Nancy and I recently watched a great 2009 documentary about Hugh Hefner. I learned a lot about the man that I didn't know. Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel. I hope you’ve seen it.
If you know only one dimension of the man, spend a couple of hours with this film. He makes me realize I've wasted a lot of my life not doing Bigger Things. Not standing up for what I believe in, not speaking up, and not being as brave as I should be. If you think him sexist, advantageous, or just a smiling playboy fool, you couldn't be more wrong. Sure, there are Naked Ladies in the pages of Playboy; but you’ll also find stellar writing from House Un-American Committee blacklisted authors and others, music, and plenty of social commentary.
While watching, I was reminded of Junior High School. Not the titillating peeks at my dad's copy of the magazine; but of the writer Jean Shephard. And my favorite teacher, Connie Dahlman.
In 1965, Playboy published a story by Jean Shepherd. "Red Ryder Nails the Hammond Kid." In 1983 it and a few of Jean’s other “memories” became part of a holiday movie that you may have seen a few times. It’s just one of 25 stories from Shephard that first appeared in Playboy. He bundled many of them into "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories," and other great books of my youth.
Back to Mrs Dahlman. She directed the plays, had us read and write poetry, and made us think about what the lyrics of our favorite songs actually meant. She chaperoned field trips to places like the Guthrie Theater – and a side trip to see the Betty Crocker Kitchens at General Mills. Which brings to mind another childhood memory, the Red Plastic Souvenir Betty Crocker Spoon that was the threatened implement of torture – to my knowledge never used by my mother, merely threatened, when one of the six of us misbehaved. Actually, just the squeaky spoon drawer sliding open usually brought an end to that day’s transgression. But I digress.
Mrs Dahlman also, one day, brought in a few pages of the May 1973 issue of Playboy that contained Jean Shephard's short story "Lost at C," concerning the agonizing incomprehension of algebra. She read us the story. And I soon looked for more Jean Shephard. Which led me to Shel Silverstein, Lawrence Block, and others.
Picture those pages, electricians tape covering the girly parts on the back of several of them; being pulled out of a teacher's book bag in a junior high today. To paraphrase Shepherd,”the mind boggles!”
Mrs. Dahlman was also a part-time voice-over talent. A cool thing to do that was never far from my mind through junior high, and into high school when Doug Samuelson and I decided during our senior year to go to the University of Wisconsin- Superior, just so we could do a comedy show on the college radio station. Doug changed his mind, left town and became a lawyer. I stayed (and enrolled at UWS) and became a disc jockey and voice-over guy with a degree in business.
This is an awful long way to go to get to the point. I’ve thought of Connie Dahlman a thousand times since 1973. And a thousand times thought of thanking her. And I never did.
Thank you, Mrs. Dahlman, wherever you are. For allowing and teaching creativity. For teaching the meaning of words. And for knowing a good story when you read one. She bought the magazine for the stories. At least I like to think so. And I’m a better man for it. Not of Hef’s caliber – but better, none the less.
I still want to find her. She really couldn’t have been much older than us – maybe a few years into her teaching career. I hope she’s still impressing young minds. I hope she still has the passion she showed us. And I hope to run into her some day. To hug her, tell her how much and how often I’ve thought of her, and to tell her how much she still means to me.
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