Month: September 2020

When I would visit my grandfather, we got up real early to work in the avocado grove, pruning and picking, or whatever needed to be done.  There is always something to be done on a farm.  After a couple of hours, we would come back to the house, where my grandmother had breakfast ready.

Right after we ate, we would gather in the den, where Granddad stoked up his pipe, and Grandma picked up her knitting.  He opened the family Bible, and we spent some time in daily devotions.  They followed this routine religiously all the days of their lives.

Granddad and I would head back out to the grove; and while following him around like a border collie, I listened to his stories.  As he got older, the stories got repeated over and over, but that didn’t bother me.  I never tired of hearing about the duck with the broken beak, or about the time he threw the thief off the trolley car, or about great-great grandpa Johnson who fought with Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto.

My favorite story was about the time he saddled up and rode his strawberry roan from Austin to San Antonio.  Today by car it is a 90-minute drive, but it took him four or five days each way, enjoying the hill country on horseback, dodging coyotes, and sleeping under the stars.  The year was “eighteen ‘n’ ninety-six.” He was nineteen years old. 

Every kid wants to own a horse, right?  My chance came when my friend Ben had a horse for sale, name of Dude.  I bought the horse and saddle, kept him at Ben’s place, and paid for feed and board.  Dude and I spent a lot of time with Ben and his horse Pete — riding through nearby hills and dales, but nowhere as far as Austin to San Antonio.     

Dude was a quarter horse, a big bay with a white star on his face.  As a younger colt, he was trained to carry a pick-up rider in the rodeo, but that kind of horsemanship was way beyond my pay grade as a cowboy.  He was also well-mannered and schooled in Western showmanship.

And he loved the work.  Whenever we came to the corral, Dude would turn his hip toward the gate and sidle up, like a ship using its thrusters to move sideways into the pier.  With my left hand on the reins, I reached out to unlatch with my right.  While I held on to the gate post, Dude shuffled sideways to open the gate widely.  With my gentle pull on the reins, he would pivot backwards around to the other side of the gate and shuffle sideways again to close it.  Dude knew how to go through gates without the rider having to dismount.  

However, after retiring from rodeo and show work he developed a bad habit. He was barn sour, which means that when you turned for home, he did not want to waste any time. Going out he was mellow; coming back to the barn he was a handful unless you wanted to flat-out gallop. After a few months I had learned how to relax and take charge, and Dude had learned who was boss.  On the days he was rarin’ to go, we compromised on a brisk trot.

When I told my granddad about the horse, he reminded me that next to his grove there was a half-acre of cleared land, completely fenced, where a horse might graze on sweet grass.  He invited me to bring Dude for a visit.

Ben loaned me his truck and horse trailer, and my mom hitched a ride with me to visit her Papa.  When we pulled into the driveway, Granddad was sitting on his front porch; and seeing the truck and trailer, he leaped off his Adirondack.  That moment is frozen in my memory.  There he was in a sweat-stained Stetson, pipe in hand, in his workday uniform of khaki pants, long-sleeved khaki shirt, and those high lace-up shoes with the eye hooks.  He was eighty-eight years old, and he was a kid again, eagerly wanting to know how soon he could take a ride.

He needed a little boost getting up in the saddle; but once he got there, no one needed to tell him what to do.  It had been all of fifty years since his last time on horseback, but nothing was forgotten.  Like riding a bike or kissing a girl, it all came back to him: his back was ramrod straight, his feet perfectly set in the stirrups, his heels down and in, his left hand gently but firmly holding the reins, and his right hand resting comfortably on his right thigh.  He had been there before. 

And off they went. Without so much as a by-your-leave, Grandfather and Dude went down the road and disappeared around the bend.  Only after he had gone did I remember about Dude’s habit of stampeding home at the end of a ride.  We did not want to hurt my grandfather’s pride by telling him not to go very far, but we also did not want him to get thrown by a horse in a hurry.   We waited — my grandmother, my mother and me. Fifteen minutes! Thirty minutes!  Forty-five minutes!  Still no sign of horse or rider.  Just when we began to consider a search party, here came the sound of hoofbeats, clip-clopping on the road.

When they came into sight; oh, what a sight!  He was tall in the saddle, and Dude was trotting along under perfect control and in no apparent hurry.  The horse just knew that he had real horseman up top.  And Granddad was singing an improvisatory tune as he came along—something about a Texas cowboy riding on his horse.  He had gone around to a few neighbors to say, “Howdy!”  Nothing to worry about!

After lunch we sat on that porch and watched as Dude enjoyed the pasturage, and my granddad asked several questions:  Do you have a nice place like this for Dude?  Is there sweet grass up there?  Does he get ridden enough?  He never did ask the real question, and I never answered it. 

Over the years I have thought about getting another horse.  Maybe a strawberry roan!  But it would not be fair to put a horse under anything less than the best rider I ever saw.

“The Waltons” was a television program that debuted in September of 1972.  It ran for nine seasons, and my wife and I never missed.  It was about a family who lived and worked on their land in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia during the Great Depression.  There were seven children, the parents, and the grandparents – three generations under the same roof.  At the end of each episode there was a view of the farmhouse, and you could hear the voice-overs of the family members as the light faded.

“G’night Momma”

“Good night John Boy”

“G’night Grampa”

“Good night Ellen”

o o o o o

After forty-two years in the same house, with loving prompts from our grown children, we decided to scale down.  We took some of the proceeds from our sale and contributed to the purchase of a house where we would live together with our youngest daughter, our son-in-law, and their family.  We now reside cheek by jowl with them and their three boys, under the same roof, but in our own apartment.  Going from 1,900 square feet and four bedrooms to 600 square feet and one bedroom was a major adjustment.  But it does not feel all that cramped because: we frequently spend time at their dinner table, we have whole family movie nights, and we have easy access to the pool and patio.

Reactions to this major life move were mixed among our family and friends.  We got a lot of advice, some of which was requested.  We got many cautions about living with our offspring.  Some people thought we were just nuts, as in … “We could never do that!” 

However, we were steadfast.  We knew this was to be the true course of our lives, but it was not an easy thing to do.  Two and one-half years elapsed, and lots of upheaval took place, from the first conversation with our children about this move until we were finally ensconced in our new home.  If you have ever sold a house and made such a move, you know what that is like. Our realtor team told us it would be one of the most difficult seasons of our life, and they were right.

There were improvements to give the house “curb appeal” in a competitive housing market.  The fix-up cost more and took longer than we planned, and in between it was a mess.  We listed the house, and nineteen families came by to visit, all by appointment.  We had to vacate each time.  We had an offer and opened an escrow, but it fell through.  More visits.  When we finally made the deal, the escrow experience was laughable.  It had been decades since we first bought the house, and oh, the changes and legal requirements!  There was writer’s cramp from signing on scores of documents. 

Then came the move.  Man-o-man, that was tough.

The Garage

If you have lived in your home for forty years, what does your garage look like?  Ours wasn’t terribly messy, and we could still get a car in there; but it was a tight fit, because we had refused to get rid of anything.  Instead of winnowing from time to time, we kept adding more storage cabinets.  Does any of this sound familiar?

When the time came, it was very painful to give away — or throw away — a lifetime of stuff.  Yet, it was also a great blessing.  We donated much of the physical evidence of our history to several charities.  For months we filled the shelves of “Second Story,” a boutique thrift-shop whose proceeds support a ministry which rescues children worldwide from the bondage of sexual slavery.     

What was not usable for donations went into the dumpster.  You know the one.  It is six feet long, four feet wide, and four feet deep.  It is made of steel of the thickness that would protect a Sherman tank, and it is a hideous green.  The dumpster people drop it at your curb, you fill it up, and they take it away a week later. 

Fill it up we did, and not just one dumpster!  You cannot believe how many boxes in how many cupboards contained stuff that we had not looked at in thirty years.  Not until dumpster time, did we wake up to the realization that nobody wanted most of that stuff anyway.  We had a few tender moments as we and our daughters stood around the dumpster and ceremoniously bade farewell to the campfire coffee pot, my mother’s three foot chicken-wire Christmas tree, and the Betamax version of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

The House

The house was never lovelier than when we spruced it up for sale; and moving away was an occasion for real grief.  We miss those friends and neighbors.  We miss our rose garden and the generous lemon tree.  We miss the spreading front porch with its railing and the Adirondack chairs where we could sit together  of an evening, sip on lemonade and watch the people pass by, walking their dogs.

We do not have room in our new house for many souvenirs, but we do have hanging on our kitchen wall a framed, watercolor rendering of our longtime family home on Citronella Street.  This cherished piece of artwork was a housewarming present from our daughter, welcoming us to our new home.         

We do not regret our move.  We gave up a lot, but we gained even more.  Our new neighbors are welcoming and generous.  There is a gaggle of a dozen kids in the cul-de-sac who will be our grandsons’ friends and playmates for years to come — with bikes and kites and sparklers on the 4^th of July. Our garden space is limited, so our herbs and tomatoes and flowers are growing in pots.

We have been pruned way back. As a result, there is some abundant new growth in us.                   

The timing was perfect.  If Liza and I were still in our old house during the Covid pandemic, it would have been unbearably lonesome and challenging.  But we are all sequestered together now.  If either of us had died while still living in the old place, the process would have been doubly painful for the surviving spouse.  If we both passed away at the same time, it would have been overwhelming for our adult children to deal with it all.

God closes some doors and opens others.  We are content in our new digs.  It can be exhausting to be around three rambunctious little boys.  But at the end of the day – literally at the end of every day as the light is fading, we have three little space invaders knocking on our door.  They burst in with their hair still damp from the bath, in their super-hero jammies, coming to get a hug and a story. 

G’night Gramma.

G’night Poppa.

Good night boys.

Bob’s family moved in next door when I was six, and we very quickly became fast friends.  He was more than eager and enthusiastic.  If ADHD had been a thing seventy years ago, he would have been its poster child.  He was much older – like eight — and he was in charge of mischief.  We drove our mothers crazy, because he never ran out of ways to get in trouble; and I wanted to do anything and everything he did.

Not only was he older, he was much bigger.  Because of his size and smarts, in a short time he became the “alpha” kid in our neighborhood.  He was not a bully, never started anything; but if someone else started it, he would finish it.  He had the biggest horns in the herd, and even the older kids gave him a wide berth if he was not in a jovial mood.

Not only was Bob my friend, he was also my bodyguard.  No one dared to touch me.  He also became my hero, and this was especially true when it came time to choose up teams.  I had always been the runt of the litter when it came to sports.  Short, slow, and clumsy, I was always the last guy chosen; but Bob always made sure that I got picked on his team.  Not first, but more importantly, not last!   

And … you could never get the best of Bob.  In addition to his size, his swagger, his powerful personality, and his athleticism; he could talk you into — or out of — almost anything.  If I had gone to the fair, he had been there twice.  If I had seen a good movie, he had already seen it and got in free.  If my new skates cost twenty dollars, his cost thirty and he had outgrown them and thrown them away.

I long suspected that he was bending the truth.  My parents laughed about his always being quick with an answer, calling him an eight-year-old barrister in training.  But whatever my misgivings, there was never a challenge, nor anything that sounded like calling him a liar.  This kid who was the “omega” to his “alpha” did not want to risk being flattened.  I was small, but not stupid.

One of the most memorable times of Bob having the last word came about when my dad stepped up on my behalf to solve a family problem — the shortage of drumsticks!  I was the youngest of three boys; and when we had a turkey, my brothers usually ended up with the legs.    

But on one occasion there was a big surprise for me.  Dad pulled the roasting pan out of the oven.  When he peeled off the aluminum foil, there was this beautifully roasted, golden brown bird with four drumsticks — two sticking out this way and two sticking out that way.  I was wild with glee. 

How did this happen? 

Well, Dad had bought two extra drumsticks and wired them to the bird.  By the time he had basted and baked it for several hours; you could see with your very own eyes, by golly, that there was such a thing as a four-legged turkey, especially if you were a six year-old kid and easily fooled.

Oh, I had to tell Bob.  I ran next door and said excitedly, “You gotta see this.”  When Bob came over, my dad showed him the turkey and proclaimed, “Look Bob, we got a four-legged turkey this time.”

Bob did not miss a beat or bat an eye.

“Oh, we get those all the time.  My dad knows a guy who raises them.”

Bob moved away, and we lost touch.  Several holidays came and went.  By the time I had abandoned my belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and four-legged turkeys; my suspicions were confirmed that Bob was a con man who had repeatedly pulled the wool over my eyes.

But it didn’t matter, because he was my bestie who looked out for me.  What difference did it make if someone else had a four-legged turkey, as long as I was able to gnaw on a drumstick along with my brothers?

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I was just a kid on the way to an adventure with my dad, when we stopped by his office, where he left me for a few minutes in the care of his co-workers.  Three or four men lounging in office chairs, haunches on desks, shooting the breeze, sharing an ash tray.  Just then two people came from around the corner — a man and a woman – pushing custodial carts.  They were remarkable in two ways: they were old, weary, stooped in posture — and they were black.

As they passed this island of desks, my dad’s colleagues talked about them, but not to them.  These men were joking and laughing about this couple as if they were not even there.  I did not get the all the jokes, but I was not too young to recognize the mockery.

My dad came to fetch me.  As we walked away, I repeated one of the jokes I had heard.  What happened next is akin to what a dog experiences when, full steam ahead, he suddenly gets to the end of his leash.  My dad jerked me by the collar.

Without a word he led me on a search through the building until we came upon those custodial carts and their owners.  My dad reached out and shook hands with the man, and tipped his hat to the woman, calling them by name.  They responded, “Good morning, Mr. Ted.”   

“I would like you to meet my son, Tim.  He is eight years old.  Tim, please say ‘hello’ to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson.”  Well, that was my cue.  I stuck out my right hand and said, “How do you do?  Nice to meet you.”

Without hesitation they both grabbed my hand, four hands on one, pumping furiously, patting me on the head and saying to my dad how handsome I was.  The backs of their hands were like coffee, but the palms of their hands were like mine.  To the best of my memory I had never touched, nor ever been in the same room as a black person, except for the train station.  Desperate not to say something stupid, I blurted out, “My granddad’s name is Johnson” — my mom’s maiden name.  They looked at each other and said amid gales of laughter, “Maybe we are related.”  More patting and pumping! 

As we left my dad put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Son, listen to me.  Whatever anyone else says, those people are Mr. and Mrs. Johnson to you. You got that?”

Over the years I would reflect on that morning and my dad’s comment, as I learned about “Plessy v Ferguson” and “Brown v Board of Education.”  As I sat at a segregated lunch counter in a bus station in Texas.  As dozens of well-dressed men and women of color quietly protested on the steps to the high school auditorium where a “Minstrel Show” was being held.  As I saw on the news a governor standing on the front steps of the state university building with a baseball bat in his hands.  As I heard, and sometimes shamefully repeated, jokes of the kind I heard in my dad’s office so many years before. 

It was four hundred years ago when the first men, women and children were dragged off slaver ships in chains and put on the auction block in the colonies of America.  It has been more than two hundred years since the Three-Fifths Compromise.  It has been more than one hundred-fifty years since the Emancipation Proclamation and the passage of the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution.  In 1953 Thurgood Marshall successfully argued before the Supreme Court that black school children in Topeka, Kansas – and everywhere else — should be allowed to attend school with white children.  Two years later, Emmitt Till, a young black man from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi.  He purportedly spoke to or whistled at the daughter of the white proprietor of a market.  Three days later they found his mutilated body.  Lynching was still alive and well in some corners of the country, and I was twelve years old.      

Today in cities all across the land, there are protests in the street, proclaiming that Black Lives Matter.  To me it is a perfectly understandable expression of outrage for those people whose ancestors’ lives, and whose loved ones’ lives, did not matter.

You may be asking why an average white guy like me has something to say about race in America.  It is patently arrogant to think I could know the depth of horror that has resulted from our heinous national sin, going back to 1619.

Yet my own anger came to the surface about five years ago, when Donald Sterling, the longtime owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, was caught on tape with a remark that was beyond a slur.  Do you remember?  Sterling had said that he did not want so many black people to attend Clippers games; and he singled out Magic Johnson, wanting him also to stay away.   

The Magic Man?  Stay away?

The all world collegian with crazy skills and jubilant manner?  The heart and soul and face of the Showtime Lakers?  The hugely successful businessman who used his name, acumen, and influence to bring commerce and jobs to previously under-served communities?  The athlete who was stricken with HIV, and who helped to bring it out of the shadows, who championed research, and who embraced the idea that no one should be shamed?

That Magic Johnson?

Mr. Sterling did get his comeuppance from the NBA, the media, and the court of public opinion — stripped of his ownership, forced to sell the team, banned from the league, and fined a bundle.  Have you learned your lesson, Donald?  If not, here is a piece of advice from a quiet man to his young son.  When and if you run into the Magic Man, just remember this.  He is Mister Johnson to you.  You got that?

It has been almost seventy years since I met Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and witnessed their egregious treatment.  When I began to write this piece five years ago, my purpose was to talk about my dad and his open heartedness.  I saw him as a hero.  He did the right thing at the time; he demonstrated respect, decency and dignity to the “others” in his life. But did I naively believe that common courtesy, a handshake, and a tip of the hat, would be enough?

So much has changed … and has not changed. Four hundred years of struggle, and people of color are dying in their homes and in the streets, by gunfire in the back and by a knee on the neck. Mothers have become afraid to send their sons to the corner market. Is it any wonder that there is so much fury?    

The Scriptures are clear:  every person from every tribe, tongue, race, or nation is made in the image of God, is loved by God, and is therefore deserving of the same promises of life and liberty. The Scriptures also say that we are to love our neighbors — regardless of their appearance or where they worship or how they vote or where they come from.

There were about ten of us in one of the classrooms at the faith-based school where we were colleagues.  It was an August morning a couple of weeks before school started.  We had gathered to pray for one another, and for the students and their parents — a common practice. 

It was our custom to spend some time singing worship songs in addition to prayer; and we were blessed to have with us on that day the pastor of the church where we shared a campus.  In addition to being a wonderful preacher, Pastor Don also had a beautiful baritone voice.

We were barely under way when he began to sing “How Great Thou Art,” and we all joined in.  I got a little sniffly because those old hymns speak to me.  For years we sang them around the piano in my grandparents’ parlor at our family holiday gatherings. 

But before we finished the first verse, the friend and colleague sitting just to the left of me was weeping so hard that we all got quiet.  Through her sobs she told us about her summer at the family home back east, where they were keeping vigil for her aging and ailing father.  He passed away while she was there.  At his memorial someone sang “How Great Thou Art.”

We made comforting sounds and gave condolences, assuming these tears of hers were expressions of grief for her daddy, brought on by the song.  But she cried out, “No!  The reason that I am so upset is because I hated my father.” 

She shared some details of the family history and the relationship with her dad, which are not mine to tell; and during her narrative the woman across the circle from me also began to weep.  She told a similar story.  She had a rocky relationship with her earthly dad.  He had died two years previously, and at his funeral someone also sang “How Great Thou Art.”

Then another friend began to cry.  He spoke of the strict upbringing by a cruel father who never spared the rod. He had left home at 18 to join the Army and never looked back.  His dad had died six years before, and he deeply regretted that he and his dad never really reconciled. At the graveside, someone sang “How Great Thou Art.”

It felt like an episode of the Twilight Zone, that three people out of ten would have similar stories of brokenness with their fathers, and that the same hymn would prompt these memories.

Make that four!  Would you like to take a wild guess what hymn was sung at my father’s funeral mass ten years before? 

Everyone was staring at me. I was beyond sobbing, crying so hard that I was gasping for breath and barking like a seal.  What started out as a day like many other … had become a day like no other.  It was a gut-wrenching moment and a turning point in my life.     

It was a perfect storm of painful tales from my prayer partners who made it safe for me to disintegrate in front of them.  I found myself sharing thoughts and feelings that had never really surfaced before.  For the ten years since he died, and way before that, back into my childhood; I had practiced resentment, anger and unforgiveness toward my dad.

He was a charming, intelligent man who loved his wife and sons, and he was a lifelong alcoholic.  There are many tender recollections of Dad, and there are also chilling recollections of the times when he didn’t show up.  This all spilled out in a torrent of tears and recriminations, right there in front of God and Don and all my friends.  This lifelong burden had bubbled to the surface.  I was raw and weary, drowning in remorse. 

The next sound was the voice of Pastor Don.  This gentle and caring shepherd was the right person in the right place at the right time.     

He knew exactly what I wanted — some measure of atonement.  He knew I wanted my dad to stand before me and apologize; but that would obviously never happen, because my father had been dead for ten years.

Don told me that to be unburdened — to be healed — I would need to forgive my dad from my heart.  He prayed for me and for the others in the room, and he encouraged me to pray for forgiveness for my years of bitterness.  This was not just about my dad and me.  This was between God and me.

He opened the Bible and read a parable about forgiveness from the Gospel of Matthew (18:21-35); and on that very day I copied the entire passage of fifteen verses onto 3 x 5 cards.  I carried them with me, looking at them several times a day, and it did not take long to commit the passage to memory.  All the while I prayed that God would forgive me for the long-standing anger toward my dad. 

This went on for several weeks, yet I didn’t feel any different.  There was still a heart of stone within me.  God could have snapped His fingers and healed this heart of mine in an instant, but I have discovered that His timing and my timing do not always coincide.  Sometimes the Lord answers a prayer with, “Not just yet,” because there is some work to be done.

Four months in, the softening began; and it took another year to come to a place of contentment.  This journey had begun in August of 1981, and by God’s grace, by Christmas of 1982, this heart of stone had become a heart of flesh. 

There is a lovely irony about this story, and it brings a smile to my face.  It has to do with the passage of Scripture from Matthew.  The following verses are a dialogue between Peter and Jesus, and they introduce the aforementioned parable.

Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?  Up to seven times?”  Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.”   Mt. 18:21-22

I begged for forgiveness every day for sixteen months; and every day for sixteen months I prayed for the strength to forgive my dad.  Sixteen months of days is almost exactly 490 – seventy times seven!   

When I consider how deep my resentment was toward my dad, I am aware that God is still in the miracle making business. 

Oh Lord, How Great Thou Art!       

Euclid Avenue is a landmark street, an engineering marvel, and a source of civic pride for three communities.  It runs approximately fifteen miles north to south through the towns of Upland, Ontario, and Chino.  It is a broad boulevard and a divided highway, and the middle is much more than a median.  It is an island, or series of islands, each one about 75 feet wide and one block long.     

Each island is flanked with rows of huge and ancient slow-growth trees, creating a tunnel and a park.  These island parks are individually and collectively the site of holiday events, community celebrations, family picnics, and car shows, as well as a shady retreat for walking and jogging.

Living in nearby Pomona, I was familiar with Euclid Avenue, but I got a much closer look in the summer of 1970 when I was given my student teaching assignment in U.S. History at Chaffee High School in Upland.

My master teacher was a gem.  John loved kids, loved history, and loved teaching.  He had been in the classroom more than twenty years, and he was completely on top of his game.  His classroom management skills were first rate, with a short and simple list of classroom rules; but the students were so engaged that there was hardly any time or inclination on their part to mess around.  Not a moment was wasted.  Everyone was on task, and John was a professional who taught from his feet, not from his seat.

And John kept up.  He did his homework and believed in continuing education.  He was a voracious reader of history and biography, and his summer vacations were spent at the birthplaces of our nation.  His lectures were peppered with historical oddities, anecdotes, and really cool slides.

He was also something of maverick, a political firebrand, and an enfant terrible —  all of which endeared him to the students and occasionally rankled the administration.  He also had a wicked sense of humor and loved nothing better than to keep the kids off balance by messing with their heads.

One day he was talking about the Age of Exploration, circumnavigation, Magellan and Columbus.  He was regaling the students with stories of the mariners who did not grasp the concept of a globe and who feared falling off the face of the flat earth.  In the middle of the lecture he casually dropped the following sentence:

“There are still people around who do not believe that the world is flat.”

He continued his lecture with a straight face; and as I looked around the classroom, kids were scratching their heads, whispering, giggling, waiting for the punch line.  Finally, this one student raised his hand … tentatively: 

“Sir, did you just say that the world is flat?”

John was waiting for it and didn’t miss a beat:   

“Well sure!  Everyone knows that.  I’ll prove it.  C’mon!  We are going on a short field trip”

He led the class down the hallway and out the front door of the school.  They followed him like ducklings to the sidewalk where they turned left to next corner and waited for the light to change in order to cross the southbound lanes of Euclid Avenue and onto the island that was directly in front of the school. 

While the students are waiting at the corner, let us consider for a moment the topic of round earth versus flat earth.  Imagine you are a little over six feet in height and you are at the beach, standing at the shoreline with your toes in the water.  While you are enjoying the view, a ship leaves the harbor and heads out to sea.  The boat gets smaller and smaller as it moves away from you.  At some point, however, it does not just get smaller.  It sinks into the ocean, because the curvature of the earth has carried it beyond your horizon and swallowed it. The horizon is about ten miles for a person whose eyes are six feet above sea level.  

When all the students were gathered on the island, John told them to look down the tunnel.  The street begins in the foothills below Mount Baldy, gently sloping southward, gradually leveling out. As you stare down the tunnel, it appears to go on without end, rising slightly, block after block, mile after mile, straight and flat forever.  The optical illusion was enough to confuse a few students and to give a hint of credence to any the flat-earthers among them. 

The next day, John turned the field trip into a teaching moment.  Just because a teacher — or anyone else — says something, does not necessarily make it so.  You must do your own homework.  There was laughter; they appreciated the joke.  There was a lively discussion.  The whole lesson was orchestrated to challenge assumptions, and to help the students appreciate the world view of seafaring men of the 15^th Century.

They all firmly agreed that the world is indeed round, but apparently not everyone got the memo.

Near the end of the period, John asked me to take over, because the principal wanted to see him.  When he got to the principal’s office, a parent was waiting for him with fire in his eyes.  He assailed John with:   

“What kind of a teacher are you?  My son came home yesterday and reported that you believe the world is flat.”

John was about to explain that it was a joke and a teaching moment, but the dad cut him off.  He was not done.  He shouted:

“I KNOW THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT.  LAST NIGHT I WENT TO THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND LOOKED IT UP.”    

I am pure Southern California, born in Los Angeles, one of the few.  Almost everyone else moved here from Iowa or New England.  They watched the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day with a stadium full of people in the sun, and promptly shoveled the snow off their driveways and headed west.  I can hardly blame them. If the temperature dips below 70 degrees, it is too chilly for me.

Southern California is fair weather and walking on the beach and shirtsleeves in December.  It is a way of life, a feeling, an attitude. It is home.  And one of the best things about living in the civilization of Los Angeles has been the constant, comforting and dulcet baritone of Vincent Edward Scully. He was the voice of the Dodgers from 1950 to 2016.     

From the time they uprooted from Brooklyn in 1958 and became the L.A. Dodgers, blue has been my signature color, and Scully’s voice has been the soundtrack of my life. Vinny has kept me company driving around.  He has lullabied me to sleep on balmy summer evenings.  And like many other Dodger faithful, when I came to the ballpark to watch the game and eat a Dodger dog and wait for that guy to throw me a bag of peanuts, I had my portable radio in my hand and Vinny in my ear.        

People often criticize baseball for being too slow, too drawn out.  It has been described as three hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of athletic ecstasy.  Yet therein lies the genius of Scully.  He has filled the spaces with his knowledge of the game and its rule book and its lore. 

After sixty-seven years in the broadcast booth he finally stepped down, and I really miss him.  I am one among millions who feel the same.  There was something about his approach that made us feel that we were one-on-one, just the two of us talking baseball. 

I miss the way he turned a phrase.

It’s time for Dodger baseball.

He’s comin’ in a hurry.

He’s going back, way back, to the track, to the wall, IT’S GONE!

Trying to sneak a fastball by Sheffield is like trying to sneak a pork chop by a wolf.     

The pitch is way inside — a little chin music.

And for those of you in the Sandy Koufax marching and chowder society…

I miss the way he used language, just the way we were taught in grade school.  His inflections rose on the questions and fell on the declaratives.  He paused just the right amount of time for us to catch up.  You could hear the punctuation.

I miss the way he respected the listeners.  He never talked down; he gave us credit.  He could quote literature to keep the fans alert, without turning them off.  Who else among sportscasters could cite Homer and get away with it?  When the Dodger starter got shelled and the manager pulled him in the second inning, Scully quipped that “…they carried him off on his shield.”

I miss his narrative of the plays within the play, the games within the game.  The duel between pitcher and batter.  The tension as the pitcher carried a no-hitter going in the late innings. Scully turning to the drama in the stands — the emotion on the face of the pitcher’s wife — a nice touch.  The chess match as the opposing managers attempted to look three and four and five moves ahead.  I have long suspected that Tommy Lasorda had his own transistor radio in the dugout, and that he listened to Scully’s analysis before making any moves; because the smartest guy in the room was the guy with best seat in the house, high above it all.

And how is it that Scully came to be so excellent and so highly regarded?  He never phoned it in.  In addition to his skill set and his finely developed craft, his homework and his preparedness were legendary.  And nowhere was his homework more in evidence than in his storytelling. 

That is what I miss most of all – his storytelling.  No one did it better.  It was uncanny the way he could shape a story within the play-by-play without missing a beat or a ball or a strike.  Occasionally a story took a little longer, and it was smoothly carried over to the next inning.  And the stories were always about the players and the game itself, and not about him.  Never about him. 

He had a trove of riches from all those years in the booth, but he also searched out current information about Dodger players and visiting team members and their families and their hometowns.  One of my favorite stories is about a baseball that was handed down from a ball player to his son, and then from the son to the grandson.

Scully was calling a game in which one of the visiting players was that very grandson.  It was amazing that three generations of the same family had made it to the BIGS.   It was equally amazing that Scully had called games in which the son, the father and the grandfather had each appeared! Only someone behind the microphone for more than six decades could honestly give an account of the arc of a baseball that spanned more than half a century.  Scully caressed the story of the souvenir baseball from a moment in the grandfather’s playing days, and how it became a family treasure and a symbol of the enduring power and tradition of baseball.

When he finished the story, eyes were being blotted and the inning was over.  When he returned, he made a statement which gives comfort to story tellers everywhere.  It is quoted here as accurately as I can remember:   

That story about the baseball might not have happened exactly as I told it, but it could have.  

I miss Vin Scully’s humanity.  I miss his humility.  I miss his sense of humor. 

Dodger baseball hasn’t been the same without their all-time MVP.

Early morning walks have been my exercise of choice for many years.  Often up and out before the crows, there has been a deep-down pleasure in the stretching of the miles and the stretching of the steps – thousands of the former, millions of the latter!  Several generations of sneakers and hiking boots have carried the load in urban and sylvan settings, hills and flatlands, trails and park paths. 

There have been fellow travelers, like my friend Steve whose company and conversation I have long cherished; but there have been just as many mornings of soloing, when the quiet clearing of the cobwebs and the stretching of the mind have accompanied the stretching of the legs.  Some of my best thinking takes place on the hoof, when my reveries take place before the sun beats me home.  Those days that have not begun with an amble or a stroll or a power walk just do not seem as positive or as productive.

That was especially true when faced with the deadlines and stresses of a career; but in retirement, and now even more in the time Covid, I have sought the company of music.  A gift of an iPad mini was delightful and very hip, but the little buds hurt my ears. 

My daughter to the rescue.  She ordered a fine pair of headphones, linked them wirelessly to my iPhone, and installed the Spotify app.  It seemed rather dorky to wear this huge thing across my dome with padded covers for the ears; but she placed it on my head and punched up Yo Yo Ma playing “Gabriel’s Oboe” from Ennio Morricone’s breathtaking soundtrack of “The Mission.” 

I got over dorky immediately.  The cello was being played rapturously in the middle of my head.  It was magic.  This daughter organized an all-time playlist, which includes artists I never would have considered.  She dragged me back to the future with gorgeous technology and used it in a subversive manner to expand my musical tastes.  The morning walks were revitalized, and I was inspired to poetry:

Those plastic buds they hurt my ears; my daughter had a perfect fix.

She amazoned some headphones and I got some brand-new kicks.

She knows I like all kinds of music, so she made a Poppa mix

of Elton John and YoYo Ma, the Beatles and the Dixie Chicks,

of Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers, Oklahoma, music flicks.

Of Evan Hanson, Hamilton, Les Miz and operatic hits,

Puccini, Verdi, Saint-Saens, I was all set to hit the bricks

with many of my favorite tunes, and lo, a few surprising picks.

Of new performers, diff’rent styles, my daughter found some mavericks

who did delight and satisfy with OMG’s and fantastics,

like Sara B and Taylor Swift.  Who says an old dog hates new tricks?

I do love Waitress and The Man; and my cake full of candlesticks!

I log the miles and hear new roads, and now my daughter she predicts

that I will never say deep six, that I will never say nix nix,

to new and unfamiliar cliques, that I in time will be a Swifty

and will be forever quick

to keep the beat and walk in time

to Clean and Starlight and Dear John

to Breathe and Fearless and Bad Blood

and Innocent, I Want You Back

to Daylight and Umbrella and

Cornelia, I Did Something Bad

and Tears on My Guitar and We

Are Never Ever Getting Back

Together

May 1992

We drove to Claremont for a wedding on the campus of Pomona College.  We were looking for the Seaver House, the new Office of Alumni Relations and a popular event site.  It is named for a family whose philanthropic foundation has blessed the college for decades.

We parked, got out of the car, stared across the street; and we were confused.  We double-checked the directions on the wedding invitation, and we did a double-take.  The address was correct; but what was perched on the site was NOT what had stood forever at that address on the northwest corner of College and Bonita Avenues.

The Claremont Inn had been the haunt of generations of parents, alumni and other visitors who came to visit the college and the town.  She was an historic, dark, shingle-sided, sprawling, ramshackle dowager.  Students also camped there when the dorms were overbooked, and my wife had been one of those students who were affectionately known as the “INNmates.”  There was a feeling of melancholy because that old familiar aging empress was gone.  Gutted and erased to make way for the new.     

And the new was completely unexpected.  There was not a contemporary edifice of steel and glass.  Instead there loomed before us something even better, something delightful, something magical.  There had risen another dowager, but better dressed, jewel-breasted and resplendent.  She had wide front steps leading up to a grand wrap-around porch.  She owned every imaginable period example of woodworking, leaded glass and architecture.  She stood three stories tall and voluptuous.  A Victorian beauty.

I was in shock, but not just because of her beauty or because she had replaced the INN.  I was in shock because I knew her.  We met many years before, but not in Claremont. 

Circa 1953

Christmas is coming, and my mother is turning our house into a showplace for her art. Mom is an interior decorator/designer with great hands and an eye for color and tremendous energy.  She can take a hunk of ribbon — and this and that — and create Holiday Magic.

To this end she is sending me a few blocks away to pick magnolia leaves from the tree in the yard of her friend, Miss Seaver. She throws a market bag and a pair of snips in the basket of my bike and gives me a little map. 

“Wait a second, Mom, you’re sending me to the busiest intersection in Pomona.  There aren’t any houses down there.”

“Just follow the map and check the address.  You’ll find it.”

I hop on my balloon-tired cruiser and head out.  As I approach the intersection of Holt and Garey, I am remembering what is there.  On one corner is the big Baptist Church; on another, a bank; on another, a motel; and finally, a gas station.  And just as I am thinking my mom has lost it, I look up and there she is, set way back from the sidewalk, like she is hiding.  You cannot see the Chevron behind the massive hedge that borders the property, but you can hear the ding-ding announcing the arrival of customers as they drive over the warning strip at the pumps.    

I stare in awe at this magnificent house. It is a mansion, a wonder, a storybook castle.  By the hedge is an enormous tree, not big enough to shade the whole house, but close.  I assume that this is the afore-mentioned magnolia tree.  Park my bike, take my bag and clippers, walk up the broad steps and ring the bell.  It is answered by an elderly lady.  I ask for Miss Seaver, and she replies, “I am Miss Seaver.”  Expecting a younger woman with the title of “Miss,” I stammer.  My mom will later explain that Miss Seaver is still living in the family home, and she is the sister of one of my mother’s friends in the Pomona High School Class of 1922.

She smiles warmly at my gaffe and invites me in.  I stare and gawk and ask about everything.  She gives me a tour, patiently answers my questions and offers a glass of lemonade.  We sit and sip in the parlor.  There are huge high ceilings, and glaring shafts of light shine through the tall sash windows. 

It is time to pick some leaves, so we go back out to the front yard.  She has already placed a stepladder up against the tree and steadies it as I fill my bag with treasure.  Even as a kid I could appreciate Mom’s eagerness.  Up close these leaves are magnificent, 15-16 inches long, with dark green glossy tops and velvet on the underside.

At other Christmases I will return to that house with fudge from my mom, and Miss Seaver will offer conversation and something to eat or drink.  I believe she appreciates the visitor, and I am taken in by her hospitality and the visions of a house like no other I had ever seen before, or since.  Until… 

1992

After Miss Seaver passed away, the family made a bequest of the house to the college.  It was a complicated undertaking.  The house had to be surgically sawn in two, very carefully loaded on two separate mega trucks, and slowly transported from downtown Pomona to nearby Claremont.  She was put down on the site where the INN had stood, and there she was lovingly and painstakingly stitched back together.

Mom and I had a moment.  As we walked arm in arm up those broad steps and onto the porch and into the house, we reminisced about many things:  my first visit to this grand empress, magnolia leaves, the gentleness and kindness of Miss Seaver and Christmases past.  As we explored the house, we marveled at the largesse of the Family Seaver.  Over the years they underwrote many projects, including a stunning science building and a state-of-the-art theater.

However, their kindest gift was their house.  This gift was especially meaningful because she was not just their house.  She was much more than that.  She was lemonade and tall windows and magnolia leaves and Christmas fudge and the kindness and dignity of her owner. She was their home.

The Seaver home is now the Seaver House.