Memorial Day

Ever since 1982, Memorial Day has been an extra special holiday for me. That is when I first met my wife, Patricia. My friends' Pam and Fuzz Christoff and Pat's friend and Fuzz's niece, Beth Fabo, arranged for us to meet on a blind date. Pat's famous line now is, "My blind date was really blind." From what she told me later about our first meeting, I believe for her, it was love at first fright. She went home thinking to herself, "David is pretty good looking but... those ugly green tennis shoes, his pants and shirt didn't match, the hair in his ears, and that pointy baseball cap made him look like a pin head. That guy needs help. I better marry him." I don't know what would have become of our relationship if I hadn't worked so hard to make a good impression.

For the picnic that Beth Fabo's parents held that day just so Pat and I could meet, Pat baked a Virginia applesauce cake. Dessert time came and she brought the cake to me. I thought to myself, "This is my kind of woman. She is giving me the whole cake." She quickly dashed that thought by pulling back the pan and telling me that I could only have one piece.

On one of our early dates, I told her that we would go meet some of my relatives. We drove north into Clearfield County and each new road took us to less populated areas. She kept asking whether I knew where we were going. Finally, I told her to pull off the road into the East Ridge Cemetery in Burnside Township. She got really concerned and asked, "Do your relatives live here?" I quickly reassured her, "Only some of the dead ones."

My maternal grandparents back to and including my great, great grandparents are buried there, as well as many of their offspring. The rural community around there has a strong sense of family and the people take great pride in caring for the graves of their ancestors. I lived only two years in that community but I do share their sense of family and pride. I didn't understand it at the time, but in retrospect I was inviting Pat to join my extended family and me.

Actual epitaphs...

Good thoughts

A clean conscience makes a soft pillow.
A family altar can alter a family.
A lot of kneeling will keep you in good standing.
Are you wrinkled with burden? Come on into Church for a faith lift!

A tourism-and-teeners modest proposal

Kidding around in yesterday's entry about an assignment to watch American Graffiti and relate it to youth in Nanty Glo, combined with thoughts about youthful hanging out and boredom, got me to thinking, a dangerous situation....

And this line of thinking combines two of my longtime passions: the Valley's youth, and the promotion of Cambria County tourism.

I've been around the world and to Europe on five tours (which is nothing compared with many business executives working with international conglomerates, like one I know; but I digress). I combined some traveling experiences with some remarks a member of the Postcard list made a few days ago (whether she was speaking on authority or just guessing, I don't know) about today's teenagers having nothing to do in Nanty Glo compared with our (1950s-'60s) generation that had as many as three record hops to go to a week, movies every night at the Capitol, canteens in Twin Rocks and Vintondale, and more.

Without knowing whether a real problem exists, I'm ready to suggest a solution anyway. My solution: a combination youth hostel and canteen for Nanty Glo. You could think of it as a poor kids' alternative to a YMCA, which may be ironical in light of the history of the Y, which started out as a solution for poor kids but has grown into a tax-exempt swim and fitness club for middle class families...but I digress again. But my proposal isn't nearly as ambitious as a local YMCA branch.

Youth hostels are tourist dormitories that provide beds (bunks, often) for travelers at rates about half the lowest now found in Cambria County motels (even in San Francisco, which has one of the most expensive living standards in the world, hostel beds can be found for $14 to $16 per night). I've stayed in hostels from Moscow to Dublin to, well, San Francisco, and they work and fill a need. I think Cambria County's aspiring tourism business needs several hostels, one of which should be a short walk from the main entrance to the Ghost Town Trail (and I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Joe and Karen Gordon's steps toward providing a hostel at Red Mill).

I don't know that anyone else has ever considered combining a hostel with a canteen, but it seems a natural to me (and in it's heyday, the Y was virtually that, though it was limited to big cities so far as I know...Tyrone, Pa., being the smallest town with a Y that I've ever seen). The door to my seeing this possibility was remembering that in the Petersburg, Russia, hostel my brother Bob and I stayed in, we saw strangers gathered in a darkened room watching a feature movie on videotape. Such a room in a canteen/hostel would give an alternative "theater" for today's generation of valley youth for negligible expense. A hostel/canteen could have dormitory rooms upstairs and a self-catering kitchen, TV room, and rec room or rooms downstairs. The upstairs would be off limits for local kids, but the downstairs facilities could get use every evening year-round if made available as a canteen as well as serve hostel guests. This could be fit into a normal house or downtown Nanty Glo business building, of which I believe several stand idle today.

Thoughts? Questions? Verbal bouquets or brickbats?

For more information on youth hostels, click here.

False accusations

A police officer pulls a guy over for speeding and has the following exchange:

Officer: May I see your driver's license?
Driver: I don't have one. I had it suspended when I got my 5th DUI.
Officer: May I see the owner's card for this vehicle?
Driver: It's not my car. I stole it.
Officer: The car is stolen?
Driver: That's right. But come to think of it, I think I saw the owner's card in the glove box when I was putting my gun in there.
Officer: There's a gun in the glove box?
Driver: Yes sir. That's where I put it after I shot and killed the woman who owns this car and stuffed her in the trunk.
Officer: There's a body in the trunk?
Driver: Yes, sir.
Hearing this, the officer immediately called his captain. The car was quickly surrounded by police, and the captain approached the driver to handle the tense situation.
Captain: Sir, can I see your license?
Driver: Sure. Here it is.
It was valid.
Captain: Whose car is this?
Driver: It's mine, officer. Here's the owner's card.
The driver owned the car.
Captain: Could you slowly open your glove box so I can see if there's a gun in it? Driver: Yes, sir, but there's no gun in it.
Sure enough, there was nothing in the glove box.
Captain: Would you mind opening your trunk? I was told you said there's a body in it.
Driver: No problem.
Trunk is opened; no body.
Captain: I don't understand it. The officer who stopped you said you told him you didn't have a license, stole the car, had a gun in the glove box, and that there was a dead body in the trunk.
Driver: Yeah, I'll bet the lying s.o.b. told you I was speeding, too!

Sent by Mike Harrison

Remember when?

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home. Basically, we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.

So send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy, Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk...as well as the sound of a real mower on Saturday morning, and summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, bowling and visits to the pool...and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.

Hanging

Wednesday's entry about porches and swimming holes has generated the most enthusiastic response of anything recent, harkening back to our discussion of "the woods." (To recap that or see it for the first time if you haven't been reading that long, click here and scroll down to July 27 1999.) Thanks to all who've sent in recollections and/or observations.

Those of us who spent many hours on porches as part of growing up are likely to have fond recollections and the swimming holes were either in the woods or at least required a walk through the woods to access, so there's lots of overlap between the topics of this week and July '99.

I suspect, too, that this time of year, just before Memorial Day weekend, is a special time for memories of youth spent back home, whether "back home" is both a time and a place far away or just time away. Memorial Day was always a climactic day for me while growing up, and probably for everyone in our part of the world. It was often the same week as the last day of school, within a week or two of graduation ceremonies, shortly after the prom, and in my case, when it was observed on May 30 (as it was for over a century after the Civil War, for those of you too young to remember) it was always the day before my birthday. By this time in May there's no danger of seeing snow flurries one more time. The trees are quite green, lots of flowers are blooming. At our house there was a "spice bush" just outside the kitchen that was blossoming by now and its fragrance was everywhere, as the name suggests. (It's the only plant I've ever known that had as its main purpose just smelling good for a week or two per year. It had no edible fruit and the blossoms were not particularly beautiful.)

Memorial Day was often targeted for the first trip to the swimming hole and getting wet in public, so that's another reason those memories get stirred this time of year. How exhilarating to have three months ahead for such days, hours to laze around, explore or even blaze trails and read, daydream, and hang out with friends, days climaxed with a hitchhike to town (or a walk downtown) and perhaps a movie or a piece of pizza and sodapop at Harry's or...? Or just hanging on the parking meter or sitting on the steps under the alcove of the (old) Journal Building (now it would be the former Nanty Glo News building, I suppose). (From observation, actually, the hanging out these days is not on Roberts Street at all, but rather on Chestnut, at the benches across from the Firehall...understandable since most traffic now goes up Shoemaker without turning on Roberts.)

Probably the greatest pleasure, and the least appreciated, of youth is hanging out. In fact, lots of hanging out is probably considered boring, nothing to do, when in retrospect it's the best thing you could possibly do at the time!

Today's assignment: Get out the tape of American Graffiti and watch it again. Then write 300 words relating it to the days of youth spent in the Valley. Alternate: play the tape in your mind.

Groaner

There was a painter named Jack. Very interested in making a penny where he could, Jack often would thin down the paint to make it go a wee bit further. And, as it happened, he got away with this for some time.

The local Baptist Church decided to do a big restoration job on the painting of one of their biggest buildings. Jack put in a bid, and, because his price was so low, he got the job. Jack set to erecting the trestles, setting up the planks, and buying the paint—yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine. Well, Jack was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, and the sky opened, the rain poured down, washing the thinned paint from all over the church and knocking Jack clear off the scaffold to land on the lawn, among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint.

Jack was no fool. He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so he got on his knees and cried, "Oh, God! Please forgive me! What should I do?" And from the thunder above, a mighty voice spoke...

Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!

Sent by Virginia in Millville

Remember when?

Remember lying on your back on the grass with your friends and saying things like "That cloud looks like a ...."
And playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game.
Remember when stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger.
And with all our progress...don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace...and share it with the children of today?

Nanty Glo's cafe society

Even though I never drank coffee while still living in the Valley, there's a myth of a "cafe society" attending the Nanty Glo in my mind. My novel, serialized here last November, attempted to catch and perpetuate it. In my teens and early twenties, it was a sodapop culture, but I observed and found certain fascination in the coffee society of influences like my first Nanty Glo good friend, Bill Martin (now the Nanty Glo bureau chief of Mainline Newspapers/The Journal), and my mentor, Andy Rogalski, then the Journal's editor.

Though at that time the K&B restaurant (earlier well known as Hagens' and at last report still a pizza place) was the main cafe in town, there were three or four other places where coffee was the main brew, not to mention many bars and clubs that could probably produce a cup on demand.

Downtown Glotown had scores of merchants, bankers, clerks, secretaries and professionals like insurance people at the time, and it was common to find many of them taking coffee breaks at the K&B in the course of a day. The professional pace didn't seem hurried and harried then; one of the smalltown pleasures was noting who was sitting at the restaurant window and possibly joining him or her or at least exchanging the time of day from the next booth or table. By the early 60's the valley also had a sizeable college coffee-drinking group (Dick Millward and Mike Olsavsky being the ones I knew best, among probably several dozen), who liked to drop in for a cup of joe and catch up on latest news or gossip, and perhaps fortify themselves for a late night of boning up for exams or term paper writing.

On his last week of work for the Journal, Rogalski appointed me his constant companion as he tried to pour everything he knew about community newspaper editing into my brain in five days. His stops for coffee were so much a part of his routine that I commented that "I'd better learn to like coffee if I'm going to do this job." He impressed me by objecting, encouraging the greenhorn to stay innocent and unspoiled. But on this score, for me at least, I was right. Eventually, I'd have to learn to like coffee and eventually did.

Now the best place for coffee is Starbuck's, where on my last newspaper job I started the day most days. And now that I'm in "industry," two or three of my best friends and I repair there each Saturday morning to get the weekend off. Regardless of which of several nearby Starbuck's we frequent, it's always crowded and noisy, with overflow patrons occupying sidewalk tables. There's something comforting about such a tradition and a shared experience and culture. But despite Starbuck's appeal, its 21st-century cachet, and inestimably better coffee...I'd rather be at the K&B.

What kind of Catholic are you?

An old man walks into a confessional. The following conversation ensues:

Man: I am 92 years old, have a wonderful wife of 70 years, many children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Yesterday, I picked up two college girls, hitchhiking. We went to a motel, where I did wild things with each of them three times.

Priest: Are you sorry for your sins?

Man: What sins?

Priest: What kind of a Catholic are you?

Man: I'm Jewish

Priest: Why are you telling me all this?

Man: I'm telling everybody.

Remember when?

When they threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed...and did!

When the worst thing you could do at school was smoke in the bathrooms, flunk a test, or chew gum. And the prom was in the gym and you danced to an orchestra.

When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady and girls wore a class ring with an inch of wrapped bandaids, dental floss or yarn coated with pastel frost nail polish so it would fit her finger.

And no one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked.

Porches

Some of the more recent houses in my residential park are palacial compared with mine, but none of them have much of a porch when mine has a porch big enough for a swing and lots of chairs. And even though I seldom have time to sit on the porch, and no neighbors to sit with, I wouldn't give it up. A house without a porch is like an apartment...just a place to sleep between sessions at work, a temporary accommodation.

At first, the front and back porches on the Belsano farmhouse were just a roof and a floor of unpainted wood, like the house exterior, but Dad couldn't have that. The front porch had to have banisters built, and eventually both porches were enclosed with windows that could be opened for the breezes (Pennsylvania has a much greater problem with flies, mosquitoes, and bugs generally than California; enclosing my porch would be defeating its purpose). The wood was covered first with shingles and later aluminum siding. For years the swing was mounted in the back porch, but when it was enclosed that was replaced by a glider and an arbor just for the swing was built in the backyard. There was also a glider on the front porch, as well as soft-cushioned wicker porch furniture.

The front porch had an excellent view over the fields to the hills beyond Belsano northward. That's where sitting to enjoy a real rest or absorb natural beauty was done. If the sitter were alone, the porch might be used for reading the Reader's Digest, the day's Tribune-Democrat, or our family's weekend reading, the Grit. The backporch was for short breaks, confabs while coming or going (the backdoor being used for all normal egress), and for snapping beans, shelling peas, cleaning berries, or shucking corn.

The porches were the best places for being neighborly. Neighbors seldom came all the way inside the house, but often sat for hours on either of the porches, catching up or reminiscing. Anyone walking down Redmill Road, or driving by with windows down, was greeted aloud, and a greeting to a pedestrian might turn into prolonged conversation.

Among countless memories of incidents on the porches, one stands out. The Thompsons from across Redmill Road were over and we sat, the adults on the porch and the kids on the adjacent lawn, being neighborly. The general conversation moved to the County Fair and then ranged from the earliest and best fair recollections among us to the plans for the next fair: which rides to take and attractions to see, which exhibitions not to miss, even some philosophizing on fair-going: to "waste time" on agriculture or "invest" in games of chance. That evening-into-night gab session was probably as memorable as any day at the fair itself.
_____________________

"AT THE BEEP..."

"Actual" Answering Machine Messages Recorded and Verified By The World Famous International Institute of Answering Machine Messages:

3. Hi. Now you say something.

2. Hi. I'm probably home, I'm just avoiding someone I don't like. Leave me a message, and if I don't call back, it's you.

And the Number 1 Actual Answering Machine Message Recorded and Verified by The World Famous International Institute of Answering Machine Messages:

1. Hello, you've reached Jim and Sonya. We can't pick up the phone right now, because we're doing something we really enjoy. Sonya likes doing it up and down, and I like doing it left to right...real slowly. So leave a message, and when we're done brushing our teeth, we'll call you back.

Remember when?

When a quarter was a decent allowance.
When you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny.
When your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces.
When all of your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done everyday and wore high heels.
When you got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time. And, you didn't pay for air. And, you got trading stamps to boot! [And when there was more than one gas station in Blacklick Valley?]
When laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box.
When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents.

Towhead's delight

The eight-year-old towhead* bounded across the front yard, over the dirt road that bisected the farm, and greeted the new day. It was a dewy sparkling green and blue day brightened by large fluffy white clouds skittering over the rolling hills to the north, beyond Belsano, on this first full weekday of school summer vacation.

He and the pet rabbit dog, Bones, wanted to explore everything on the farm: the raspberry bushes still mostly in blossom, weeks before the fruiting stage; the chicken coop, pigpen, and barn with their respective livestock, and the meadows behind the barn. The cows noted the boy's and dog's intrusion in their meadow with lazy flips of their tails against flies, unconcerned. The boy knew they were both milk cows so, unlike a bull, he had nothing to fear from walking or running through the trails that crisscrossed their pasture. The cows knew the dog was too small and friendly to be a threat.

The northwest meadow, the farthest from the house, was the least cultivated field on the farm, grown up by huckleberry bushes and pocked by stumps of trees never pulled out to complete the field-clearing efforts of a previous farm owner. It had a primeval appearance, like the setting of a chase in a western movie or Robin Hood episode. The boy imagined that this place looked just like the world looked a thousand years earlier. There were places to hide here, growing natural objects to navigate, portals to lots of childish imaginings. There were bunnies for Bones to romp after, and probably black snakes to startle them both.

He looked for treasures. Wildflowers to put in a jar with water for his Mom (no dandelions). Wild strawberries (tiny delicacies). Shelves of punk growing on the sides of stumps. Edible leaves or grape vine tentacles, even sweet/sour huckleberry blossoms.

The setting invited running, so he ran, his face and hair cooled by the wind his fast motion created. He didn't see the barbed wire fence that caught him on the throat at breakneck speed, tumbling him backward. There were drops of blood and now it seemed like a far way back to the house. This could be serious...certainly the upset of a day started out so perfectly. But the upset also imprinted that morning in his memory for life.
_____________________

*Towhead: a person with flaxen hair (a blond, usually used to describe blond boys). Tow is a derivative of towrope, which is traditionally made of hemp, a yellow-blond fiber.

"AT THE BEEP..."

"Actual" Answering Machine Messages Recorded and Verified By The World Famous International Institute of Answering Machine Messages:

7. Hi! John's answering machine is broken. This is his refrigerator. Please speak very slowly, and I'll stick your message to myself with one of these magnets.

6. Hi. This is John: If you are the phone company, I already sent the money. If you are my parents, please send money. If you are my bank, you didn't lend me enough money. If you are my friends, you owe me money. If you are a female, don't worry, I have lots of money.

5. A is for academics, B is for beer. One of those reasons is why we're not here. So, leave a message.

4. Hello! If you leave a message, I'll call you soon. If you leave a "sexy" message, I'll call sooner.

Remember when?

Not stepping on a crack or you'll break our mother's back ...
paper chains at Christmas, silhouettes of Lincoln and Washington ...
the smell of paste in school and Evening in Paris.
What about the girl who dotted her "i's" with hearts?
The Stroll, popcorn balls, & sock hops.

Remember when . . .there were two types of sneakers for girls and boys (Keds & PF Flyer) and the only time you wore them at school was for "gym." And the girls had those ugly gym uniforms.
When it took five minutes for the TV to warm up.
When nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school.
When nobody owned a purebred dog...?

Old swimming holes

David Caldwell's entry for yesterday about his backyard swimming pool and describing his preference for the old-time strip mine pits, farm ponds, or tree-lined streams inspired similar reflections on my part. Though I supported the Nanty Glo Park and Pool project when it was in the blueprint stage, when I think back on my swimming memories the afternoons and evenings at White Mill or Adam's Crossing greatly eclipse the ones at the Ebensburg or Portage pools we visited now and then. David said the streams are maintained by mother nature; but I think their appeal has to do with nature in another sense as well. It's probably similar to the pull of ocean bathing or swimming at lakes like Shawnee Lake near Bedford (where I got a Fourth of July sunburn circa 1954 that still smarts).

Swimming is in itself sensual, so it seems enhanced by a natural locale rather than the artificiality of concrete, plastic, and painted pools. We had a pool at one of our homes in California and, as David suggests, such pools are more of a hastle than a boon, at least for nonteenagers. We lived there for two years in my 30's and I was never in the pool. Our second child, Michael, was a toddler, so despite the heroic fencing I installed there was always a strong fear that he would get to the pool and fall in. I instilled into his mind such a fear of it that he remembered it for years afterward. Oh, and my present residence park has two pools, which I've never been in after 15 years here, and I go to a fitness club almost daily with a pool which, also, I've never been in. (The whirlpool spa pool, yes, but not swimming.)

I haven't heard whether the Nanty Glo Borough Park Pool is going to be open this summer. It wasn't last summer, because of budgetary considerations, and I found it fitting and somewhat satisfying that when I drove by Adam's Crossing on the north branch of the Blacklick, the first week of August, it was obviously "open" for business much as it was generations ago.

This is probably a male thing. Backyard pools and town chlorinated pools are probably preferred by women for guessable reasons. They're "safer" in a lot of ways, for starters. And because the girls used to prefer the Ebensburg pool, we sometimes did also. The hunting was definitely more fruitful there.

Procedural notes:

First, thanks to all who responded to Friday's request for feedback on the previous day's emailed Jonal entry. The email seems to have been bothersome to virtually no one, though several responses among the couple of dozen received were a bit ambigious.

Just after saying that apparently Yahoo Groups was not going to work for us, I received that day's Jonal mailing and even though it was 12 hours late, I decided to try it again. It was better the second time (I believe it got delivered by noon the next day). So the third-time charmer was perfect; I got my test mailings within an hour of mailing the master for Sunday. Incidentally—or not—the first example was mailed using a return address of one of the service's biggest competitors in the field of webmail. And the second mailing still contained instructions for contacting our previous email forum host, another Yahoo competitor. It may be that those were factors in Yahoo intentionally delaying the delivery of those first two emails. We've discontinued both practices now and now we'll see.

"AT THE BEEP..."

"Actual" Answering Machine Messages Recorded and Verified By The World Famous International Institute of Answering Machine Messages:

10. My wife and I can't come to the phone right now, but if you'll leave your name and number, we'll get back to you as soon as we're finished.

9. Hello, you are talking to a machine. I am capable of receiving messages. My owners do not need siding, windows or a hot tub, and their carpets are clean. They give to charity at the office and church and don't need their picture taken. If you're still with me, leave your name and home phone number and they will get back to you.

8. This is not an answering machine, this is a telepathic thought-recording device. After the tone, think about your name, your number, and your reason for calling...and I'll think about returning your call.

Politically incorrect

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

—Mark Twain

The wife's pool

On the warm days in April, as my wife and I drove around Nanty Glo and surrounding communities, she kept commenting about the swimming pools she saw open and some in the process of being opened. Finally, after the tenth such comment, like a well-trained husband, I got the message. She wants me to open our pool.

Female logic is difficult for us males to understand. For a long time, I wondered why my wife didn't come right out and ask when she wanted the pool opened. After 18 years of marriage and 10 years of opening the swimming pool, the answer came to me. She knows that when I take the winter cover off and find the water looking like the bath water of the Jolly Green Giant, I am going to be a little upset. Then when I find that leaves and twigs made it into the water in spite of the cover, I am going to be a little more upset. Then when I have to keep adding chlorine, PH up and PH down and algaecide and decalcifier and clearout and who knows what else, I am really going to be upset.

At that time, she can look at me and calmly say, "Well, Dear, it was your idea to open the pool." That is when I smile sweetly, turn my back to her, grit my teeth and get back to work on her pool.

Notice that I call it her pool. I don't like swimming in water that goes round and round, makes you smell like chlorine, makes your eyes red and turns your hair green. Give me the stagnant water of a strip mine hole, or the muddy water of a farm pond or a deep spot along a stream. Now, those are the kinds of swimming pools I remember.

As a kid, I didn't worry about what was in the water as long as it was wet and deep enough for swimming. I never had to worry about opening the pool in the spring or covering it in the fall. Mother Nature took care of those chores.

Bathing beauties

Two old-timers were seated on a bench along the boardwalk intensely watching the bikini-clad sun worshippers lying on and parading around the beach. The first one asked, "Do you like bathing beauties?"

The second man thought a long time, then answered, "I don't rightly remember. It's been a long time since I've bathed one."

More great words of wisdom. . .modern proverbs

Thanatopsis

In high school I came across the poem by William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis, which word I found defined in some dictionary as a morbid fascination or fear of death. (I don't find it defined in the Merriam-Webster site linked to our Home Page now; "thanatology, the study of death" being its closest approximation.) By the time I discovered the poem, I had gotten over my own thanatopsis, but I remember it clearly still.

It seemed to be the mark of my eleventh year; after I turned 11 I suddenly became aware of my own mortality and had a dread of it every time it came to mind, and it seemed I couldn't keep it from coming to mind. I've heard of studies, in fact, that find that thoughts of death are a constant part of our conscious life, fleeting in and out of more focused thinking, much like the awareness of our sexual/sensual nature is part of "every waking thought," at least in males of certain ages (perhaps from six to 96).

It was, at 11, as though I self-consciously thought about the fact that I was going to die some day, and until then I'd never entertained the thought. It was earth-shaking. Until then, I'd feared the loss of my parents more than anything else. I knew of one or two schoolmates who'd been orphaned, and couldn't imagine so hard a loss, and there were movies and stories that drilled that possiblity into our childish minds, too, not to mention my Mom's sometimes singing "The Letter Edged in Black" about the narrator's loss of her mother (as described in an earlier Jonal entry). I also remember seeing as one of the first movies in my life (at about age 4), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, in which a small boy dies as a result of a steam shovel accident. So I knew children could die...but it hadn't translated into my own categories. Until age 11, I guess I thought myself immortal.

The awareness, fascination, and dread were not that I would die young...it didn't matter. Even if I lived another 70 years or more, that was nothing in the scope of the eons. I was at 11 a dead man walking. The awareness was accompanied by something I now identify as grief, actual grief at such a young age, and yet a grief I couldn't share with anyone. How could I bring it up with my parents, who were so much older and who had already often referred to their eventual demise?

I still remember, on a visit to my Aunt Buelah's in Painesville R.D., Ohio, that eleventh year, my Dad, in a rare jovial mood, reciting the morbid "poem," "Do you ever think, when a hearse goes by, that some day you are going to die?..." It described my misery to a T, but also compounded it. I already felt that way every time I saw a hearse, but now I had rhyming words describing it all to fight against in my mind as well. There was some sense, too, in which that poem fit my "discovery"...I could now imagine my own death, but I couldn't imagine loss of self-consciousness. I pictured death as paralysis of everything but the mind, but knew of course that wasn't a reasonable definition of death.

And you may be wondering, what about church and Sunday school and eternal life, faith in God? I knew all that, too, and didn't believe it less than ever, but the "what if?" questions I now had of death seemed to be eclipsing the certitudes of faith.

What are the lessons learned, the point of all this? I'm not sure. We become self-aware and that includes awareness of our motality. We accept death as part of life and learn to cope with our own motality. Learning to really comprehend our own mortality makes us less horrified by the knowledge of the mortality of others, especially dear or even felt unexpendable, to us.

Does every child go through this? I've never read that they do, never saw signs of it in my own children's lives. But then my parents had no idea what I was going through for that year.

Meet the fiance

After Leslie brought home her fiance to meet her parents, her father invited the young man into his study to find out more about him. "What are your plans?" he asked Joseph.

"I'm a scholar of the Torah," Joseph replied.

"Well, that's admirable," Leslie's father replied. "But what will you do to provide a nice house for my daughter?"

"I will study, and God will surely provide for us," Joseph explained.

"And how will you buy her a nice engagement ring?"

"I will study hard, and God will provide for us."

"And children?" asked the father. "How will you support children?"

"Don't worry, sir, God will provide," replied the fiance. The conversation continued in much the same fashion.

After Joseph and Leslie had left, her mother asked her father what he found out. The father answered, "Well, he has no job and no plans, but the good news is that he thinks I'm God."

More great words of wisdom. . .modern proverbs

It's all right to sit on your pity pot every now and again. Just be sure to flush when you are done.

Prominent people

Walt Cameron's writing recently about his childhood in Belsano and memories of storekeepers Ward Adams and Merton Edwards inspired some thoughts about prominent people.

Nowadays it seems like there are no "prominent people," probably because I'm now a very small fish in a very large pond...one of thousands of technical writers in a metropolitan area of about five million people (greater San Francisco/Bay Area). Here in the San Jose subsection of the nine-county standard metro area, the largest pool in the pond in population, it seems like the only prominent person is the mayor, and we tend to forget who that is from one administration to the next. I'm sure people who "make the scene" have a whole cadre of prominent people on their radarscreens, but for normal stay-at-homes like me, the only people who count are those who let me get into the lane I want on the freeway and hold the door if I'm just behind them on the way in or out. And such prominences as those are very fleeting and ephemeral (here today/gone tomorrow).

I think my Congress Member is Zoe Lofgren, though I wouldn't swear to it. I know the President is George Dubya and the governor is some Davis I'd rather not remember. I don't know who publishes or edits the San Jose Mercury (other than the corporate "publisher," Knight-Ridder) or the San Francisco Chronicle (recently acquired by the Hearst Corporation after a century of coveting it). I know who the publisher and editor of the Metro weekly are, if they haven't left their posts in the past five years, but then I used to be their peer at the chief competition.

But when we lived in Blacklick Valley we knew scores of "prominent people" from Ward Adams to Jessie Edwards to John Kupchella to many of the faculty members of two/three high schools, insurance agents like Prave and Thomas, at least one person at each car dealership, the dentists, clinic employees, undertakers, the top producers in the Lion's Club, Mr. Nanty Glo Lloyd McMullen, Doss Paul, Tom Bello, the LaMantias, Rineharts, and Commonses, the manager and some clerks at the Acme, several of the local clergymen, two or three of the Yobaggy Brothers, Betty Nedrich, Steve Oblackovich and lots of Rummels, and so on and on. We even knew lots of names of prominent people in Ebensburg and Johnstown.

If you lived out of town you knew at least the family name of every family living within a mile from your house, and many of those beyond (and I wouldn't know how this translates for those who lived "in" town, never having lived there). So in that sense, everyone had more "prominence" in that milieu. I know the family name of only one of the neighboring houses to the one I've lived in for over 15 years, and that's only because we occasionally get a letter intended for them misplaced in our box. We have a few first names—only three or four—beyond that.

Is the "big village" still alive in places like Blacklick Valley or, because of urbanizing trends like more broken homes, perhaps, people are more alienated there, too? And if, like me, you've moved far from the valley, how do you find things in your neck of the woods?

Conjugal duties

One summer evening during a violent thunderstorm a mother was tucking her small boy into bed. She was about to turn off the light when he asked with a tremor in his voice, "Mommy, will you sleep with me tonight?"

The mother smiled and gave him a reassuring hug. "I can't, dear," she said "I have to sleep in Daddy's room."

A long silence was broken at last by his shaky little voice: "The big sissy."

More great words of wisdom. . .Modern Proverbs

The tongue must be heavy indeed, because so few people can hold it.