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Information about what religious beliefs Harry Chapin may have had are a bit nebulous. Of course, Harry's life and work may well have been as good a representation as you will ever see of what Matthew 25:40 ("whatever you did to the least of these my brethren, you did unto me") is supposed to look like, but beyond that, it gets a bit murky. He was raised in the church - in fact, he and his brothers performed in the choir at Grace Episcopal Church in Brooklyn Heights, NY, which is where he met Big John Wallace.
A paraphrase of something his brother said at his funeral: "Harry said that God looks at us, with all our faults, with all our failings... and hugs us."
Other sources suggest that by the time of his death, he was more or less an atheist.
But whatever the case may be in that regard... so many of the resources out there about the life and work of Harry Chapin overlook "Cotton Patch Gospel." Harry wrote all the songs for this musical, which is based on a reimagining of the life and ministry of Jesus, as delineated in Matthew's Gospel, if Jesus lived in Georgia in the early 20th century.
"Are We Ready?" is a song from the musical, sung during a scene that serves as a mirror of the final journey into Jerusalem, with the Twelve reflecting on everything their lives have been about for the previous three years, realizing that it has led to this moment, and each of them asking themselves if they are ready to seize that moment.
Although this is largely a transitional chapter, it begins with Annie asking herself that very question, and seeking an answer from her own personal spiritual vantage point. If you are reading this on Friday evening, the chapter itself will be available tomorrow morning. Enjoy.
Harry Chapin once said he had three heroes: Pete Seeger, Ralph Nader, and the late Congressman Allard Lowenstein.
One of the three is name-checked in this chapter: Ava's husband Raphael (the closest 1868-era equivalent I could find to "Ralph".)
Two other people are also referenced. Harry Chapin was a bit unique among folk-rock singers of the 1970s in that his band included a cello, and he had a string of them over the course of his career. The name “Ava Cavill” is a reworking of the name “Yvonne Cable,” the last of several cellists who toured with Harry. If it is possible for a third-grader to have a legitimate crush, I had a crush on her. To her successor in Steve’s band, Arlen Hlusko: you are both beautiful and uber-talented, but I would sell my firstborn child for the opportunity to enjoy Yvonne’s musicianship again... and to see her sing “Circle” live, since Harry had the poor grace to end her singing career by leaving us only a few weeks before my mom and I would have “gotten together again” with him and the band.
Also, Tim Scott (namesake of the porter who carried Ava’s bags on the day she and Annie met) was his first cellist.
Finally, there are the two side characters: Dr. Daniel Tyson and William Wheedon.
School shootings didn't just appear from whole cloth in the 1990s, although they used to be far less common. One of them happened on August 1, 1966, at the University of Texas. Harry wrote about it for his 1972 song, "Sniper." Bill Wheedon and Danny Tyson are two of the (fictionally-named) victims in the song.
Trigger warning before you click on this link: the song *still* scares the hell out of me when I listen to it.
Addendum: in looking for an image of Yvonne Cable that I could link to, I found this tribute to her following her passing in 2023.
I decided to make Chapter 4 a Thanksgiving bonus and post the next chapter today, on my normal schedule.
First, here are the non-musical callouts in this chapter:
If you've been paying attention, you know that the names of Annie's brothers - Stephen, Thomas, John, and Wallace - come from Harry's brothers, Steve and Tom, and his "brother by another mother," Big John Wallace.
Jonathan is Harry's middle son, mentioned - along with three of his siblings (not sure why Josh was excluded) - in "Someone Keeps Calling My Name" on the "Portrait Gallery" album.
Lily is Harry's niece, who performs with her sister Abigail as part of The Chapin Sisters.
Miss Michaela Fields (née Howard) is named after Harry's drummer - who still performs with the Harry Chapin Band - Howard Fields.
A "normal school" was what we would now call a teacher's college, and the one in Ewing, New Jersey, was among the first to be established in America.
Now, then...
I am old enough to have brought home report cards that were entirely hand-written by the teacher(s), and each of them included a section for the teacher to write free-form comments about the student and their performance during the grading period.
Harry Chapin's secretary had a son who came home with such a report card. It criticized the kid for being a nonconformist. Not for poor academic performance... not for poor conduct... but for being free-spirited.
To understand the first three chapters of Book 2, "Flowers Are Red" is the song that resulted from Harry hearing about it... and it could have been written last week, let alone 1978. Miss Judith Harlan is written to basically be the teacher in the song.
Harry's brother Tom, who primarily writes and performs songs for children, wrote his own version of this song, "Not On the Test."
Incidentally, Tom still tours... as does Steve.
Also from this chapter's soundtrack:
"March 21st, the first day of Spring" is the day Harry's daughter, Jen, was born. She performs a wonderful jazz/blues cover of her father's song, "I Wonder What Would Happen to This World" which is also Harry's epitaph.
(Fun fact for Babylon 5 fans: the title of the episode "Midnight On the Firing Line" also comes from "I Wonder What Would Happen to This World.")
Watertown, New York - of which Harry once said "I spent a week there one afternoon" - inspired his song "A Better Place to Be" which Harry considered his personal favorite of his own songs. You'll catch the secondary references once you listen to it. "A Better Place to Be" will get a few callouts over the course of Book 2.
"She seemed determined to prove that she could stand just as tall..."
I started toying with this story a little more than two years ago. Chapter 4 is where I really started to hit my stride telling the story (and, by extension, finding places to insert Chapin references).
The date-related Easter eggs:
November 16: "the Cat's In the Cradle kid," Harry's son Josh, was born on November 15, 1972. However, in 1870, November 15 fell on a Sunday, and I needed that plot development to happen on a business day, so it is pushed forward one day.
January 8: the final (or at least one of the final) non-bootleg recordings of a Harry Chapin concert coincided with a celebration of his 2,000th concert that took place over three days at The Bottom Line in New York City. The first of the three shows was on January 8, 1981.
July 16: the date of Martin Tanner's confessional letter is the date of Harry's death in 1981.
Elements of both funeral scenes are drawn from "Corey's Coming." There are two versions of the song: the original version from the "On the Road To Kingdom Come" album, and the longer version on the "Legends of the Lost and Found" album, which many fans (me among them) deem the canonical version.
Either one tells why "when he finally looked up, Harry saw that he was not alone" and provides the source of the parson's eulogy for Martin: "We need not grieve for this man, for we know that God cares." Incidentally, Ella walking into the parlor "with a shawl around her head" when Harry comes calling to escort her to the town festival in Chapter 2 also comes from "Corey's Coming."
Harry feeling "as if he had traveled nearly a thousand miles only to find himself standing exactly where he had begun" is a callout to one of my favorite lyrics that Harry Chapin ever wrote: You can travel on 10,000 miles and still stay where you are from the song "W.O.L.D." which also appears on the "Short Stories" album.
What I really want to pause for, though, is the name of Martin's attorney.
The song 30,000 Pounds of Bananas was a favorite of Harry’s fans... and was the bane of his band’s existence when performed in concert; Steve once said "I try to stay as uninvolved as possible with this song at all times."
In 1965, Harry was riding a bus between New York City and Ithaca, NY. As it passed through Scranton, Pennsylvania, a passenger regaled Harry with the tale of a recent truck accident. The truck, en route to a grocery store, had jackknifed, spilling fifteen tons of produce all over Moosic Street. Later on, Harry was watching the evening news and heard the dispassionate recitation of the day’s casualty figures from Vietnam. He thought of that conversation on the bus, and remembered the man laughing uproariously over all that spilled cargo, the cars that were wrecked, the property that was damaged... but mostly the bananas.
Yet the laughter and the jokes overlooked one simple fact: a man had died. A human being, flesh and blood, had a wife and family waiting at home... and they never saw him walk through the door again. Not terribly unlike those daily casualty reports. It was often hard for people watching those news reports to remember that those staggering numbers represented real people. A mother who had a folded flag rather than a son. A young woman who had dreamt of her high-school sweetheart coming home and beginning a life with her, left only with a class ring. A boy whose big brother would never throw him another football. Much like 2020, when we listened to the daily COVID numbers, but perhaps never really thought about the woman watching her husband struggle to breathe, or the son who had to tell the doctors to turn off the machines keeping his mother alive.
On March 18, 1965, a man went to work with no thought of becoming a hero. Yet he did. Although he died in that accident, he was the only fatality. When his truck’s brakes failed and he rolled into Scranton out of control, he stood on the truck’s running board and screamed at everyone in his path, warning them out of the way. And when he saw the approaching gas station, he steered the truck away from it, which cost the driver his life but likely prevented a mass casualty incident.
The truck driver's name was Eugene Sesky. I realize his family is not happy about the immortality that “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” brought him, and theirs is a fair criticism. Perhaps he does deserve to be memorialized as more than an opportunity for people to sit on the edge of their seats, tapping their feet and waiting for their cue to scream, “Harry, it sucks!” I can only offer a different tribute, making him the namesake of an advocate, a protector, and a man of compassion - qualities the real man demonstrated with his final act.
Rest well, Mr. Sesky.
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