred miles. Four six foot plus high school seniors headed for Jackson as soon as school was out, three in front and one stretched out across the tiny back seat. We changed positions, except for the driver, every twenty to thirty miles. We were met in Jackson by my gorgeous blonde cousin, Judy, and a bevy of her friends. I don’t remember which team won the football game, but I do remember that we had a marvelous time at a mixer afterwards and that it was after midnight before we started back to Dearborn. I coasted home with time for about an hour’s sleep before seeing to it that the newspapers were delivered on Saturday morning.
Eventually all good things have to come to an end. In January I was to graduate from high school since I was part of the mid-year graduating class. I had been accepted by the University of Michigan and was due in Ann Arbor the first Sunday in February for freshman orientation. Back in those Neanderthal days, college freshmen in particular and undergraduates in general were not allowed to have automobiles on campus. Thus, it came to pass that on one snowy afternoon in January 1952, I drove the “Black Beauty” from my west Dearborn High School to the East Dearborn used car lot. The same ubiquitous used car salesman was still there. He offered me $185 for the car I had purchased for $285 almost a year before. I thought the car was worth more but I had to sell it. I only hope the next owner had as much fun and as many adventures as I had with the “Black Beauty.”
Happy birthday today to William John Smallman, my great-grandfather. William was born in Toronto on April 18, 1872. That’s right, 1872. That means he’d be 154 years old today. For context, he died in 1950 at age 78. In 2028, just two years, he will have been dead as long as he was alive.
Time is a funny thing.
I returned to my deep interest in William back in February when Melinda and I learned of a change in Canadian law. It automatically made Canadians out of anyone in the world with a Canadian ancestor. Given William was born in Toronto, when the law went into effect last December, I became a Canadian. So did my kids, Chloe and Ella. So did Chloe’s kids, Remy and Leon.
Place is a funny thing.
To be recognized by the Canadian government, you have to submit indisputable evidence. This involves finding documents that prove your ancestor is Canadian (a certified birth certificate is ideal) and additional documents that confirm your lineage, such as birth, death, and marriage certificates.
Since I’ve long been interested in genealogy, and, heck, I’ve had an 8×10 picture of William and his wife, Mary, in my home office as part of my Zoom background for a couple of years, I set about gathering the documents. After hearing from Chloe how much she’d like Canadian citizenship for herself and her kids, I decided to apply for our certificates.
CLICK TO ENLARGEMy paternal grandfather, Ralph, had completed a significant amount of Smallman genealogy research before he died in 1982. He collaborated with two distant relatives, Molly Smallman in Canada and Doris Kemp in Australia, to demonstrate that we all descend from an Isaac Smallman, who lived in Roscrea, Ireland, in the 1700s. Their research showed that Isaac’s great-great-grandson, Thomas Smallman, immigrated to present-day Ontario around 1870.
CLICK TO ENLARGEWhen my dad, Al Smallman (Ralph’s son), died in 2023, I inherited/claimed a large box of family documents and items. Handling each item came with its own rabbit hole, though. For instance, deep among these items were things belonging to William, some showing his involvement in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Chicago. Not knowing what to do with these things, I reached out to the IBEW and they accepted a donation for their archives, sending me a thoughtful letter of acknowledgement that I’m proud to have.
Also in there was a handwritten family tree created by Ralph (see above). His printing was simple and easy to read. Seeing it reminded me that he would send my family cards and letters when my brothers and I were kids. Near the bottom of this tree is the entry for William with these comments: “My Father! Born in Canada. Went to Chicago in 1884.” A very nice piece of family history but penmanship aside, it’s probably not enough to convince the Canadian authorities that William was born in Canada.
I returned to an online family tree I created years ago on FamilySearch and looked for sources linked to William. I was pleased to find the exact record I needed: the official entry in the Ontario birth registry. Interestingly, I was the one who had added it there back in 2018! Each page of the registry includes space for six births (more in a second on how twins were registered). William’s entry is the one on the lower right. Here are images of both the full page and an enlarged version of William’s specific entry.
About twins, you may have already noticed that William was a twin, as noted in the images. I wasn’t aware of this before, something that took me back to Ralph’s family tree. Written in smaller print and outlined by a rectangle, I found this in Ralph’s handwriting: “Unnamed twin of William (died at birth).”
Wow!
Happy birthday today to William’s unnamed twin!
But wait a second. Look at the birth entry again. It appears that the twin WAS given a name: Frank. After some online sleuthing in the Ontario live birth index, brought to my attention by a kind person in the office of Ontario Records who took my call yesterday, I found evidence that Frank was not stillborn, though it soon became clear that he unfortunately died during his first week of life.
William John & Frank – Twins
Among the treasure trove of documents Ralph had gathered and that my father had kept were photocopies of three handwritten letters Thomas (reminder – Thomas is William’s father) had sent to his mom in Ireland. Here’s a letter dated April 25th, 1872, a week after the birth of William and Frank:
As beautiful as Thomas’s handwriting is, I know it may be hard to read. Here’s a transcription of the parts relevant to a son sending a letter to his overseas mother to tell her she’s a grandmother:
I suppose you will not be surprised to hear that you now have a grandson. There were two of them but the other poor little fellow is dead. Christie has had a pretty hard time of it and is only mending very slowly. It is a very strong healthy child and so far quiet as could be expected.
I find this all kind of heartbreaking, actually, and more than a little touching. I know families were much more accustomed to stillbirths and the death of children than we are (shout-out to modern medicine and vaccines). But it still slows me down to think about how Thomas and his wife, my great-great grandmother Christie, were feeling that week and beyond.
So I share all of this today as a tribute to all of them:
to William and Frank on the occasion of their births 154 years ago today
to Thomas who made sure the births were properly recorded, something he did on April 25th, 1872, the same day he wrote a letter to his mother in Ireland
to Christie who 154 years ago gave birth to two children, one of them my great-grandfather, William, in Toronto
The number of descendants that William has is no small number and it’s only getting larger, what with Remy and Leo, my grandchildren, having been born in the last three years.
And about those certificates for Canadian citizenship I’m applying for (for Leo, Remy, Ella, Chloe and me), having found William’s birth record I now had the anchor I needed. I have since acquired his death certificate which shows his birth place as being in Canada, the birth & death certificates of Ralph which show that his father is William, the birth & death certificates of Al which show that his father is Ralph, my birth certificate which shows my father is Al, the birth certificates of Chloe and Ella which show that I am their father, and the birth certificates of Remy and Leo which show that Chloe is their mother.
I shipped the application package off to Nova Scotia on Tuesday.
POSTSCRIPTS:
Melinda also tracked down a Canadian ancestor and has submitted her documentation.
Shout-out to my niece Olivia who is living in Chicago and was able to get us a certified copy of William’s death certificate by visiting a government office in person (it is still possible to see people in person). Olivia sent me the following text after exiting the office with said certificate in hand:
“The guy giggled at me when I said, ‘I need a death certificate for my uncle. Wait, but not FOR him. My uncle didn’t die.” Yeah, people are fun.
Thomas & Christie moved the family to Chicago in 1884 when William was 12. By then, he had a younger brother named John. Chicago is where both Ralph and Al were born. In my research, I found some really fascinating newspaper clippings about Thomas getting involved in a bribery scandal involving the railroad/streetcars. A story for another time…
(Last year. I finished editing my 92-year-old mother’s memoirs and had them printed for her to give to family members as holiday gifts. Here is one about what life was like for her as the mother of three boys and a husband on the road. Of added interest, I’m including the voice of her granddaughter Stephanie reading the story. The little bit of Spanish you hear at the start is Stephanie providing context to her Spanish husband, Moises. –Andy)
A Day in My Life as a Mother
by Carib Smallman
Most important to my life as a mother was Al’s job. For thirty-two years, he worked as a salesman and then as Division Manager for E. J. Brach and Sons, a Chicago based candy company. Travel was important to his job. His territory, while we were in Omaha, Nebraska, was the northern half of Nebraska, southeastern South Dakota and western Iowa. He was on the road Monday through Friday two weeks out of four. In addition to sales meetings, which happened at least quarterly and took up part of a weekend, he spent five times a year out of town over a weekend. I missed him, but what I missed more was having some time to myself. Without him and his help with the boys, those almost two weeks seemed endless.
By summer of 1965, we had three boys: Scott, going on 6, Steve, 3. and Andy, 2. My day started when Scott would wake at seven a.m. Steve and Andy were close behind. As I helped with getting them dressed, before I started a load of wash, the boys discussed what they wanted for breakfast. After loading the washer, I made the beds and prepared breakfast. Then I supervised tooth brushing and carried the clean clothes out to hang on the line, while the boys played in their rooms. As I look back on those mornings, it makes me tired.
The tract houses near ours were occupied by families composed of two parents and two to four kids. This provided plenty of playmates for our three. A few of the mothers worked full time. Over the eleven years we lived there, five of the households became like family. Several of us keep in touch to this day.
Often on a summer morning, my closest neighbor, Eunice, would call across the yard, “How about some iced tea?”
Norma, on the other side of our house, hanging newly clean wash on her clothesline, would call back that she would be over in a few minutes.
“Sounds good to me!” I shouted, as I returned inside to gather up the boys.
Eunice would set up two small tables, with chairs for the eight kids. She had KoolAid and cookies for them. Eunice had three girls and a boy, Norma had one girl and was pregnant, and I had our three boys. Eunice’s oldest girl, Shelley, and Scott were the same age, the oldest of the group. The gang played well together with not too many squabbles. It was a nice break for us moms to be able to talk to other adults for forty-five to sixty minutes. The three of us took turns hosting the gang.
But my favorite time of day came after lunch. I’d quickly wash the dishes. “Story time!” I’d call. I never used the word nap.
The four of us would climb onto Al’s and my king-size bed, snuggling up so everyone could see the pictures. We all rested while I read Winnie the Pooh or The House at Pooh Corner. We also read our way through Wind in the Willows, which I had never read as a kid. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was another favorite. Andy and Steve would most often fall asleep. Scott knew he needed to stay quiet until I got up. Looking back, I see how much those books affected the boys. Even now, when we gather, there is often some quote or reference to a character. At family gatherings someone will mention something that brings back a quote – “They’re changing guards at Buckingham Palace,” immediately from another voice – “Christopher Robin went down with Alice.” We all remember Mr. Toad and his motorcar. Occasionally, we have been on a bridge over a small creek and played “Poohsticks.”
Omaha is miserably hot and humid in the summer. Scott and Steve enjoyed playing outside for a while in the afternoon, but were soon happy to be inside with our air conditioner. How pleased I still am, decades later, to have chosen an air conditioner over carpeting when we moved in!
Bath time came after dinner and dishes. Three boys in a tub! How crazy can it get? I let them play as long as they could keep peace. I enjoyed sitting beside the tub, swiping at the boys’ faces with a washcloth, as they propelled their boats in the water.
On a “short week” for Al, he would be home by Friday night. On Saturday, after lunch and with dishes done, I would take the car, all by myself, and go wherever I wanted. “See you for dinner, guys!,” I would call as I walked out the door.
I can still feel the soothing quietness outside the house. I love being a mother, and now a grandmother and a great-grandmother, but every adult needs some quiet time away from children, even a short time.
December 31, 1990Thirty-five years ago, Melinda famously told me, “This is not a date!” Less than four months later, on December 31st 1990, 35 years ago TODAY, we were married, and we’ve spent every day since raising a family and building a life of shared purpose.
I’m marking this milestone by reflecting on the meaningful exchange of energy and value that I hope defines my life and work.
My work to help people connect with their inherent wisdom and contribute positively to their communities exists within the gift economy. Everything I offer online is shared freely, with no obligation to pay. Learn more:
(I’ve been editing my 92-year-old mother’s memoirs in hopes of having them ready to be printed and given to family members as holiday gifts this year. It’s a big task, but a thoroughly enjoyable one as I’m getting new insights in her life by reading them. You’ll learn about her interest in ladybugs in this story. In honor of the fact that my parents were married 67 years ago today, I present this one. –Andy)
Engagement and Marriage
by Carib Smallman
Obviously, Al and I decided we would marry. We agreed we would like to pick out our rings together. With Al’s busy travel schedule and my job at Colorado State, weekends were the only time that would work. Al called early one week and said, “Be ready on Saturday. I’ll pick you up and we’ll drive to Denver to look at rings.” I replied that it would work for me.
The jeweler asked, “Do you have anything special in mind?”
“I have small hands. I prefer white gold. A small diamond would be nice,” I answered.
“The emerald cut is in fashion now,” the jeweler told me. “This is a set you might like.”
The engagement ring had a small emerald cut solitaire. The wedding ring nested snugly into the engagement ring. It was perfect for me. Holding out my hand, I asked, “What do you think, Al?”
“Whatever you like, I like,” he replied. “A plain gold band is fine for me,” he said, answering the jeweler’s question.
The jeweler explained, “It will take some time to size the rings. You may pick them up next week. That will be xxx dollars for the lady’s rings and xxx dollars for the man’s.” Al, having been on the road with no credit card as yet, didn’t have quite enough cash. I put the extra charge on my credit card. What a good tease to say he married me for my money. I owned a TV, a car, and, because of my dad, some good stocks. He had just returned from the army and was fortunate to have a job.
“Next weekend is the Fourth of July. We can pick up the rings and then have dinner at our favorite restaurant in Loveland,” Al suggested. That we did. After dinner, we drove to a high spot outside of town so we could see the fireworks. Al put the engagement ring on my finger as the first fireworks burst in the air. We were really going to marry!
Al was working further west most of the fall. We talked often and agreed that we did not need a “wedding.” “How about we meet in Seattle and marry there?” Al suggested. “If we do it around Thanksgiving, we can travel to meet our families at Christmas time.” I agreed it was a great idea.
We each called our parents to explain what we were planning, and they agreed to our schedule. Both sets sent me a list of who they would like to receive an announcement. Al managed his schedule so he would be in Seattle for Thanksgiving. After letting me know, I asked Dr. Wayte if I could have ten days off, starting the Monday of Thanksgiving week. He agreed as long as I would be back to babysit his kids the following week, which I had agreed to earlier.
Al set about locating where we would marry, somewhere for pictures, and a special place for dinner. He talked to the Seattle First Presbyterian Church minister who agreed to his request to be married in the office on Saturday, November 22, 1958. A reservation at a fancy restaurant was next on his list.
Meanwhile, I ordered announcement cards to send to family and friends. I received them in time to address and stamp them. We would mail them from Seattle. I purchased a fancy blue dress and a pair of shoes dyed to match for the auspicious occasion.
On November 21, 1958, a Friday night, I was to fly from Denver to Seattle. I needed to finish my work before driving to the Denver airport. I finished and hurried to the airport. I had a difficult time figuring out where to leave my car. At that time, all the parking at the airport was in a grassy area in front of the terminal. I finally left it there. I hustled into the terminal just as my flight was leaving! I missed my plane!
The clerk at the desk was very calm and helpful. “We’ll get you on the next flight,” she assured me. Oh no! I phoned my good friend, Sue. She and her husband hurried to the airport and accompanied me to a bar where we had a bite to eat and quite a bit to drink. The plane, with me on it, took off some time after midnight.
At 5:00 am, Saturday, November 22, I arrived in rainy Seattle, bleary-eyed and exhausted. Al met me and drove me to the motel where I napped until time to grab a bite to eat and to dress for the big event of the day. First, Al had scheduled picture taking in Pioneer Square where I ruined my dyed-to-match shoes walking in the rain. Next, we drove to Seattle First Presbyterian Church where the minister married us in his office with the custodian and his wife as our witnesses. Lastly, it was on to a fantastic restaurant on a boat anchored on Lake Union where all the waiters wore tuxedos. I floated through it all, hardly realizing we were actually married!
We spent the night in Seattle and then moved on to Portland as Al had to work Monday through Wednesday. As we drove down I-5, and, it seemed, the whole time I was with Al, when we turned the radio on in the car, the same song was playing, “Lucky Ladybug.” Although we couldn’t understand all the words, the chorus stuck in our brains. Reading the words as I am writing this, I have to agree, “our love is lucky.” Starting in that first week of our marriage, Al has called me his “Ladybug.”
Thursday, at an elegant restaurant in Portland, sitting at the bar in front of a large picture window framing Mount Hood, we had our first Thanksgiving dinner. I stayed with Al until Sunday, then flew back to Denver, found my car was still in the parking lot, and drove up to Fort Collins. Back to the real world!
A few weeks later, Al joined me. We each had a break for Christmas and New Years. We flew to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for him to meet my parents and grandmother. Then we flew to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, for me to meet his family. After the first of the year, I quit my job and we moved to a long-stay motel in Denver. Finding we were pregnant, we stayed there through April, then moved to an apartment on Xenia Street in Denver.
August ninth, I delivered our first son, Scott. Much as I love Scott, I didn’t want to have him quite so soon, but my gynecologist at the time would not provide a diaphragm for our protection. Scott was close to one when we moved to a comfortable, two bedroom duplex near the airport in Aurora, Colorado. Quite a start to our marriage!
If it hadn’t been for Al’s continuing to track me down, my life would have taken an entirely different direction. I might never have married. How happy I am that he was so tenacious.
This morning, I got a funny text message from a friend of mine:
“I was watching a clip from Fox News (yes, really) where they accidentally unmuted their report of an ICE protest in Portland and an awesome AI generated disco themed song about the Epstein files is playing!”
Typical of me, I quickly offered a silly response:
“Ha! That sounds like the plot from a dream! Are you sure you’re awake?”
As I hit send on my message, I got this follow-up:
“And I thought: we need a song like that to play at our No Kings protest here, maybe Andy would write one for us!”
Challenge accepted!
I stepped into the kitchen to fix breakfast for Senator Lloyd Bentsen From Texas (that’s the full name of Melinda’s and my maltipoo) and started thinking about what I might write. The “No Kings” concept had already planted in my head the idea of removing the four kings from a deck of cards, suggesting, perhaps, that the country wasn’t playing with a full deck. But that isn’t quite right. It’s not so much that the country isn’t playing with a full deck but, depending on one’s politics, half of the country and a number of politicians aren’t playing with a full deck.
At this point, I was breaking up Bentsen’s kibble into tiny pieces to get them ready to soak in beef broth. You see, he had dental surgery on Tuesday – 18 teeth removed – so we’re having to soften his food. He doesn’t have a lot of patience for this, especially when I’m distracted by a songwriting idea.
So distracted, I took Bentsen out to the parking strip to make room for his soon-to-be moist breakfast, if you know what I mean, and the idea of a song called “48 Card Pick-up” (52 cards minus the 4 kings) came to me. In standard 52 card pick-up, at least how I remember playing the game, you basically pinch a deck of cards so they go flying off in every direction. Once scattered, you pick them up. My idea for 48 card pick-up is you pick up, or reorganize, all the cards except the kings, getting everything in order again while leaving the kings where they’ve fallen
My creativity took off as Bentsen and I returned to the kitchen and I gave him his breakfast, along with his crushed pain pill and antibiotic. He gulped down the meal with the body language of a dog – who needs teeth, anyway, if you’re just going to swallow everything whole?
I sat down at my desk and started jotting down a few of these ideas, keeping any eye on the clock. I had a 9am meeting with 13-year-old client in California, followed by a scheduled conversation with his parents, so I wanted to capture these things before shifting my focus to the mentoring work I do on Saturday mornings. Today’s lesson with my client was on Honesty & Truthfulness, something for which I created slideshow during the pandemic. I wanted to make sure I had that all cued up so I put 48 Card Pick-up on hold.
Both my meeting with my client and the follow-up chat with his parents with his parents went long so it was about 10:30 when I got back to the song. By then, my friend who had texted me, along with her partner, had sent me several more texts, one of which was a suggestion to include something about the Epstein Files in the song.
At that point, I started to imagine how Pete Seeger might take on this assignment and typed his name into Google. I glanced through his Wikipedia page and some of the songs he helped make famous, one of which is “We Shall Overcome.” I opened a tab with the lyrics and typed “5 string banjo” at the top of my text file that at that point had nothing but my working title, “48 Card Pick-up (No Kings)” across the top.
Next, I opened a tab to NotebookLM, that’s part of Google’s AI suite and a tool I find extraordinarily helpful at condensing ideas. Notebook LM allows you to input sources – websites, random thoughts, pdfs, YouTube videos, etc. Then you enter a prompt and the AI will sort through the sources and respond to your prompt. I entered Wikipedia links to Pete Seeger and 52 Card Pickup, as well as two articles about Jeffrey Epstein, and the website to the No Kings rally. I also created a text source of my initial song ideas as I’ve summarized them above. I then prompted Notebook LM to organize the sources into an outline, highlighting overlaps between them. From the outline I got the lines “shuffle the deck” and “let the people decide” that I ultimately used in the song’s chorus.
Perhaps of interest, when writing a song lyric this way I find it helpful to start hearing some words being sung. I edited the NotebookLM outline and then uploaded it “as-is” to Suno, and used my first genre prompts:
The result was an absolute mess except for one thing. In editing the outline I had tried to create a simple chorus so my first input of words to Suno included this:
[CHORUS]
Oh, pick ’em up, pick ’em up, forty-eight cards!
We don’t need the Kings, they just stand in the yards.
Shuffle the deck, let the people decide,
A democracy built where the Kings cannot hide.
The prompts and the chorus yielded the catchy melody that you hear in the final version. And having a catchy melody allowed me to get a flowing rhythm for writing the verses and then ultimately editing the chorus.
Years ago, back in 1984 when I first started writing song lyrics, I found that the words came more easily if I could come up with a rudimentary melody. Suno provides me a more sophisticated melody and then musical accompaniment than I could ever hope to create on my own, one that helps me hear what needs to happen lyrically. And that’s what happened today.
When this happens, it’s like entering a zone or even like I’m channeling an idea from somewhere out in space. I’ve heard other people describe something similar when they’re creating something. It’s like it comes through you rather than from you. One piece of inspiration was to actually include a quote from “We Shall Overcome” in my lyric (can you find it?).
Just after noon, I had a version that I felt really good about and sent it to my friend. You can listen to that first version here. At that point, I could have been done. But once I send out a song link to someone, I click on the link and try to imagine how it might be to sit with them while they listen. And when I did that, I realized the chorus needed to be rewritten.
I had already rewritten what I had first written (remember, as inspired by the NotebookLM outline) to this:
[CHORUS]
Oh, pick ’em up, pick ’em up, forty-eight cards!
We don’t need the kings, put ’em in the discards.
Shuffle the deck, let the people decide.
No kings, no kings – that was already tried.
The “cards” and “discards” rhyme bothered me. And the 48 Card Pick-up idea, what had initially inspired the whole song while I was feeding Bentsen, really wasn’t part of this final version. But I had come up with something while writing the song’s bridge, how I could make a play on words with “The Art of the Deal” concept of the president and how I was using a deck of cards for imagery purposes. I needed a good rhyme for deal in order to have the art of the deal serve as a punchline.
I often use a lyrical bridge to enhance a point or to offer a new perspective or play on words. To get a rhyme for “deal,” I played with the “Stop the Steal” phrase that became ubiquitous with the 2020 election. I thought of “Start the Steal” as an opposite but that would give validity to the idea that the 2020 election was stolen and I didn’t want to do that. Keeping “steal” for the rhyme, I shifted focus to consider other playing card references and the concept of how in poker some cards are often announced as “wild cards” and that the king is a “face card” came to me. I knew I had the final chorus:
[CHORUS]
Shuffle the deck, let the people decide.
No kings, no kings – that was already tried.
His face card is wild, just out to steal.
No kings, no kings, that’s the art of this deal.
Having now used the best part of the bridge to complete a much improved chorus, I decided to forego writing a new bridge and set about taking what I now felt was a really good final lyric and putting it through Suno’s prompts and editing.
I had found that my original song was way too heavy on banjo (sorry, Pete Seeger) so I started using Suno’s cover feature to focus on other instruments. This takes a lot of time and tweaking, and uses a lot of the credits I pay to be able to fully use Suno. Some tweaks improved the song, some were neutral, and some didn’t work at all. What I finally liked was this set of genre prompts, covering a scaled down version of the song:
“Folk, musical hooks, male singer, alternative folk, catchy”
I recently upgraded my Suno subscription to allow me to use what they call the Suno Studio. With Studio, you basically have a recording studio at your fingertips, something that takes me back to my days at The Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio in 1983 when I learned how to record bands and mix songs on a 24 track analog console. I took my favorite version of my song and extracted the “stems,” stems being the individual instrument tracks. Then I exported a version that was just the vocal and acoustic guitar, what is kind of like a demo version.
With that version, I used Suno’s Cover feature with these genre prompts:
“children’s singalong, sparse acoustic instruments, twangy male vocal”
That’s the version I’m now promoting; in fact, I even made a simple music video of it:
Melinda, the woman who will become my wife of 35 years later this year (if we make it to December 31st still married, that is) once firmly told me, “This is not a date!” This is the story of how that happened.
The Setup: In September 1990, I was re-emerging into the social world after leaving a challenging job and wanted to see a concert.
The Cover Story: My real plan was to ask my friend Bruce’s housemate, Melinda, to a wedding later that month.
💍 The Surprise: Melinda not only agreed to the wedding but also to the concert, a spontaneous trip to a racetrack, and, less than four months later, marriage.
My plan was to call my friend Bruce about seeing Nick Lowe at Bumbershoot, the Seattle music festival. This was my excuse to get an opening to ask Melinda to a wedding. As it turned out, Bruce wasn’t in town, but he put Melinda on the phone. To my surprise, she immediately agreed to go to both the concert and the wedding with me.
After the concert, as we walked and made small talk, Melinda mentioned she had recently taken up horseback riding. I had connections at Longacres racetrack and could get access to the stables, so I asked if she’d like to see the thoroughbreds sometime. Her face lit up as she asked, “When can we go?” Seizing the moment, I replied, “How about now?”
I think she suddenly realized her enthusiasm might be misinterpreted. We had just been to a concert, she had agreed to be my wedding guest, and now she’d accepted a spontaneous trip to a racetrack. She clearly felt the need to halt any romantic ideas I might be getting. With a tone that matched her words for clarity, she stated, “This is not a date!” My less-than-eloquent response was something along the lines of, “Um, okay.”
Of course, we were married less than four months later. In those three+ decades, we’ve raised two kids to adulthood, started a school, lived in France for a year, become grandparents, and spent nearly every day together.
Occasionally, I’ll ask her if we’ve had a date yet. 😉
The Robinsons did not have any children and the one survivor listed was MISTER Robinson’s sister, Anne. I did some digging and found that Anne died in 1998, leaving me to wonder who remembers MISTER Robinson. Obviously, I do, hence this blog post. Given how important he was to my father, I feel the desire to honor him. In a handwritten draft of a letter my dad sent to someone named Mr. Randall, I found this paragraph:
