Sky Pilot and Big Kahunas

We are speaking now of Charlottesville, VA one summer, where I was living successfully disguised to myself as a college student at the University of Virginia. I was staying with three friends in an apartment imperfectly cooled in the Virginia heat by two laboring a/c window units.

In the afternoons we drank beer on the roof above the downstairs apartment’s porch. We would do our coursework later, when the evening fell and temperatures slightly declined as well. The end of the first week Wild Man had hung up from talking with his girlfriend back home, screaming, “The bitch bled! The bitch bled!” He came out and accepted congratulations all round at his escape from fatherhood. Terrapin pulled a bottle of beer out of the cooler and presented it ceremoniously to Wild Man. Several more went the same way, and the afternoon waned.

Circle of Friends

I met some friends of mine and my beloved’s this past Saturday, noontime, at a local watering place down the street from our mutual gym, a private club. I was by myself, since Babs had to prepare for her workday, beginning in the late afternoon. These friends all gather each Saturday at the conveniently located bar to share conversation over a few beers. Later, some go on to lunch. This pattern began at the sports club itself, years ago, when there was a bar within the club, open to the public but usually full of members who had just completed a workout.

A few years ago, after a series of changes which greatly reduced the traffic in this favorite gathering place, the club closed the bar, replacing it with additional cardio machines. Several reasons were cited by management for this decision, principally that a venue selling alcohol was incompatible with building healthy bodies. That the adults who paid for their memberships might be better judges of this incompatibility seemed not to have occurred to management, who countered any such argument by pointing at the declining revenues from the bar. A decline fomented and encouraged by management decisions, in the view of the displaced.

What was really ended was a convenient place for a circle of friends to meet during the week, and often on weekends, fostering a sense of camaraderie among those who considered the bar their “Cheers,” where every one knew their name. Some of these friendships had been formed and grew from the early days of the club, and extended into activities and relationships away from the bar. But always, always, that special place was available for the time after workouts, to discuss, tell stories and enjoy each other’s company for a short while before going home. In British pub language, it was the “local” for a group of friends who now had no connection between their friends and the club other than chance meetings in the locker rooms.

Now the bar down the street partly answers the purpose, but the scattered friends are always outnumbered by the varied groups of people who know not the history, the stories, the companionship of those who have been dispossessed. The management had its way. It showed the members who was boss, and any who didn’t like it could leave. A few did. But the central location of the club, and habit, kept most there. Resentful, but there. Something was diminished, and cannot be made whole again.

So, on occasion, the old guard gather where they can, and reminisce. Life moves on, but they do not forget.

Soggy Shoe Saga

I have a friend, or at least a friendly acquaintance of forty years standing, who married a girl who grew up next door to me. For the purposes of this story, and others, I will call them Wally and Linda. They married young, much against the wishes of Linda’s family, who were as straight-laced, proper and serious as Wally was rowdy, profane and given to bawdy humor.

Linda was a bright, energetic and friendly little girl, who grew up to be an accomplished and well-educated woman. She went into teaching, and loved reading, languages and her students. For some reason, she also loved Wally. Although an extremely intelligent man, with a quick mind and wit who could be surprisingly literate, Wally was large in appetites and contemptuous of polite society. Every thing Wally did was on a large scale, especially where food and drink were concerned. Linda was temperate in all things, speech, manners, food and drink. Wally grew large of belly and loud of voice, laughing uproariously at his own jokes and the discomfiture of others.

Circling around the Truth

For years I have habitually said, in response to some tale of domestic discord, “There are always three versions of a divorce or breakup between a man and a woman: His story, Her story, and, finally, the truth.” Nicely phrased bit of wry humor, I always thought. But now, at the unwinding shank end of my life, I think I was wrong. There are as many versions of any story as there are those not only directly involved, but deeply affected. This is especially true of divorce and its aftermath, particularly when children are involved.

Jeanne Reese Allison

My mother was a remarkable woman, like all the women in the family.

Daughter of the redoubtable “General” Thelma Reese, Mother managed to carry on to her own little family the love and capabilities she inherited from her mother.

Over a life that at 75 lasted not long enough for her children, Jeanne raised us, energetically volunteered in the community, and eventually went to work. She had a variety of jobs related to music and the arts, managing concert bookings, artist accommodations and a multitude of other tasks.

She also loved us. And loved the grandchildren as they came, for whatever her interests were outside the home, and they were many, family came first.

Those Who Went Before

At some point you begin to wonder about the distant people who fathered and mothered your grandparents and great-grandparents, and even further back. You wonder even if those folks were poor, obscure and from all indications lacking in any outstanding traits other than contributing to your DNA.

Twenty-something years ago, during the genealogical frenzy resulting from the popularity of Arthur Hailey’s book Roots I felt such an interest. My great-grandfather had published a partial genealogy of his family, so I had a starting point.

Mrs. Temple

Dorothy Temple

Teachers whose careers span many years often cannot remember every student. Some teachers do remember their students, and I think perhaps that is a trait only of the born-to-be-first-grade teacher.

First grade teachers really have to be born, not trained, to be a nurturing figure for six-year-olds emerging from the warm little caves of kindergarten or nursery school. Mrs. Temple was my first grade teacher. She was wonderful. Twenty-six years after first meeting Mrs. Temple my first day of first grade, I walked my six-year-old son into his new school. We had just moved back from Knoxville the spring before, so my son was barely familiar with the school or with his classmates. He had one month of kindergarten there. So, for me to see Mrs. Temple on just entering my son in first grade was A Sign. All would be well.

It turned out that Mrs. Temple just filled in as a substitute, since she had retired several years before. I did not know that as we approached the much grayer, but still erect and smiling Mrs. Temple. She looked at me once. Then at my son. She smiled more broadly, and said to me, “Well, Felix, it has been a few years, hasn’t it?” just as though she was greeting me, as well as my son, for first grade. Instantly I smelled the classroom smells, sharpened pencils, paste, gum erasers, chalk dust.

I knew my son was in good hands, even if only on a substitute basis. Mrs. Temple died a few years later, but I know that regardless of any problems with schools, there will always be first grade teachers to ease the transition from pre-school to first grade.

The Teacher Who Mattered

It is axiomatic that teachers remember few of their students over a career, they have so many. Corollary to that axiom is the observation that students quite often remember one or two teachers to the end of their days.

I had several teachers who mattered through the years. A couple of them stay fixed in my memory, as though the dusty light of sunlit schoolrooms past trapped them like pedagogues in amber. One such, who only taught me for one semester, when I was a junior at The Baylor School for Boys, is probably the best English teacher I ever had, perhaps the best teacher of any I ever had. Frank P. Steele was one of the young teachers at school, a tall,  smiling man with sandy hair already thinning. The crusty old men who dominated the faculty at Baylor often gave short shrift to young teachers, but the head of the English department had commented to a class I attended the year before that Frank Steele was “a poet, and knows how to teach it. If any of you pissants have him next year, maybe he can get you to appreciate poetry. I can’t.” Mr. Hitt, aptly named, was not much for positive reinforcement.

Grandparents’ Day

So today is officially Grandparents’ Day.

For anyone fortunate enough to have grandchilden, and live in the same town with them, many days are grandparents’ day. My Beloved and I seem to average about one overnight visit from the grandchildren per week or ten days. The parents worry that they impose on us with that frequency. Hah. These visits make our week.

It is true that older folks (painfully accurate term) find the pint-sized tornadoes taxing drains on our energy, but we always feel a lift to our spirits both in anticipation of the visit, and in remembering every moment, every laugh, every hug. Being a grandparent is all about love, love unmeasured and endless. I was fortunate in having grandparents who were sources of boundless and unconditional love. I hope we are doing that for our grandchildren. I think we are.

Quality of Life

In 1998, while working at a public housing agency, I became responsible for managing a subsidy housing program for the disabled. My experience of disabled persons was limited. I knew there was a need, but the process of recruiting partners from the various agencies dealing with persons with disabilities educated me. One of the principals in a program to enable persons with disabilities to adapt living to their special needs introduced me to an acronym heavy with meaning. He referred to “CRAB” people, and explained that the acronym referred to “currently regarded as able-bodied.” This term underlined the fragility of the “normal” physical condition which I, among most people I knew, enjoyed. The complexity and vulnerability of our bodies make the possibility of limitations due to disease or injury not unlikely. We who are CRAB people simply don’t contemplate such debility, any more than we dwell on the inevitability of death. A defense mechanism, which can collapse at any moment under the weight of reality.