Dad's Writing

Baseball

Reflections on Baseball or What’s really eating at America’s kids?
It's a long way from Cincinnati’s Bold Face Park to Utah’s Zion's canyon where my family owns two one acre lots on a ranch that borders the park. The mountains in Utah are beautiful but harbor things like Rattlesnakes and Mountain Lions . I never saw any thing like that in Cincinnati, Or did I? In his autobiography Don Zimmer said" at on end of Bold Face Drive was the park (where he played baseball) and at the other end of the road was where he lived". Bold Face Drive started at River Road and ended at the creek that went underground at the foot of our driveway. I remember Bold Face drive as a tree shaded lane lined with houses and yards maintained more with loves labor than money. Baseball was the same. Today baseball is maintained by money and what is left of Sedamsville qualifies as a slum. Don Zimmer was my hero He still is. Hell, he was every Sedamsville kid's hero, but he is wrong about Bold Face Drive and where he lived. He lived at 777 Sedam St. He never lived at the end of Bold Face Dr. from the period August 1943 to August 1953. The address for the last house on Bold Face Drive was 764


Don Ennis aka Doodles Ennis lived at that address during that time period before his brother Walt joined the army and later rejoined the family in California to where they had moved. Doodle Ennis that's me.
I played in that creek and I played in that park and I walked respectfully behind the great Don Zimmer whose name was linked with Ted Williams and Joe Dimagio.
Don Zimmer was going to be the next everybody who was ever great in baseball and in the hearts and minds of a troop of lost boys looking for a hero he was and still is a hero. Among those boys was Pete Rose.
Pete did what Don could not but Don did what Pete regretfully failed to do
Don Zimmer was idolized in the hearts of boys whose hearts were baseball.
Their blood was baseball. The very essence of their being was baseball.
When Don Zimmer walked up Bold Face Dr he had the absolute adoration of the purest hearts in the world. Don Zimmer wouldn’t quit. When he couldn’t play the game he coached but he didn’t quit. That’s why Don Zimmer is a hero. He wouldn’t quit. Pete may have displayed errors in judgement but he can’t quit either so don’t expect him to go away. Quiting is losing and Pete can do neither.
When he came back to Bold Face Park in 1947 from the Kansas City world series for kids his age, our hero brought a baseball with him signed by Babe Ruth. I was only six but I got a piece of that ball. Like Don said "We hit that ball all over Bold Face Park". That's the way Don Zimmer was. That’s the way baseball was. He would play ball with a bunch of kids. He was bigger and we looked up to him, but we looked up to him because he was a bit taller in Character. That's what Pete missed. I don't mean to disparage Pete's character and I don't care if he bet on baseball, but I do lament the opportunity he missed to be the next Don Zimmer. I was on the property that borders Zion's last fall digging a hole to install a flagpole. I dug up a bunch of symmetrical rock and I picked up a stick I had whittled in to a walking stick for my grandson.
I haven't swung a bat in almost 50 years and I never was good hitting a curve ball. But there in Zion's which means the pure in heart a sixty-three year old boy with Parkinson's disease tossed a rock into the air and hit the rock clear crossed the ravine. I heard the crack of the bat on the stone and the noise of wood on rock racked a memory. Baseball! I remembered how much I enjoyed the game. My love of the game came alive again
I never got to be as good at the game as Pete did. No one did. Pete was the best. I quit playing when my family moved to California but I never lost my love of it. What some people have forgotten is that it is a game not a business. It is a game remembered by boys with pure hearts. The rewards for play are enjoyment not money. I don't know if Pete has tucked into his heart the love of baseball that is mine. I haven't seen him in 50 years.
I do know that he was richly rewarded for playing the game and make no mistake Pete played he only way he knew how. He played to win. He may have bet against his own team but he played to win. A military commander who doesn’t know which fights he can’t win is going to get a lot of people killed. He is betting on his knowlege . So was Pete Rose but not playing to win is not in his person. If playing to win is a crime or a sin than I'm as guilty as Pete. So are seven others I can name who played in Bold Face park with him. I’m out of touch with baseball, but I’ll bet that there are still guys around who play the game because they love it . Some of them might even play in the major leagues.
I read and article in the Cincinnati Enquirer a while back that talked about the ball fields in Cincinnati being empty. That article missed the point entirely. Those ball parks are filled with memories and the dreams of boys with pure hearts who have memories of hero’s like Don Zimmer.
I drove Polaris submarines for the US Navy and the fact that you are speaking English instead of Russian is because guys like me and Pete Rose were taught in places like Bold Face Park
Who remembers the guy who stuck out more times than anyone else? Who cares? Fans don't come to the ballpark to watch players strike out they come to watch the ball clear the fence. They come to watch "Charlie Hustle" dive into third and steal home. They come to watch the players they idolize stand up to bad calls and get into the umpires face and learn how to accept the call like a gentleman without resorting to profanity or violence. The morality of baseball went away with multimillion-dollar contacts and five dollar hot dogs. So please don't talk to me abut someone betting on a game. Talk to me about players stopping by the old park to show kids how
to enjoy the game. If you don‘t know how to do this call Don Zimmer.
He's retired now and he might need something to do and he just might teach you something, but if; you ever paid ten bucks for a beer at Riverside stadium don't condemn Pete. That's the crux of this whole Pete Rose thing isn't it? It's not a about a proud arrogant ball player. It's about money. The
powers that rule baseball tell us they are protecting baseball, the boys,
the country and mother's apple pie.
My mother never could bake an apple pie, but I married and angel who can and don’t talk to me about protecting boys until you’ve been in scouting for twenty years and Pleeeeze don’t waste my time telling me about protectng America: its borders or its integrity. I’ve got more time sitting in the diving officer’s chair backing down at test depth protecting America than you have getting rich protecting baseball. What they are really saying is your players can use drugs to win but don't mess with the money. They can beat their wives and their kids but don't mess with the money. They can throw a bat at the pitcher but don't mess with the money. And for messing with the money you want a contrite Pete Rose You would do better to take some of the money and pay your admission fee to spend a baseball afternoon in the tiger's cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. You might see a tiger eating soy based no meat with vegetable mess But you aren't going to see a contrite Pete Rose. Actually you saw Pete as contrite as you are going to see him. You saw him stand squared to the question thrown at him and he answered it frankly and honestly with the best interest of the game in his mind. Pete Rose learned to play ball in the Knot hole league. Todays kids don’t know the meaning of that medifore.

It means that kids like Pete would rather watch a baseball game played by Ted Williams and Joe Dimagio through a knot hole in the fence at Wrigley field than spend the afternoon with a bunch of over paid, foul mouthed spoiled brats play what just passes for baseball at the Riverfront stadium. Don’t you guys get it. The money taints baseball. If the money wasn’t there and if you hadn’t let money become the point of the game guys like Pete wouldn’t bet on it. I would rather watch a bunch of kids who love the game more than life play poorly than subject myself to an afternoon of boredom watching nine rich guys with talent but pumped with drugs show off. Now let me ask you one: Just what is it you want? Besides the money I mean. Ask honest questions and you will get honest answers. Demanding contrition is too subjective. Pete gave you the best answer he knows when he said, "Baseball doesn't owe me a damned thing I owe baseball" This really is about money isn't it? Let who is without sin cast the first stone. Me. I enjoy hitting rocks into a canyon that means the pure in heart. I'd rather play the game than watch it. I can't speak for Pete
but I think he would rather play than watch too.


He wants to play so bad that he will put up with a bunch of self righteous baseball wannabe's who can’t get to second base without stepping on their wallets. You want blood? Start in Bold Face Park and wind up in major league baseball. I'd rather go from Bold Face to Zion's.
The distance is shorter and when I get there. I only have to worry about the mountain lions and the rattlesnakes
Don Ennis
P.S. You want Pete Rose to just go away, but he won’t, Those of you who will dissolve with time and no one will know your name. You’re the decendants of the guys who screwed Jim Thorpe who may have played a little baseball for room and board . Ask any one who reads "Who was the greatest at hlete of all time and a big Saux-Fox Indian will led the list. I’m told that there are two lines at the baseball hall of fame. One line goes to the door, The other longer line goes to a table where Pete Rose signs his picture and his book for people who know who is the greatest baseball player ever.
Baseball fans know their heros.

Bubbles

by

Truman Miller

Chances are if you've ever seen a movie about teenagers and a high school is involved, you've seen John Marshall high school in Hollywood's Los Feliz district. The last such movie I saw was "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". The lunch scene, where Buffy and friends discuss the ozone and "bugs - totally". brings back tenth grade memories. The bushes in the background, slightly to the left in the scene, remind me of the bushes directly below room 322 where a grand lesson began to incubate. But I'm getting way ahead of this story, which really began to make sense at another high school, thousands of miles away; thirty years later.

I once taught in a school where every boy had a knife and every girl had a story. Ginny came to class, every day she decided to come to class, and shared the latest in her law suit. Ginny was suing her mother! When I first saw Ginny, I felt like suing someone for dressing a beautiful fourteen year old girl like a twice older girl who works the streets. There was only one girl in room 322 who wore that much lipstick and rouge and that was Bubbles, our teacher. But, I'm getting ahead of this story again. Ginny was suing for the social security money she stopped seeing when she stopped seeing her mother.

The mother had been abandoned by Ginny's father before the little girl could remember, and after ten years of mommy's live in boyfriends,

Ginny was left with the latest "uncle" in a less than wholesome situation.

Ginny lived with her maternal grandmother, a kind, simple woman raised in a time when young girls did not sleep in the same room with thirty year old men not their blood relatives (not even their blood relatives). One look in the window, and a quick call to real Uncle "bull-policeman" Bill, who sans ceremony and court order kicked the door down and Ginny was in grandma's care. Thank God for a simple grandma who cared and uncle Bill who didn't stop kicking at the door. Ginny, who was as street wise as she looked, was suing her own mother, if the law could find her.

Danny Lewis was a fifteen year old recidivist. He liked to steal. It gave him power and satisfaction. It had already given him celebrity status as a two year guest of the state's juvenile correction facility. This time he was charged with GTB (grand theft burglary). Someone might have questioned why a good experienced thief had stolen a human skull from a college biology laboratory. The item in question was worthless to Danny, but the purchase invoice read just enough to qualify as a GTB. Somehow I think Danny knew that. Now, the court order of a socially enlightened judge remanded Danny to my class to await sentencing. He knew where he was going. He'd been there before and despite the status his situation gave him it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out he was terrified. I was expected to teach algebra to a frightened little boy who viewed his presence in my classroom as an extension of his future and sure sentence. Did the same God who made caring grandmas and uncle Bills make socially enlightened judges? My students would probably say "NOT"!

The school, where I taught, or tried to teach, Ginny and Danny and dozens like them ,was designed for 700 junior high school children and we had 1500 almost adult high schoolers packed in.

In that school, I taught three different subjects in three different rooms; so, in addition to keeping up with the inherent problems of my clientele, I also had the problem of beating the bell schedule from one classroom to the next. My students were often waiting at the door. One morning at the end of my usual sprint to class, I found Henry Klinefelter at the door just getting ready to unlock it. Henry, who taught only math and liked to let teachers who taught three subjects in three different rooms know about it, had forgotten something in his room and had returned for whatever it was. The room was Henry's because that's where he taught math five periods a day. We were permitted to use the room during his prep period. Of course, my students were the only students in the room on any given day who missed the waste paper basket or deposited gum under the seats. Henry had subtle ways of letting us know this. "Statistically" Henry was fond of the word statistically, "Statistically, advanced math students must be better shots." To which I once heard one of my students mutter "But they're piss poor at urinals". Henry's key and I reached the door at the same time. The lock didn't respond. Henry did! "Damn these no good rotten kids. This is the third time this year one of your kids has put super glue in the key hole". Since, this was the first of October, and because I was hired late in the school year to accommodate the overflow the administration had taken four weeks to figure out, I only had Henry's word for the frequency of this occurrence. "Statistically," I said, "that's once every six days".

As Henry transfered his glare from my students to me, I realized I had something Henry would never have. Although I didn't have a room to call my own, these kids were my students, and if the truth ever dawns on teachers like Henry, they will know they don't actually own the room either.

This is a misconception bad teachers seem to need. Henry huffed off to get a custodian who had a can of super glue melting, custodial magic. I waited for Henry and the magician to return. All the while, Danny smiled a sly, knowing smile. Henry returned alone with a spray can in his hand and squirted the keyhole with aerosol and us with "You're really not too smart" He unlocked the door with a look of supreme accomplishment and pulled the handle toward him. Instead of swinging out as it should have, the oak school door with the little mesh window and the heavy steel kick plate fell on him, brass fittings and all. While he was looking for the custodian and the can of magic, someone had removed the hinge pins from the door. Only Henry's pride was hurt, but one of my valiant students, who had inherited her grandmother's caring nature, called 911 on the school's pay phone before anyone could stop her. Before the rest of my "caring "students could remove the door and dust Henry off, the fun was on its way. By the time we got things sorted out and I had my students in Henry's room, the period was three-fourths over. My lesson plan wouldn't fit into fifteen minutes, but more important, I knew the administration was mad as hell and I knew the super gluing had to stop. Actually, the super gluing could have gone on indefinitely. The 911 call, paramedics, fire engines, police and the front offices' dullness to humor commanded my attention to the problem.

Most of the students were seated when I entered the room, but their agitated chatter skipped and chortled from chair to chair. "Lacks classroom management." a random evaluation might have read.

I walked to the front of the room, leaned back, sat on the desk and said, "In 1956 we didn't have super glue". Once-upon-a-time is a great noise dimmer.

The noise began to dim. When I had sufficient attention I repeated, "In 1956 we didn't have super glue, but in 1956 when I learned 10th grade English in room 322 at John Marshall high school in Hollywood's Los Feliz district, bubble gum worked just as well". Children, even almost adult children, love stories. Starting a story with the word Hollywood in the first sentence rivets high schoolers. I continued: "Our teacher was Mrs. Henrietta Opalthorpe. I don't know if she was really married or not. In 1956 any female teacher over thirty was automatically called Mrs. It didn't matter anyway. We called her Bubbles, So did the faculty."

"Even the principal had been heard to say "'Bubb... er, ah, that is Mrs. Opalthorpe' on occasion. The origin of her name had several theories, all conjecture and all lost in antiquity."

"Sounds like a street name to me"

"That's what some of the less charitable young men held." I told Ginny, quotating 'charitable' with two fingers on each hand slightly above my head, and double clicking my tongue.

Another theory had to do with bubble dancing; I had to explain burlesque, Sally Rand, and Gypsy Rose Lee to my perplexed students, who thought Madonna was an original and they were the only generation with outlandish icons.

Finally, "Most of the girls in Bubbles' English class, insisted that Bubbles refered to anatomy which in this case was considerable."

"One October morning,

Bubbles (who must have taught three different subjects in three different rooms) came running up to room 322 where 25 sophomore English students had been waiting for five minutes. One of us smiled a sly, Danny Lewis smile. Bubbles tried the key in the lock. It went in slowly and stopped before it should have. She retrived a pink goo covered key. Bubble gum! 'Damn you rotton no good kids! That's the third time this year one of you has gummed my door.' Since I had transferred from Cincinnati's Western Hills high school just a week earlier, I had to take her word for the the lock gumming. frequency"

"Don't anyone leave now. I've taken a mental roll and I know who's here. I'm going to get a custodian."

It never occurred to Bubbles that if anyone present had a better place to be at 9 o'clock in the morning they would already be there. I really thought I was going to be in for a bad English year, and I was glad that at least my late enrollment eliminated me from gumming blame. This was an advantage and I've always been good at making an advantage pay off.

"Bubbles returned with the custodian who laboriously removed the gum with a neat lock pick." The mention of a lock pick caught Danny's attention and brought him back to the story.

"There was not then nor is there to this day a spray that will remove gum from a keyhole."

" Too much mass." Danny interjected.

"Mass, a physics term used by a petty thief." I thought. As I reflected on the effectiveness of learning in context I continued with my story:

"After the gum was removed. Bubbles pulled the door knob toward her, but the door didn't swing as it should have.

Someone had removed the hinge pins when she went for the custodian. The oak school door with the little mesh window and the heavy steel kick plate fell on top of Bubbles, brass fittings and all."

"There was no 911 in those days, so we didn't get the fire engine show. Without firemen, paramedics, and cops around to assuage the situation, Bubbles wasn't hindered from having a go at us once the door was lifted and we were all seated in room 322."

"We all sat quietly as she made her straight back, chin up, chest out entrance. She herded the last lingering student before her. Billy Good, sauntered his was to his back row assigned seat. Bubbles took a

commanding stance at the front of the room."

We braced ourselves as she started in.'

"You......" ,but she never got to the second word because, Billy Good's hand, demanded attention. The strange newness of his hand in the air, the way Billy held it, the yoohoo wiggle of his fingers caught Bubbles' eye before the second word escaped her lips and mesmerized her irked attention.

"What...do...you...want?" She slowly seethed through slits in her teeth.

"What do you want", said that way really meant. Who do you think you are to interrupt me?' 'Don't you see I'm angry? Don't you see I have something important to say?'

Twenty-four pairs of eyes turned to see Billy Good rise from his seat. rising as if to say, "I have something more important to say."

Anticipating her question he said, "I'm Billy Good"

"Yes, I know who you are." She snapped and thought, "Now sit down, shut up and let me berate you."

"You....." she tried to continue.

But Billy Good, still on his feet, interrupted the second word a second time. "Is it true that your name is Bubbles, because you used to be a whore?"

The innocent, sing song, delivery of his question didn't escape my attention.

Bubbles caught only the content. Her cheeks blazed through layers of rouge. "Get out of my classroom"

The concept of teacher classroom ownership probably didn't originate with Bubbles, but its the first time I can recall hearing it.

Billy stood fast and after a long staring spell during which Billy's sly, knowing smile met and aggravated Bubbles glare.

Cheeks blazed hotter, "Get out of my room!" she repeated through clenched teeth.

"Nope, Don't believe I will. I kind of like it right here." Said the smile.

"Get out of my room this instant or I'll get the principal."

We all saw that Bubbles was really mad, but I saw something else. An in-control adult wouldn't have upped the ante so high. Bubbles had lost control.

Billy must have seen it too. He turned the smile to feigned horror. Overacting he cried, "Oh my God not the principal!"

Bubbles missed the hyperbole. An English teacher who misses hyperbole is definitely not in control, but she perceived she had the upper hand now. She folded her arms across her breasts. Check! Your move.

" Oh my God, not the principal!" Billy repeated. "I've already seen the principal twice this year." Billy wasn't lying. Once in the lunch room: "Good afternoon Mr. Wheeler" and once tardy hurrying to class. "Yes sir Mr. Wheeler, I'll get there as fast as I can."

It's easier to act if there is some note of truth in it.

Billy continued; "Three strikes and I'm out. My father will kill me."

Had Bubbles not upped the ante so high, and had she not lost control so early, she may have recognized that capital punishment was a bit much for a two day suspension.

Who knows the state of an English teacher beyond hyperbole? The principal in a black hood with an ax in his hand comes to my mind. Perhaps, the same apperition appeared to her, in her excited state, fulfilling some "gramatical" need. She may have gotten some pleasure in her actions, but it wasn't until later that I learned, what followed occurred because she didn't understand the situation. Every kid in the class, except for me, knew Billy was the son of pediatrician Dr. Good. ( Honestly, that was his name. ) Half the kids in the class had been treated by the kindly doctor, but no one had ever been treated in early October when the Goods went on vacation. Billy wasn't going to his funeral, nor was he going to get suspended! Unless you count a week in Hawaii as death or a letter from the principal ( Aloha Billy, you're suspended, have a great fall vacation) as suspension.

Bubbles didn't now the half of it. The other half was on it's way.

Ignorantly, she turned to the door, "I'm getting the principal."

In turning her back she, missed the return of the sly, knowing smile.

Billy ran to the window at the rear of the classroom and looked down on the patio where Buffy and her friends would sit some thirty years later. He looked at the bushes I mentioned earlier, thirty feet below.

"If you call the principal, I'll jump out the window." He put a knee on the window sill.

"Nonsense, plain nonsense" Bubbles stomped from the room.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Billy's loud, mournful scream froze Bubbles' office bound progress. Before she ran back into the room, Billy dove behind the back row of desks.

In any other decade of this century, his hiding place would have been inadequate. This was the fifties. Poddle-dog skirts and innumerable petty coats hid the doctors' son. When Bubbles reentered the room, twenty-three pairs of eyes were fixed on the rear window.

"He didn't jump. This is silly." She half-convinced herself, but she walked to the rear of the classroom. Billy made himself smaller and smiled a grand, sly, knowing smile.

Bubbles leaned her ample self out the window and looked down. She gasped and fainted back into the room.

I had to see. Everyone else seemed to know. They'd seen this kind of thing before. I had to see. I left my desk, and stepping over Bubbles, I looked out the window. I learned later that Billy's twin brother's name was Bob. Bob was lying in the bushes thirty feet below with catsup coming out of his ear.

We didn't have 911, but someone did go get the principal, and a whistle queued Bob out of the bushes and back home via a bedroom window, back to the bed he and the flu had occupied all day.

Bubbles recovered, but she never returned to school, and since no one could corroborate her story the administration let well enough alone. When it's them against us, fifties kids knew how to choose us.

I told this story to my class and finished just as the bell rang.

The students left with their knives and stories of their own amid 'No ways!', smiles, and even some laughter. They all left except for Danny Lewis.

Danny smiled a sly, knowing smile and sauntered up to my desk. I'd seen that smile and saunter before. I wondered what kind of genetic anagram produced Lewis from Good.

Without fear of retribution Danny confessed, "Mr. Miller, I super-glued the door. I promise I won't do it again." He turned toward the door and with his hand on the knob he turned again and caught my eye. "That was a great story Mr. Miller" he paused as if in perplexed thought then said "Honest Mr. Miller, I didn't take the hinges apart." Before I could reply he was halfway to his next class. I smiled the grandest, sly, knowing smile as I felt the three pieces of metal in my pocket.

"I know you didn't Danny, I know."

Postscript:

Nofzigger

I have had for lack of a better term what I am calling an introspective revelation. I’m trying to be nonplused about this but the experience has far reaching implications. I have never been afraid of traveling a thought path but this one I’m going to explore with caution. I’m comfortable with the footing I have chosen. Perhaps I am suffering from intellectual laziness.

Early this morning I logged on to Classmate.com and looked at the message board for John Marshall High School. I found a reference to Ms. Nofzigger who is the model for my story. Not only did I find her, but I found the elements of my story in fragments like the chards of an ancient pot. What I thought was the product of my imagination turns out to be at least urban legend : at best it or some of it actually happened. I always knew the story was embellished by my mind, but the thought that it may be true challenges the way I view truth and memory.

Eulogy for Dorothy

If Dorothy were here now and saw so many weeping eyes she would be among you drying your eyes and having a good time of it. She is in a better time and place … Modern folklore gives us a gauge of a woman’s tenderness. Did she cry when Ole Yeller died? Grandma Dorothy cried when Little Toot got kicked out of port.

I’m going to tell you stories about pennies and love. Pennies are a little girl’s coin and since she never got old it is appropriate that I speak of pennies. When Dorothy was a little girl she walked to downtown Cincinnati with her sister, Anna Mary in hand. She skipped and did a balancing act on the curbs, walls and fences. She did it when she was eight and she did it when she was eighty-eight. If she saw a little boy who looked like he had pennies in his hand she charmed him into letting her see and when he did (and he always did), she did the old pop-the-back-of-the-hand trick, and she became pennies richer. She originated the one-more-penny scam; in which she would approach a stranger and extend her open palm with four pennies in it and say, "Mister, my little sister lost her money and she needs one more penny to ride the bus home. We’ve walked so far today and she’s so tired and I can’t carry her any more. Please, just a penny." She knew instinctively that a man in a suit with a date on his arm was a sucker for innocent blue eyes.
She was born in New York where her dad died when she was seven, leaving her mother with nine or ten children to raise. Her name was Janet Dorothy then, but at seven she was already making decisions and defining who she became…she became Dorothy. She had wonderful stories about the gypsies who camped near the big house she lived in and how they watched Anna Mary because Anna Mary had their dark eyes and complexion. If they wanted her sister they would have to deal with Dorothy.

The 1922 equivalent of the Child Protective Services made a noise about taking the children away from her; so, Dorothy’s mother, Clara packed up the kids in the middle of the night and headed for home in Cincinnati and the German farming community of Sunman, Indiana. Clara did her best to put the children to sleep but little Dorothy was a survivor and she knew that to survive you have to be alert. She remembered the train ride in detail, right down to her white dress with the purple sleeve bands. The purple dye ran when she got a drink from the train drinking fountain and died her wrists purple.

She was a great storyteller and she told this adventure to her children and grandchildren often so they and now I cannot forget. A death, a desperate train ride, a child in a ping-pong white dress, bouncing down a rickety-rack railroad track, willy-nilly looking for a future. Life would be hard for little Dorothy. Her brothers went to the farms in Sunman, the Wells girls went to a rich, evil Cincinnati relative who put the unwanted girls to bed early so the rich children of the house could be feed cookies and milk. Dorothy would hush the hungry Anna Mary as they both watched the cookie feast while hiding like little mice behind the staircase spindles. When ever she served cookies Grandma Dorothy would tell that story starting with the train ride and ending with the very same kind of cookies she was serving. Life was hard for little Dorothy but her will was as hard as the train rails and if she were to be bounced she would choose the direction.

She began to choreograph her balancing act while collecting pennies and the little girl became a beautiful young woman who could dance. On her casket here my sister and I placed a pair of dancing shoes symbolic of another Grandma Dorothy story. She danced so much she was always wearing out her shoes and as she left the house Clara would say “Dorothy, whose shoes do you have on. Those are Anna Mary’s not yours.” Before she could deny it, she was out the door and down the street.

It was 1932, Dorothy made a curious choice: A young man who liked to sing came calling and Clara told him that Dorothy was at an audition to become a dancer. It was said in vaudeville "never follow animal or kid acts"; Clarence “Happy” Ennis and his brothers and sisters were the kids you didn’t want to follow. They were talented and they made good acts look bad by comparison. Happy didn’t know of any vaudeville auditions. By 1932 vaudeville was dead. He was headed for Vine Street before Dorothy’s mother could say "the Gaiety Theater". The Gaiety! Burlesque! Vaudevillian people didn’t even stay in the same hotels as Burlesque people. His strong hands locked around the once purple dyed wrists; he pulled her from the theater…"No wife of mine is going to dance in burlesque!" Defiantly she countered, "I’m not your wife! We’re not even engaged!" but she meant something else. And Hap Ennis replied as emphatically, “We are now!”

Dorothy was beautiful and she had the grace of a dancer, no one knew how smart she was until in retrospect we all realized how long with limited memory she conned us into thinking she didn’t have a problem. She called everyone “Honey” because she couldn’t remember your name.

She was never a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize for literature but her handwriting was a work of art with either hand. She dropped out of the 10th grade so she didn’t understand the nuances of literature and she never learned another language, but she gets the golden ticket to the pearly gates because she understood the concept the Greeks were getting at when they specified the word “love.” Where English has only one word for love, the Greeks have three. Philos, meaning fraternal love. Eros, which signifies the physical and carnal. And Agape. This is the stuff Dorothy knew so well. It was high octane and 200 proof. Agape is unconditional love. Her response to all of our sins was always "You shouldn’t have done that…but I love you anyway." Dorothy was a forgiving machine. Someone said that as you learn to forgive you are forgiven. She was a lady who forgave so fast and so completely one can visualize the angels in heaven shouting “Hosannas,” saying "Quick! Get over to that cloud and see what Dorothy is doing now.

She never judged; she listened and counseled. She never criticized; she always encouraged.

There never was a child she did not love and there never was a child who did not love her…and she made you think she loved you most of all.

Eternity is divided in to seconds and a life is explained by little things. There are bits and pieces of Grandma Dorothy that linger: "Go to the dance with whoever asks you. When you get there you can look around" When I was a little girl, my grandma would gather the little girls around her jewelry box and we would gaze, gape-mouthed at the treasures she received from the countless men who pursued her “Keep the ring,” she admonished. “It’s what you get for the trouble.”

There came a time when she didn’t remember any of us but I believe she could see herself in everyone and she loved and trusted what she saw. She couldn’t remember her stories, but that was okay, we had learned them. And just in case we became confused and troubled and could not see her in the shell she occupied for the last part of her life, she left us a gift. The essence of her was there; her vocabulary was reduced to "wonderful,” “beautiful,” “lovely” and “sweet.” She knew Cole Porter and George Gershwin where she was and is now. All you had to do was begin a tune; her toe would tap; her shoulders would roll; and her body would sway saying “Dorothy is here.” But she wasn’t really with us. For a long time she had been dancing on the hardwood floor of the Island Queen as it steamed up the Ohio River to Coney Island. And she followed the advice of my Uncle Tim who at four or five years of age would say “If you ist goink on dat dance floor you ist goingk wit no one but my pop.”

The last time my father saw my Grandma Dorothy, he sang her favorite song. At Dorothy’s funeral, my father called his sister, Janet to the podium to help him read the words to a song and help recreate that tender moment with his mother.

He said, “I called Sis to the podium to help me with this because Happy Ennis took her to see the movie “Hello Frisco” in 1943 when she was seven or eight” Janet remembers the occasion and the song, I remember Happy singing it to Mother.”

He read: You’ll never know just how much I loved you…”

Janet read: “You’ll never know just how much I cared…”

It was too much. They are the children of a would-be dancer and a vaudevillian. They SANG the rest of the song.

God’s Time

by

Donald T. Ennis

We had traveled to Nauvoo to get answers but we gave more than we got and in giving got more than we gave. The sister missionary stood in front of the diorama of Nauvoo in the visitors center waiting for my family to assemble before it too. We had just finished watching a historical film on the city and now it was the missionary’s turn. She waited patiently. My family is often more difficult to gather than the tribes of Israel. They are not bad kids but they are incredibly curious and intellectually independent. Some families look like LDS families. You have to engage in a conversation with mine to come to that conclusion. Perhaps she saw in us multiple convert baptisms She waited patiently. Time is measured by information gathered by the curious. The seconds ticked on an aging missionary’s wristwatch are meaningless to children whose parents have instilled learning as a high virtue. Mechanical time is as meaningless to them as it is to the Lord. But the Lord’s time will be counted. It will be counted at His command. It was about time. It was time to listen It was time to learn It was time to fulfill promises according to God’s time.

The lady missionary began her presentation hoping that the two children with the group who were occupied with other displays would join in.

She started with Parley Street. She ended with Parley Street. She ended with Parley Street. She got no further. Parley Street brought the two wanderers back to the group. We knew Parley Street. We knew the rest of it too – all about Nauvoo, but what we wanted to know had to do with Parley Street.

“And at the end of Parley street On the river where the saints crossed there was a mill” she explained, “I don’t know what kind of a mill it was and it is all under water now since they built the Keokuk dam” My children’s eyes glycined with knowledge as my hand went up. “It was a saw mill” I said, “it was a saw mill and it belonged to my grandfather’s great grandfather. His name was John Clossen Annis” The missionary began to take notes. The roles of teacher and learner had changed. A second ticked on God’s clock

The promise had begun to be fulfilled. John Clossen Annis and his good wife Hannah had been promised a place in Zion and numerous posterity to hold their names in remembrance. The promise had lain unfulfilled in their patriarchal blessings buried under 150 years of church records. Two records among billions Unknown and visited by none.

John Clossen Annis was born in Thetford VT in 1785 fifteen miles from and 18 years before the prophet Joseph Smith. His father John, his grandfather Ezra and all of his uncles had participated in the American Revolution. John C’s mother Sabra Clossen was the daughter of American patriots. By the time Joseph Smith was born, the Annis family had moved to western New York perhaps to test and witness what they had fought for and won. They fought again in the War of 1812. John C’s father, John, was a boy when he marched off with the American rebels. He was an old man when he fought the British again. John C’s brother Harvey was a boy in 1812 but he would not survive the war. After the war John C grabbed hold of the western movement once again. By the time the boy Joseph became the Prophet Joseph and had move to western New York, John C was raising his family and was learning to build and operate saw mills in Mason Virginia (now WV).. Joseph had his visions and moved on to Kirtland Ohio. John C followed his own dreams and moved on to Cincinnati. He became a ship’s carpenter and lent his trade to building the steamboats that opened the west for the wandering feet of my pioneer ancestor.

The Annises gave every indication that they had intended to stay in Cincinnati and some of us did. My ancestor Hamlet, John C’s, son stayed and some of Hamlet’s progeny are still there. My part of the Annis family stayed for 120 years changed its name to Ennis and moved on west to California. John C stayed in Cincinnati for less than 5 years and caught the western movement again, but this time with an added purpose. Apparently Joseph Smith with his new church and doctrine and his Utopian doctrine of Zion on the western frontier of Missouri caught hold of John C. An entry in Alonzo Anneses journal says, “It is said of him that he became a Mormon preacher and removed to Nauvoo. “ Nauvoo wasn’t even a dream then, but John C had caught the Prophet’s dream. He sold his Cincinnati property in 1832 and with his wife and two youngest daughter’s Elizabeth and Hannah Marie began farming in western Missouri. To him it must have been more than farming. He was building Zion on the American continent. One can only speculate on the conversations in the homes of his grown children who did not embrace the Mormon Church or John C’s new dream. It is safe to say they probably thought him insane. Even his youngest son James despite his owning land in the Mormon Zion of western Missouri may not have gone west with his father.

John C however was definitely in western Missouri in 1834 when he joined Joseph’s ill-fated armed expedition from Ohio whose purpose was to relieve the suffering of the saints under the hands of the Missourians. Zion’s Camp as it was called though unsuccessful in its purpose had immense impact on the LDS church. It organized them and it taught them how to move quickly. It produced the leadership of the church for the next sixty years. John C’s status in the church until his death in 1849 was unquestionably elevated by his participation in Zion’s Camp. From the Farr west record July 7, 1838

"…. The following brethren who came up to the camp in 1834 received their blessing. Also ordained as Seventies." John C. Annis is listed with that group of men.

For a time between 1834 and 1838 he worked a homestead on the Big Blue River in Jackson County where he was a neighbor to the young Porter Rockwell. John C was an old man by then and was know as Father Annis by his neighbors. The title of “Father” is a story within this story that I learned from a church historian named Jim Kimbal. I met brother Kimbal right after I had uncovered John C’s Mormon affiliation. Somehow we were directed to the first floor of the church office building where the history department maintained a card catalog. Actually Jim Kimbal maintained the records, which had become known as the Nauvoo restoration Inc. Maintained is hardly the word to use in describing bro Kimbal’s relationship to those files. He guarded them and had they ever by misfortune been destroyed I have no doubt that he could have reconstructed them from memory. His physical stature was slight but he was a sentinel who scrutinized and challenged any and all who entered his domain. I liked him from the moment I saw him. He I am sure was less certain of me. I was in his territory with out a white shirt and tie. I gave him my name and explained how Ennis had been derived from Annis and that I was interested in the Annises who had lived in Nauvoo. He gave me a visual once over once again and without opening a file said “Annis and questioned John C” Amazed I said yes to which he responded, “We’ve wondered what happened to him. Amazed at his knowledge of my family I told him “John C died of cholera June 12, 1849 in Cincinnati Ohio. For that bit of information Jim he gave me land records and knowledge of the sawmill and several other pieces of information, which Susan Easton Black had missed in her marvelous work on early Latter Day Saints.

Jim Kimball told me that years after the Saints had left Nauvoo, some old timers in Utah were recounting their stay in Jackson county and they had recalled that “Father Annis” had lived on the Big Blue” He never gave me the documentation for the remark, but I believe it to be true. The Missouri petition that John C filed in compliance with the 123rd section of the D & C corroborates it. His petition indicates that he had also lived in Caldwell and Fayette counties

We visited Nauvoo on another occasion. This time we flew into Kansas City and rented a car, which we drove across Missouri following the route of the Mormon refugee’s fleeing from General Clark, and his Missouri border ruffians. It was an unpleasant silent trip for me. I kept rolling the car’s window down to feel the biting Missouri winter’s air that had stung Hannah’s face as she huddled daughter’s Elizabeth and Hannah Marie through the snow. It was not difficult to conjure the blood from their bare feet on the cold white muddy Missouri ground. The image of the atrocity evoked the vision of blood in John C’s eyes when he finally caught up with his abused family. I have come to know this man better than I know any of his offspring even better than my own father. I know he was angry. He was beaten but not defeated. During the next five years, despite the extermination order that barred Mormons from Missouri, John C traveled through the state buying property preparatory to the Saint’s returning to Zion

It is almost as if his righteous defiance had been recorded, preserved, passed on and awakened to spill out as tears on my face a century and fifty years too late. God’s clock ticked again.

I knew none of this growing up in Cincinnati, nor when my family moved to California in 1953. The LDS church was unknown to us. Our history was just as obscure. When the Jews returned to Jerusalem some of them were put from the Priesthood because they could not prove their right to it by genealogy. Sixty years in Babylon had removed them from the Priesthood. John C. Annis died in 1849 his son Hamlet had a son Zechariah known in Ennis family lore as Jack. Jake had a son whom he named Samuel and Samuel’s son Clarence was my father born in 1910. There are sixty-one years between the death of John C and the birth of my father Clarence. Three score years is enough time to obliterate even the most lofty achievements from a family. But God’s promises will be honored. I joined the church in 1957 and much of the Ennis family followed me. My sister tried to do the family genealogy, but the name change threw her off and then there was the late 19^th century courthouse fire that burned our name from history. Later I learned that the courthouse fire is perhaps the most often cited reason for not getting further than the fourth generation. “The court house fire” is superceded in genealogy discussions only by “That’s not what aunt Bessie said.”

I retired from the Navy in 1987. We were financially secure and riding a spiritual high. We would have stayed in Washington for the rest of our lives, but the time for the miracle was at hand and the Lord’s clock ticked again. Our comfortable life dissolved in the face of sickness and a poor economy.

The spiritual high continued after we lost everything and we found ourselves in Ogden Utah We were broke without jobs. Carol and I are both multitalented workers and finding jobs has never been a problem. It was a problem this time and in retrospect I can see the hand of the Lord working in this. We exhausted our possibilities and left with time on our hands we casually made the decision to do a little genealogy while we were waiting for something to happen. The jobs came eventually. The spirit of Elijah happened. We immersed ourselves in family history. After three months of opening the FHC doors in Salt Lake City every morning and closing them every night, we were forced to cut our research time to eight hours in the evening by the good jobs we found. It’s funny how when you do the Lord’s work, He works for you. At the end of six months we had gleaned most of what I have recorded. Most important, the Patriarchal Blessing promises given to John Clossen and Hannah Crawford Annis were known to our family and numerous posterity held them in remembrance as promised. living in our eldest daughter’s partially finished basement.

There was a problem. We had counted our lineage back to my ansecestor Hamlet (not the Dane from Shakespeare). Hamlet was a ship’s carpenter living and working in Fulton east of Cincinnati from the early 1830’s to at least 1872. The Ennis/Annis family had a history of living in Cincinnati’s east end. We had first found John C. Annis on the 1850 census mortality schedule and later learned that this John C. Annis was also a ship’s carpenter who lived near Hamlet and he was the right age and came from the same origin of birth to be Hamlet’s father. We had traced this John C Annis’ line back to Cormac Annis born c1638 in Enniskillen, Ireland. We were no longer refugees from the potato famine.

We were the sons and daughters of patriots whose presence in America dated from the 1660’s. I always felt overwhelmed by my wife’s Mormon pioneer heritage. Suddenly the Ennis family was the descendents of Mormon pioneers. MY family’s fierce defense of liberty now made sense. Our tradition has been when America goes to war we send every available man. Our character was passed on to us as certain as our DNA; it was a proud accomplishment that I had to defend to the rest of the family. I knew our research was correct, but we had no hard proof that John C and Hamlet were father and son. We spent another two years searching a documented connection only to give up when we decided to move back to Washington where I had secured a better job.

There is a delightful cartoon of Albert Einstein at a large chalkboard filled with scientific notation and mathematics. In the middle of the numbers and notations are the words “And then the miracle happens” followed by E=MC². The Lord’s clock ticked again

I was immersed in my new job teaching and as Department Head of Edmonds-Wood way High School technology department I was excited about designing the curriculum as well as the facilities for the new school building. Christmas vacation came in a rush bringing with it the worst snowstorm in Seattle’s history.

Incongruously to get out of the snow we decided to visit the kids in Utah. The decision was made with the agreement that we would not under any circumstance do any genealogy. We were enjoying a reprieve from Elijah’s hand that we had come to regard in ourselves as an obsession. We had done our duty and if the Lord wanted the work done it was up to him. We drove from Seattle to Ogden through a blizzard that seemed designed to keep us from getting there. It was so cold that I dared not turn off the Wagoner’s engine when we stopped for gas.

Frost on the inside of the windshield had to be periodically scraped off even though I had the car’s heater on defrost and operating at full capacity. When I finally shut the engine down in my daughter’s driveway, I could not start it again for three days when the weather finally turned milder and I placed an electric heater under the car and filled it’s carburetor with starter fluid. We enjoyed our Christmas vacation with the family and as promised stayed away from the FHC. The Friday before we were to return to our home I was out walking through the snow and cold late at night. I was commiserating with the Lord. “ Lord” I said,” you have burdened me with more than I can bear. I need your help.” Then the miracle happened. I was stopped in my tracks, neither by a tethering force nor by a voice. I can’t say I heard a voice nor did words enter my mind. One moment I was complaining to God. The next moment I knew that Dolly Green Annis had the answer. I stopped and said out loud “You have to be joking, I’m talking real problems here and you’re talking genealogy I won’t do it. “ I took another step and the answer was still the same. “ Listen Lord”, I pleaded. “If I go back to the house and tell my wife we have to go to the FHC tomorrow because it is the last possible time we can go and Dolly Green Annis has the answer I know what I will hear. Carol will say’ that’s ridiculous. Doll Green is not even a direct line relative. The church won’t even give you a copy of her patriarchal blessing. At best she is the second wife of John C and it may have been a marriage of convenience at that.'" Dolly Green Daniels had become Dolly Annis somewhere between Nauvoo and Salt Lake sometime between 1846 and 1863 Carol knew that I knew all of that but she would say it anyway. “ No way” I said and I took another step and I knew once again what I had to do.

Dolly Green Annis had the answer. Carol registered her objections exactly as predicted and left me at the Temple Index Bureau of the SLC FHC while she went off to do “less ridiculous” research.

I was alone in front of a film reader and I said” now what”? I was alone obviously deserted for some Divine cause. Okay I’ll do this myself. I took the Dolly Green file from my brief case and I soon came to my note concerning the adoption record. I never fully understood this record. Apparently early members of the church were adopted into the families of prominent members of the church instead on being sealed into family lines as we now are in the temple. I knew this record verbatim and it had yielded nothing useful. I continued on, but the same spirit I had encountered the night before blocked me and I returned to the index card. “ I looked at it a long time before I began to wonder. “This is a copy of and index card I have seen many times before. It was an index card of a record surely not carried across the plains in 1847. I asked the sister missionary at the desk if the church still had the original record. She checked her references, said yes, and she gave me the call number of the film on which it was recorded. I sped through the records as fast as I could and came to the name of Dolly Green Annis. There she was with most of her children right on the line where the index card said she would be. Several lines away was another familiar name: John C Annis and his wife Hannah and the names of the Annis children so familiar to me now. In the middle of the names I envisioned’ Then the miracle happens’ followed by E=MC^HAMLET. There he was, Hamlet, listed as John C Annis’ son.

I floated from my chair, enlisted the sister at the reference desk to stand guard over my treasure and went to find my wife. I needed a witness. God‘s promise to John C and Hannah were not only fulfilled now they could be sealed.

We now know that John C. Annis reported to the block house branch High Priest’s quorum in August of 1848 which indicates he was still active in the church and had once again shown his loyalty to the religion to which he had been faithful for the first tumultuous twenty years of its existence in this dispensation. I could almost hear the Prophet's uncle John Smith’s words as the Patriarch’s recorder, Rob Campbell wrote them down.

…”.. Thou hast a right to all of the blessings of the new and everlasting Covent. Because thou hast obeyed the Gospel and hast not fainted in times of trouble, neither hast thou murmured against the Lord, neither against his servant. but thou hast been willing to submit to council that has been given through the right source and hast not turned away after the vain and foolish notions of men, but with a steady and persevering mind thou hast kept in the right path and they name is written in the Lamb’s book of Life and in as much as you continue in the right course, it shall never be blotted out. Thou salt be a counselor in the house of Israel, clothed with all the power pf the priesthood. In due time all mysteries shall be revealed unto thee. Thy faith shall increase exceedingly. Thou shalt have power to do miracles in the name of Jesus. Thou shalt have the gift of healing, shall have wisdom to direct all matters right , Thou shalt have the power to save they father’s house for many generations back. Thy children shall become very numerous and be esteemed as the excellent of the earth. Thy name shall be had in everlasting remembrance in the house of Israel

We may never know why he returned to Cincinnati where he died of cholera on June 12, 1849. Dolly Green Daniels Annis did cross the plains. She is on the Pottowatamee Census of 1850 and 1860 and is recorded as proxy for the sealing of Hannah Crawford Annis to John C Annis in the endowment house in 1863. Dolly died in November 1877 and was buried in a grave which was unmarked until the Ennis family had a headstone placed for her. The church and my family’s place in it was lost to us for five generations. but, Lord’s promises will be kept. They will be kept according to His time not ours and those promises will be kept in a most miraculous way. .