Her father was working in his shop in an outbuilding that also served as garage and storage area. I walked the hundred feet or so from the house to the shop much as a condemned prisoner approaches the scaffold. I was always more than a little awed by her father, an awe seasoned with a healthy dose of fear, and I was uncertain of his reaction. Approaching him in his shop, surrounded as he was by an array of potentially dangerous tools, hammers, screwdrivers, saws and such, seemed to me not to be the most advantageous of surroundings. As I approached, the slightest sound might have cause me to bolt for the car, but my feet carried me on and when he looked up and saw me, it was too late to retreat. He returned to his work, planing a board. The plane, at least was not a threatening tool, no sharp edges although I suppose he could have beat me about the head and shoulders with it. I remember asking him what he was making. I don’t remember his response. Fear and the churning of my stomach have erased the response from my memory although I think there was one. Not one to delay an execution, I then blurted out “I want to ask you permission to marry your daughter.” “When?” he asked, and I mumbled something about after my first year in college. He looked at me hard and asked if I thought I could take care of her and I told him I thought I could. His response to that is a little hazy, as I was measuring my chances of making it through the shop door alive if necessary, but it was something to the effect of “OK” and he returned to his work. No handshake or words or welcome, just a positive acknowledgement of my question, and I escaped, not quite running, back to the house; understanding the feeling of a prisoner who has just received an 11th hour reprieve from the governor.

I should explain at this point that my future father-in-law was a gentle man with a gruff exterior. I didn’t realize that at first, the fight or flight response of being near him in those early days did not allow me to relax, but I did know that he had a puckish sense of humor. He would occasionally appear at the d river’s side of the car on some excuse or other, once asking me if l cared for some peanut brittle. The first time I met him, he was on the roof with a bucket of tar when I arrived and yet he was at my back as the door opened to acknowledge my knock and I later accused him of jumping off the roof rather than using the ladder to get down. Introductions were made and we left with the admonition to “be home early.” We were. He often remarked afterwards that he could have saved a lot of problems if he had just dropped that bucket of tar on me as I arrived.

We were married on a windy Sunday afternoon in August 1960. The weather was changeable as a front approached that would bring heavy storms later that evening, the violence of which was lost to the romance of our first night together.

To mark the highlights of 50 years together is beyond the scope of this writing, ranging as they do from a beginning as married students at Indiana University where we were joined by our first born, a son, years  that saw an unused dollar as a chance to go for a drive with perhaps a stop at McDonalds afterward; to leaving the insularity of an academic community for the unknown of a first job in Maryland where we were joined by our second born, also a son; to 4 years in Munich where we were joined by our third born, and final, child, a daughter. The return to the reality of Maryland began a blur or settling into a house, of school activities, of children growing up and marrying; to now, when we are a couple again. For all of the adventure of those years, being a couple again is the icing on the cake.

I recently read of a couple in California who just celebrated their 72^nd anniversary, a rarity in any age. They have their own blog at the-ogs.com (ogs stands for original grandparents) where they dispense advice, stories, songs and the occasional video. It certainly is a goal to strive for and I remain optimistic about that, but for the moment I am content with the rarity of reaching 50 years, no small accomplishment as statistics indicate that only 5% of married couples reach this milestone. But as much as I am proud of our accomplishment, this isn’t the real reason for writing this reflection, sketchy though it is. It really is a love letter to she who accepted the love of a gawky teenager and has since been the guiding light of my life, accepting me at my worst and my best and yet remaining a constant at my side. It is she who gives me cause to celebrate the past 50 years and it is she who gives me the hope of more to come.

I love you Princess.

Even as I consider this, I realize the difference between the mores of our generation and those of our children and am astounded at the gulf that exists between us and the present generation. We went steady in those days and double dated on occasion and believed to one degree or another that the logical outcome dating and going steady was to eventually marry and spend the rest of our lives together, living happily ever after. It is in the ever after that we differ little from our children’s generation or that of the present generation. Attending a 50th class reunion of a year ago revealed that the percentage of our generation which divorced and remarried is remarkably like that of that of succeeding generations. In only one area has our particular group diverged from the general population, fewer of us have died than the national average.

Change was in the air and a shift in attitude became apparent in the latter years of the 1950s, a shift which came into full blossom by the end of the 1960s and the world turned upside down for a time. This shift in attitude changed personal relationships, how we viewed each other, how we dealt with the world at large. It is doubtful that we will see a return to exchanging class rings and going steady, of double dating to the drive in, of falling in love and marrying at an early age. The changes we face today occur at a breathtaking pace.

My great-grandmother, who was born at the end of the Civil War, raised a family in the turbulent years of the 1880s and 1890s, saw the expansion of this country from 38 to 48 states, lived through the Depression and saw friends and relatives march off to two world wars. She accommodated herself to electricity, the telephone and the automobile. She never flew and I suspect never wanted to. She fed hobos who would do odd jobs for her and shot the hat off one who wouldn’t. An independent sort, she married at least four times, the family records on that are sketchy, but kept the name of her first husband through her succeeding marriages. In the years before the Second World War she would tell the daughter with whom she was living, my great-aunt, that she was going to the store and then head off to parts unknown, she explored a good part of the American West during her jaunts, before coming home. Needless to say her unannounced disappearances caused a lot of consternation in the family and were the subject of some discussion, even after her death. To some she was a daunting figure but she was always quite kind to me. I remember her stopping a young woman on the street who was freshly manicured with bright red finger nail polish and ask her if she had cut her fingers. “Oh no ma’am,” was the reply, “that’s finger nail polish.” “You don’t have to paint yourself up for any man,” was her stern reply as she pulled me down the sidewalk away from the rather nonplussed woman.

The changes my great-grandmother experienced came slowly, at decent intervals, allowing her and the remainder of the population to get used to them. Today’s changes come exponentially and, to paraphrase an old joke, many things we purchase today are old technology before we get them out of the box. The first telephone I remember was a wall-mounted crank telephone. Our number was 707, two long rings and a short. Being on a party line, you had to listen for your ring before answering the phone although to some the ringing phone was an open invitation to eavesdrop. Although the telephones took on a more modern guise, the party line was part of our dating life and the operator would always ask me to “please limit your call to 5 minutes” as she put the call through, an enjoinder rarely obeyed. The party line could be fraught with problems, eavesdropping or thoughtless love-struck teenagers talking longer than 5 minutes, a combination that once got me dressed down by an irate, albeit eavesdropping neighbor. She asked if she could have the line and I asked her to hang up so that I could tell my steady good bye, but she came back twice with the comment “are you still on the line?” Repeating my request, we thought that she had hung up and I was asked “who was that?” “Our neighbor,” I explained, “she’s drunk again.” That response was barely finished when a voice hissed “you’re a vicious, vicious boy and I am going to tell your parents.” There was more, but you get the general idea of her invective. Future wife and I said goodbye at that point. My parents were never informed of my gaffe; a saving grace of alcoholism is that the individual rarely remembers the events of the night before.

The party line is long gone and the landline telephone has evolved into the cell phone; a powerhouse of information, telling us where we are, the closest restaurant, passing text messages and photographs all the while allowing the user to play games or listen to music. My cell phone is several generations in the past, allowing rudimentary services, like placing a call and taking a picture, but little else. Quite frankly, the technology might be lost on this user. My iPod Touch, which I dearly love, for example, is used to play radio programs of the 40s and 50s, to great effect, I might add. An anachronism, I suppose, and a capability not anticipated by those listening to those programs live on the old Crosley in the living room.

When we dance, my wife and I, we still dance in the same old way, but I still thrill to the closeness of her as the Platters repeat my own fervent wish “That you’ll always be there at the end of my prayer.”

The moon is seldom what it seems and has been imbued with a number of anthropomorphic characteristics. Juliet admonishes Romeo “swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb.” Joseph Conrad, on the other hand writes “There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery,” while the playwright Christopher Fry wrote “The moon is nothing but a circumambulating aphrodisiac divinely subsidized to provoke the world into a rising birth rate.” The last quote, perhaps, sparked the popular song “Shine on Harvest Moon.”

My love affair with the moon began at an early age. When I was aged 10 or so, I got my first look at the moon through a telescope. Just shy of the 1st quarter, the field of view through the telescope opened up a whole new world for me. There were mountains and seas and craters of every size and description. It seemed as if I couldn’t get enough and the man, whose telescope it was, patiently let me explore the alien surface until I remembered myself and thanked him for allowing me to look. Instead of sending me on my way, he turned the telescope to Saturn and stepped back for me to look while he explained what I was seeing; the magnificent ring system and, next to it, Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. He went on that night to show me Jupiter and Mars, orange Mars with a clearly visible polar ice cap and darker areas that could be mistaken for vegetation. I was hooked. Already high on the science fiction stories I had begun reading that summer, these glimpses through the telescope further fueled my imagination. Still, it was the moon, with its greater detail, which kept drawing me back.

The popular press of the time was beginning to fill up with stories of flying saucers and alien bases on the moon and I used to look at the moon with the hopes of catching an alien ship as it glided to its silent surface. Everyone, it seemed, was seeing and photographing flying saucers and meeting with aliens of every size, shape and description. I spent as much time as I could with the telescope in hopes of catching an alien sighting myself. As an aside, I should mention that I became good friends with the man who owned the telescope, good enough that he often loaned it to me and, when they left their cottage on Labor Day, he would leave it to my care until the following spring.

The telescope used to be a magnate for onlookers and it was seldom that someone did not stop by when I was out for an evening’s observation. Most quickly bored of the sights I used to show them, thanked me politely and continued on their way. It turns out that of the visible universe, what most holds people’s interest are the outer planets and the moon. Cloud covered Venus and the elusive Mercury showed no detail; no polar ice caps, no rings and no moons to catch their fancy. Some would ask me to show them a star, so I would try to find one of more than passing interest, a double star, for example, but all were disappointed with what I showed them. lilt doesn’t look any different,” was the common complaint. They’re too far away to show any detail, I would explain and I would get the look that insinuated, “then why bother looking at them?” One learns early in astronomy that things are seldom what they seem. Looking at the Andromeda galaxy, for example, can be disappointing. We are used to pictures of a pinwheel of stars of all colors and all that the telescope will show is a hazy blob. Not terribly impressive, even when one realizes the tremendous distance involved, 23 million light years away. Was someone on a planet orbiting a star in that galaxy looking at our own galaxy and wondering the same thing? Photography shows us a universe invisible to the human eye and Hubble and its successors never cease to be a source of wonder.

Not surprisingly, I decided at an early age that I was going to be an astronomer and actually began my college career with that goal in mind. But again, things are seldom what they seem and, realizing that I would never master the math involved, I change my major to history. A decision, incidentally, which I never regretted.

In ages past, we watched the moon and quaked in fear as it eclipsed the sun, turning day into night. Priests of an earlier time used the eclipse to their gain. They understood the mechanics of the celestial landscape which pinwheeled overhead very early in human history and had early calculated when eclipses, partial or total, would occur, using this knowledge to further their power. After all, what power must a man have who can command the sun to darken, or begin to do so and then return things to normal with but a word.

Astronomers have debated for years as to the moon’s origin. Some say it was carved out of the earth by some primeval collision while others suppose it was captured by the earth in the infancy of the solar system. Whatever the happenstance, the moon is, it would appear, essential to life on this planet; the tides it promotes creating the conditions that may have tempted the first early denizens of the sea to crawl up onto the land. Our current search for earth-like planets circling other suns is in part driven, I believe, by the hope that somewhere else a similar process has occurred and we are not alone in the universe.

Should this be so, I offer the following as a footnote. On a warm spring evening before we had yet taken the first steps into space, I had set up my telescope just after sunset in the hopes of catching sight of Mercury. The closest planet to the sun, its orbit does not bring it far above the horizon and it can be difficult to see in the after glow of the setting sun. Several people had gathered around, curious for look at this occasional phenomenon when a bright orange-colored object appeared in the western sky about 45 degrees above the horizon. I was not the first to see it as I was busy scanning just above the horizon for Mercury. “ls that it?” a neighbor asked, pointing to the object in question. Training the telescope on it, the object resolved into two football-shaped objects, one slightly above and to the left of the other. We took turns watching it through the telescope, easy to do since it did not move, but stayed in the same position relative to the horizon. Were the object a star or a planet, it would have had the decency to ’set’ as the sun had just done. After about 15 minutes, it began to rise in the sky and arc to the east, the two objects never changing their position in relation to one another. When the object reached the earth’s shadow in the southeast, it slowly faded out and was gone. Like a good citizen, I reported the object to NORAD and received the polite response that we undoubtedly had seen a weather balloon. This explanation raised some doubts as I had seen weather balloons before and they never traveled in pairs and the ones I had seen tended to move about in the winds of the upper atmosphere. In short, I didn’t believe them and, to this day, still do not.

Things are seldom what they seem and while I don’t believe that little green men were flying through the night-time sky, I remain open to any rational explanation, excepting weather balloons. To paraphrase Yum-Yum in the Mikado ”pray make no mistake, we are not shy. We’re very wide awake, the moon and I.”

“John,” he said, “it’s good to see you.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied, “do I know you?”

“I’m Tod,” he said.

I paused at this. He did not say Mr. Tod or Tod anything, just Tod, pronouncing it as if it were spelled todt. It was a proper German pronunciation and, as my German kicked in, I wondered If he were using the name as a noun. Tod is the German word for death. I started to back away as I asked my self, “did he just call himself ‘death’.”

Although I am certain I did not voice the thought, he said “that’s right, Death. When I first meet people, I try to use a synonym, something not too off putting, to give the fact of who I really am a chance to sink in. Even though you know German, it took a few moments for the fact of my name to sink in.”

I started to get frightened at this point because, despite his friendly manner, his smile had no warmth, and I was uncertain as to whether I was talking to some sort of kook, a serial killer perhaps, who liked to toy with his victims before doing them in. Yet, despite his cold demeanor, he didn’t look threatening and, in another setting, he might have been taken for an academic out for an afternoon stroll. His eyes were dark and unblinking and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was looking through me, not at me.

He continued standing on the sidewalk and I was prevented from backing up any further by the fence which suddenly started pressing into my back. He had the advantage over me because if I ran either left or right, he could easily cut me off.

As if to answer this latest thought he told me “no, you cannot run away from me. But that is not the reason I am here. Your time is not yet. I’m here because I sensed that you have had me on your mind of late. I am here to answer some of your questions, save one.”

“And that is?” I asked.

“Don’t ask me how much longer you have,” he said, “that is knowledge that I do not have and it shouldn’t matter to you anyway.”

He was about 10 feet away from me at this point but made no effort to come closer and remained standing on the sidewalk. It didn’t seem possible. Did Death really dress like a preppie?

“No,” he said, “people’s expectations dress me in various guises. In the Middle Ages I was most often depicted in a monk’s habit, the cowl obscuring my face, my bony hands holding a scythe. It is what was expected. I was more familiar to people in earlier times. Wars and plagues took heavy tolls and their view of me as the Grim Reaper seemed appropriate to the time. Priests, after all, often attended the dying and such a stereotype was familiar. Despite at least one recent television program, which depicted me as a loving, caring individual in casual clothes, the Grim Reaper image is the one that most people still associate with me. It is an overstatement of who I am. I am not indiscriminate in my calling, as the image of the Grip Reaper would imply, nor am I loving and caring. I am Death and my sole purpose is to call people from this life when it is their time. I am finished in the blink of an eye and I am gone.”

I had to confess that the Grim Reaper image was the one I associated with death. I had seen the television program he mentioned and felt the Death it portrayed was smarmy and too regretful.

“I always pictured you as Bergman portrayed you in the Seventh Seal, stern faced, business like, but no sense of cruelty about you. Can someone really bargain with you, wager his life over the outcome of a chess game?”
“No,” he replied, “I don’t have that power. My mission is non-negotiable. Your literature is full of such stories, stories where I am tricked or agree to take someone else, stories, such as Bergman’s, which have me delaying the inevitable by playing chess with the individual, one move a day until the inevitable result. Make no mistake, when I call for someone, it is his or her time. When next you see me, it will be your time.”

“If you saw me approaching you as Bergman’s Grim Reaper,” he continued, “you would have bolted long before I got to you. I chose to approach you in a manner that would not seem threatening to you. Television, you see, does alter your expectations. Many cultures have identified me as an angel since the beginning of time. I was named as such in Exodus.”

“A dark angel,” I replied.”

“You may view me as such,” he said, “many artists paint me with dark or black clothing. And there are hints in Christianity that I belong to the Dark Side, that there is an evil taint about me. You view death as unnatural and, hence it is evil. Death is neither good nor bad and favors no one. It exists as one of the constants of the universe.”

I pondered that for a moment as my foot stirred the pile of leaves in front of me. Christians are taught from the beginning that death is our punishment for rebellion against God. That had Adam and Eve not defied God in the Garden of Eden, we would never die. Then I remembered a Rabbi who told me that had Adam and Eve not broken the rules, there might have been only Adam and Eve for all eternity, living chaste and, in my opinion, rather boring lives.
“Procreation,” he said, “implies desire, lust, feelings which, according to Genesis, only came about as a result of eating that apple. Adam, after all, did not know that Eve was naked until he ate the apple. No apple, no carnal desire, no carnal desire, and our sexual nature remains latent.”

To not know true love, it seemed to me, would have been a very real tragedy.

Remembering myself, I looked up and asked, ”what about it, have you existed since the beginning of creation, has there always been death in the world?”

He frowned at this and his impatience with my question was obvious in his voice when he said “you already know the answer to that question. Look around you. Everything in creation dies. Every step you take, every breath, is responsible for the death of some organism. You know that the creation story is a myth, told to give your ancestors a sense of place, of who they were and where they came from. You have been millions of years in the making and the ground on which you stand holds their very bones.”

“What about now” I asked, “has death stopped in the world because you stand here talking with me?”
A slight smile flickered over his lips as he slowly shook his head. “I think you know the answer to that question also,” he replied. “I already told you that everything in creation dies, from galaxies to bacteria. Much as the one who sends me, I am everywhere at once and can act everywhere in an instant. Death does not cease because I pause here with you. My work is never done.”

“Do people see you when they die?” I asked, “do they know who you are?”

“All see me, but the context in which they see me is culturally dependent and not everyone, the Grim Reaper image aside, recognizes who I am. Earlier cultures saw me in the guise of some real or imagined animal, their totem if you will; others in the guise we have already discussed. Many whom you have known saw me as a loved one, a family member, most often a spouse, and they readily reached out their hand to me. Others resist me until the end, fighting to their last breath for the life they love so much. They know the party will continue after they leave and they resent being left out. You, I suspect, are like that.”

“What of ghosts?” I continued, “how can they remain behind?”

Impatient again, he told me, “remember, I only enable your crossing. I don’t conduct you anywhere. Where you go, is up to you. Some people get lost because there was something about their life that they cannot let go of. Not all ghosts are the result of unhappy endings, many get lost for quite different reasons. Some, as I said, resent leaving the party early and stick around for a while until they realize that there is really nothing left for them and they finally follow their ancestors. Some are afraid of what they will find at the crossing, afraid of the hobgoblins which dogged them in life, and remain as shadows, shadows you yourself have seen. There are too many reasons to speak of them here but all of those who linger, eventually, find their way to their proper place. In your terms of reference, some ghosts may seem long lasting, but from the perspective of eternity, their haunting lasts but a second.”

I frowned at this and, hesitating for a moment, finally found the courage to ask, “what can I expect,” I stammered, “what can I expect after?”

“Have you not been listening,” was his sharp rejoinder. “That is largely up to you,” he said. Some see it as an everlasting sleep and their desire usually is granted. They sleep on through eternity, untroubled by all things past, present or future.”

“But even Hamlet, when he said ‘to sleep, perchance to dream, ah there’s the rub,’ was questioning that particular state,” I said.

Death waved my rejoinder away with a quick flick of his wrist. “You waste your time on details, you want guarantees,” he said.
“But what of God,” I asked in a rush, “will I see God?”

Another impatient flick of the wrist. “Again, that is up to you. Remember, I am but the messenger, the power that sends me does not provide the details of anyone’s life. I can promise nothing but an end to existence as you know it. What happens after depends in part on your expectations and how you led your life.”

“You said it wasn’t my time?”

“No,” he replied.

“Is the time and manner of my death, everyone’s death, preordained and set in stone? Do we have no control over the when and the how or are we all doomed to follow a path set for us at conception.”

“The time and manner of your death is largely up to you,” he replied. You have been given free will and that means that the creator sees endless possibilities at the beginning for each individual. He knows the ultimate result, being outside of time, but when he acts within time, he must watch as I must watch. As you grow older, the number of possibilities shrink until that final decision which sets you on your path to meeting with me.”

“Dickens was right, then,” I said, “that men’s lives portend certain endings.”

“Dickens caught a sense of the truth,” he said, “but you see it elsewhere. In the Faust legend, for example.”

“The Faust legend?” I asked, “how so?”

“You’ve read the folk tale and know that Faust made a bargain with the devil that he might have everything he wanted and live as he liked for a year. At the end of the year, the devil could have his soul.”

I nodded my head and he continued: “when the time comes for the devil to return, the forces of heaven tell Faust to turn aside and repent, that forgiveness awaited even him. Afraid, Faust refuses. Three times the angel pleads with him to repent, but Faust cannot. He fears the wrath of Hell more than he believes in the forgiveness of Heaven. The devil is more immediate and Faust is incapable of asking for the forgiveness so freely offered to him and so is drug down to Hell.”

Again I nodded.

“Goethe,” Tod continued, ” prettied up the tale, as you know and has the bargain set that Faust will not die until, at last, he utters the words ‘now I am satisfied’. True to form, Goethe has Faust begin his search for satisfaction in his lustful affair with a young woman who has fallen under his eye. The affair ends badly with the young woman drowning herself rather than facing the shame of bringing a bastard child into the world.”

I nodded slowly because I was uncertain as to what he point was tending.

“We subsequently see an affair with Helen of Troy and other outrageous acts, but at the end we see Faust surveying his world, a world finally changed for the better because of his liaison with the devil. ‘Now I am satisfied,’ Faust says, and immediately falls dead. The devil arrives to claim Faust’s soul as his own when God intervenes and takes Faust up to heaven. The devil cries foul and God tells him that Faust’s ultimate goals, that he used the devil himself to bring about good, erased all of his past sins.”

Tod must have noticed the bemused look on my face because he went on to say: “some Christians tend to view all of this in black and white. You are either on the road to good or you are on the road to evil; stating further that one cannot travel the road to salvation without assistance, that you cannot do it alone. Dickens was closer to the mark; the divine assistance, as with Faust, would be nice, but it is not absolutely necessary. The believer and the non-believer both can make the right decisions and both will end up with the same result.”

I think I look puzzled because he added: “listen! You all make decisions, some good and some bad. The important thing is not to deliberately make the bad ones. Examples of this abound in human history and it seems that the more powerful the individual, the more likely that this will occur. As Lord Acton once opined ‘Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ The powerful forget that their position does not put them on a higher plain; that they are not above telling the truth. If I have one admonition for you, it is to remember this, so that there is more of Heaven in you than of Hell.”

I pressed on, sensing that this interview was about to come to an end.

“What of Heaven and Hell,” I asked, “do they not exist?”

“Not in the way that you think of it. If people are tormented after me, it is their own making. Their separation in this life separates them for all eternity. In a sense, they do pay for their sins, but the payment demanded of them is of their own devising. Dickens, again, caught a sense of it in his Christmas Carol when he showed Marley in torment, trying in vain to help someone. He is helpless and that helplessness is his torment. Another of your authors, C.S. Lewis, wrote that the gates of Hell are locked on the inside.

“Some,” he continued, “who expect nothing after death are quite surprised to find themselves in the presence of the numinous. It sometimes happens when one secretly hopes for that which he or she doesn’t really expect to find.”
I started to object when he continued, “heaven and hell are human constructs. They have no meaning in eternity. You are not eternal in the sense of your creator and, eventually, you will just fade away, you will cease to exist. You have no future when you die, but are part of the great All which is the universe. You are there for a time until you are absorbed by it and become a part of it.”

I looked at my hands holding the rake, the pile of dead leaves, as I tried to make sense of this. So many questions, each leading to another, an eternity of questions. Wanting to ask another, I raised my eyes from the silent ground and realized that the interview was at an end, no one was there. I looked up and down the street, but it was empty. He had, after all, addressed the more important questions. Understanding the answers was another matter and I had much more to ponder than before the interview started. I felt a chill as an imagined shadow passed in front of the sun.

“Are you OK?” my wife called out, “you’ve been standing there so long I thought maybe something was the matter. What did you do, fall asleep?”

“Maybe I did,” I called back, “because I had the strangest dream.” The last part of the sentence fell on silence. She had not waited for an answer but already gone back inside.

It was a cold November day shortly before Thanksgiving, much like any such day in the Midwest at that time of year. Gray, lowering clouds pressed against the shadowless landscape. The threat of snow had hung in the still air all day.

My mother had picked me up from school for one reason or another and had parked on the main street of the small town where I went to school to run an errand. I waited in the car, which cooled rapidly in the late afternoon silence. I should mention that the main street of the town was only two blocks long and one parked diagonally to the curb, an arrangement which allowed for more cars to park along the street while allowing those waiting in cars a full view of the pedestrian traffic. Had the weather been warmer, the passenger side window would have been rolled down to allow conversation with those passersby who wished it. These two blocks included a grocery store, meat market, bank, drug store, dime store, department store, a couple of barber shops, and two bars. Except for the bars, the stores were getting ready to close as 5 0′ clock approached, and people were hurrying to finish last minute errands when the snow appeared. As I said, one second there was no snow and the next second there was. Magic!

I watched as people smiled into this first solid manifestation of winter, some even pausing as they hurried along to hold out their hands to touch the quiet snow. For just a few moments, everyone was a child again, staring in wonder at the snow’s sudden appearance, before remembering themselves and resuming their rush to finish their shopping and get home. Even I got out of the car to witness this event first hand and exchanged bits of conversation with a couple of people as to how much snow was likely to fall. Everyone, it seems, likes the first snowfall of the winter. The seasonal carol, Oh the first snowfall of the winter was a day that we all waited for may have run through my mind at the time since I had an album of Christmas songs by the Walter Schumann Chorus which included this song, although it is more likely that subsequent recollections altered my memory to include that reminiscence. Yet from the smiles and joking banter of the pedestrians as they passed one another on the sidewalk and spoke to me as I stood beside the car, it was obvious that most everyone enjoyed this first appearance. Quite soon, everything was covered with a thin layer of white and meandering paths on the sidewalk marked the passage of the foot traffic while the streets were highlighted by parallel black lines made by passing cars as they drove into the gathering whiteness. As the town closed up for the night, these reminders of our presence would disappear under the continuing snowfall, a landscape which would be largely undisturbed until the next morning when merchants would appear before opening up to rid the sidewalk of what by now had become a nuisance. The exception would be the two bars which took care to keep the sidewalk clear in front of their establishments in anticipation of the evening trade; the Comer Pocket, situated as it was on the corner of the block, had more to care for than the other bar, whose prominently hand lettered sign “No Miners” was its only distinguishing factor.

How quickly the simple joy engendered by such an event pales. The gray days ahead would more than fulfill our expectations of snow. Combined with the unrelenting cold, any residual joy taken from this first snow would finally be erased as the last Christmas present was opened. The coming short days and long nights conspired to keep people indoors and even such outdoor pleasures as sledding and ice skating soon lost their glamour. As children, we began to invent reasons to be out of doors.

One year, to fight the continuing boredom, we got together one Saturday morning in late February with the avowed purpose of building the world’s largest snowman. A damp snow was falling, perfect for snowman making, as we sketched plans for a snowman which was to reach at least 10 feet in height. Eagerly we began rolling the large ball that was to be the base but we soon ground to a halt when the ball became too large and too heavy to push any further. An exaggerated memory would tell you that it was at least 4 feet in diameter, but practically speaking, it was much smaller than that. Although it was not as large as later memory would make it, it was large enough that when we had the next ball all rolled out, also heavier than anticipated, our combined kid power could not raise it into place. We got some 2×4s with the bright idea of sliding the ball into place by means of a makeshift ramp. The attempt failed miserably as our hands pushed into the ball and, rather than moving, it began to crumble under our efforts on the sagging pieces of wood.

Undeterred, we abandoned the idea using the traditional method of building a snowman and fetched buckets and shovels. With these we converted the original first ball into a largish round base that was over three feet tall. We then piled snow onto this platform to create a second level which was above the heads of some of the smaller members of the company. The third and final level was added by a couple of boys foolhardy enough to balance precariously on a couple of rickety wooden step ladders. These two were able to form the head, or what passed for a head in our minds. Some large pieces of coal were stuck into this third level to give “Frosty” some semblance of a face. We stepped back and admired our handiwork, the largest snowman our neighborhood had ever seen, or, we thought at the time, would ever see. Some neighbors complimented us on our perseverance and were too kind to remark that “Frosty” looked more like a disheveled pyramid than an actual snowman.

“Frosty,” being as large as he was, took a long time to melt. Traces of him were visible long after the snows of winter had vanished, well into April as a matter of fact, and a disgruntled parent was heard to murmur that a repeat performance would not be appreciated in future winters, at least not in his yard.

As it was, that November afternoon was the first and only time I actually got to see it begin to snow. Almost, of course, does not count, as in “oh, look, it’s snowing,” nor does checking outside through the window to see if it has begun snowing. As an adult, I no longer have the desire or the patience to sit in a cooling car to wait for someone, even if it would mean witnessing the beginning of the first snowfall of the year.

And it showed no signs of stoppin’, every kind with eyes a poppin’, knew he’d soon be belly whoppin’ on his ear. Oh, the first snow fall of the winter, the first snow fall of the year.

The hotel and Melody in F are intimately intertwined. When we first moved to northern Indiana, we stayed for a time in a house in town. The chronology can get a little garbled, but we probably were not in the house more than three or four months before we moved into a couple of rooms on the first floor of the hotel. These rooms were not ideally suited to this type of arrangement, meant, as they were, for summer guests. The rooms were connected by a door and shared a bathroom. It was not equipped for cooking but there was a hotplate and a refrigerator had been brought in for perishables. We were there but a short time before moving on to yet another rental house about half a mile down the road, finally settling in our house shortly before Christmas.

The hotel, a large three-storied affair, stood empty between September and May. The owners lived there alone for a time before they moved out to a house a couple of blocks away. My parents owned a roller rink down the road (this building may have been part of a livery stable associated with the hotel when it was a stage stop) which was open until 10 or so in the evening on weekends and for special events during the week. I would normally go there when my parents opened for the evening, skate for a while, but invariably would grow tired and leave. By leaving, I mean just that. I would walk alone up the street to the hotel, enter through the kitchen and walk through the dining room to our rooms and go to bed. The owners may have heard me when I passed through the dining room as I invariably would plunk a few notes on the piano that stood along the wall and then stand before a large floor to ceiling mirror on the wall opposite the entrance to the dining room, dancing to my reflection in the dark room. It has been reported that after my few note concert on the piano, I would say “boogie woogie.”

I didn’t like the hotel that much. It was dark in the corridors which were carpeted with a red-patterned runner. The same runner was used on the stairs which ran up one side of the entrance hall. The corridors themselves were illuminated by low wattage bulbs that gave off a red cast. Other than the carpet, there was no adornment, and the row of transomed-doors on either side of the corridor did little to alleviate the gloom. All of the rooms were papered with a floral pattern over a light yellow background. The dining room, also papered, was blue. I had free run of the place while we were there and although I did some exploring, I steadfastly avoided the 3rd floor. Since the corridor lights were not used during the off season, very little light penetrated to this level from the lobby below or from the transoms above the doors; the glow of the transoms merely adding to the weirdness. I was aware that someone or something waited at the back of the hall, watching, and the presence caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. Actually, I had the impression that more than one something was waiting there. They were no where else in the building and, as far as I knew, did not stand beside me as I played “boogie woogie” on the piano, nor did they dance with me before the mirror. Had they done so, I doubt that I could have walked through the darkness to the hotel, let alone enter the dark kitchen or the dining room illuminated only by a light in the lobby.

Some evenings, my parents and the owners of the hotel, as well as anyone else who happened to be in the neighborhood would sit down around a large table in the kitchen and talk about the state of affairs over coffee, boring to a six year old. It was on one such an evening that some people stopped by with their teen-aged daughter. She too soon tired of the conversation and asked me to show here the rest of the hotel. We wandered for a time through the dark halls and I may even have taken her to the 3rd floor, supported as I was by an almost grownup. I showed her the mirror and I showed her the piano. It was then that she opened the piano bench, found the music book and sat down to play, her light-colored dress seeming to glow in the semi-darkness of the room. Although taller than me by a good bit, she looked small as she sat facing the tall upright piano. Thumbing through the pages of the music book, she would try a few chords, turn some more pages, play a few more notes and turn again until she came to Melody in F. She stopped here and said something like “here’s something you’ll like.” I had never seen or heard a piano properly played before and stood hypnotized by the music issuing from her slim fingers as they ran over the keys. It was, I thought, the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.

Finishing, she said “let me show you” and pressed my index fingers on the keys comprising the beginning of the melody. Not quite the same, but recognizable and I understood the purpose to the markings on the page. It would be a few years before I could read music, but I used to pick out those few notes whenever I was near the piano. Dah dahdah dah dahdah dah dahdah dah That was all but it was enough to prompt the repetition of the entire song in my mind.

The memory is sweet as I mark the end of summer. The memory also is sweet since she played it for me and taught me where to put my fingers to pick out a reasonable duplication of that tune. Years later, when the guests had left the dining room for the day, I visited that piano again and took the tattered book that contained Melody in F. I have it still.

- Mother Teresa to the Rev Michael Van Der Peet, September 1997

I often pray when I run, not out of fear of the traffic although some drivers have attempted to run me down on occasion, but in an attempt to have a dialogue with God. Recently, I have increasingly felt that I am talking to silence and that is troubling because it has not always been the case. There have been times, admittedly few, when reactions to my prayers have been almost immediate. Once, when receiving word that my grandmother had died and I was trying to make arrangements to return to Indiana for the funeral, the high school running coach appeared at the front door with our older son, who was obviously in pain, in tow. A misstep while running cross country had caused considerable damage to his knee. I was now in a quandary about what to do, how to handle a situation which had suddenly gotten very complicated. I sat down in the quiet of our bedroom and prayed that the anxiety be taken away so that I could see what to do. Almost immediately it was as if someone reached deep inside of me and I felt all of the frustration and anxiety being pulled away and I was calm. I knew with certainty what had to be done and acted accordingly.

There had been other occasions, not quite so dramatic, when I understood that I had been heard. My quick prayer had been answered. But not of late, not as I run into the growing darkness.

My religious upbringing was casual, typical of the time. It was expected in rural Indiana in the 1950s that people would go to church of a Sunday and that children would receive a Christian education and be confirmed in the faith. I dutifully went to confirmation classes and memorized the appropriate responses but always with the nagging feeling that something was not quite right. I early on questioned some church teachings, but never out loud, never to the pastor. To have done so was to risk censure and a somewhat geeky child did not want to stand out any more than necessary. I knew in my own mind that the stories in Genesis were myth, a belief bolstered by outside reading. In reading the biblical texts, some, out of doubt, others out of conviction, react to various passages differently. Conservatism Judaism could interpret the binding of Isaac differently from what Christians are taught. In at least one interpretation I know of, God did not command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. God was silent. It was Abraham’s own torment at having banished his firstborn, Ishmael, which was the voice in his head. And ultimately it was Abraham’s own sense of the holiness of life, and not an angel from God, that stayed his hand.

As other voices clamor to be heard, it becomes plain that the concept of a geocentric God has to be addressed. The writers of the various books of the bible had no idea of the immense grandeur of the universe, nor of its age; estimated at 15 billion years, give or take a few million. The God of these writers created a world at the center of the universe and the Church charged Galileo, among others, with heresy for saying otherwise. If, as some say, the biblical writings are inerrant, then how do they square the fact that we occupy a rather insignificant world in an average-sized spiral galaxy with its portrayal in scripture? Can it be true that the salvation of the universe comes down to this speck of dust orbiting a small star?

Some insist that God is an inner force, a creative life force that shapes our actions and desires. To discover God and what God wishes of us, we must look within. Several of the Eastern religions hold to that concept. Charged with impiety, Socrates was forced to take Hemlock. The impiety charge stemmed from his reference to his personal spirit, or daimonion, a spirit that never urged him on but only warned him against various prospective events. Contemporaries were suspicious of Socrates’ daimonion as a rejection of the state religion. It didn’t help Socrates’ case any that he claimed that the concept of goodness, instead of being determined by what the gods wanted, actually precedes the entire business of deities.

Speaking of the business of deities, just when did God make his presence known to his creation? The myth in Genesis states that we knew God from the 6th day of creation. The myth aside, one has to ask whether he made himself known to the Neanderthal. The presence of grave goods in some Neanderthal burials would suggest some sort of belief in the supernatural. Did the Neanderthals see ghosts? Did the painters of Lascaux know God? Is the expression of individualism, as is demonstrated by the hand prints silhouetted on the walls of their caves, an indication of their first steps toward an awareness of God? Creationists would have us believe that none of this is true; the universe came full blown into existence a little over 6,000 years ago. They will tell you that man and dinosaur existed at the same time, even though an immense chasm of time separates the two. Our mammalian ancestors co-existed with the dinosaurs but it is likely that, being very small, they were given little notice. When, in the several million year evolution of our species, did God make himself known? It is an unanswerable question and, as such, probably doesn’t matter.

As I grew older, I was distracted by this and other wonders. We stood at the threshold of the space age and I devoured anything written about it; a series of articles in Colliers Magazine, with marvelous illustrations of space ships and space travel, spoke of going to other worlds. At about the same time, thanks to Playboy and Ray Bradbury, I discovered science fiction. The science fiction I read looked outward at new worlds and alien species. We were not alone in creation. An editorial note is appropriate here. The very first issue of Playboy, the one with the nude pictures of Marilyn Monroe, also contained the first half of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The concluding portion of the story was contained in the second issue. A family friend spending some time with us gave me both issues without the slightest hesitation. He had no children and I am forever grateful that he never questioned the appropriateness of giving the first two issues of Playboy to an 11 year old boy. This was the push that opened the marvels of the science fiction writers to me. But I digress.

By the time I reached my 20s, I no longer prayed and, to all intents and purposes, I had left the church. God, apparently not caring for this state of affairs, made certain that I made friends with a woman who was in the same state of doubt. The daughter of a Lutheran pastor, she also no longer saw the relevance of remaining in the church. She discovered C.S. Lewis and urged me to read Mere Christianity. Conversations and letters on this and other of Lewis’s writings talked me, and her, back into the church. A decision I have never regretted. And yet I have doubts.

Not doubts about the existence of God. Personal experience with the numinous has convinced me of the existence of the same. But I am not absolutely certain that we have gotten it quite right. For example, some that I know are excessively complimentary, one could say fawning, in their praise of God in their public prayers. You would think that the God of creation would know all of this and not need us to continually tell him how great he is. That should be a given. Yet we continue our flattery with language foreign to our daily existence. Do we do so to propitiate a god who could squash us like a bug? Certainly there are enough examples in the Old Testament about the almighty doing just that to give us pause. The Incarnation, central to Christian belief, of course, changes the nature of God. The jealous and vindictive storm god of Abraham becomes a God of goodness, love and mercy. Even so, I don’t think we have it quite right. The exclusivity of Christianity, for example, has been responsible for more excesses, some particularly horrific, than I care to recount here. God, in the opinion of some, is far more inclusive than others might think.

I am left, then with the question of the silence which descends on some of us. Early church fathers call it the dark night of the soul and Mother Teresa is but one prominent example. Some would say that the devil sits on my shoulder and whispers doubts into my ear, but that only complicates the matter. The doubts come not from the devil, but from the silence and we are left with the eternal question; “why?”

A gathering of classmates for a 50th reunion. Faces changed by time ask “do you remember me?” And you find yourself embarrassed by the disadvantage. The person has called you by name, you see, and you struggle back through time, seeking familiarity in the stranger standing before you. A name is given and your mind wipes away the age wrought changes and you see shadows of the face you knew and, as the conversation continues, the shadows become reality as the individual becomes as you remembered him or her before.

The class of ‘59 graduated 42 young men and women. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were poised at a moment in history which would see radical changes in the decades ahead.

Many of us had been together since the 1st grade and early class pictures show a motley group of children standing on the steps to the gymnasium, squinting into the noon day sun. Scraps of memory accompany some of those pictures. The 1st Grade teacher who told one boy that if he didn’t stop squirming in his seat, she was going to bring a piece of rope to school and tie him in his seat. He didn’t and she did. It was a lesson in discipline that was not lost on the class; a lesson not possible in today’s politically correct world. Memories of recesses when we would swarm out of doors and expend an hour’s energy in 15 minutes. “Red Rover, Red Rover, let Jerry come over.” The idea, of course, was to pick someone you thought could not break through your line. I have been told that children are no longer allowed to play Red Rover for fear of someone getting a broken arm. We were never hurt and never heard of anyone being hurt, but what did we know, we were just a small school. Oh! For those of you who might not know, the person picked ran as hard as he or she could at the opposing line of children looking for the weakest link and charging into the line. If the line held, the person called over was added to that side. If it broke, the person called took someone (usually the biggest) back to the line from which he or she was called. The game ended either because of the bell or because one of the lines got too small to maintain itself.

Halloween carnivals, sock hops, proms, class trips crowd around as this is being written. One classmate looks to be remembered, the victim of a fatal accident one cold October evening when we were in the 3rd grade. He had been building a fort in the woods when he apparently slipped and caught his chin on an outcropping branch which held him suspended above the ground in the gathering cold and darkness of the night. The bruise was still apparent as our class filed silently by his casket a couple of days later.

Fifty years later, talking to what is now a stranger, the temptation is great to ask repeatedly, “do you remember?” “do you remember?” As we come together for a reception, knots of people, the women mostly, gather together around albums of pictures and clippings and other memorabilia. There’s a picture of my wife at a slumber party. There, some of us are at a picnic. There we are beside cars, in cars, on cars. The people in the pictures are old friends. I recognize them immediately, can hear their voices, the laughter set to a background of Buddy Holly. The person I am talking to, while the same as the person in the picture turns out to be a stranger. We share no common memories and 50 years gave us different challenges.

Forty-two of us graduated and 39 of us remain; one dying early on and two within the last year. Of the 39 remaining, 31 of us gathered for one function or another, many with disinterested spouses in tow. Assembled at the Alumni Banquet held every year to honor that year’s graduating glass, it also honors the 25th and 50th year class reunions, we watched as members of the classes of ‘39 and ‘49 got mention. Listened as the class president recounted some highlights of the past 50 years and gave some vignettes of our time together. We were mentioned in the vignette, my wife and I, and our names were usually said in one breath, John and Judi. It was noted that we held hands a lot. She and I probably are the only ones who remember that we marched in together for Commencement and sat together on the stage, receiving our diplomas one after the other. She first, as it should be. We still hold hands and occasionally still are known as John and Judi. The other class couple to marry were too far apart in the alphabet for such an intimacy at graduation. As an aside, it was amazing to me the number of our classmates who have divorced and remarried. Far more, it seems than those of us, the other couple included, who have stayed together.

There was a buzz around our table as we recognized one of our teachers. As one of our coaches, he also was our Social Studies teacher and was a class favorite. It was he who taught us how to take notes, a skill I maintain to this day. We spoke briefly and, somewhat surprisingly, he remembered my name and went on to tell me that we were the best class that he ever had. Of course, teachers used to tell us that all of the time and we thought them being polite. Perhaps, after all of these years, he really meant it. That he enjoyed subsequent classes less and less is possibly a social commentary. Our conversation reminded me of one I had with another teacher at another gathering, years before. She asked where we lived and what I was doing and, as she got ready to leave for the evening, she pulled me aside and gave me the admonition, “don’t ever come back here to live.” Other teachers, many gone now, I would like to have seen, if for just a few minutes, to thank them for their positive impact on my life, even the 1st Grade teacher.

Still, we were strangers at a table brought together by a common event. Many of the classmates I had not seen in 50 years and, as we parted, I knew that, for many, it was for the last time.

Louis Vierne (1870-1937) was a renowned French organist and composer. On the evening of June 2, 1937, Vierne had just finished giving his 1750th recital at Notre-Dame de Paris, a recital which all attending agreed was as well played as ever. At the end of the concert he was to play two improvisations on submitted themes when he suddenly pitched forward and fell off the bench as his foot hit the low “E” pedal of the organ. He lost consciousness as the single note echoed throughout the church. On that note, he fulfilled his lifelong desire to die at the console of the great organ of Notre Dame. The story of Vierne’s demise was related to us, with some embroidery, at an organ concert recently. The organist had just finished playing one of Vierne’s compositions and was about to continue his recital when he turned to the audience with an impish grin and related a version of the story above, including a re-enactment; a re-enactment which diverged from the truth when, instead of falling off the bench, he slumped onto the keyboard as a discordant chord filled the church.

This little aside, which I suspect may have echoed the current organist’s sentiments, started me thinking about the various ways, pleasant and unpleasant, that we depart this life. I was reminded of the first time I ever considered this subject. As an undergraduate, I enrolled in a course on Goethe’s Faust which was taught by an excellent German teacher, H.L Meesen, who had emigrated to the U.S. just after the war. A German primer “Lebendiges Deutschland”, which he co-authored in 1959, is still widely remembered and available from several sources on the web. He was in his element when he taught Faust because he believed, like Goethe’s Faust, that when one reached the pinnacle of his or her life, that was the time to die. During the course of his lectures he commented on the fact that Kennedy was so young to be president and asked the rhetorical question as to what Kennedy would do with the rest of his life after he left the presidency. The problem for Meesen was that after reaching the pinnacle of success in America, the presidency, just what else is there aspire to. His model, Faust, it was apparent, had the right idea. Making a deal with the devil, he would not die and allow the devil to claim his soul until he could finally say that he was satisfied. One evening, as Faust stood reflecting on his life and surveying all that he had done he said “jetzt, bin Ich zufrieden,” now I am satisfied, at which point the devil closed the deal and Faust dropped dead. I will leave it up to you to read Faust if you want to see how it all turned out. It was Meesen’s ideal that when, having reached the acme of life, you died. Coincidentally, you can see where this is leading, there was a reception for Meesen in the Chancellor’s Office one fall afternoon. He was being recognized by the German government with its highest civilian award for his efforts, to include Lebendiges Deutschland, to rehabilitate the German image after the war. Following the ceremony, he walked back to the building where he had his office, pushed the elevator button and dropped dead. Those of us who were his students had a “well I’ll be” moment, smiled briefly and thought it most appropriate.

Most of us have not gone so far as to consider how or when we would like to die. If pressed, most people would like to die quietly in bed, in their sleep if at all possible. I consider that a bit of a cheat, dying in one’s sleep. I think I would like to see it corning, peacefully, of course. The evening before my aunt died, she went through a box of photographs and old letters while sitting at the kitchen table. She had such a good time as she laughed and cried at the same time, reliving old memories and resurrecting the ghosts of those long gone. When she was finished, she packed everything away quite carefully, went up to bed and died. She must have seen the shadow waiting for her and picked the best possible way to spend her last few hours.

I have heard some men boast that they would like to “die in the saddle,” this being said with a knowing leer. Very selfish of them, I would think, and not very considerate of their partners. I suppose it does happen, yet the obituaries mercifully spare us such details, foregoing the obituary leader “Herbert Smith goes out with a bang,” and instead telling us that the Herbert died of “natural causes.”

Before the advent of excessive realism in the movies, dying people most often were shown lying comfortably in bed, and well made up I might add, surrounded by a loving coterie of family and friends. Amid the tears, the individual tastefully and chastely passes away, sometimes after a soliloquy of 5 minutes or more, causing one to wonder if the person might not have survived had they not talked so much. Heroines in operas somehow manage to belt out a final aria before slipping away. But since most opera heroines die under questionable circumstances (it is the rare heroine who survives the opera), it does not appear to be an end that most of us would want to emulate. Given the choice, most of us would opt for the friends, loving family and soliloquy.

These days, Hollywood is quite graphic in depicting death and on an average night one can see myriad depictions of violent death. People are hacked, slashed, strangled, shot, stabbed, drowned, dissolved, buried alive, hung (let’s see, have I left anything out, well, you can fill in where I left off) in stop-motion, slow motion, color, and black and white. They are defenestrated, run down, pushed in front of moving vehicles and encased in cement in scenes which many of us watch while munching contentedly on a slice of pizza. In one regard, I am convinced that Freddy Krueger was invented to scare teenagers into taking a chastity pledge. His arrival at the end of innocent teenagers doing the deed and their swift and violent end can be no coincidence.

My choice? Quite frankly, I really haven’t given it much thought; non-violently, of course. I only know that I do not intend to go quietly into that good night.

]]> http://jlkuntz.com/2009/04/24/checking-out/feed/ 1 http://jlkuntz.com/2009/04/09/analog-mind/ http://jlkuntz.com/2009/04/09/analog-mind/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:34:18 +0000 John Kuntz http://jlkuntz.com/?p=82

I realized today that in this digital age, I have an analog mind. I had written a note to a friend at work complaining to her that the day seemed incredibly long and that it brought to mind lyrics sung by Joan Baez “It’s the 33^rd of August and I’m finally touching down. Eight days from Sunday finds me Saturday bound.” Even though I haven’t listened to the recording in over 30 years, I could still hear her strong soprano voice. I suspect if I played the record now, I would find my analog memory true to the original. You might ask how this makes my mind analog. The reply is simple, it is the way I access the memories. My mind slides through them much as one used to dial a radio, an analog radio.

For those of you who don’t remember or are too young to know, dialing an old AM radio used to bring a shower of noise as stations were bypassed in the search for the correct frequency. Blehblehlibbleblehlibble “and folks I have here in my hand a bottle of gall stones sent to me by a listener in West Falls. He passed these stones last week as he listened to this broadcast so put your hands on the radio and feel the healing” blehvlehlibbleblehbleh “Page Two. A woman in Poughkeepsie writes in that her dog” blehblehlibbleblehbleh “and I think it is about time we did something about all those liberals” blehblehblehlibblebleh “you’re listening to WOWO in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, 50,000 watts at 1190 on your AM dial and we’re here to bring you this week’s Top 40.” Ah, at last as the Everly Brothers begin singing “Wake Up Little Suzie.” Depending on how fast you dialed, you could make some sense of the gibberish, especially important at night, in a dark car, when your mind wasn’t exactly concentrating on where exactly the dial pointer was.

Perhaps I am making some assumptions that everyone knows just what a dial is. After all, I suspect that a majority of the current generation has never seen, let alone used, a rotary dial telephone. There was no speed dialing with these babies, you had to wait until the dial had returned to its original position before dialing another. In today’s world, with speed dialing, one can call, make a dinner date, and move on to other things while a 1950s vintage caller was still entering numbers. In one regard, analog phones did have an edge over digital phones. You could dial a number without using the dial. You simply tapped the number out on the receiver button. Some might ask why, other than trying to impress someone, we would want to do that. Simple. Some phones had dial locks on them to control outgoing calls, an economy measure when there was a charge for outgoing calls. Tapping out the number got around that little hindrance.

But for some of us, our first exposure to the telephone did not involve a dial, it involved a crank. If you wanted to call someone on your party line (assuming they weren’t listening already, you cranked out the number. Our number was 727, which translated into two long rings and a short ring “RIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGG RING RIIIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGGGG” That told everyone on the party line that some neighbor was calling us and, depending on the time of day and what was on the radio, invited anyone to listen in if they so chose. Calling outside of the party line always involved the operator. You simply held down the receiver lever and gave the crank several brisk turns. This alerted everyone else on the party line that maybe someone was going to have an extra interesting conversation and some went on alert. The operator would come on saying “Number Please.” “Yes operator, I would like “Eavesdrop 455.”

Your call was put through if the party line was not engaged, otherwise you heard “I’m sorry but that line is busy, would you like me to try again in five minutes?” Saying yes, you waited for her to call back with the connection. Long distance calls always took much longer and you normally waited for the operator to call you back with the connection. It was a treat if, on rare occasions, she kept you on the line while she tried to put the call through. “Hello Coldwater, this is Fremont, I am trying to call Central 367 in Detroit”. “just a moment” “Hello Hillsdale, I have a call for Central 367 in Detroit.” “Just a moment please” “Hello Detroit, I have a call for Central 367” And so it went until the connection was made.

In a digital world, it is amazing that we still retain the old vocabulary. Most people still “dial” a number. Yet I suspect that this will change soon as texting, tweeting and twittering assume more prominence. As it is, we no longer hear an announcer admonish “don’t touch the dial, we’ll be right back.” Since televisions no longer have a dial, such an admonition would be meaningless anyway.

Mind you, I’m not against the digital revolution. I like the fact that I can load enough old time radio shows on my iPod to keep me occupied for several weeks and I like the convenience of CDs and their play anywhere capability. Long trips are much more pleasant with a book or two on CDs. Movies and DVDs seem especially made for each other and I predict that the cineplex will go the way of the dinosaur in the not too distant future as more and more people weigh the relatively cheap rental cost of a movie against shelling out big bucks at a movie theater.

blehblehblehlibbleblehbleh “When we are dancing and you are dangerously near me, I get ideas, I get ideas” blehblehblehlibblebleh “Bei Mir Bist to Schoen” blehblehblehlibblebleh bleh “One, two, three o’clock, 4 o’clock rock.” Ah, there it is.