August 28, 2023

As our wedding reception wound down on Saturday, August 26, 1978, Sandy and I realized we didn’t have enough cash with us to pay the bill. We told the manager of the place we’d send him a check that day. We didn’t have a postage stamp to mail the check. The post office was closed (grocery stores didn’t sell stamps).

In late afternoon we drove the near-deserted streets of downtown Nashville and climbed the darkened stairs to my office to get a stamp from my desk.

Fortunately I had a key. We found a stamp and an envelope, wrote the check, and dropped the envelope in a mailbox. Then we went to dinner at a Ruby Tuesday’s which, like most of that chain, is long gone.

As with every other couple, our anniversaries are benchmarks for recalling things. That October we went camping at a state park in Alabama. On the way we stopped at Sandy’s parents’ place in Cowan, Tenn., and watched the Yankees play the Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series with her dad. The Yankees won, 5-1. We drove through heavy rain the rest of the trip down I-59 and set up our tent, using a flashlight, in the downpour at midnight.

In those early years, we’d drive to Cowan for R&R weekends. I went fishing with her dad and uncle on giant Tim’s Ford Lake near Winchester. Her folks had bought property at the lake. Then the company he worked for closed. They moved to Nashville and asked us if we wanted to buy the lot. We didn’t have the money. Now we wish we had found a way.

Over years, anniversaries come and go in a kind of blur. Young couples with kids discover this. Unless you’re sentimental or mark dates on the calendar, they seem to come out of nowhere.

You can “google” your anniversary date (or any date) and find both amazing and pedestrian things. On August 26, 1682 the English astronomer Edmund Halley discovered the comet named after him. Then too, on August 26, 1907 Harry Houdini escaped from chains underwater at Aquatic Park in San Francisco. Our daughter’s and son-in-law’s wedding date was June 6, 2009—they didn’t plan to commemorate Operation Overlord in 1944, but it worked out that way.

We annoy our kids with our ancient stories. Still, we place memories in the sweep of change. In 1978 I used an IBM Selectric typewriter at work and thought that was high-tech. My desk phone had rows of buttons. In ’78 or ‘79 Sandy took a night course in computer programming at nearby Belmont College, studying Fortran. She passed the course, it didn’t do much for her career.

At that time Jimmy Carter was president. He was known for his cardigan sweaters, turning down the White House thermostat, and his July 15, 1979 “malaise” speech. He never used the word, but he did say, “A majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.” Less than four months later 52 American diplomats were taken hostage in Iran and held for 444 days.

For many, the stampede of technology may be the significant theme of the past 45 years. Anyone with gray or thinning hair, or no hair, can pinpoint some experience with “devices” that now seems awkward or comical. We bought our first computer in 1986. It was made by AT&T and cost nearly $4,000. The hard drive had 12 kilobytes—right, kilobytes, of memory. Your cellphone has the equivalent of thousands of those.

Our oldest daughter was born in ‘79, the last three kids were Reagan babies in ’82, ’84, and ’86. In 1986 I took a job in New Jersey, we packed up and moved to a rented house in Red Bank, 40 miles south of New York and close to family. A year later we landed in Virginia.

Those were the now-infamous years of runaway inflation and the sky-high interest rates imposed to choke it. Our initial mortgage on the Virginia house was 13 percent. We tumbled forward through the late 1980s. Anniversaries came and went.

By 1990 the kids were all in school. In August we took a week’s vacation at a state park in southern Virginia. Driving home we heard President George H.W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announce Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. They and other allies initiated Operation Desert Shield, the buildup of forces around Kuwait. In late February ‘91 it became the 100-hour war called Desert Storm.

We worked overtime to move forward. In ’94 we took a 16th anniversary trip to New York. In ’98, for number 20 our kids treated us to a cruise on the Potomac.

In 2003, number 25, we splurged and went to Rome. At a public papal audience attended by thousands at the Vatican, we found ourselves in the front row, pushed against the ropes. John Paul II rode by in his popemobile. I thought he stared down at us.

Americans persevered. We struggled, all of us, to move into the new century. The running meter of anniversaries kept ticking, but we hardly noticed. Our kids were in college, then graduated, then job-hunting, then working. They all trekked across the world, Europe, Russia, Japan, Latin America, places we had never been. We tried to keep track of them.

We look at cataclysmic events that now shape the world and our own lives. Experts still argue whether Desert Storm spawned the festering Middle Eastern hatred of the U.S. that exploded on 9/11 then led to the second Iraq war and the 20-year agony of Afghanistan. Three years ago we lived through covid, which may be back.

The sterling moments of our wedding on that stifling August day have receded into the dim past. The church, St. Mary’s in Nashville, is surrounded by high-rise office towers. The rectory building was demolished, the square footage paved as a parking lot.

We look again at the photos. The priest, the parents, and some of the guests are gone, the rest, like us, are moving slowly to their medical appointments. Still, we recall with happiness the Mass, the lovely notes of “Ave Maria,” the good wishes all around. We remember, too, that we didn’t have a stamp.     

August 21, 2023

An avocado tree grows in our kitchen. A year ago I placed an avocado pit in a cup of water on the kitchen table. Now a magnificent tree stands, nearly six feet tall, in a corner near a window. Some of the rich green leaves are 15 inches long, broad and thick. New shoots rise continuously from the top. We water it every few days, but don’t do anything else. It seems indestructible.

I look at the tree in the morning, when sunlight reflects warmly off the leaves. In the evening we watch the news shows, which are all about tragedy, now the agony of the people of Lahaina. Yet the lovely tree raises our spirits, evoking, somehow, hope.

Beautiful things coexist with danger. The life of the tree is fleeting, temporary. Eventually it will shrivel and die. Still, like everyone else, we look for beauty wherever we may find it.

In two years the tree has been our only step forward in the bare, nondescript kitchen. It was time to do more, to do what everyone we know has done: put in a new countertop. Really, isn’t that what everyone does? It was time to make the effort.  

We had put in a countertop in our Virginia house years ago, either quartz or granite or marble. I don’t remember the details, how we made the decisions. I was at work when the contractor installed it, so I didn’t watch the job. It was shiny, went well with the kitchen colors.

The previous owner of our South Carolina home, Miss Jean, was an elderly single lady who more than decade ago papered most of the walls in elaborate old-country flower patterns. We never met her, she had moved to a nursing home. She sold the place to pay those expenses, her nephew handled the sale. He told us her only child, an adult daughter, had died of cancer some years ago. That cruel blow, it seemed, ended her interest in the house. She didn’t have internet service for the last five years she lived here. It was her final place.

The kitchen, a short, narrow passageway, is called a “galley kitchen.” The countertops were the standard bargain-basement laminate installed by the homebuilder, a solid off-white shade that, without constant attention, easily chips or stains.

The house was on a downward slide. We had it painted. A month after moving in the water heater died, we replaced it. Four months later we dipped into savings to replace the rickety furnace/air conditioning unit because it failed in the dregs of a stifling South Carolina summer. No one would visit us, even for a few minutes. We installed new faucets in the kitchen and bathrooms. Then we stopped, exhausted.           

Every homeowner yearns for this improvement or that one: a deck, a patio, a renovated basement, and so on. Some decisive folks take on complicated, expensive projects, creating beacons for others who believe home improvement to be a benchmark of success. A new water heater and furnace don’t qualify. We wanted to add something beautiful.

We talked and talked about it. We walked through Floor & Décor and looked at their dazzling variety of stone types. We looked at the displays at Home Depot. We looked at pictures everywhere. We found a coupon for a company in Spartanburg.

A salesman came to the house with a briefcase and eight samples, all variations of a vaguely white pattern. I guessed he left his other samples in his car when he saw our house. He measured the kitchen and gave us an estimate. We hurried him out the door. We stopped at Encore Stone, a big warehouse filled with twelve-foot-long slabs of quartz, soapstone, granite, and marble. We walked among the aisles and left more confused.

This was the middle of the tiny industrial neighborhood of this small town. A block away from the warehouse, as we waited for a traffic light to change, Sandy noticed a house turned into a business named “Kitchen and Bath Gallery.” We pulled into the lot.

Inside, a middle-aged lady was talking on a cell phone, surrounded by stone samples. “I’m Sherry,” she said with a smile. She said she and her father ran the business for years. He retired, she took over. We looked around. I was tired of this. We picked something.

The rest was a kind of blur. A few days later Sherry’s guy, Carlos, show up and took measurements. We talked a bit, he was from Mexico, near Acapulco, and came to the U.S. as a teenager. He raised a family here. I wondered, why here? There’s lots of work, he said. This town is booming. People are building, fixing things. 

Within a week Sherry had ordered the stone and had it cut. A few days later Carlos and his son showed up with the new countertop lashed to the back of their truck. In an hour they had ripped out the old countertop, laid in the new one, and fastened it in place.

We said thanks, they said so long. A plumber arrived that afternoon to reattach the water and drain lines. We waited 24 hours to use the kitchen. It has turned out OK. I wondered what Miss Jean would think.

Whenever we visit Nashville, I drive by the old house, near Vanderbilt University. It’s been 37 years since we moved away, the neighborhood has gone from middle class to upscale chic, populated by professors and university honchos. The house has been sold and sold again, and worked over inside and outside. I want to knock on the door and ask to see the rooms.

Miss Jean wouldn’t recognize our place if she stopped by. Well, yes, she would. A paint job, new faucets, and a new countertop in two-and-a-half years isn’t that much. But we’re another short step beyond the home she left us. Then there’s our avocado tree, reflecting the sunlight, making us happy, inspiring thoughts of continuing, refreshing new life. She couldn’t miss that.

But it won’t last. And she’s not coming.

We’ll come up with another fix-it idea, maybe an upgrade to the bathroom.  We’ve already talked it to death. We have to cost these things out. We’ll fall back into our maybe/maybe not routine, and wait another two years. Or more.   

August 14, 2023

Trivial things sometimes take control of our lives for moments, sometimes longer. A few days ago I slid into a chair at the Country Café on U.S. 25 near Pickens, South Carolina. I was exhausted and hot after a hard mountain hike at nearby Table Rock State Park.

Usually I go straight home after these outings, but the road ahead was under construction, which meant a traffic tieup. I called Sandy, she said stop and get lunch. I turned off at the Country Café. I knew what I wanted, a cheeseburger and a Coke. The protein and sugar would help. The waitress—er, server, approached and offered a one-page laminated menu. I waved it aside.

“I’d like a cheeseburger and a large Coke,” I said.

“We have Pepsi, she said.

“Pepsi.”

The young woman glanced at the menu with her sparkling brown eyes.

“We have a cheeseburger platter, with fries and coleslaw. There’s no other option.”

I took the menu and looked it over. Right, cheeseburger platter, fries and coleslaw, $10.99.

“I don’t want fries,” I said.

“They come with it. With coleslaw.”

I didn’t want fries or coleslaw. I don’t like French fries. I just wanted a cheeseburger. Is there no way I could order only a cheeseburger?

She made the decision for me, actually no decision was needed since there was no other option. I would have to get the eleven-dollar platter or something else, a sandwich platter, dinner entrée, or salad. I didn’t want those, either.

I nodded, she smiled and walked away. I reminded myself I didn’t want fries. But it wasn’t important enough to get up and stomp out. No other restaurants were nearby.

The diner scene from the 1970 classic Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson and Karen Black, flashed back. Bobby Dupea (Nicholson), in a booth with his girlfriend and two women hitchhikers, in that silky-smooth Nicholson voice, orders a plain omelet, coffee, a side order of wheat toast. But he wants tomatoes instead of potatoes.

“No substitutions,” the waitress announces.

“What do you mean, you don’t have any tomatoes?”

“Only what’s on the menu. You can have a plain #2 omelet, it comes with fries and rolls.”

“I know what it comes with, but it’s not what I want.”

Not to go on about it, but Dupea finally orders an omelet and a chicken salad sandwich, hold the butter, mayo, and lettuce. The angry waitress repeats his order. He then tells her to hold the chicken and bring him the toast and a check for the sandwich.

“Hold the chicken?” the waitress asks, incredulously.

Things explode. Dupea sweeps the table setting onto the floor, soaking the waitress, and he and the women are thrown out of the place. In the car one of them laughs at his cleverness in ordering toast. He answers, “Well, I didn’t get it, did I?”

I guessed I could have said, in a sarcastic Jack Nicholson tone, “Hold the fries, the bun, and the coleslaw, bring me the cheeseburger.” I’d still be on the hook for the price of the platter.  But I was too tired to go the Pieces route. The girl was sweet, I don’t think she’d throw me out.

She didn’t know me and wasn’t old enough to have seen the movie. She might have worried that if she served only the cheeseburger, I might make a scene and refuse to pay the full price for the platter. I nodded and went along with the platter-only rule.

She brought me a plastic plate with my cheeseburger enclosed in a giant bun, a mountain of fries, and a cup of coleslaw. I stared at it, then took the burger from the bun, ate it, guzzled my Pepsi, and pushed the rest away. A heavyset guy at the next table gave me a curious look. I thought for a second of offering him the fries. I asked for the check.

“I’ll get you at the register.” She rang me up. “That will be $17.55. The Pepsi was $4.45.”

“Okay,” I muttered, but I was thinking, wow, with a $3.00 tip that’s $20.00 for a cheeseburger.

Five Easy Pieces was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Jack Nicholson (he didn’t win). It’s not what anyone would call an uplifting story; more of the timeworn “men are angry, alone, and alienated” theme. But for that, it’s well done.

The diner scene shows Dupea, the Nicholson character, as quick-witted and clever, the waitress as cranky and obnoxious. So the audience laughs when Dupea sends the table setting crashing to the floor, the water spilling on the waitress. She got what she asked for, is the reflexive reaction.

I didn’t feel an urge to do what Dupea did.  This is a minor annoyance, way down the scale of minor annoyances. I should have forgotten about it. Some restaurants, especially diners with high customer turnover, do have a “no substitutions” rule. They’re probably thinking, what if somebody gets a non-menu item then argues about the charge?

So the rule may cause irritation. The customer does have the option the young woman didn’t mention, walking out. He would be angry at having to find another restaurant. The “no substitutions” restaurant would lose the business, the server would not get a tip. If he stayed the confrontation might continue, tempers might flare, as they did in the movie.

This is happening all the time. Right now, political figures are mudwrestling, calling each other corrupt, traitors, criminals, lunatics, exchanging ugly threats. Some of us are out of control, like Bobby and the waitress.

Things are not always the way we like. We don’t have to be awful to others. Only solution:  don’t let the problem get personal. Take the platter. You may not want it, but the alternative is worse. The lesson: move on.         

August 7, 2023

Love may lead us to joy, and hate to tragedy. For many, they lead to Shakespeare. Who hasn’t seen Romeo and Juliet? Or Hamlet or Macbeth—or at least heard of them? Or heard or read these lines: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act 5, Sc.5, 27-31)

Those words are spoken by Macbeth on hearing of his wife’s death, shortly before he is killed. That is, after he has murdered Duncan, king of Scotland and his guards, his friend Banquo, and ordered the murders of the wife and child of Lord Macduff.

An outfit called the Warehouse Theater, with support from the city, sponsored performances of Macbeth here for two weeks, admission free, on a makeshift stage in the city park.  Mitchell Grant, a construction superintendent for Habitat for Humanity, had the title role. Unlike most of the amateur cast, Grant received professional training, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London. His practiced, powerful voice boomed across the park with the agonized authority and pathos of the character.

Macbeth, as Shakespeare readers and watchers know, is a nobleman, the Thane of Glamis, in Duncan’s Scotland. After victory against the rebel MacDonwald, Duncan gives Macbeth a higher rank. But the promotion ignites Macbeth’s and his wife’s murderous lust for power. He and Lady Macbeth die pitiful, violent deaths.

The Bard still lives in performances of his work, famously at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford-on-Avon, where he was born (1564) and died (1616), and everywhere else. He studied Latin and classics, but did not have the university education of well-known scholars and writers of the time. In his twenties he moved to London and became an actor, writer, and part-owner of a theater company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. One story is that he became involved in theater by caring for the horses of theatergoers.

He wrote and wrote, sometimes in anonymous collaborations, the histories, the tragedies, the comedies. In 1599 his company built the famous Globe Theater, where his plays were performed. He acted in his own plays and those of others.

The chronology of his life and work is enchanting, history in its purest form. He returned to Stratford at about age 49 and died at 52 in a house called New Place. The house no longer exists, the site is owned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Many years ago, while in high school and college, I rode a bus, sometimes with a friend, sometimes alone, from Jersey into New York City to attend summer performances of Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Like most Shakespeare festivals around the world, the shows were free. You waited in line for your tickets.

The theater had no seats, you brought your own chair or sat on the grass. I recall seeing the tragedy Titus Andronicus, the history Richard III, a couple of others. The shows ended around midnight, in time for me to catch the last bus.

To say that Shakespeare’s work defines the sweetness and beauty of the English language is a given and an understatement. Those who struggle to write well, and those who appreciate authentic literature, recognize the abuse it has taken over the centuries since the Bard wrote these lines: 

“All the world’s a stage, the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.” (As You Like It, Act 2, Sc.7, 146-149).

Or:

“If it be you that stir these daughters’ hearts Against their father, fool me not so much, To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, Stain my man’s cheeks!” (King Lear, Act 2, Sc.4, 315-319).

Or:

“Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so for my peculiar end. For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In compliment extern, ‘tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at. I am not what I am.”  (Othello Act I.Sc.1, 65-71)

Written English appears in limitless shades, from great literature to graffiti. Today we get this immortal prose from the former, once more indicted president’s campaign: “The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes.”

Shakespeare’s story always has been flavored by legend and myth: that he plagiarized the work of others; that others wrote the plays and he took the credit; and so on. But we have the 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three longer poems. We know his genius.

Shakespeare elevates English to a kind of art form. His plays probe the depths of the human heart and the unknowable range of the power of men and women to create and act on ideas, emotions, desires, and ambitions, for good and evil. We cannot read A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Hamlet without coming away awed at his insights into our own lives.

So the plays are performed in hundreds of small towns and large cities worldwide, more than 400 years after his death. The Greenville Warehouse Theater’s series concluded last week. As the play ends with Macbeth’s death, Malcolm, Duncan’s son, then steps forward and promises a return to civility and honor in Scotland.

The audience, stunned, stood and applauded. They came to enjoy a warm summer evening in the park, and as a bonus watch a famous play. They witnessed a performance of power, a study of the tragedy but also the dignity of the human condition. Lovers of language, written and spoken, will be back next summer, here, and everywhere.