When the English language was developed from its Saxon roots, the original meaning of “bastard” had to do with the offspring of unmarried parents. The word bastard is sometimes considered an epithet and should never be hung on the offspring but should be reserved for the unthinking parents who produced that offspring. But in any case, bastard is a lovely noun that has endured for hundreds of years. In this essay I hope to give you a taster’s choice of four different kinds of bastards, which some of you may well recognize.
The taster’s selection has to do with stingy, cheating, mean and smiling bastards. When you have finished this course of tasting, I hope that your vocabulary will now include the rich noun of bastard.
In view of the political climate as we approach another presidential election, I have elected to forgo politicians because the general perception is that all of them are “lying” bastards. In my humble estimation, lying bastards constitute a large percentage of politicians. In deference to the election that will take place in a few weeks, I have elected to ignore the political lying bastards until the election results are in. I haven’t forgotten about politicians as lying bastards, but we will reserve that for another time.
The first tasting has to do with “stingy bastards.” In 1950 and 1951, it was my lot to spend a considerable amount of time in New York away from my St. Louis home. The work had to do with attending meetings of the executive board of the Long Lines Employees Federation union and with bargaining a contract between that organization and AT&T. Our lodgings in New York were always provided by the Piccadilly Hotel on 45th Street, just east of Eighth Avenue. The Piccadilly was in the heart of the theater district and its lobby bustled with scalpers, actors, stagehands, and hangers-on. The stage play “Guys and Dolls” could well have been set in the lobby of the Piccadilly Hotel. It is my recollection that the great stage play “South Pacific” was taking place in the neighborhood, and although it was a great success, my union friends and I were able to buy tickets from scalpers in the lobby of the hotel. I saw “South Pacific” on two occasions in New York and once more when the traveling company came to St. Louis.
The stage play “South Pacific” takes place on an imaginary island in the Pacific called Bali Hai and is set in the Second World War. In the play, elements of the American Navy are stationed on Bali Hai. A featured actor was Ezio Pinza, who had been a bass singing at the Metropolitan Opera. As Pinza aged, there were fewer performances at the Metropolitan Opera so his career tended to wane. When “South Pacific” came along, it was a magic moment because the leading male role seemed to have been invented for a person such as Mr. Pinza. His opposite number was Mary Martin, a lovely American woman who was widely known from her work in previous stage plays. Casting Pinza with Martin was an inspired choice and the play caused critics to issue rave reviews.
Somewhere down the line was an actress named Juanita Hall, a leather-lunged long-time veteran of American stage plays. In “South Pacific,” Juanita Hall played a role called Bloody Mary, who seemed to run a sort of “escort service” among the native Polynesian women there. Juanita was a very forceful character who had my love and devotion from her first syllable. There were occasions when American Naval personnel were entertained by her girls, and Bloody Mary thought her girls ought to be more amply rewarded. When an American sailor shortchanged one of her Polynesian girls, Bloody Mary would cry out loud that such a sailor was “a stingy bastard.” Those words caused the audience, generally, to cheer wildly.
At the time when “South Pacific” was first shown, profanity in the theater was subdued. But “South Pacific” captured the American idiom perfectly. Sailors who toy with call girls are not given to the speech of Sunday School children. Neither are soldiers. It was suggested that Bloody Mary had learned the term “stingy bastards” from the men who called on her girls. The line that Bloody Mary spoke about “stingy bastards” was delivered in such fashion that even the Archbishop of Canterbury would have laughed and approved. I suspect that the Archbishop may think that some of his parishioners are stingy bastards when it comes to their contributions to his collection plates. But the Archbishop says that he has no comment.
The music was by Richard Rodgers with the lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. If there ever was a perfect blending of music and words, it is in the music and lyrics of “South Pacific.” That stage play has now been revived, more than 59 years after its opening, and is playing to a sold-out house in New York. I have been unable to see the revival of “South Pacific” and have only a compact disc of the new cast, but for all these years I have remembered Juanita Hall in her depiction of Bloody Mary. She ran a verbal knife through those who cheated her girls by calling them stingy bastards.
Now we turn to a second tasting, this one having to do with being cheated. The rule at AT&T in St. Louis and throughout the Bell System was that upon the first anniversary of being hired, the new employee would become a “permanent employee,” and would be entitled to a leave of absence if required. Don Meier and I had completed the requisite service but because the company found that we were going to enlist in the Army and, in Don’s case, the Marines, the company said that the rule had been rescinded and that no leave of absence would be granted. This was in the summer of 1942 and Don and I said “to hell with AT&T”; we were going to go. For more than two years, there were no communications of any kind from AT&T as Don fought his war in the Pacific and I attended to duties in North Africa and in Italy. Late in the summer of 1944, Congress passed a law that said that fellows in our situation must be granted leaves of absence and given full employment rights upon our return. With this, floodgates were opened and material of all kinds from AT&T began to appear. Don served with great distinction in the Marine Corps on Iwo Jima. He was killed in the battle there and never was able to take advantage of the right to return to AT&T. In my case, I did return to AT&T in St. Louis in November, 1945 and was given a desk in an office that was run by W.G. Nebe, who was my boss’s boss.
Bill Nebe sat in the back of the room with his desk placed before a large window. Nebe faced the window, and in this position, his back was toward all of the rest of the employees in that office. He had a reputation for orneriness and few people ever approached Mr. Nebe. In return, Mr. Nebe rarely spoke to any of the employees under him.
When I returned to work in November, 1945, there were no welcoming ceremonies of any kind. My old job had disintegrated and I had a desk but no duties to speak of. My immediate supervisor, John Baxter, rarely spoke to me and Mr. Nebe spoke not at all. And so it was that I was startled one day, after having returned for about four months, to raise my eyes and find that Bill Nebe was standing by my side and seemed to want to speak to me. He said something about a “recalculation” of my meager salary which had taken place during my long absence. AT&T had thousands of accountants and actuaries, but four months after my return there had been a “recalculation” of my salary, which was to be increased by the magnificent sum of about $4 per week. Significantly, the “recalculation” included no retroactivity. The returning veterans had the formula for computing these salaries and their conclusions differed greatly from those of the actuaries and accountants at AT&T. In point of fact, it became quite clear that AT&T was cheating the returning veterans.
On the other hand, however, there is one compensation in that for the first time Bill Nebe was required to deliver that message to such lowly serfs as myself. When I saw those figures, I concluded that “you, Mr. Nebe, are a cheating bastard.” I did not say those words to the Honorable Nebe, but rather I then joined the union where I could do something about such larceny.
Well, the tasters have now given you some idea of what stingy and cheating are like, so let us turn to meanness. For many years, the affairs of the 20,000 employees in the Long Lines Division of AT&T were directed by a man named Henry Killingsworth. Killingsworth was a small person in stature who had such proclivities as ordering the begging nun in the headquarters lobby to refrain from her work. In a Christmas letter, he wrote that from now on, “we are going to have to take the slack out of those trace chains.” This was a reference to planting cotton, where the mules that pulled the plow were thought to be working hard when there was no slack in the trace chains. So in essence, Mr. Killingsworth wrote in a Christmas letter that from now on, he expected the Long Lines employees to work as hard as his mules used to work.
Killingsworth has been dead now, I assume, for several years but even at this late date, some 24 years after I retired, I would say that Killingsworth was a mean, vindictive little bastard who did not have a place among honorable men.
So now our tasting has taken us from stingy to cheating to mean. At this point we turn to insurers. Insurers have never been known for their generosity to their customers. Quite the opposite, insurers find unknown clauses in their contracts, often to deny payment to their patrons. The sinking of the Mary Ellen Carter was one such case.
There is an Irish folk song called “The Mary Ellen Carter.” The Mary Ellen Carter was a fishing trawler that had the bad luck to strike a rock outside of its harbor and to sink. Because it was not sunk on the high seas, it appears that the insurers refused to pay a cent on the grounds that striking a rock near the home harbor was not covered. There was an effort to raise the Mary Ellen Carter, which is the subject of that song. One of the lines in that folk song is memorable. The line goes like this:
“For those to whom adversity has dealt the fatal blow,
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go.”
Presumably the smiling bastards are the insurance agents who refused to pay for the loss of the Mary Ellen Carter. Perhaps smiling bastards is a welcome relief from stingy, cheating, and mean bastards.
Well, boys and girls, there you have a small tasting of four kinds of bastards, ranging from stingy to smiling. It excludes those who take the last seat on the subway that you had your eye on as well as those who duck into a parking place just before you get there. They are a special kind of bastard.
Your old essayist would be greatly disappointed if in the future you regarded the word bastard as an epithet. It is a descriptive noun that only requires an adjective to go with it. If we are to keep the English language alive and vital, bastards should be a part of that effort. My final piece of advice is that if you have a chance to see the revival of “South Pacific,” please do me a favor and go see it. Juanita Hall, the lady who played Bloody Mary, is probably retired by this time but if you treat one of her girls with stinginess, you can be prepared to be called a “stingy bastard.” That, my friends, gives vitality to the English language.
E. E. CARR
September 17, 2008
Essay 337
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Kevin’s commentary: Pop also likes to refer to the briefly-mentioned politicians as pissants.
Per usual, Killingsworth continues to sound like an asshole of the highest caliber.
In point of fact, I saw my very first musical last weekend. It was called “Book of Mormon.” I would imagine people today initially reacted to Book of Mormon in the same way that “South Pacific” shocked people with its language (but then pulled it off smoothly). Calling someone a stingy bastard is on stage is pretty intense, but for instance the lyrics “When God fucks you in the butt // Fuck God back right in his cunt” are just about as extreme as could possibly be permissible in the theater.