The General's Daughter

Odette Tyler in 1927

As far as I've been able to trace so far, former Brigadier General William Whedbee Kirkland (1833-1915) and his wife Susan Ann Hardee (d. 1905) moved to Savannah, Georgia, after the American Civil War ended, and they had three children there: Margaret Kirkland, Noble Hardee Kirkland and Elizabeth Lee Kirkland. I'm not entirely sure about Margaret, or what became of her, but the second kid was born in 1868 and the third in 1869 or 1872, depending on the source.  

Odette Tyler, late 1800s

The Kirklands seem to have been quite unconventional people. Susan Ann Hardee Kirkland, for instance, was married four times (Kirkland, Mann, Callahan, Wilkins): unusual at the time and even in 2012. Noble Hardee Kirkland, named after Noble Andrew Hardee (Susan's father), eventually took to making and acting in movies under the name Hardee Kirkland. The general's daughter, Elizabeth "Bess," took the stage name of Odette Tyler circa 1884, well before she married Rezin Davis Shepherd -- who also had a stage name (R. D. MacLean) -- on April Fool's Day, 1897. 
    

Odette Tyler (upper left), The Saphead (1920)

Odette Tyler (aka Elizabeth Bess Lee Kirkland/Shepherd) acted in many plays in New York City and elsewhere, and had a supporting role in The Saphead, a 1920 silent movie directed by Herbert Blaché and Winchell Smith that starred Buster Keaton. For a time, she ran her own repertory company. She also wrote Boss (sometimes given the subtitle: A Story of Virginia Life), a novel published in 1896, and The Red Carnation, a play she first produced in 1905. At the end of her arc, Odette, the general's daughter, died in Hollywood in 1936. 

Today's Rune: Signals. (Sources include: "Odette Tyler Shepherd" by Alice Pike Barney, 1927, Smithsonian American Art Museum; Odette Tyler, cabinet card, Pach Brothers, New York City, late 1800s; still from title cards, The Saphead, 1920).

The General from Ayr Mount

William Whedbee Kirkland presents the world with a mystery. First, a quick rundown of his life. Born in 1833 in Hillsborough, North Carolina, at Ayr Mount, a beautiful estate featuring a brick Federal style house completed circa 1815 -- still standing, restored and open to the public as of this post. Wounded in the leg by his older brother by a gunshot wound. Attends the United States Military Academy at West Point in the 1850s. Kicked out. Joins the US Marine Corps as a second lieutenant. Stationed in China. Resigns his commission on the eve of the American Civil War. After North Carolina joins the Confederacy, becomes Colonel of the Eleventh North Carolina Infantry. Is shot by enemy troops during the Valley Campaign in 1862; after recuperating, assigned to the West. Transferred back East in time for Gettysburg. Is wounded twice more, then assigned to the defense of his home state, where he eventually surrenders (with the rank of Brigadier General) with General Joseph E. Johnston.

    











At some point, Kirkland marries Susan Hardee, a niece of Confederate Lieutenant General William J. Hardee (1815-1873), who had before the war served as commandant at West Point.
 

After the war, Kirkland relocates to Savannah, Georgia, and resides there with Susan. They have three kids together (so far as I know). Two of them become involved with the theatre and, almost surrealistically, Hollywood. Kirkland works for the US Postal Service in New York City for a time, and ends up at the Old Soldier's Home in Washington, D.C., where he dies a year into the Great War of 1914-1918. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, next to "Susan H. Wilkins," who died in 1905.

That's the set up. (To be continued).

Today's Rune: Warrior. (Sources: Brochure for Ayr Mount Historical Site; Dickinson College crop of WIlliam W. Kirkland from Walter Clark, ed., Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War, 1861-1865, Vol. IV (Goldsboro, NC: State of North Carolina, 1901), page 535; photo I took quite a little while ago at the West Virginia cemetery).     

Finck's "Detroit Special"

Here's an advertisement for Finck's "Detroit Special" Overalls. Year: 1916. The Great War is raging "over there," and down Mexico way, there's an ongoing revolution. US troops will soon be massing on the border in response to raids orchestrated by General Francisco Pancho Villa. Everywhere, the railroad is big time.

So, in fine copy for the times:

Prepared!

This man is ready for anything that railroading can offer -- Food from Home -- and a suit of Finck's "Detroit Special" Overalls which "Wear Like a Pig's Nose."
 

Slogans are in. Propaganda is in full gear, too, thanks to the mass industrialization of economy and war. All aboard for funtime!

YOU Railroaders who want the most for your money should always ASK for and GET the overalls with the "Pig's Nose" ticket.

Write if your dealer hasn't them!

W. M. Finck & Company Detroit, Michigan.

The ticket is your guarantee. Insist on it.

RETAIL PRICE
$1.25 $1.15 $1.10 $1.00

Today's Rune: Journey. (Source: Milwaukee Railway . . . January 1916).

The Ray Bradbury Chronicles

The big push in my Ray Bradbury absorption came as "extra reading" during the year of Mrs. Barlow's Ninth Grade English class, with R is for Rocket, S is for Space and The Martian Chronicles, all of them from home. Before that, I devoured Something Wicked This Way Comes, Fahrenheit 451 and The Ilustrated Man. With friends, there were repeat showings of the movie versions of the last two named books, and a final flourish in 1979: the TV mini-series broadcast of The Martian Chronicles, featuring Darren McGavin of The Night Stalker. I loved it all!

Having not reread any of the books nor rewatched any of the adaptations since the mini-series, they've all remained floating around in my psyche like phantoms, right back to the very first Bradbury book I picked up, Something Wicked This Way Comes. If all books were burned in the near future, these would all be good tales to pass on orally to the next two or three generations. 

The original order of publication hardly mattered to me at the time, but for what it's worth and out of sheer curiosity, I looked them up and found that it goes like this:

The  Martian Chronicles, 1950 (including stories first published in the 1940s).
The Illustrated Man (1951).
Fahrenheit 451 (1953).
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).
R is for Rocket (1962).
S is for Space (1966).
Fahrenheit 451 movie directed by François Truffaut, with Oskar Werner and Julie Christie (1966).   
The Illustrated Man movie directed by Jack Smight and starring Rod Steiger (1969).
Michael Anderson's The Martian Chronicles mini-series (1979) -- same director as for Logan's Run (1976 -- a good deal of it, by the way, filmed in Fort Worth, Texas).

Has Ray Bradbury (RIP) done anything similar for you over the years?

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

In the Year 1916: Meet Me at the Tuller

New Hotel Tuller
Detroit, Mich.

Center of business on Grand Circus Park. Take Woodward car, get off at Adams Avenue.

Absolutely Fireproof.

200 Rooms, Private Bath.
Single: $1.50
Up Double: $2.50

TOTAL, 600 OUTSIDE ROOMS.

All Absolutely Quiet.

New Unique Cafe and Cabaret Excellente.

Meet Me at the TULLER.

[Source: Milwaukee Railway System . . . January 1916].

Demand the Genuine by Full Name, or: 1923 Revisited

Another advertisement from a 1923 UNC alumni publication. The product remains the same, but the approach is a bit different from, say, in 2012, although not that much different. Where to "get a bottle" -- that's a whole different story 89 years later.   

DRINK
[Coca Cola]
Delicious and Refreshing.

Quality tells the difference in the taste between Coca Cola and counterfeits.

Demand the genuine by full name -- nicknames encourage substitution.

Get a bottle of the genuine from your grocer, fruit stand, or cafe.

Durham Coca-Cola Bottling Co.
Durham, N.C.  

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Pendy Rocks, or: It's 1923, Okay?

Going from this 1923 advertisement, Pendy must have been a real pisser. The distance between Durham and Chapel Hill is about eleven or twelve miles -- walkable, but Pendy offered a convenient alternative: a ride in the Red Bus.

PENDY: Dean of Transportation.
All History of the Bus begins and ends with Pendy.

He is the pioneer jitney man and the one that brought the $1.00 Fare to 50c.

Alumni are invited to keep this price down to 50 cents by riding in THE RED BUS.
See and ride in the Red Bus.
Pendy controls the price.

Leave Chapel Hill . . .
Leave Durham . . .

[Source: a 1923 UNC alumni publication].

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Theatre of the Absurd

This scan of a clipping advertising Slava Tsukerman's Liquid Sky (1982) triggers memories that had been buried under the sediment of later experiences. Liquid Sky really took off in 1983, right around the time I began working in the small offices of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, attached to the building in which was housed the Chapel Hill Newspaper -- published by the tyrannical Orville Campbell and his fretful crew.

Oddball characters were always coming and going from Algonquin Books, anything from authors, editors and publishers to art designers, book jobbers and friends of the main instigator of the whole enterprise, Louis Rubin, Jr., a volatile man who, in between shouting matches or dictated letters asking for more money from the board of directors, dramatically took naps on a cot in the back office. Whenever he threw tantrums -- which was fairly often -- I imagined him morphing into a rabid owl until he scrambled off for another nap.    

Every once in a while, an English professor named Dougald MacMillan flitted in with some madcap idea. He ran his own independent publishing outfit called Signal Books in nearby Carrboro, and one idea he bandied about was a book of poetry and artwork created by children dying of cancer. Sounded awfully depressing to me, but what did I know? Another time he asked me to pack up a stack of British pound notes along with a mansucript he was shipping to someone in Scotland, for what reason I didn't know, or ask. Finally, with a mischievous gleam in his eye, he scrawled "PHOTOS" on the outside packaging, then added with a flourish, "DO NOT BEND." Dougald, though he was originally from Arkansas, was mad about Irish literary folks, particularly James Joyce and Samuel Waiting for Godot Beckett. One day I had to deliver some materials to the Signal Books office, which was tucked along the railroad tracks behind The Station, an old Carrboro train station converted into a bar-eatery where bands like R.E.M. cut their teeth; in this case as in some of his Chapel Hill visitations, he was accompanied by another Beckett enthusiast, Martha Fehsenfeld, who had intense, almost bulbous eyes. 

All that from a Liquid Sky artifact!  

Today's Rune: Signals.