Tidings from Tim

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.    

Jean and I worked together.  She was secretary, bookkeeper, receptionist, and Girl-Friday.  Bright and cheerful.  Hard-working and creative.  Enthusiastic, quick to laugh, a team player, and totally forgiving of my shortcomings as a boss.  She was the heartbeat of our office.

She had this habit of taking in stray kittens – of the student kind.  It was commonplace to see her ensconced in her cubby with a teenage girl, providing whatever was needed at the time – a Kleenex, a shoulder, a hug, a dollar for a cup of tater tots, or just some good-old, down-home, earth-mother advice.  She also had this habit of saying, “Praise the Lord anyhow.”  All day long!  In any situations, good or bad!

The state of my spiritual life at that time was dormant.  Raised on church and schooled on Sunday clear through high school, in college — and for several years after — I had put it on the shelf.  Frankly, the daylong mantra of this hard-core, church-going Christian woman was rather annoying.

However, as the story of her life unfolded before me, I was amazed at her ability to stay upbeat, because most people in her circumstances would have crumbled.  She had this inner strength that kept her coming back disaster upon disaster.  Her kindness and compassion for others in the face of Job-like challenges was simply astounding.  When asked about it, she cheerfully replied, “I just praise the Lord anyhow.”  I got over my initial annoyance because whatever she was leaning on was obviously reliable.      

Her husband died tragically at a young age and left her with two preteen daughters, which brought her back into the workplace and into my life.  Then she met and later married this fellow who was the father of three girls, so again she went home, and for good.  So sad to lose her as a colleague, I was happy for her and her new life.

Over the years we bumped into each other or called each other from time to time, and some of those years have been tough on her.  Yet whenever we spoke, she had this peaceful and positive attitude; and she has never abandoned her Source.  She has always managed to praise the Lord anyhow.   

When she remarried and became the mother of five girls, she longed for another baby.  She wanted his, hers and theirs.  Soon enough she and her husband were blessed with a bouncing baby boy.  You can imagine how that kid was loved on, fussed over, and fought over with five doting older sister-mommies, right up until he was two years old and they found him face down in the neighbor’s pool.

All day and all night and for the next two years they fought to keep him alive.  There were tubes and shunts and surgeries.  There were clinics, ER’s, IV’s, and hospital beds from here to Philadelphia.  All the other two and three and four-year-olds went to pre-school and played in the sandbox; but John-John’s playground had green walls, and his playmates wore masks and scut-clothes and poked him with needles.

This saga was faithfully chronicled in the local press, and the community sent checks and made sandwiches and prayed and wept over the story of this brave little guy.  He had good days and bad.  He had victories and just as many defeats.  Eventually his little body could take it no more, and he died at the age of four.  The time and money that went into that vigil took its toll.  Their marriage did not survive.

Not long after, an electrical short caused a fire that did thousands of dollars in damage to her house.  How could a person take it?

We met up at a restaurant for lunch.

“How are you?”

Instead of the pain and rancor of divorce, she talked about the personal and spiritual growth in her life.  Instead of complaining about the smoke and the ashes, she spoke with delight about new carpeting and drapes and flooring.  Although she couldn’t hold back the tears over the loss of her child, she spoke of the outpouring from God and the church and neighbors and a village of strangers who had read of her plight and reached out to her with generosity and comfort.    

She had to leave because she had a date.  I wondered if she was still in the business of taking home stray kittens of the human kind.  Would someone take advantage of the enormity of her heart?  Would she suffer additional heartache?  If so, she would wear her pain with grace and continue to do what she had always done.  As she skipped away, she turned and said cheerfully, “Praise the Lord anyhow.”

My annoyance had turned to acceptance, and to admiration, and to emulation.  Jean was a key player — one of the people who paved the way for my re-entry into life of faith.  She found joy in the midst of turmoil and tragedy.  She always demonstrated an important Biblical principle that is expounded in the first chapter of the Book of James.  No matter the hardship, no matter the news, no matter the inconvenience, no matter the loss, no matter the cancer, no matter the circumstance!  Each one is an opportunity to grow in empathy for the pain of others and to grow in the knowledge of God. 

When I was a little kid, my older brothers knew how to stop me from crying.  They asked me this simple question: “Are you laughing or crying?”  And while repeatedly asking the question, they did “schtick.”  I would start to giggle, because they were very funny; but the tears had not completely dried up, and for a few seconds I would be laughing and crying at the same time, ping-ponging back and forth between “boo-hoo” and “ha-ha.”

That feeling of laughing and crying at the same time — of mixing tears of joy with tears of sorrow — returned to me in the days following the death of my father.  There was gut-wrenching grief, but there was also a measure of comfort that his long and painful struggle with cancer had come to an end.  There was such relief and such release that at times a lightheartedness overtook us.  At no time did this feel in any way disloyal to Dad because he had an abiding sense of humor and often found the funny when the going was the toughest.  

My mother decided to stay with my family for a few days, and we shared memories of Ted.  We would start out maudlin, sobbing one minute; then one of us would remember an anecdote about Dad or relate one of the stories from his repertoire, and we would descend into stand-up.    

One moment we were passing the Kleenex, and in the next moment my mom was repeating the joke that my dad had told about a woman whose husband had died.  She gave to the mortician her husband’s best blue suit, in which she wanted him to be buried.  The mortician apologized, saying it was impossible, because her husband had died in a brown suit, and rigor mortis had already set in.  The woman wailed and insisted, and the mortician said he would do what he could.  When she came to the viewing, her husband was laid out in the coffin, resplendent in a blue suit.  The widow was delirious with gratitude.  The mortician said it worked out because another man died the same day in a blue suit, and his wife wanted him buried in a brown one.  They just switched their heads.

I could SO hear my dad.

Mom and I could be sobbing on each other’s shoulders one minute and giddy the next; but we felt the pressure to put on a straight face, because it was time to visit the mortuary to finalize funeral arrangements and pick out a coffin.

The coffin room was in the basement, dimly lit with a low ceiling, and the attendant spoke in the hushed and reverential tones that are reserved for the lately bereaved. There were about a dozen coffins in the room, and these floor samples were wildly different.  Two or three were simple and unadorned, but many of them were over the top, gaudy and garish.  They were festooned with expensive brass fittings or fuzzy, felt-like exteriors, or expensive inlays, or completely clad in copper.  One-half of the lid was raised on each one so you could see the interior.

On top of each one was a little sign with the price of the box, which included a list of “extras” if you wanted to pay for the “memorial service package.” It all seemed pricey for something that would be buried forever, and it made you wonder if the price of the coffin was a measure of how much you loved the dearly departed.  The little sign also read, “All major credit cards accepted.” 

There was one coffin that was very high-end with burnished chrome on the outside and tuck-and-roll satin upholstery on the inside.  It could have been confused with a shiny new ’56 Cadillac convertible, fins and all. 

“Hey Mom.  Check out this beauty.”

She came over, took one look, and without missing a beat, said,

“Your dad wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing.”

We laughed out loud, right there in the coffin store; and Ted would have said, “Good one, Audrey.” 

My dad’s needs were simple, and his demands were few.  In the end we picked the one he would have preferred – the budget box of polished wood.   

The funeral service was appropriately somber, especially when our friend Mary Lou played keyboard and her friend sang “How Great Thou Art,” my dad’s favorite hymn.  The solemnity of the High Mass had us all on simmer, but when my brothers and I and our wives and our mom all piled into the same stretch limo for the drive to the cemetery, the morose disappeared.

Anything we saw, everything we uttered, and every single thought for the next 15 minutes turned to laughter. Here we were filling the limo with laughter, while mourners in the following cars were no doubt dabbing their eyes; that made us laugh even more. The driver of the limo, our family friend Jack the Mortician, was giving us the fisheye, and that made us laugh even more. The fact that we were giggling and not crying made us laugh even more.

When we arrived at the cemetery, people poured out of their cars.  We stumbled around that big pile of dirt and gathered at the gravesite under a spreading oak tree; but someone was missing – the priest.  Father Jack was a longtime family friend who drove from Los Angeles to officiate at the mass; but why wasn’t he at the graveside?  We waited, and waited, and waited.  No Jack.  We finally rounded up a substitute priest and carried on.  Now everyone was chuckling, not just the family.  Where the heck was Jack?  Ted would have laughed at that for sure.   

What happened next sobered everyone up.  My dad was a 17-year-old kid in the year 1917 when he enlisted in the Army and was shipped to the fields of France as a “Doughboy” in World War One.  Because of that, he was accorded full military honors.  Three soldiers were there, two of whom displayed the Stars and Stripes, while the other played “Taps.” If there is anything more mournful than the soft blare of a bugle floating over the gravestones, I am yet to hear it.  They folded the flag into a neat triangle and one of the soldiers knelt before my mom.      

“This flag is presented to you, Mrs. Piatt, in honor of your husband’s service to his country.”

He placed the flag in her lap.  Then he stood and saluted.

Audrey hugged that flag to her chest and bawled uncontrollably.  That was the moment when the full weight of her loss sank in, and that was the real and honest beginning of her grief.

By the time we returned to the house, Audrey had composed herself, but she was still clutching the flag.  Someone cracked open the champagne and the wake began.  It had always struck me as odd that you would end the funeral with a party, but not anymore.  I can think of nothing better to do than to celebrate someone’s life.  For two or three hours we frowned a little less because he was gone, and we smiled a little more because we knew him.  We enjoyed some grape, hugged one another, cried some, laughed as much, and all agreed that Ted would have loved his own funeral.

But what about Jack?  We had told him that the burial was at Sacred Heart Cemetery, and he said he knew how to get there.  But what we did not know, and what Jack did not know, was that there are two cemeteries with the same name.  He drove to the one in Los Angeles, while we were waiting at the one in Pomona. 

We laughed at Jack’s expense.  We laughed that we stood at a graveside, waiting for a priest.  We laughed even harder that — at the same time — there was a priest wandering around a graveyard, looking for a funeral.

Oh, how Ted would have loved it! 

Note:

“Doughboy” was the nickname given to grunts in World War One. The nickname “G.I.” is from World War Two, when every single item from a tin of Spam to a Sherman tank was stencil-stamped “Government Issue,” or “G.I.”

Dad:               Good night, Darlin’.

Daughter:     G’night, Daddy.

Dad:               I love you, Darlin’.

Daughter:     I love you more, Daddy.

Dad:               Well, I love you down the hallway and through the kitchen and into the dining room and by the living room and back down the hallway and back into your bed, and more.

Daughter:     I love you more than that.  I love you down the hall and the kitchen and the dining room and the living room and out the front door and down to the mailbox and back inside again and down the hall and into bed, and that’s how much I love you.  More.  More. 

Dad:               More than that, huh?  Well, I love you down the driveway and down and around the cul-de-sac and back home again.  How ‘bout that?

Daughter:     I still love you more.  I love you down the street and three times around the block and up the hill and real fast down the hill and all the way back home and right back here.  That’s how much more!

Dad:               More, huh?  Ha!  I love you into the car and past the library and clear to the school and through the park and all the way back home again and into your beddy-bye.

Daughter:     Still love you more.  I love you back into the car and over the hill and through some meadows and to the zoo and all the animals and all the way to Grammy’s house and back home again.

Dad:               Hold on!  I love you into the car again and over two freeways and through the valley and over to the airport and up into the sky and over to Phoenix and into a taxi and up to Dammy and Grandfather’s house and the doggies and the swimming pool and all the way back home again.

Daughter:     Oh Dad.  I still love you more. I love you down to the airport again and up into the sky again and clear across a hundred hours to Boston and New Hampshire and to the lake and the canoes and the dining hall and the ice cream and the loons at night and all the way across the country again and back into bed.  More.  More.  More.

Dad:               Not more than this!  I love you all the way down the hall and the kitchen and the living room and  the driveway and the mailbox and the cul-de-sac and the hill and the library and the airports and Grammy’s house and Dammy’s pool and the zoo and all the animals and Squam Lake and all the loons and jetting down to Florida and to the Space Center and into a rocket ship and up beyond the sky and about one hundred and fifteen times around the earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean and get picked up by a helicopter and put in a chauffeured limousine and back into our house and back down the hall and back in the sack.  Whew! I love you more, more, more!

Daughter:     WOW, Dad.  That’s a lot, Dad.  G’night, Dad.

Dad:               Good night, Darlin’.

Daughter:     Hey, Dad?

Dad:               Yeah?

Daughter:     I love you more.