The Interesting Month of April

Ogden Nash

April has been the subject of many great writers from Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Robert Browning, T.S. Eliot to Edna St. Vicent Millay, to name a few.  But, for me, the zany Ogden Nash, summed April up best with his poem, Always Marry an April Girl (which I did!):

“Praise the spell and bless the charms,

I found in my April arms.

April golden, April cloudy,

Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;

April soft in flowered languor,

April cold with sudden anger,

                                                            Ever changing, ever true —

                                                        I love April, I love you.”

Nash is famous for his short poems and observations; the one that speaks to me the loudest is:

“You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.”

He also came up with:

“Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”

And, he also offers up some really good poetic marital advice:

“To keep your marriage brimming with love in the loving cup,

Whenever you’re wrong admit it, whenever you’re right shut up.”

and

“There is only one way to have a happy marriage, and as soon as I learn what it is, I’ll get married again.”

Here’s one he wrote many years ago, but is apt today:

“I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people”

Lots of other things happened in April, but before we leave Mr. Nash, an interesting factoid is that the city of Nashville, is named after his forebearers.

Many famous and infamous people were born in April, from William Shakespeare to Adoff Hitler; and of course, the most famous to me, my wife, Linda!

RMS Titanic

But what I really wanted to write about this week, was a great historic event that occurred exactly 112 years ago, on April 15, 1912, the sinking of the Titanic.  It took over 70 years to find her as she lies 12,600 feet under water.  Of the 2,224 passengers on board, 1,496 died, in part because the ship was supposed to have 64 lifeboats on board, but only had 20, and those ended up being filled to only 60% capacity!

Aside from the 13 couples who were celebrating their honeymoon on board, there were several famous people who died, John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest man on board and Benjamin Guggenheim, along with several other titans of industry in the day.  The luckiest people were those who purchased a ticket for the Titanic’s maiden voyage, but ended up having a conflict that kept them from getting on board – Milton Hershey, who gave us the Hershey Bar, J.P. Morgan and George Vanderbilt to name just a few of the eight very wealthy men who luckily didn’t make it on board.

Not the iceberg’s fault?  Recent evidence has shown that a fire of 1800 degrees had burned in the ship’s hull for three weeks prior to the ship’s departure, thus weakening the hull and ultimately was responsible for the hull splitting when it hit the iceberg.

The longest living survivor of the disaster was Millvina Dean, who was the youngest survivor on the Titanic at two months old. She died at the age of 97 in 2009.

Hoping your April is more Nutty Nash than Tragic Titanic!

 

The Queen Mary – Luxury Liner, Troop Carrier . . . and Haunted

by Bob Sparrow

G&L2     In an effort to get our readers and myself into the ‘spirit’ of Halloween this week, I visited, what has been billed as, ‘one of the most haunted places in the world’ – the Queen Mary. Not the actual queen, although by the looks of her picture in the grand foyer, she could have haunted a house, but I’m speaking of the ship the RMS Queen Mary, now docked in the port of Long Beach. Two ‘Haunted Tours’ were offered, I took both of them, but first a little history of this grand ship (Don’t worry, I’ll make this the Reader’s Digest version).

      Commissioned in 1936 as a luxury liner, she was soon put to work as a troop carrier when World War II broke out. In fact, she still holds the record for the most people (troops) transported across the Atlantic in a single voyage – 16,683! She was painted gray to help avoid detection and was ironically called the ‘Gray Ghost’, long before any ghost stories about her emerged. Hitler actually had a bounty on her, offering over $2 million to any U-boat captain that could sink her. There were two reasons the mustachioed maniac never had to pay up, 1) the Queen Mary was actually quite fast and could outrun a German submarine, and 2) the code breaker, Enigma, helped identify the location of German U-boats.

qm troop carrier

Troop carrier

      After the war she went back to being a luxury liner and for a mere $1,400 you could cross the Atlantic on her. Doesn’t sound like much now, but the average income in the U.S. in the late 40s was right around $2,000 . . . a year! Which is why the ship’s manifest included such names as, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, Greta Garbo, Bing Crosby, Clark Gable and Elizabeth Taylor.

      OK, let’s get to the spooky part. The first tour I took was called ‘Ghosts & Legends’ and was much like Disney’s ‘Haunted Mansion’; it was a walking tour that took a group of about 12 of us into the bowels of the ship, down narrow stairs and dark passageways with special effects along the way. We stopped at one of the two indoor pools where we could hear people splashing and playing – real water drops hit our face, despite the fact that the pool has been empty for decades. We continued further down in an elevator, but when we exited, the doors jammed behind us and we had no way to get back up. Just then, leaks began to appear in the ships ironclad walls and water came pouring in – we seemed doomed, but we escaped just in time as our guide lead us to a secret passageway to safety. This tour is definitely not for those afraid of the dark or the claustrophobic.

b340

Room B340

      The second tour I took was called ‘Haunted Encounters’, where a guide took us throughout the ship and related real ghost stories evoking such characters as the last captain of the ship, a ‘lady in white’, a young girl who still swims in the pool, a crew member who was crushed to death in the engine room by the closing of ‘Door 13’, as well as other various ‘shadow people’ and balls of light. One of the most intriguing stories was about Room B340, where a man was purportedly murdered, faucets turn on by themselves and bed sheets fly across the room. The room has provided so many paranormal experiences that it is no longer rented out, in fact, as the picture I took when in the room shows, it is completely bare of furniture.

      The tour ended with our guide telling us of several ‘ghost stories’ that he     experienced personally including seeing wet footprints by the pool that’s been dry for decades. I couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or he had to make up those stories so he could keep his job. Either way, the stories were very entertaining. The tour ended and we were left to wander the ship on our own to see if we could have any encounters of third kind.

foyer

Grand Foyer

      As I walked through the Grand Foyer and poked my head into the Grand Ballroom to get a peek, I was struck by how truly grand this ship is, even today. The art deco décor was so 40s that it seemed ‘in’ today. It truly must have been magnificent in its day.  My visit to the Queen Mary was complete, including a honest-to-goodness paranormal experience . . . or was it just a coincidental iPhone malfunction?

     Oh, the paranormal experience? I swear this is true; back when I was visiting room B340 I waited until everyone had cleared out of the room so I could take a picture of it with my phone. I took the shot you see here and then my phone vibrated and showed the ‘Ringer Silent’ and the symbol of the bell with a line through it (putting my phone on vibrate), then it vibrated again and the symbol ‘Ringer’ and the bell with no line through it; that happened three times in a row! Yes, vibrating frantically each time as it went on and off, and I never touched the vibrate on/off switch – honest!

 Have a Happy Halloween – may the ‘spirits’ be with you!