Chapter Ninteen   1940   Here’s to You

 The most iconic jersey in baseball history is emblazoned with number 42: Jackie Robinson wore it when he dared dream the impossible dream. But the number not only symbolizes a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement-it represents an enduring love story.

       Rachel Annetta Isum was born in Los Angeles on July 19, 1922.  The city was infected with racism: a nearby theater required blacks to sit in the balcony and an adjoining hamburger stand refused non-whites service.  Despite the bigotry surrounding her family, her parents provided stability: violin lessons, visits to the Huntington Museum and attendance at the local Bethel African Methodist Church. An indelible childhood story from her father related how he had grown up in Chicago where his parents had lived in a rental for forty years after which time they were evicted. His message “a key to one’s own home provides the only key to security.” They intended for her to get that key through  education.

Following graduation from nearby Manual Arts High School, Rachel won a scholarship from a civic group and entered UCLA.  At university she not only became the first of her family to attain a degree; she also became the tireless teammate of a man whose shadow was to stretch far beyond Ebbets Field.

     UCLA’s few African-American students congregated in the corridors of Kerckhoff Hall, where Rachel first laid eyes on Jack Robinson, a four-sport letterman. He favored crisp white shirts to showcase the color which he refused to view as a badge of shame. Rachel was interested-as were many girls- but felt she would never be the homecoming queen to the BMOC. Nevertheless, in a nod to ‘hope springs eternal’ she would arrive early in her beat-up Ford V-8 to accidentally bump into him. They were introduced by a mutual friend and Jackie was taken with Rachel’s beauty and dignity.  For their first date Jack, (as she called him,) invited her to a Bruin football dinner at the Biltmore. She was eighteen years old and nervous-she had never been on a date or a guest at a hotel. Sheathed in her first black dress, purchased from the May Company basement, she danced the foxtrot throughout the night with her BMOC.

          To their mutual dismay, in 1942 Jack moved to Honolulu to play semi-pro football. Realizing Rachel was “the one” he wrote daily love letters and sent a weekly box of candy. Rachel declared her love but said she would not marry until she became a nurse and he obtained a position as a high school coach. Jackie left Hawaii two days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and true to his middle-name (Roosevelt), he enlisted in the armed forces. The couple had a major spat when Rachel wr

   The 2009 film, The Rum Diary, based on Hunter S. Thompson’s novel of the same name, provided the venue where Johnny Depp met Amber Heard. Their relationship ended in an acrimonious divorce and an infamous defamation trial. Yet the original rum diary began with Bacardi Rum, the brew created by Facundo Bacardi.

“Here I am with all this talent bottled up inside of me and you’re always sitting on the cork.” Lucy Ricardo

   In mid-century America, the sit-com mother served as the happy homemaker; in contrast, Lucy of I Love Lucy was, in modern parlance, a hot mess. Rather than the helpmeet of her husband, she was usually neck-deep in self-made mayhem. What redeemed Lucy, and made her as distinctive as her flaming hair, was she dared to dream of becoming a star, to break free from the confines of her New York apartment. 

Crown Jewels
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man

in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” – Jane Austen

Jane Austen’s House

 Winchester Rd, Chawton, United Kingdom

             Jane Austen’s nephew observed of his aunt, “Of events her life was singularly barren, few changes and no great crisis ever broke the smooth current of its course.”  Although Jane may have had a seemingly placid existence, she never left England; she nevertheless had her share of sunshine, of storm. 

     The Italian opera Pagliacci revolves around Canio, the clown; what gives the lie to his smile is his tears over his wife’s adultery. Insane with jealousy, he murders both his faithless partner and her lover. Life imitated art in an Italian soap opera in a crime of fashion.

“I would rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.” Louisa May Alcott

Orchard House, 399 Lexington Road, Concord Massachusetts.  
        Some of America’s greatest authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, slumber in Sleepy Hollow, a Concord Cemetery. Another notable grave belongs to the mother of young adult fiction, Louisa May Alcott.  If, in Spoon River Anthology fashion, Louisa spoke from the afterlife, her story would involve her family, immortalized in her novel, Little Women..  

“My life is full of mistakes. They’re like pebbles that make a good road.” Beatrice Wood

8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. 

Ojai, California 93023

   In medieval Florence, Beatrice Portinari served as Dante Alighieri’s guide in his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. In 20^th century California, Beatrice Wood inspired a pivotal character in James Cameron’s blockbuster, Titanic. 

The staccato bark, “Going, going, gone!” followed by the banging of a hammer, signifies the sale of a coveted object to the highest bidder. Christie’s has conducted awe-inspiring auctions, many which would have astounded its founder, James Christie.

          The press barons of yore were alpha males whose giant shadows shaped the way the world received its news: Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Harold Ross. In the 21^st century this glass ceiling was shattered by an infusion of estrogen when a Greek Colossus bestrode the shores of media.

     Before the four female Musketeers of Sex and the City went on the hunt for men, money, and Manolos in Manhattan, there was the real-life party girl, Candace Bushnell, the inspiration for Carrie Bradshaw.

“C’est mon Plaisir” “It is my pleasure.” Isabella Stewart Gardiner

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

25 Evans Way, Boston, Massachusetts

   Gods behaving badly is exemplified in Titian’s 16^th century painting, “The Rape of Europa.” The canvass reveals Zeus, in the form of a bull, ravishing the maiden. The masterpiece served as the crown jewel in Isabella Gardner’s art gallery, the scene of a violation that involved the art world’s greatest whodunit.