Introduction: A Planet of Mongrels
[My kids gave me a membership, or subscription or whatever, to Storyworth.com as a birthday present. It’s an Internet-based program designed to facilitate writing a personal memoir, with the goal being a handsome, printed volume that will set you back about a C-note. Assuming that no one in their right mind will pay that for my story, I am publishing it on Silverback Digest. The justification for this is three-fold:
- Although parts of this have appeared previously, they have never appeared in chronological sequence.
- Publishing it online allows me to include many of the videos that could not be part of the printed volume.
- It doesn’t cost anything! (Being frugal is an essential part of my identity. My wife Sandy lovingly just calls me “cheap.”) SB SM]
And now … Extra-Ordinary: A Memoir of Step-by-Step]
Without wanting to incite a biblical debate, the human species has been around for about 200,000 years. My story (yours, too) started in South Africa.
In time humans, who are very adept in adapting environments to their needs, migrated north, the east, then west. According to my genome analysis (as provided by National Geographic) I have genes that went in both directions. This surprised me, as I thought I was a purebred British islander with roots extending into Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. When I visited “my people” in the fall of 2013 by returning to the supposed ancestral homeland, I learned that there really are no Scottish people. The Scots are a mongrel breed consisting of Celts from Ireland, Vikings from Norway, Picts from wherever Picts came from, Normans from France, and all manner of English slime.
Similarly, my wife, Sandy, proudly claims Sicilian heritage, and her National Geographic test backs her up, but her father was Hungarian, and the Sicilians are a minestrone of Moors, Greeks, Normans, Phoenicians, and Arabs. Everyone has had their way with the Sicilians. To be Sicilian is to be yet another mongrel.
We’re all mutts, making race, and its artificial distinctions one of the world greatest granfalloons, the proud, but meaningless, association of humans as defined by Kurt Vonnegut in his mind-altering novel Cat’s Cradle.
Other notable granfalloons are political boundaries and organized religion. How many wars have been fought for race, nationality, or religion? How many lives have been lost, over nothing really.
It’s no different with canine mutts. Great Danes and Chihuahuas are the same species. Put a male and a female in the same room when the female is in heat, and they will find a way to copulate. (Don’t ask me how; I can’t figure it out either.) Three or so generations of this and you’re back to the ubiquitous mutts that are universal from Puerto Rico to New Delhi.
Humans, like dogs, can interbreed. It’s been happening for 200,000 years. It’s not going to change.
Something else I learned
Who Am I? And Why am I here?
I’ve reached the legacy period in life, in which we try to figure out who we are, where we came from, and why we were put on this planet. I haven’t given much thought to these questions previously. It’s been enough to get up, put my pants on one leg at a time, then put one foot in front of the other in the eternal quest to meet the next deadline.
With this noble purpose in mind, my wife and I set off for Scotland to discover my ancestral roots. Total disclosure: I don’t really know how Scottish I am. My surname is “Morris,” which is the 32nd most common name in America. This is fact. I know because I Googled it. The origin of the name is either “of the moors,” meaning that I come from “a broad area of open land that is not good for farming” (Merriam-Webster). Alternatively, it could mean that I am Moorish, i.e. a Muslim of Berber and Arab descent from Northern Africa. Shakespeare’s Othello was a famous Moor. In other places the name is reported as a derivative of Mars, the Greek god of war, or it can be an anglicized version of the French “Maurice,” as in Chevalier. Am I making progress? And that’s just my father’s side.
My mother’s side of the family, which I carry in my middle name of Hunter, offers an easier identity hook. It is obvious that a Hunter exists to put meat on the table. Family lore, which gets pretty fuzzy when you go back more than two generations, places the family in the Ayrshire district of the Scottish lowlands. Assisted by my good friends Google and Wikipedia, I soon discovered an organization called Clan Hunter USA.
I have a Clan! I am somebody! Not just some warlike North African living in open lands not good for farming.
Home! for the Hunters
Moreover, the clan has a motto (Cursum Perficio– “I will complete the course,” meaning the hunt), a tartan, and even a castle! The clan can date its roots to 1107, when WillielmoVenator (translation “William the Hunter”) was granted lands by King David I in the years following the Norman Conquest. The mighty Hunters fought alongside William Wallace and Robert the Bruce in the Scottish Wars of Independence, and they defended their homestead against repeated threats from the Vikings. The castle dates from 1374 when the British Crown granted a charter for lands for the whopping annual sum of one silver penny.
We arrived in Edinburgh (Edin-burrah, not “burg” as in Pittsburg) and immediately beat a path to a tourist shop featuring all manner of Tartan chotchkes. “I’m a Hunter,” I told the store clerk. “So am I,” she answered, “it’s about the most common name in Scotland, kind of like ‘Smith.’”
Undeterred, I purchased coasters, key rings, postcards, and even shot glasses festooned with the clan markings. Yes, the shot glass cost $17.00, but where else are you going to find a shot glass with Cursum Perficio on it?
No riff-raff allowed!
A few days later we were in the village of West Kilbride to personally tour the ancestral home. Keep in mind, there is not a single scrap of evidence to connect me with this place, family, or clan, other than the Scottish proverb that says “he who would have a gown of gold is sure to get a sleeve o’it.” This was my sleeve.
Oh, there have been a few changes since 1107, notably the grounds upon which Hunter Castle (called “Hunterston”) sits were at one point taken by the British equivalent of eminent domain, and not one, but two nuclear power plants were built just beyond the tree line visible from the castle ramparts. (Perhaps there’s a connection to the fact that I’ve devoted my professional life to promoting all things green and renewable.)
I’ve also taken a crash course in Scottish history, enough to know that the misty look that comes over the eyes of Scottish-Americans when they sip a wee dram and blubber about the “auld sod” is based on something other than fact.
Scotland lost its quest for independence at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Bonnie Prince Charlie, a wannabe King, had rallied the Highland forces into what proved to be a suicidal attack against the disciplined English forces. Although the prevailing image is of kilt-clad Highlanders brandishing swords and shouting Braveheart-worthy war screams, the truth is that the battle lasted barely an hour and was an utter rout for the Scots. The Prince stayed well clear of the front lines, escaped and went on to live as a degenerate exile on the European continent. The vanquished Highlanders, by contrast went into an extended period of poverty and cultural repression.
Scotland, at this time, was a country of hereditary land owners (lairds) and subsistence farmers (crofters), who rented their modest holdings from the lairds. This system worked when times were good and the crofters could afford their rent, but throw in the occasional potato famine and the lairds began to think that it was more profitable to have sheep rather than those pesky crofters on their lands. In what has become known as The Clearances, the crofters were evicted, often by force, and sought asylum in places like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.
This, in all likelihood, is my legacy. The Hunter family still has the castle and estate, but my people were the ones who got the boot. Even though I’ve paid my $35 membership fee to become an official member of Clan Hunter USA, I am one of the huddled masses whose ancestors were deemed less valuable than sheep.
Scotland regained a measure of independence in 1999 when the country established their own Parliament. People there still grumble about Culloden and Bonnie Prince Charlie being the rightful heir to the throne, but I’ve let it go. I’m glad to be in America publishing “practical information for friends of the environment.” To that I raise a glass with a wee dram and say “Cursum Pacificio!”
I bought a hat to fit in with the locals. I look the part, right. Went into a pub and a local said “What part of the States are you from?” “How did you know I am from the States,” I said. “Yer hat,” he returned.
PS– One of the very cool things we did in Scotland was to attend a traditional music festival in the seaside town of Dunbar, a town whose claim to fame is tied to being the birthplace of John Muir who is widely renown as the father of environmentalism, is now celebrated with statues, civic monuments, and a museum. When his family emigrated to America, however, they were impoverished and looking for opportunity, as were, most likely, my Hunter forebears.
Chapter 1: Extra-Ordinary
My Mama must have loved me. That’s the only explanation.
I have no writing talent, but I’ve written a bunch of books. I have no music talent, but as long as I adhere to the mantra of “loud, fast, the get-the-hell off the stage,” I can fool some of the people. I’m not an intellectual, but people give me credit as one. I know little to nothing about business, but I’ve earned a small fortune as a marketing guru, and I’m not funny, but many people know me, first and foremost, as a humor writer. The truth is, I’m just a wise guy who never quite graduated from adolescence. I am the Eternal Sophomore.
Here I am in my mother’s arms visiting the home of Flora and Logan Fields on Little Squam Lake in New Hampshire.
I blame my Mama. Because she loved me, I grew up invincible. Because she loved me, I grew up thinking I could do anything. Because she loved me, I knew that all the best of life would come my way.
As my life is heading for the inevitable finish line, I am forced to acknowledge that I have fallen short of some of my life expectations. Fame and fortune? Let’s just change the definitions. I am a household word, admittedly in a small number of homes, but they are the homes I care about. In terms of money, unless I am unlucky or stupid, I should have enough to last until I die. World’s greatest lover? It’s quality, not quantity, that matters.
Beloved? Um-m-m, not my style. Talented? By my definition, yes. Respected? Well, who needs respect, anyway?
Why, then, a memoir? Aren’t those for exceptional people living in extraordinary times, who accomplished amazing feats. Why yes, yes, and yes! I am that person, the one who stands out from an entire generation, the one who inspires myth and legend, the one celebrated in song (albeit, my own), the one who lives on after the flesh has returned to dust. And all because my Mama loved me.
I hope your Mama loved you, too!
****************************
But my Mama was not the only one who made me feel special. On Post Island our neighbors Rita and Charlie Johnson cared for Rita’s elderly mother. One day, prompted I’m sure by my mother, they invited me on to their porch and invited me to sing “The Happy Wanderer.”
I was about six years old, too young to have learned to be self-conscious. I launched right in and belted out an acapella version. Everyone on the porch showered me with praise and they gave me a shiny dime— the exact amount of legal tender that could be exchanged for a small soft-serve ice cream cone at the local Dairy Queen.
Henceforth, nearly every time I walked by the Johnson’s porch, I was summoned to perform my signature version of “The Happy Wanderer” and pocketed many a shiny dime for my efforts. Truth be told, I began to make a point of making sure my route took me by the Johnson’s porch whenever I could see Rita’s mother out there.
As a result, it became fixed in my head that I was an exceptionally good singer and a born entertainer. Time passed. Old mother Johnson passed away. No one gave me dimes for singing “The Happy Wanderer” any more, but the notion that I was an extraordinary singer was firmly etched into my brain. It was years later that I learned that my crooning abilities were slightly below average, but by this time my self-image was set. The discrepancy between my singing ability and the harsh reality could now be explained by one, tiny punctuation mark. I was not an ordinary singer … I was extra-ordinary.
Chapter 2: Post Island
Post Island is a community that is part of the city of Quincy, Massachusetts, 8 miles south of downtown Boston. This is probably what it looked like in 1850 or so when it was still part of the John Quincy Adams estate.
Eventually, the land was carved into tiny quarter-acre parcels that were sold to the huddled masses of South Boston and Dorchester to become part of the “Irish Riviera.” My grandfather, Robert Henry Hunter, built our family’s cottage on Post Island around 1900.
Grandpa Robert Hunter and Grandma Edna Foster Hunter
Here’s an entirely fictionalized account of what happened in my novel “Stripah Love” that was originally published in 2005.
“The Gordons came to Boston by way of Nova Scotia in the mid-1800s. By the turn of the century they were well established as accountants and actuaries and dentists in Dorchester and South Boston and started coming to the Quincy shore for aquatic recreation. At first these were manly affairs, the men staying in simple camps that accommodated expeditions to hunt ducks, catch flounder, or dig clams. Bull and his three brothers, including Artie’s father Bruce, weren’t consciously aware of it, but they were continuing a tradition that had been lived by generations of Wompatuck Indians before. As the Gordon boys grew older, they began to bring their girl friends on their salty excursions. Their camps became gentrified, a great place to spend the Roaring 20s. Then, the girl friends became wives, and there were lots of little kids.”
My mother, Connie, was one of those little kids.
That’s Connie on the left, younger brother Gordon in the middle, and Bob on the right.
Brother Bob turned out to be the business success in the family, developing a machine that cleans and recycles the fats used in deep frying. His company, the R.F. Hunter Company, is still in business after more than 75 years, and is still in the family, now under the watchful eye of his grandson-in-law, Paul Santoro. It started off as a fish store, Hunter Sea Foods, and evolved into a manufacturing business.
The R.F. Hunter Company played a significant role in the development of both Howard Johnson’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. I described this in “Stripah Love.” I am a writer who thinks of research and fact checking as cheating, so my accounts are unsullied by either. Bob Hunter was the inspiration for “Bull Gordon” From “Stripah Love.”:
“But what he really knew was fat. All fish fryers know that food tastes best when cooked in clean oil. Over time the fryers become cesspools of all that has been cooked before. When Bull looked into the cost factors of his business, he was surprised to find that fat, even more than fish, was the highest cost commodity in his business. He could have done what most small restaurants do and just use the fat longer and longer, until a single piece of fish reveals the entire history of the summer. Or he could have kept the fat fresh, and raised his prices. Instead, he developed a simple pump and filter that cleaned the fat and extended its usable life. Not only did it reduce operating costs, but it improved the quality, consistency, and taste of his fried foods. He called the device the Gordon Filtron. The take-out fish shop thrived, but Gordon’s Sea Food was about to morph again. The owner of an ice cream stand in nearby Wollaston came to Bull to learn the secrets of his grease. He had just opened a restaurant and wanted to served golden fried clams, just like those that came from Bull’s fryers. People were traveling more, he told Bull. They wanted familiar food in familiar places. His plan was to open restaurants with instantly recognizable orange roofs all over the country. And his name was Howard Johnson.
Bull nodded, and agreed to outfit his fryers with Gordon Filtrons,
The R.F.Hunter Filtrator in real life. A few years later another local entrepreneur approached Bull. His business, a small coffee and donut shop, was only a few miles away. If Bull’s fat filter could improve the flavor of Howard’s fried clams, wouldn’t it work with donuts, too? In not too many years Dunkin’ Donuts were sprouting like weeds up and down the Eastern seaboard. The restaurant was closed down because it made more sense to manufacture Gordon Filtrons than fish & chips. Bull’s small place in fast food history was assured.”
The cottage at Post Island was, for many years, the constant in my life. I was there, at least for a while, every summer. This simple structure withstood the Nor’easters and hurricanes of more than a hundred years. Eventually, in March, 2017, the cottage met its match and was destroyed in a storm that devastated much of Post Island and resulted in the seawall being raised for the third time in my life.
Post Island, pre-sea wall
My life, like the tides, cycles back to Post Island periodically. It is one of the connective tissues of my life. Music, another. Beer, arguably, is a third. A fourth, and one inextricably intertwined with Post Island, is baseball.
Post Island was a very self-contained place. It’s a private community of 40 houses, wedged between two other middle class neighborhoods of Quincy, Hough’s Neck and Adams Shore. It was no more posh or exclusive, but because it was private and set off by a surrounding salt marsh, Post Island maintained an aura of aloofness. For kids, the three short streets plus the beach were the world. Occasionally we would dash across the marsh to go to Perry’s Store (right across the street from Hunter’s Sea Foods). and at night we’d stroll as a pack up to the DQ (Dairy Queen) where $0.10 or $0.15 could get you a small mountain of creemee.
There were two annual excursions that were as much a part of summer as thunderstorms and shooting stars–Fenway Park and Nantasket Beach.
If you take a boat from Post Island, past the Pumping Station and Peddocks Island, across Hull Gut, and continue along Nantasket Roads until Boston Light is directly on your left, then hang a right, you enter a different world. No longer do you have the protection of the Harbor (let alone the inner sanctum of the puddle that is Quincy Bay). The water is now colder, and the waves higher. Life, overall, is more vibrant and beguiling.
To your right is a two mile stretch of sand, Nantasket Beach, for many years the last stop on the trolley for Bostonians seeking relief from the summer heat. To your left, just over the horizon, is Portugal.
Depending on the light, time of day, or state of inebriation, the beach can take on a spectrum of complexions. They are all intoxicating. The Atlantic always feels icy at Nantasket, especially compared to the mud puddle of Quincy Bay where the waters are warm by passing over the sun-baked flats twice a day. Within a few minutes, however, the waters become inviting, beckoning. Make no mistake, however, something very titillating is going on.
We’d generally go to the beach in the afternoon and save the amusement park for the evening. Paragon Park was a delightfully sleazy place, filled with tough-looking teenage guys and painted women smoking cigarettes. I loved it, of course. Our parents held us withing their protective grasp, but this is what made me want to grow up. There was something going on here that I wanted to understand.
The clackatyclack of the roller coast is always accompanied by a soundtrack, and the soundtrack is a loop, and the song that’s playing is “Palisades Park” by Freddy “Boom-Boom” Cannon. But there are other musical memories associated with Post Island:
* The jingle for Adventure Car Hop on Route 1 in Saugus where if you said “Woo-Woo Ginsburg” into the speaker after ordering the daily special, you’d receive another one FREE. (You can read that full story, and hear the jingle on SilverbackDigest.com).
* Anything and everything by Roy Orbison. “I was all right, for a while. I could smile for a while …”
* The summer I showed up with my electric guitar and plugged it in in the garage/bunkhouse. The same group of kids that had been my bunkmates just the year before, crowded in. They thought the guitar was cool as I fumbled my way through the intro to “Walk Don’t Run,” but it was instantly clear that we, as teenagers more than Post Islanders, were now on different planets.
Step Morris, Bobby Pearson, Ricky Reyenger circa 1963
* The summer of 1971 when I got my “just-in” copy of the highly-awaited Who’s Next album. Lacking a proper hi-fi source of playing music at the cottage, Laura and I went up to my Uncle Bob’s basement where he had one of those all-in-one hi-fi units, a Grundig, I think. We pored over every aspect of the album … cover photo, song lyrics for the next couple of days, listening to the album probably 15 times. Laura, who had followed me into Who fandom, now happily shared the obsession and fantasized about having Roger Daltrey over for dinner.
* Coming back for a Cuzzins Reunion so that Patrick, Jake, and now Whitney could meet the extended family. On the way home, in the car, we sang a round of:
*** From a hand-written sign in Hunter’s Seafoods, in the area where clamdiggers would bring their harvest to market.
** Clams, clams, clams, clams,
Clams, clams, clams, clams,
Briny as the ocean, sweet as candied yams,
Everybody’s eating chocolate-covered clams.
*** No honkeys, no crackies, no muddies, no sandies
No honkeys, no crackies, no muddies, no sandies
** Lyrics by Rutherford Robbins Romaine, III (Yale 1970)
A Post Island inspired sea shanty
Chapter 3: Me & Lefty
Me & Lefty, or “Here’s How You Throw a Curve.”
The cottage at Post Island, soon after my grandfather finished building it
Rita and Charlie
During summers at Post Island I ran around obliviously, being a kid. My parents lived in a parallel world of grown-ups. They were best friends with Rita and Charlie Johnson whose house was separated from ours by a single lawn.
Fourth of July Costume Parade at Post Island, circa 1954. Cousin Martha Hunter (left), Sister Jan, and mystery kid
The couples were polar opposites. Charlie was a pressman, a union guy, who toiled, often on the night shift at the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and, in my earliest memories, the Boston Traveler. His employer changed as the newspaper world declined, but the union assured that he always had a paycheck. When he was on the night shift, there was always a morning paper waiting for us on the front porch. Dark complexioned and from mysterious circumstances, Charlie would never talk about his childhood, other than he grew up poor and from Maine. He treasured his time in the Navy during World War II, and a misty film would come over his eyes at sunset when he gazed out over the placid waters of Quincy Bay and uttered his catch-phrase “You know, there’s a lot of water in the Pacific.”
There was a suggestion of trouble in Charlie’s past, but he decided to straighten up and fly right when he met Rita White, a blue-eyed and dark-haired lass from a tight-knit, Boston/Irish family. She came from the same world as my father, second or third generation survivors of the Potato Famine, now bootstrapping their way up the ladder of success in America. For my father, John, this meant working his way through Suffolk Law School (in those days you could go to law school without having completed an undergraduate college degree.
John Joseph Morris (1911-1983). Pretty damn good-lookin’ guy!
To support himself he worked at a settlement house in Cambridge where he met my mother. She was a happy-go-lucky graduate of Bouve College where she majored in physical education. She chose to attend Bouve with her good friend, Dot Allard, because “we both loved to dance.”This was during the Depression, and my mother, Connie, had a college debt of $2000 to pay off. She got a job as a social worker at a settlement house in Cambridge. Settlement houses were institutions providing educational, social, and recreational opportunities for under-privileged women in the inner cities, often immigrants.
She took great pride in her work and her $19/week salary was nothing to sneeze at. She was one of the few women who had jobs at the time, and she not only paid off her college loan, but was able to help John with books and other expenses. Eventually, at $2900/year, she was the highest paid girls’ social worker in Boston! And she loved to dance!
Despite differences in their backgrounds, John, Connie, Rita, and Charlie hit it off famously. (The notable exception was when the discussion turned to politics, where Connie and Charlie held opposite and contrary world views. They had some pitched battles that lasted for weeks.)
Putting politics aside, they’d gather nightly on the brick patio beneath the oak tree in the Johnson’s back yard where Charlie would serve his renowned “Mah-toonies” from a half-gallon fruit juice jar that was kept perpetually refrigerated and perpetually full of gin. Charlie, himself, never touched martinis; he drank only the occasional beer. He was very quick to provide refills, however, on everyone else’s glass.
I am now the keeper of the famed glass Mah-toonie jar. It is, alas, currently empty.Later, when I reached legal drinking age and would occasionally join them for their evening cocktail, I discovered the secret of Charlie’s famous martinis … SIZE, they were HUGE. Knock back two of them too quickly and you were gone for the night.Rita had an aura of glamour to her, a suggestion of Elizabeth Taylor-style beauty, but without the lavender eyes. She read all the movie magazines and knew the latest Hollywood gossip. She and Charlie took exotic vacations on cruise ships and to casinos, where they occasionally had celebrity sightings, of which Rita would regale us under the backyard oak tree.
Lefty
They were also personal friends with Lefty and June O’Dea Gomez, the Hall of Fame pitcher for the Yankees and his glamorous actress wife.
Here’s what the New York Times had to say about Lefty upon his death at the age of 80 in 1989. “In his 14 major league seasons, Gomez won 189 games, lost 102 and was nearly flawless in the World Series, winning 6 games without losing in his 7 starts. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. Back in the days when baseball games were being played on lazy summer afternoons and the Yankees were winning more games than anybody else, few persons symbolized the sport more joyously or successfully than Vernon (Lefty) Gomez, who was known to let a batter wait while he watched an airplane go by.
The light-hearted left-hander reflected the mood of the business by breezing through 13 seasons as one of the happier, more colorful souls on the landscape: the Singular Senor and El Goofy of the Yankee pitching staff, and a wit and raconteur of the front rank.But he also reflected the Yankees’ dominance of the business in the middle years of the empire, starting in 1931, when Babe Ruth was king, and ending in 1942, when Joe DiMaggio reigned.”
Vernon “Lefty” Gomez, his wife, June O’Dea the actress, and daughter Vernona in the trophy room where I once slept.
I had heard Rita and Charlie reference Lefty, June, and their daughter, Vernona, many times, but since neither were baseball fans, the references with about family life, homes, good times they had shared … in short, things of little interest to a nine year old boy.I don’t know how the couples met … on a cruise? There was an air of unreality to this supposed friendship a baseball legend. I knew of Lefty’s baseball career, which Rita and Charlie cared and knew little. Rita, in fact, was much more impressed with June O’Dea’s Hollywood credentials than Lefty’s baseball stats. He was basically the guy who bridged Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, maintaining Yankee dominance in the post-Depression and pre-war era.
He was likable and colorful, but he was a Yankee, and even at nine I was old enough to know that the Yankees were our enemies. His record, especially his winning percentage, were among the best in baseball history, placing him inarguably among the greats of the game.
We made a summer road trip to Connecticut to visit my mother’s dancing friend, Dot Allard, now Prevost, who lived in Southington, Connecticut. It was a trip the Morris family made annually, but on this occasion the Johnsons came with us. Trips like these were always on the tedious side for me. The Prevosts had daughters who were more my sister’s age, and the girls were all off at summer camp, so the fringe benefit for me was that I could snoop through their 45 records and Archie comics while the adults did their adult thing … you know, smoking cigarettes and drinking martinis.
Upon leaving, however, I learned of a change in plans … we were going to visit the home of the Gomezes, and I was going to sleep in Lefty’s trophy room. I was thunderstruck by this news. I was going to meet a big leaguer! I was going to meet a baseball legend. I was going to be sleeping in Lefty Gomez’s trophy room!
Charlie told me that one of Lefty’s quirks was that he liked to steal interesting road signs, and that other people liked to steal them for him, too. Before long we were snaking our way up the secluded drive where the woods were filled with colorful road signs that Lefty had collected. “Slow Children,” “Bump,” and “Bangor … 19 miles.” No wonder he was nicknamed “Goofy.”I wish I could tell more about the visit. Sure enough, Lefty and June treated Rita and Charlie like best friends. They were great with the Morrises, too. There was little baseball talk, although the trophy room was like having Cooperstown all to myself. Unfortunately, despite Lefty’s affability, I retreated into a world of bashful intimidation. This was crazy … my normal-people parents were being friends with a REAL, LIVE BASEBALL PLAYER!
The next morning we packing things into the car and saying our good-byes in the driveway when Lefty appeared, holding a baseball and two gloves, one of which he offered to me. We soon fell into the easy rhythm of playing catch, a ritual that instantly relaxed me and made me feel at home. Finally, Lefty, holding the ball making a twisting motion with his wrist and announced “Curve ball.” He threw a lollipop curve at about 30 miles per hour. Then he threw another and another.
After the third or fourth, I had had enough. Tucking my glove under my arm, I … Steppy Morris, age nine … walked over to where Lefty was standing and made the pronouncement that made me a legend on the brick patio under the oak tree in the Johnson’s back yard on Post Island. “No,” I said taking the ball from him with complete confidence, ” … here’s how you throw a curve.” And, I showed him.
Poor Lefty Gomez. For all these years he had been doing it wrong, but I set him straight.
Chapter 4: The Pantheon of Small Kindnesses
My first home was the Charlesgate East Apartments in Boston’s Back Bay, almost within the shadow of Fenway Park. Whenever I take in a Red Sox game, I always look to see if there is a commemorative plaque. There never is!
From Charlesgate East we moved to Albany, NY, as my father, a manager with the American Red Cross, was transferred. Two memories. We got our first television set, and the one thing that could get me to bolt out of my crib at night was the commercial for the Mohawk Carpets. Indian tom-tom … dum-dum-dum-dum … “car-pets from the looms of Mohawk.”
By the time the slogan came on I was on the couch, seated next to my Dad. My mother would try to put me back to bed, but he seemed glad to have me there. Usually, he would get me a glass of ginger ale and let me sit with him for a while. My Daddy loved me, too!
My sister, Jan, was three years older. One day, she was having some friends over for a birthday party. As the prototypical younger brother, I was prepared to show off and to do anything possible to attract attention. “Don’t bother,” she warned me. “We’re just going to ignore you. I don’t care what you do. You can stand on the table and wiggle your penis, and we’ll just ignore you.”
Jan’s the one responsible for my nickname “Step.” She was the first born, and quite precocious, already learning to spell by the time they brought me home from Milton Hospital. My mother taught her that new baby brother’s name “Stephen” was a combination of two shorter words, “Step” and “hen.” I’m glad it was Step that stuck. (Of course, at Post Island where the requisite “y” or “ie” was added to every name, I became “Steppy.”)
After two years in Albany my father was transferred again, this time to the Red Cross’s national headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia where we moved into a complex of apartments called Belle View. This was classic suburbia of the 1950s, one step before home ownership. When out of town relatives visited we would dutifully tour them around to the various Washington monuments and nearby Mount Vernon.
Because the apartment buildings all looked the same, it was quite easy to become disoriented, so my parents made sure that I knew our exact address. Our first apartment was “Ten-oh-four Potomac Avenue.” (I’ve checked … there’s no plaque there, either. There should be, because not long after we moved out, a young man moved in who was a rookie third baseman for the Washington Senators. His name was Harmon Killebrew, and I have a signed baseball to prove it.)
I was always impressed with Harmon’s signature. After Ted Williams’s, it was the best in baseball.
We lived in Alexandria for eight years. Our lives were exceptionally white, middle class, and average, establishing the tone for my life. Time has been kind to both Charlesgate East and Belle View, and as I Google them these days, I am struck by the fact that I could never afford to rent these apartments today, whereas in the 50s it was quite affordable, even for a middle manager in a non-profit organization.
We bought our first home in a nearby development in 1958 and lived there only a couple of months until my father was promoted to a new position as manager of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Red Cross. This brought us much closer to family and the beloved cottage at Post Island, and I was all for the move, an enthusiasm not shared by my sister, who was firmly established with her friends at nearby Groveton High.
We moved in the middle of the school year (5th grade for me, 8th for my sister). After a few months in suburban Barrington, RI we moved again, this time to the East Side of Providence. A more significant change, a game-changer, was that my mother got a part-time job as a gym teacher at Lincoln School, an independent, all-girls Quaker School. Her pay was the source of a longstanding joke between my parents, but carried the benefit that her offspring could attend Lincoln, or the corresponding boys affiliate, Moses Brown, tuition free.
A Perfect Windsor
The summer preceding my entrance to Moses Brown was one of strongly mixed emotions. On the positive side there was Post Island, where I spent a carefree summer, ensconced in cousins and my pack of friends, a group that included Ricky Reyenger, Bobby Pearson, Dennis Coughlin, Brian Coughlin, Bobby Thomas, Dicky Rizzotti, Kevin Kelly, Bobby Tropiano, Billy Mahar, and David Lewis. My parents turned me loose on the Fourth of July and expected me back by Labor Day. The entire time was spent barefoot, and in the same bathing suit. There were family dinners on Saturday night–franks and beans, brown bread, fish chowder, steamed clams, corn on the cob, watermelon, strawberry shortcake. Besides those potluck dinners, I think I survived on Fluffernutters. Rickey Reyenger once ate seven of these … as a snack! … and Ricky grew up to be 6 foot-7 inches!
The garage at the cottage had been renovated as an extra bedroom and now served as a clubhouse for me and my friends. We could stay up as late as we wanted and sleep until the tide was in. The only negative, besides the Red Sox’s expectedly disappointing season, was the ticking clock, counting the days until school and … Moses Brown. I don’t remember talking much about it. I’m sure my parents were more concerned about my sister’s more awkward transition. But this would be different. This was a school for the rich and privileged, for the swells. Exceptionally average kids need not apply!
The world of Moses Brown was one of hard surfaces and few words. It was mandatory to wear sport coats and ties. I didn’t own a jacket or know how to tie a tie, but my mother got me properly assembled and out the door on that first day. My teacher, Mrs. Cullen, referred to me as “the new boy,” as she did with the other students new to the class. She persisted in this for the entire year. Relief came in the period for “gym,” when we got outside to race around on the banked wooden track. That part was fun.
Disaster struck, however, when it was time to change out of our gym clothes and go back to the classroom. I had forgotten how to tie my tie! Moments before, pounding around the wooden track, I had a fleeting moment of thinking I could hold my own in this new place. Now, as I watched my noisy, unfamiliar, confident classmates get dressed and head back to the classroom, I realized “I am not one of you.” I was panicked and humiliated, terrified of returning to the classroom with an untied tie. I might as well have pooped my pants.
My sense of impending terror was palpable enough to show, and a classmate named Curtis Mays asked if anything was wrong. I sheepishly told him about my tie. Hey, no big deal, he said, taking my tie, putting it around his own neck, and quickly tying a perfect Windsor, then loosening it so that he could slip the loop over his head. “Sometimes I don’t even untie mine. I just slip it on and off like this.”
Curt left Moses Brown for another school a few years later, so I lost track of him, but I hope he knows that somewhere he is enshrined in the Pantheon of Small Kindnesses.
Chapter 5: A Quaker Jew from Providence
After surviving the trauma of the tie, the rest of Moses Brown was smooth sailing. That is, of course, both a cliche and an exaggeration, but not by much. There was some social stratification. One of the conditions of my scholarship was that I was expected to perform some light work. Over the years this entailed cleaning the wood shop, bussing tables in the dining hall, and later running the school book shop, but I never minded, nor did I feel that it marked me as less than an equal with any of my classmates.
Of greater significance was the intellectual stratification that took place within the class. Starting in 7th grade there was always a group that was deemed “advance,” or “accelerated,” or ‘honors,” and I was part of it. These were the classmates I spent the most time with and the ones who became my closest friends.
They were all Jewish.
Organized religion has not played a major role in my life, happily so. My father grew up in a strongly Catholic family. One brother is a priest, a sister is a nun. He was ex-communicated, however, for marrying a Protestant. His brothers and sisters lived mostly in the greater Boston area, but he had virtually no contact with them, a fact that struck me as the height of absurdity. I had cousins living within a few miles whom I’ve never met!
My mother compensated for the fact that we were not raised as good Catholics by being zealously non-denominational in our religious training. She dragged us to a baffling succession of churches–Congregational, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Unitarian, Catholic–until we were completely confused. None of it stuck.
Meanwhile, as I was being exposed to my mother’s mishmash of organized religions, the consistencies in my spiritual life were left to the quiet stoicism of the Quakers at Moses Brown and the community of Providence’s Jews. This came into focus when I gave Alan Hassenfeld a fishing net for Christmas.
Grotto Avenue in Providence is a short street that spans a wide range of cultural and socio-economic statuses. The Morris family lived in a wood frame duplex at #81, perfectly comfortable and respectable, but utterly bereft of pretension or ostentation. Less than half a mile away, the Hassenfelds lived in a low-slung, contemporary tucked away in a little cul-de-sac called Woodlawn Terrace.
In between were the Gilbanes of local construction fame.
For someone whose living standards were defined by the cottage that my grandfather built on Post Island, the Hassenfeld’s house was magnificent. They had a full-time maid and a full-time chauffeur, George. Alan’s mother was suitably elegant, a jewel within a setting of modern art. His father, Merrill, seemed a little remote, but that was understandable, since he had a big job, being one of the brothers in charge of the family business, Hasbro Toys (HASsenfeld BROthers). Hasbro, makers of Mr. Potato Head, and Sunset Pencils, was a big deal in Rhode Island.
Luckily, none of the differences between our circumstances mattered much to Alan or me. We were kids, much more concerned about common ground and turf boundaries than status, power, or religion. (Although I do admit to being envious of the Hassenfeld’s color TV, the first I had ever seen.)
Alan was a polite, kind, and gentle without even a whiff of privilege or arrogance. One of our common interests was fishing, a sport we approached from slightly different vantages. I shared my fishing magazines with him and told him of my exploits in Quincy Bay, catching trophies of flounder and mackerel. He, in turn shared his fishing stories, including the one of the five foot, stuffed and mounted marlin that hung over the bed in his bedroom. He caught it while on vacation in the Florida Keys, all by himself, he assured me.
That any person, let alone a kid my age, could catch such a fish struck me as wondrous, but there was the proof on his bedroom wall.
Alan’s friends became my friends. Before too long I was playing basketball at the Jewish Community Center and wondering why my family did find it necessary to send me to weekly Hebrew lessons. I wanted a Bar Mitzvah, too!
On the day before Christmas, Alan was at my house for the afternoon. We were just horsing around, doing whatever we used to do. The doorbell rang, and it was George the chauffeur, coming to pick up Alan. Just before he left, I pulled a package that I had placed with the others under the tree. “This is for you,” I said. “Merry Christmas.” I had picked it out, paid for it out of my own money, and wrapped it myself, but you couldn’t camouflage that it was a fishing net. Still, it was a gift that I was proud of.
I caught him by surprise, but that was ok. This was the essence of Christmas. I wasn’t expecting him to have a present for me. It just was something I wanted to give him. He thanked me politely and went home. This was a rare selfless moment in a life that has experienced more than its fair share of privilege.
This should be the end of the story, but it’s not. That evening, after dinner, the doorbell rang. It was George. Light snow was falling, just as it should on Christmas Eve. George, a uniformed, black man, looked very much like Santa Claus as he handed an armload of wrapped boxes of what turned out to be Hasbros’s finest. “Merry Christmas,” he said heartily. Now it was my turn to be surprised as he hopped back into the sleigh and disappeared into the night, back to Santa’s workshop on Woodlawn Terrace.
Chapter 6: The Grand Tour
My Aunt Margaret died in 1963. She was the fun-loving of the Foster girls. She married Arthur J. Feltham, and the two of them led a life that, by the rest of the family standards, was quite glamorous. They drove to Florida in his Cadillac. I remember seeing a picture of the Felthams posing with Babe Ruth.
Aunt Margaret and her spinster sister Myrtie lived on the East Side of Providence, not far from us, so visits were a fairly regular affair. Aunt Margaret was generous and had a bit of a tomboy in her. She would often hide a $5 or $10 bill and set my sister and me on a treasure hunt to find it. There was always one for each of us.
Aunt Myrtie, by contrast, was dignified, formal, and proper. She was not a barrel of laughs.
Aunt Margaret’s death caused a couple of important changes for the Morris family. First, it was decided that we would move into Margaret’s handsome white, brick house on Taber Avenue. Secondly, my mother inherited a small sum of money that, very uncharacteristically, she decided to blow all at once by taking the family on the Grand Tour of Europe. She shot the wad.
Post Island had always been our family vacation. Why even consider going anywhere else? But my mother was determined to make the trip happen. My sister would be graduating from high school in 1963 and heading off to college. We had never really had what could be described as disposable income, so it was now or never. It was a great decision on her part.
The trip was months in the planning, mostly using Fodor’s Europe on Ten Dollars a Day as our Bible. The Johnsons, Rita and Charlie, our Post Island neighbors, were recruited as travel buddies. They were almost polar opposites of my parents, but the four of them got along famously well. By the time June rolled around the trip had been planned with the precision of a military operation. We departed from the pier in New York City aboard the Italian ship, the Saturnia.
The Morris family in 1963. Notice that my mother, the gym teacher, was in great shape. My dad was now middle-aged good looking. Sister Jan was flourishing. I am the disaffected, alien teenager.
We pulled away from the pier with the ship’s horn thundering amidst a cascade of colorful streamers. It was terribly romantic, even though I was only 15 and hadn’t quite figured out what romance was all about. The ship was built in the mid-1920s, and this trip was one of its last trans-Atlantic crossings. There was still a lot of Old World charm, but even more old world wear and tear.
There were three classes on the ship–First, Cabin, and Tourist. We were in Cabin class (as always, in the middle). We ran into my music teacher from Moses Brown who was travelling in Tourist. Our cabin was small and cramped; his by comparison was Third World. A day or two out we encountered a storm, a real one. We weren’t allowed on deck but could only look at the snarling North Atlantic through spray-splattered windows. Ropes were put up so that we could negotiate the corridors without bouncing off the walls. Some comic relief took place when we went to watch the evening movie. The ship was pitching and rolling so much that they removed all the chairs, and we all had to sit on the floor The ship rolled left and the audience, like a well-trained chorus, slid left. Then the ship rolled right, and we slid right along.
With Umberto (left) and Vittorio. Open your eyes, Rita!
Life onboard ship was different, but tedious. Meals, served by Vittorio and Umberto, were consistently good. My parents and the Johnsons engaged in non-stop speculation about what romantic engagements were taking place amongst fellow travelers. We won a prize in the costume contest when my mother managed to take the ladder from our cabin bunk bed and to convert the whole family into a facsimile of the Saturnia. Land was a welcome sight. As we steamed up the Rio Tejo to Lisbon, all our senses were alive. We toured the city in a horse-drawn carriage.
The Grand Tour had begun.
Lisbon was magical, especially for a 15 year old, whose only exposure to European culture was visiting Boston’s North End. We ticked off other great ports in the next week. Gibraltar, Barcelona, Naples, Palermo, Dubrovnik, Venice. Dubrovnik was the most beautiful; Naples the smelliest; the catacombs in Palermo the most gruesomely memorable. Venice was a perfect place to make our sea-to-land transition. From there we picked up a Volkswagen Microbus, my father at the wheel, and hit the continental road.
Charlie instantly established himself as our resident Ugly American, refusing to make any concession to national custom or tradition. He refused, for instance, to learn anything about local currencies or exchange rates. Lira, pesos, francs … all were lumped into his category of “chinka-sortas.” If he needed to buy something, he’d just reach into his pocket, pull out a handful of mixed coins, and proffer them to the vendor, saying “Here … take some chinka-sortas.”
Down the backbone of Italy … three sweltering days in Rome … up the coast to Portofino and the French Riviera … through the Alps to Austria … across Switzerland to the vineyards of France … and then Paris. All of this in three weeks! None of us had ever been to Europe, but my French training at Moses Brown had prepared me for some of the cultural nuances, so when it came to translating road signs and figuring out the Metro in Paris, I was the lead dog. This is what you see coming out of the subway stop at night.
My French teacher, Theodore Whitford, was an unabashed Francophile. Of the many virtues of Paris, the one he praised most highly was the produce market of Les Halles. I was determined to go, even though you had to be there before 5 am to catch the action. My father was not about to let me venture off by myself in the pre-dawn darkness and dutifully trudged off with me. We were rewarded with a bustling, colorful panorama that easily exceeded even Mr. Whitford’s description.
We took a train to Le Havre, where we boarded the SS France, a brand new cruise ship that supposedly set new standards for comfort and luxury. For me, however, it just meant more boring days at sea. The only highlight is that one of the nightly movies was Irma La Douce starring Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon, which was set in Les Halles, the area just frequented by me and my father. Even dad was impressed by my foresight on this.
A Door Closes
Back at Post Island, I bought a used Harmony guitar at a pawn shop in downtown Quincy and spent the rest of the summer uncharacteristically indoors at the cottage, trying to play catch-up to The Beatles.
The same cast of characters were there–Bobby, Ricky, David, Dennis, Brian–but things had changed. Girls had arrived on the scene, and that complicated things. Also, relationships had developed with “off-Island” kids (and by that I mean kids who lived about 300 yards away) so there were new personalities in the mix. Some kids started smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. It wasn’t bad stuff, but the page had turned. The carefree days were now gone. One door had closed; another soon opened.
Chapter 7: Screwin’ Around in G
One of the transcendent words of my generation is “cool.” “Hot” has morphed from jazz to women. “Groovy” has gone the way of flower power. “Boss” and “gear” came and went with the British Invasion, but “cool” has endured.
I was many things in high school, but cool was not among them. Mason Watson, on the other hand, was cool. He was quiet, but friendly, had the blond hair of a California surfer, played the guitar and reportedly was more advanced with the ladies than the rest of us shmoes. He had a ready smile, with a chipped front tooth. That was cool, too.
Mason had a reputation as a troubled kid or troublemaker, but I’m not sure why. His quietness might have been interpreted as attitude. Maybe it was because he was being raised by a single Mom, and in the 60s that was enough out of the ordinary to provoke people to pass judgement. Maybe it was the defiance of having an unfixed front tooth. I dunno. Mason lived only a block away from me, and I would pass his house walking to and from school. Sometimes we would see each other walking and we’d hook up. Before long he’d wait for me, and we’d walk together. The walks became part of the daily ritual.
Our school was Moses Brown, “For the Honor of Truth,” founded in 1784 by the brother of Obediah Brown, the founder of nearby Brown University. It was a Quaker School, long on tradition and formality, firmly rooted in the English tradition of all-male prep school. We were required to wear jackets and ties to class every day.
I started playing the guitar in the summer of 1963. I had gone to the Newport Folk Festival with my sister Jan and had some vague notion of being a folkie like Joan Baez or her scruffy friend, Bob Dylan. I bought a used Harmony guitar from the music shop in downtown Quincy, MA and spent some time in a boy-cave teaching myself some basic chords.
February 9, 1964
On February 9, 1964, my sixteenth birthday, The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. I immediately decided to go electric, an action that Dylan followed a year later. Several of my classmates had been similarly infected with guitar affliction, among them Mason.
Mason had the advantage of having an older brother by the name of Sedgewick (I’m not kidding) who had started a year earlier and had a few tricks to pass down to younger brother. Inevitably, Mason and I started hanging out together and showing each other what we knew. Today it’s called peer-to-peer learning. Back then it was just “foolin around at Mason’s house.” Initially, Mason had a four string tenor guitar. He was left-handed and played upside down, that is, with his base strings towards the bottom. Despite his unorthodox style, he was pretty good, a fact that I attributed to Sedgewick, who also had a solid body electric guitar. Soon, Mason had one too, and not long thereafter, so did I.
Mason had a Gibson Les Paul Junior with a sunburst finish. I had a white Fender Mustang with a red jeweled pick guard and dual toggle switches for the pick-ups. A boy doesn’t forget his first electric guitar! Mason taught me the standard chord progression that is the foundation of 90% of blues and rock songs. He taught me about bar chords and about changing keys. What little I know about music I owe to Mason.
1965 Fender Mustang
After a while we started sounding … well, not quite good, but like we were actually playing something, not just making noise. One day that fall, Mason surprised me by asking if I wanted a job playing music with him at a Brown fraternity party on Saturday night. We’d make $25 each, a not insubstantial sum when you could fill your gas tank for less than $5. I sputtered that I had never played in front of actual people before … that I wasn’t ready … that we only knew a few songs. Mason managed to cut me off at every objection. I’d be fine, he assured me. Just watch him and follow along, as I did in his bedroom.
He recruited a drummer–another kid from our school–and was committed to playing the party. He wasn’t about to let me off the hook. Just pick him up at 7 pm. Buoyed–or was it beguiled–by Mason’s confidence, I agreed.
Saturday night arrived without so much as an intervening practice. I was, in the vernacular of the day “scared shitless,” but as we set up, it was obvious that I was the picture of confidence compared to the drummer, who looked on the brink of tears.
“Ready?” asked Mason. I was using the usual musician stalling tactic of tweaking the tuning just a little more, and a little more, and a little more. “Close enough!” he proclaimed and launched into a Chuck Berry sounding intro.
“What song are we playing?” I had to scream to be heard above the trebly sound. “Screwing Around in G,” he screamed back, and even though I didn’t know the tune, I came along for the ride. That song mercifully ended, Mason. letting no moss gather, launched into the next, “Louie, Louie.” That’s the pattern that repeated all night. Mason would start each song, I’d join in as soon as I recognized the key and chord progression, and Bob, the drummer, would keep time … nothing more. Our repertoire–ha!–consisted of the aforementioned “Louie, Louie,” already a rock ‘n roll cliche by 1965, “Twist & Shout,” a bunch of Chuck Berry songs to which Mason played almost identical intros, “Moondawg,” a Beach Boys surfing’ tune that I was allowed to sing on and make barking noises as if howling at the moon. Since we didn’t have many songs, we’d stretch them out, typically doing first verse, second verse, instrumental, final verse, instrumental, final verse, even longer instrumental, final verse … you get the idea. We were to play from 8 pm to 11 pm. I was completely self-conscious, and spent the entire evening staring alternately between Mason’s guitar neck and my own.
I was oblivious to several facts that I came to appreciate only later. First, these were college kids on a Saturday night. They were undoubtedly drinking like crazy. Mason, to his credit kept the music loud, fast, and moving. There was little time for tuning up or dicking around between songs. That was very smart of Mason. We had exhausted our repertoire midway through the first set when Mason called out the next tune, “Screwin’ Around in G.” Wait a minute. I didn’t know this one, but too late, Mason was already into the intro. I followed along, tentatively at first, but with a little more confidence as I recognized the familiar pattern of the standard blues progression. We weren’t good, but we weren’t that bad, either, especially by the end of the night. Our mike stand was knocked over a few times by over-zealous dancers, and our shoes were sticky from the spilt beer, but no one seemed to mind. Because we repeated ourselves so many times during the evening, the songs got better as the night went on. Ironically, the one that stood out as sounding best was “Screwin’ Around in G.”
That proved to be the only time that Mason and I played in a band together.
Summer vacation came and we went our separate ways. By September he and I were ensconced in different bands. We still commuted to school together, but now in my car, a 1960 Pontiac Catalina. We chatted about all the usual stuff … music, cars, classmates, and football. We were both on the varsity, a squad with the unlikely nickname as the “Fighting Quakers.” Mason was the starting halfback. He was pretty good, but the team was pretty bad. He took a constant pounding. He never complained, because this was the part of the 1960s that was a vestigial extension of the stoic 50s. Complaining was not allowed.
Then, one day during the football season we got the news that Mason had been kicked out of school. No one ever told us why. Explanations, like complaints, weren’t allowed at the time, and it never occurred to any of us to press the issue. It was well-understood that any of several infractions–cussing out a teacher, getting caught drinking, going too far with a girl–could get you kicked out of school which was a pre-cursor to the ruined life that inevitably followed. Maybe his mom couldn’t manage the tuition payments. That day, he wasn’t at football practice. The next morning, I didn’t pick him up to go to school. Just like that.
I did see Mason one more time. The Saturday following his banishment we had a home football game. Now there was a new halfback to take the punishment that was once Mason’s. As the first half ended, word passed quickly, in whispers, that Mason was at the game. I saw him directly in front of us, sitting on the hillside directly between us and the field house, poised where we would have to see him. He was smoking a cigarette, looking cool. A week ago that would have been offense enough to get him kicked off the football team. Now, however, he had nothing to lose. The players mostly looked down to avoid him. I wasn’t about to do that. The sun must have been behind me, because I remember him shielding his eyes. “Hi Mason,” I said. He smiled his slightly snaggle-toothed grin and said “Hi, Step.” It was a syllable that said a lot. He was now a documented bad boy with a ruined life ahead of him. I was still intact, a future without limitations before me. But he was still Mason, and he was still my friend. That was it. We were, after all, in full-uniform football warrior mode, watched closely by teachers and coaches.
“Go get’em,” Mason said. “I will,” I returned. “See ya.”
Afterwards, we were told that Mason was drunk and had been escorted off the campus. And I never saw him after that. Occasionally, I would hear some scrap of news about him, then I heard he died, way too young and way too abruptly. I never knew the circumstances of his passing, either, but I can’t imagine they were good. It’s the small things that get etched into memory–the cigarette, the upside/down guitar style, shielding his eyes from the sun. For me one of the etched lines came on one of our last trips into school together. I asked him something that had been nagging at me for a while “Hey, who originally did that song that we played that night at Brown, ‘Screwin’ Around in G?’”
“That was just me,” he said with a quiet laugh, “screwin’ around in G.” For that night, my professional debut, I was entirely content to follow Mason’s lead screwin’ around in G.
An excerpt from Old Rockers: The Musical Journey of Grendel. This is a semi-fictional account of the sinuous journey of two friends who were bonded by their shared musical experience. My writing and performing partner is W. Gregory Morrison, coincidentally one of the “new boys” who entered Moses Brown the same year that I did. The project was completed in October, 2022 and may be viewed on a dedicated page on SilverbackDigest.com.
No Remorse … Our First Original Song
This is an excerpt from Old Rockers:
Del: Then, the inevitable happened … we wrote a song. It was mostly mine, but Greg contributed, so we created an official songwriting partnership (Brewster and Watson), just like Lennon and McCartney. We even got Greg’s dad to write up an official agreement.
Greg: And we have stayed true to that agreement to this day, splitting all royalties 50/50.
Del: What’s 50 percent of nuthin’?
Greg: This song would be lost to history except that one of our rival Rhode Island bands, a wannabe Grendel group called the Van Goghs (stupid name!) covered it and turned it into a video that we discovered on YouTube:
Here’s our first song.
Greg: Ladies and gentlemen … No Remorse.
The Van Goghs, circa 1965. rom left: Steve Fales (bass), Greg Morrison (lead guitar), Bill Gannon (singer), Randy Smith (drums), and Step Morris (rhythm). This is the original recording.
Del: That song still rocks!
Greg: And it’s still moronic. Not only did you steal the opening riff, but the lyrics were all false, just pure adolescent posturing.
Del: I’m hurt …
Greg: Get real … you’re singing about lovin’ and leavin’ them. Had you ever been with a girl?
Del: As in “had sex?” No.
Greg: Not even close. Had you even kissed a girl?
Del: Do cousins count?
Greg: No … I’ll say now what I told you then … you’ve got to stay within your own experience to create good music. Dig deep. Get below that pimply surface.
Del: Dig deep huh?
Chapter 8: Accept with the Left
The year after I gave Alan Hassenfeld the fishing net, everything changed. He got a girl friend, Nancy Krause, who lived midway between us on Grotto Avenue. Her big brother Bob was a star on the Moses Brown basketball team, so not surprisingly Nancy was a whole head taller than Alan. Height, like socio-economic status, didn’t matter a whole lot. I started noticing a number of changes with my Jewish friends as they cruised into their Bar Mitzvah era. More attention was paid to haircuts and clothing. Instead of fishing and baseball, we talked more about pop music and … girls.
The transition took place very quickly. The hot topics became Ellen Chaset, Evelyn Zuckerman, and the Paley twins. Who was slow dancing with whom when it was time for the last dance.
I was cluelessly mired in boydom. I had no experience with girls beyond my cousins at Post Island. Unlike many of my classmates I did not take weekly dancing lessons. So, when it was announced that a tea dance would be held at Moses Brown, all of my friends got very excited. I was at a complete loss. Mom, however, had the solution. She was, remember, a part-time phys-ed teacher at Lincoln School and was completely familiar with all the seventh grade girls at our sister school. She’d pick out one who would be just right. As for the dancing, she cut a pretty mean rug herself and would be glad to teach me the basics.
The dance would be held from 4 to 7 pm in Moses Brown’s Alumni Hall. Music would be provided by the Ed Drew Orchestra. (Ed Drew’s son, Frosty, was in our class.) The boys were issued dance cards that were expected to be filled by swapping dances with your friends. This was one part of the process I could handle. I had traded plenty of baseball cards in my day, so treating women as chattel was something I came by naturally.
The perfectly completed dance card.
The week before the dance–the swapathon–was lively and fun. Dancing with Mom in the kitchen was less fun, but tolerable. Unfortunately Sunday eventually came. I will spare readers my account of the tea dance itself. Just imagine every awkward, cliched moment of every coming-of-age movie or television show, and you’ll have it.
My date was Patty Gifford. She was pleasant and attractive, but I can’t say much more as I was overwhelmed by my own self-consciousness. I survived and was palpably relieved when the last dance was over.
The tea dance was all the talk the next day, heck the next week and month. I was still on the fringe of the hormonal surge. A number of guys made the assumption that Patty, as my blind date, was automatically “my girl,” a myth I was entirely willing to perpetuate.
The assumed myth, in fact, continued for the next several years in a total void of any contact between Patty and myself. There were no phone calls, no letters, no dates, no casual conversations (despite the fact that she lived nearby). Absolutely nothing, and yet my friends vaguely assumed she was my girlfriend, and I did nothing to correct their assumption.
Although I was retarded socially, my hormones were right on schedule. By the time I entered my junior year at Moses Brown, I was a guitar-playing Beatle wannabee who played three varsity sports, made the honor roll, and was beginning the panic about where to go to college. The wisdom of the world was communicated to me through the pop songs of the day. Patty Gifford was still my girl, although we hadn’t spoken in the four years since the tea dance.
Then, when you least expect, life hits you upside the head. In the words of Del Shannon, “As I walk along, I wonder what went wrong.” Only in this case I was standing in our living room on a Sunday afternoon when I noticed a couple about my age strolling by. I recognized the guy as David Stegmaier, a new boarding student at Moses Brown, and the girl was … Patty Gifford.
My knees buckled. I collapsed onto the couch as if I had just taken one in the gut from Mohammed Ali. My mind raced with incoherencies … betrayal, revenge, suicide, backstabbing, longing, hurt. I could now feel the pain that was in Brian Wilson’s falsetto when he sang “Wendy, what went wrong? We’ve been together for so long” and “I can’t picture you with him. His future looks awful dim.”
By the next morning, my emotions had given way to sanity and I decided to handle this betrayal with the same stoic silence with which I had handled to romance for the past four years. This lasted about five seconds on Monday morning when someone said “Hey Morris, I saw Stegmaeir walking with your girl yesterday. They were holding hands!” I didn’t think it possible, but the situation had gone from bad to worse.
The pain from being jilted by Patty Gifford lasted a surprisingly long time. My first real girl friend came along in my senior year. Her name was Lynn and she went to a Catholic girls’ school on the other side of the Providence River, but I can’t recall her last name or how we met. Strange … I thought those things were indelibly etched into a young man’s brain.
Mosher! … Her last name was Mosher.
Our dates were entirely predictable. I picked her up in my blue Pontiac Catalina and we’d drive to one of the big downtown movie theaters in Providence.
We’d go back to her house and make out like fiends (nothing more) on her living room couch. Her parents were home, but I never saw them. This was quite an acceptable relationship for me, but suddenly in May, just a couple of weeks before graduation, she dumped me. No reason, no explanation. She didn’t even do it in person. Her friend called to let me know.
Once again, I was the clueless guy. This was the rare, sweet interlude of harmony–spring was in full bloom, exams were over, college acceptances were in (I would be going to Yale), sports seasons were complete, and the Van Goghs were playing the Prom, but I didn’t have a date. The sweet now tasted bitter.
I knew that the next week was Lynn’s birthday, so I decided to take a romantic risk. This is what you do when you have nothing to lose. With classes all but over, I had some spare time on my hands, so I made her a birthday cake. I frosted and decorated it. I had to admit, it looked pretty good. Then I drove to her school and left the cake on the front seat of her car.
I felt good about myself on the way home. It was a bright sunny day, more summer than spring, and I had given it my best shot in the game of love. My miscalculation was that the bright sunny day, more summer than spring, caused the cake to melt, causing a complete mess, something that I heard about second or third hand. As Chester A. Riley used to say to his neighbor, Gillis, on The Life of Riley TV show “Whotta revoltin’ development this turned out to be.”
Happy birthday, Lynn Mosher
Graduation was on June 11, held out in the grove of towering elms that sadly later succumbed to Dutch Elm disease. This day, however, spring was in full, vernal bloom. Soft, round, fragrant, lush … I’ve run out of adjectives. We were rehearsed, more accurately “drilled”, on graduation procedures by Mrs. Monahan, our 7th grade Latin teacher who was very much the lovable old battle-axe. This was a different side of her, all business and no nonsense.
“When your name is called to get your diploma, walk crisply to the stage and accept the diploma in your left hand and shake with the right, otherwise you will tie yourself into a knot and look like a fool. And if you should win an award, remember the same thing … ACCEPT WITH THE LEFT and shake with the right. Don’t forget, ACCEPT WITH THE LEFT!
My name was called more than once that day. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the end of the beginning.
Twenty-five years later I was a guest at “Career Day” at Moses Brown, a day when alumni return to tell students about their various professions. I was introduced by a fellow who I vaguely remembered as being a couple of years behind me. We spent a few moments chatting afterwards and he told me he was there on that graduation day. “What went through your mind,” he asked, “as you walked up to the podium to accept those awards.”
“Only one thing,” I answered without hesitation, “ACCEPT WITH THE LEFT.”
Excerpt from the transcript of Old Rockers
Fifty or so years later “Accept with the Left” found its way into a song that became part of the Old Rockers project:
Greg: And we were rock stars, at least on our own little stage of garage bands in Rhode Island. We were getting gigs playing fraternity parties at Brown. Plus we already had some bookings for over the summer, a couple of weddings and a regular gig at a little club in Pawtucket.
Del: We planned our work and worked our plan, hit the beach all day, get the perfect tan.
Then nighttime comes, get the guitars out, make a lot of noise, make ’em twist and shout
Greg: All that was left was graduation day. The day before we were rehearsed by the football coach, Umberto “Bertie” Zimino. Tough guy. Kindof talked like a gangstuh, but he did tell us something we never forgot.
“Youse guys gotta remembuh one ting tomorruh. When your name is called, walk toda stage and accept your diploma wid your LEFT HAND and shake wid da RIGHT. Sum dumfuk always messes it up, you’re dat dumfuk, they’ll tink Zimino didn’t do his job and I will track you down and I will make you pay.”
Scared the shit out of us, but we didn’t forget to accept with the left and shake with the right.
Del: That advice has stood me in good stead for all those trips to the podium I’ve made.
Greg: Del and I thought Zimino’s passion was so absurd that the night before graduation we wrote a song about it.
I still live in fear of Zimino showing up at the front door one day, screaming “I told ya to accept widah left!!”
[And if you are asking “What the hell is Old Rockers?” the you need to spend some time here: https://silverbackdigest.com/grendel-part-one/
Chapter 9: Boola, Boola
So … I accepted with the left, and left Moses Brown as a memory.
The summer of 1966 was my summer of emancipation. There were no tests to worry about, no sports teams to stay in training for, no college applications … I had a car (my 1960 Pontiac Catalina) and my guitar (a 1965 Fender Mustang). Gas was cheap, and I was in a band. If Hollywood was writing the script, then the time was right for my first love and sexual experience. Never happened.
Ralph (call me “Randy”) Smith, the drummer in the Van Goghs and our business manager, kept us busy. Since it was summer, there were no college jobs, so we started playing clubs and had gigs in Misquamicut Beach, Newport, and even Lake Winnapausaukee, where a bunch of kids got drunk and decided to throw our sound system into the lake. The equipment had been rented specifically for the party, so what the heck, Ralph took care of it.
My hair, no longer constrained by the Quakers at Moses Brown, began creeping down my neck. Dylan had taken folk electric the previous summer, so the Newport Folk Festival was definitely on the downswing, replaced by the British Invasion that was now in full force. The Stones, the Kinks, the Animals, the Zombies … there was music in the air, and it was loud and distorted.
A funny thing happened with the Van Goghs- we got good. Playing regularly just made us a better band, kind of like the Beatles when they went to Hamburg. (Speaking of the Beatles, my band mate Billy Gannon scored two tickets to the Beatles playing live at Suffolk Downs, the racetrack just north of Boston. The concert was most memorable for me in that the opening band was Barry and the Remains, for whom the Van Goghs had opened earlier that summer in Rhode Island. What is that … two degrees of separation?)
The Beatles were transitioning from teenage idols to cultural phenomena. Unbeknownst to us, or them, Suffolk Downs was their next to last concert, the last coming the next night at Shea Stadium. An era was ending, right before our eyes. And, fittingly, a new one was beginning.
The Van Goghs played regularly at the end of the summer at a club in Pawtucket called The Edge. The venue was utterly unremarkable except for the fact that it would get so hot and sweaty inside that moisture would condense on the ceiling and would subsequently fall back on the audience (and band) as “rain.” It was at The Edge that I played my final gig with the Van Goghs. The club managers treated like a big deal and had a cake and bottle of champagne for the farewell. At 18 I was “retiring” from rock and roll. It had been a great run with the band, however, so I was leaving with “no remorse.” Now, I was New Haven bound.
Of all acts of the parental experience, none is as poignant as dropping a kid off at college. The fruit of your loins is now fully on his/her/ or their own. Is there any acknowledgement or moment of appreciation? Never. There was no welcoming fanfare as our white, Chevy station wagon pulled up to, then away from, the entrance to my dorm, 59 Vanderbilt Hall, on Yale’s Old Campus where the freshman are housed for a year before splintering off to their respective residential colleges.
I met my new and eagerly anticipated roommates. My bunkmate was J.P. Lund, a classical music major and a southern gentleman from Virginia. Besides noting that he is a fine and upstanding human being, the most interesting fact I can relate about J.P. is that he kept his entire wardrobe in a laundry bag that he kept at the end of his bed. He would stuff the dirty items in their along with the clean ones. There was no telling the two apart. Every couple of months, he’d grab the bag and haul it to the laundramat and the whole process would begin anew.
My other suitemates were preppies from the Nobles and Greenough School, Bill Peck and Peter DeChellis. They had been groomed to go to Yale and seemed to take the experience in stride. Meanwhile, I arrived in full-blown rock star mode. My hair hadn’t been cut since I accepted with the left. I had a fledgling goatee that still needed some help from mascara. I wore a black t-shirt with tight black jeans. My new friends were suitably impressed. I was a badass!
This all changed in the first week. I had been awarded a scholarship by the U.S. Navy and was attending school by virtue of their largess. I was sworn in on the second day on campus. The hair and the goatee had to go. The uniform was was issued. By the end of the first week, I recognized my mistake and went to the NROTC office to return my uniform. “That’s not the way it works, son” I was told. “You are now enlisted in the You-Ess-Enn (USN).” Ugh. The muffled sound of a gut punch.
Years later, this is an era best looked in retrospect, I summarized my bright college years in my hip-hop rap entitled Autobiograffiti, a musical journey told via my various area codes:
I spent four years in the 2-0-3.
It’s a lovely place, but it’s not for me.
I moved into my dorm, and then,
I found myself enlisted in the U-S-N.
Once I had my Yale degree, the Navy had big plans for me.
But that was not for four more years.
Still time for parties and girls and beers.
But the world outside the Ivy calm
was booby-trapped like Vietnam.
JF-RF-MLK
Assassinations ruled the day
Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?
Along with 999 other “male leaders,” as we were dubbed by Yale President Kingman Brewster, I entered a world of jackets and ties, sherries with the Dean and Master and Old World civilities to a backdrop of the Vietnam War, rock and roll, and searing social injustice. Within scant months wour class of privileged punks had dragged the venerable institution down into the mud us. The traditions were quickly torched, not just at Yale, but across the nation as a combination of an unpopular war, the increasing popularity of marijuana, and The Beatles coalesced to shatter decades of institutional tradition.
Four years later we left, amid turmoil, capless and gownless, to go back to the garden and complete the Revolution. Several lifetimes later, I’m still trying to make sense of it all. On the surface, I look like a solid Old Blue. I’ve shepherded three, count ’em three, published books on the history of our class and have served two stints as president of the Yale Club of Vermont. My lingering impression, however, is of the schism that existed at the conclusion of my stint in New Haven.
From my Autobiograffiti:
As the Navy’s time was getting closer,
I was mighty sick of the “yessir, nossir.”
But to get away from Uncle Sam,
I’d have to win the lottery.
so I did … hot damn!
The “lottery” was the first Draft Lottery to decide by the luck of the draw and the date of birth who would and would not be accorded the honor of fighting in the unjust war. There is no one of a certain age who doesn’t remember the precise number of their birthdate on this fateful day. I am, was, and will forever be #338!
And we were also suitably impressed with ourselves. We were now “Men of Yale.”
Good Lord! I’m really glad I took this picture. Otherwise, I might have been in it. Clockwise from top, Bill Peck, Clyde Wilson, Brian Heaney, John Newberry. Four of the “1000 Male Leaders” promised by Yale President, Kingman Brewster? … more like
“The revenge of the Flower Children.“
Chapter 10: Hello, Step … It’s me, Jim
For God, for Country, and For Yale,
I’m living proof of a fairy tale.
Gettin’ smart don’t get much cooler … Go Bulldogs!
Yeah … Boola! Boola!
—From my musical Autobio-grafitti, From the 4-0-1 to the 8-0-2
I retired from both music and sports when I arrived in New Haven to begin college. It wasn’t a conscious decision so much as not knowing what lay in store for me and to put academic achievement first … make that academic survival. I was prepared for college, but it took my freshman year to figure that out. When I was confident enough to poke my nose out of the womb of my dorm room, it was to audition for a play produced by my residential college’s theatre group, the Morse Experimental Theatre. I was cast as Warrior #7 in the classic Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus. The play was directed by Aly Taygun, a Turk studying at the Yale Drama School.
Aly was the real deal. Imposingly scruffy, with a droopy mustache punctuated by an ever-present cigarette, he brought an authenticity to Greek drama that the classroom had failed miserably to accomplish. The warriors all had non-speaking parts, but we were actually the stars of the show. Aly dressed us in black, then outfitted us with swords (just wooden dowels) and rattling shields (metal hubcaps with short lengths of dangling chains). He then taught us a simple four-beat dance. We each had a solo sword fight, but it was when we moved in unison and chanted that we functioned as the play’s chorus.
Of course, all of us in the cast fell in love with Aly’s wife, Meral, who hung around at rehearsals, smoking cigarettes and looking unbelievably sexy. Not surprisingly, she also became a popular artist in the Turkish film industry.
Set against the soaring backdrop of the exposed stone of the Morse College dining hall, it became an impressive spectacle. That such a magical transformation could be created with such simple props and human ingenuity was a revelation. I was hooked, and theater became my principal extra-curricular activity.
The Eero Saarinen-designed dining hall at Morse College, Yale University.
I became a regular in the Morse Experimental Theatre (always with the “re,” not the “er”) productions. I was not a great actor, but I managed to get better parts as time passed.
In my junior year we decided to do three original, student-written one act plays. I volunteered to write one. My story was loosely based on the real life experience of Del Shannon, the singer/songwriter who had been riding high until the British Invasion made solo performers like Del yesterday’s news. Silverback Digest readers have already heard much too much about Del Shannon. (Footnote: about 25 years later this play was produced at Chandler Music Hall in Randolph, Vermont, with my two sons among the illustrious cast.)
In my senior year I took over as President of the Morse Experimental Theatre. Among my responsibilities were managing a modest budget and selecting the plays and director. I interviewed several candidates from the drama school. One was especially aggressive and annoying. After several follow-up calls I had to break it him that we were going with someone else.
Henry Winkler took the news badly … what would you expect of da Fonz? To make matters worse, the director I chose was a disaster, and I had to let him go after the first semester.
For the second semester we took a different approach. I had always loved the children’s fable of The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery. Someone told me that it was James Dean’s favorite book and that he read it aloud to his girlfriend, which gave some additional romance. The director I enlisted was V. John deMarco, who eventually became the best man at my wedding.
John had some delightful and fanciful ideas on costumes and set and wanted to make it a musical. Whoa! That was well beyond my musical abilities, song I enlisted the help of a talented junior, Ezra Donner. (The perquisite quick check of Google yields an Ezra Donner, Conductor, but born in 1986 … perhaps the original Ezra’s son.)
For the lead role, we didn’t have anyone who was quite right, so John prevailed on a classmate at the Drama School named Jim Naughton, who later, as James Naughton, became a movie star and the toast of Broadway, not to mention “the voice” in countless commercials. Years later I wrote this article for the Vermont Sunday Magazine.
“Hello, Step, it’s me … Jim”
By Stephen Morris
I watch the evening news, not for the latest on world events, but for the pharmaceutical commercials. Specifically, I look for commercials about that little purple pill called Nexium. When it comes on, I wave at the television and say, “Hi, Jim!”
The Nexium ad is the one where they keep referring to “that little purple pill” while they show a humongous purple cylinder (must be a propane tank) that could choke a sperm whale. I can’t tell you what “Nexium” means, what it does, who makes it, or what scourge it cures. I do know that the little purple pills make you “better.” I know this because the spokesperson, right at the end, leaning on the purple propane tank, looks directly into the camera and says, “And better is better!”
James Naughton in Planet of the Apes (front row, left)
The spokesperson for Nexium is James Naughton (“Jim” to me, “James” to the rest of you), and he’s a great actor. You can tell the by the way he makes eye contact with the camera, furrows his brow in a way that exudes credibility, and says “And better is better!” without cracking up. Not even a little smirk. That, Dear Reader, is the mark of a great one.
Jim and I started our show biz careers together back in college. I was the head of a small undergraduate theater group. Jim was a graduate student in the drama school. Because there was an overall shortage of acting and directing venues, drama school students were desperate to pad their resumes with anything that smacked of experience. This actually put me in a position of some power. Here’s how powerful I was: I once turned down Henry Winkler, who went on to become a household word as Fonzie from Happy Days, for a directing position. Instead, I hired a guy named, to protect the innocent let’s call him Zocor, who proved so inept that to do something idiotic in our theater group became known as “to do a Zocor.”)
Back to Jim. I had the good sense to cast him in a lead role in a play that became a big hit on campus. He had it all—good looks, could sing and dance, fun to be around, always came prepared. You could tell he was headed for great things. Graduation came and went, and we went our separate ways—Jim to Broadway and Hollywood and me to Haverhill, Massachusetts where I took a job selling ads for a second-rate boating magazine.
The rest is history.
Jim comes into my living room every few years in a new and unexpected way. He’s almost always a good guy, never a thug. Sometimes he’s a guest star on a series. He drew rave notices on Broadway for Chicago. He’s had several TV series of his own, none of them very memorable. For a while he was Ally McBeal’s father. He’s done a bunch of commercials. I think he was one of the guys who said “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Jim exudes credibility.
His name is not a household word, but I bet you would recognize his face. He does some cool things on the Nexium commercial. In addition to furrowing his brow, at one point he materializes out of thin air. Try doing that at home. For a few seconds he just stands, looking bemused (but credibly bemused) while his voice-over continues. His lips don’t even move. You don’t often see such dazzling special effects in a drug commercial.
I’m sure that Jim is constantly wondering what has happened in my life. Our paths haven’t crossed, but they almost did … once. This was a dozen or so years ago. Jim was on some TV show or commercial that brought him into our living room with some frequency. At each appearance I would start the obligatory shout “Wife! Kids! Hurry!”
Thinking an emergency, at least a heart attack, was in progress, they would come scrambling in, sometimes in time to actually see Jim on screen. I would then treat (subject?) them to the story of how Jim and I started in show biz together. Usually the story provoked only yawns and rolled eyebrows, but once my youngest son said “Oh yeah? Well, why doesn’t he have any grey hair?”
Hm-m-m. He raised a good point. While I had gone the way of all flesh, Jim looked just as he had when I knew him in college. I began not to like Jim. I began to resent Jim. I began to hate Jim’s guts. Now, when he appeared on screen, and one of the kids said, “Hey, isn’t that your friend?” I would just mumble and turn away.
As fate would have it, we made a trip a few months later that took us through Williamstown, Massachusetts. We passed by their summer theater and I noticed “James Naughton” on the marquee. Minutes later we were driving through Williamstown’s downtown, and one of the kids said:
“Hey, isn’t that your friend?”
It was Jim! There was no mistaking that erect posture, those fine features, the strong chin, and that thick shock of completely grey hair! Instantly, Jim was my friend again. I considered making a u-turn and stalking him, but decided not to inflict myself. Just as well, too. Of the various outcomes that could have transpired in a face-to-face meeting, most of them would have been deflating, especially in front of my kids. Stephen who? This way we could just move on with our travels, with me blustering that if I dyed my hair, I would look like I was still in college, too.
So, Jim, if you’re out there and wondering what happened to me. I’m ok. I’m living here in Vermont, writing my articles and stoking the woodstove. So far, knock on wood, I don’t need those little purple pills, but you keep right on taking them. “And better is better,” don’t you know? I hope they paid you a small fortune to recite that line. Good to see ya.
My career in theater lasted only a bit longer than my career in rock ‘n roll, and yet it provided me with connections and memories of a Tony award-winner, two Turkish film stars, and da Fonz. I’ve got no complaints.
(Epilogue: A couple of months after this article appeared, there was a message on my answering machine. “Hello, Step (my nickname in college), it’s me, Jim. I’m calling from backstage at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on 47th Street in New York. I thought I’d give a call and see how you are doing …”)
It was Jim, all right. I’d recognize that voice anywhere. Better really is better.
Chapter 11: May Day, 1970
It’s 9:17 am on March 26, 2024 in San Miguel de Allende when an old man reflects upon the moment when the die was cast.
***********************************
It was May Day, 1970. Rumors were swirling that there would be trouble in New Haven over the weekend. The Black Panthers were gathering in support of Bobby Seale. The Yale campus was at the epicenter.
I lived on the 12th floor of The Tower at Morse College. It was the pinnacle of the epicenter. I had the lowest pick in the room selection lottery the previous year, and ended up with the worst room on campus, but the table was reversed for Senior year, and I had the first pick. I chose a single room on the 12th floor, overlooking the Paine-Whitney Gymnasium. Nice that I had a good view of North America’s premier athletic facility, because I never stepped inside. It is, if not the highest point on the campus, it is the loftiest student dwelling.
The rooms in Morse— all of them— had floor to ceiling, vertical windows. Only the top half opened, so you couldn’t fall out accidentally. A floormate, nick-named Cello, had a cat that sat by his window, endlessly watching the world go by on Tower Parkway. One day he was playing his cello when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. The cat was not on its familiar perch. Cello lurched over to the window, just in time to see his cat hit the sidewalk.
Spring was in the air, but so was something else. Something metallic. I didn’t like it. I went to the window. There was none of the usual traffic, but rather ranks of soldiers and armored vehicles. The Connecticut National Guard had been called out for whatever the weekend held. The trees were blossoming.
This was the culmination of turmoil that had been building since November 22, 1962. Not everyone could draw a straight line from there to here, but I could. 3 assassinations, a war, football, graduation. rock ‘n roll, The Navy, the Draft Lottery, The Little Prince … it had all come to this. “This is nuts,” I said to no one. It was time.
I drifted back to my bed, littered with the detritus of open books, half-finished assignments, and the Rand-McNally Road Atlas of North America. This was my comfort, my balm, my narcotic. I am a map reader. Reading them, I go into the same trance of concentration once reserved for the Hardy Boys, Superman comic books, baseball cards, or cereal boxes. I love “reading” maps.
I flipped through idly. Also open on my bed was The Whole Earth Catalogue with its newsprint pages teeming with access to tools. The stage was set. The only thing missing was the beer. I flipped the page of the Atlas, landing on Nova Scotia. I said the name out loud, then again, then, as if a revelation had occurred “New Scotland,” then to no one, “No-va Sco-tia.”
And thus, the die was cast. My life would not be the bang, but the whimper. The whimper would be peace, not war; country, not city; words, not money. Back to the garden for me (never having been there before).
I went home that weekend, and had a pleasant, quiet weekend in Providence with my parents. I convinced my good friend, John Newberry to join me in this quiet act of sanity, but he was overcome by the call of duty and abruptly left to return to campus. The weekend in New Haven was not Armageddon, but thankfully so. Consensus afterwards was that Yale, the Institution, by welcoming, housing, and feeding the Panthers had avoided a worst case scenario. Some claimed that outcome as triumphant victory. I didn’t care. Let them all blare into their megaphones. I was checked out, Nova Scotia bound.
And from this present perch, well south of Nova Scotia, surrounded by flowering trees and distant, arid mountains, I am glad to say I have never looked back. Marriages (2), kids (2), grandkids (2), houses (9), cars (at least 23 that I can think of), books (12 mine, 250 others), articles (1000+), lifetime achievement awards (0), dogs (4), lovers (not many), Draft Lottery # (338), hips replaced (2), trees planted (35?), videos on YouTube … this is getting silly. You get the picture.
Chapter 12: The Rolling Stone Interview with Stephen Morris, Part 1
(Author’s Note: On February 9, 2024- exactly 60 years after The Beatles made their U.S. debut on The Ed Sullivan Show- my sons, Jacob and Patrick gave me the present of a year’s membership in Storyworth.com, an online service designed to help people write their own memoirs. Further, Jake thought that the fulcrum of the story should be the year 1971, the year many musicologists regard as one of the most pivotal in pop music history.
The real gift was not the membership, but the opportunity to think about, and record, the most meaningful moments in my life. The challenge for me as a writer was how to take a relatively ordinary existence and make it worthy of a reader’s time. the answer came quickly … make stuff up, lie, pretend! Assisted by Storyworth I could have my visage carved onto Mount Rushmore, have my lifetime achievement awarded by the Kennedy Center, or … be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine! That’s my ultimate 15 minutes of fame (now reduced to 15 seconds by TikTok). Here is the entirely mythical, self-gratifying, two-part interview with Stephen Morris, the cover story in Rolling Stone in recognition of the 50 anniversary of “1971 … The Year the Music Changed.”)
*********************************
As part of our ongoing series “1971 … The Year the Music Changed” we’re talking to Stephen Morris, author of “Old Rockers: The Musical Journey of Grendel” and co-host, along with Greg Morrison of the popular podcast of the same name.
We travel to Vermont to meet with Morris. He lives in rural Vermont, midway between the towns of Bethel and Randolph, in other words “nowhere,” or as he puts it “just southwest of Bumfuk.” We meet on a warm spring day in a small outbuilding that has neither electricity nor water. He says it was built as “a playhouse for grandkids, but these days it’s more of “a playhouse-for-a-game-of-cribbage-with-a-glass-of-wine-house.” His most frequent cribbage opponent is his wife, Sandy Levesque. He is wearing a Red Sox hoodie and jeans that are soiled from “planting peas and onions.”
Rolling Stone: How does it feel to be the spokesperson for the whole generation of garage rockers?
SM: It feels ridiculous, absurd, overdue, spectacular, humbling, hilarious … you want me to keep going? It’s a joke that I’m a spokesperson for anything, let alone a generation. Seriously, 1970 was the most tumultuous of my life. I got out of the Navy, survived the Draft Lottery, graduated from college amidst a backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Trial of Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers. I got married, not once, but twice, to the same girl, no less. I was living entirely on my own for the first time. Well, actually that’s not true, because I was living with my wife, Laura. Looking the rearview mirror I could see in the recent past a moon landing, Woodstock, the Gulf of Tonkin, the assassinations of MLK and RFK … the list goes on. It was not a happy time in America.
Rolling Stone: But, were you happy?
SM: I was ecstatic! I was glad to leave the academic world of Yale; I was married to a lovely woman, I had grand dreams of homesteading in Nova Scotia and becoming the next great American novelist. I was free of my parents, free of the Navy, and free of Yale. The world was my oyster! You know, that’s a silly cliche! Who thought of that one?
Rolling Stone: New Year’s Eve, 1970 … describe your world as the countdown brings the ball to zero.
SM: My wife Laura was working at her alma mater, Bradford College at that time, so my guess would be that we spent New Year’s Eve in our 3-room apartment at 23 Wonalancet Drive in Haverhill, MA. $28 bucks a week rent. There was no big party, we didn’t have many friends, although my college roommate, Bill Peck lived nearby, so it’s probable that he came over. Maybe drink a little beer or smoke a joint, if anyone had one. It’s so funny … it’s now legal to grow pot in Vermont, so last summer I grew two plants in the garden, and I can’t give the stuff away (laughs).
Rolling Stone: In 1971, a gallon of gas cost 36 cents. An LP cost around $3.00. in 2024, gas costs $3.60, and music is basically free. What does that say to you about how things have changed since 1971?
SM: The change in the cost of fuel is one of the more significant changes of our lifetimes. Those of us who grew up in this area simply considered cheap fuel a birthright. You never worried about the price of gas for your car, or the cost of heating your home.
Every problem that was faced was solved with the same answer … just add more power. Knives and garage doors were electrified. More power! More power! Our soils are becoming depleted? No problem … just add oil (in the form of chemical fertilizers to the ground). Problem solved. As we’re seeing now … problem created.
We as a country and culture drifted along, fat and oblivious, until 1973 (the First Arab Oil Embargo) when the rich, corrupt sheiks said, “You know what … we’re not going to ship you any more oil.” A great nation sputtered, and great nation whined and whimpered, and a great nation realized that those sheiks in their ridiculous outfits had us by the national balls.
Joni Mitchell, back in 1969, told us we had to get “back to the garden.” Some of did, but nearly enough. The sudden recognition of how we had been the architects of our own vulnerability was a shock. For me it was a shock so profound that it redirected my personal and professional life.
An equally profound shift in the music industry occurred between 1971 and 2024, but it happened almost two decades later. I’ll get to that. One thing at a time.
And where did the power/oil come from? Some distant place on the other side of the world, a place where stupid people sold us their natural resources cheap so that we could like kings. Oh sure, a few sheiks got rich in the process, but who cares?
Rolling Stone: Let’s get back to music. 1971 was the year The Beatles broke up. Was that traumatic for you?
SM: Naw … There as no “moment” of the Beatles break-up. It had turned into a soap opera, a protracted, messy, negative drama. Vietnam, the Nixon presidency, the racial tension … it had all gone on too long, and we were ready for a fresh start on something new. The Beatles chapter of our lives had ended, and we were ready to turn the page. For me personally, it was time to turn North and to head back to the garden.
My interest in The Beatles dwindled after the Abbey Road album. They put the perfect punctuation on the era when they said “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” I know, there was a lot of “stuff” after that. They became mired in squabbles, speculations, and business disagreements. John was entangled with Yoko, and everyone was engaged in individual projects.
I never bought a single album by an individual Beatle.
I liked what McCartney was doing with his life. He was married to a sister of one of Laura’s friends, and they had settled on a farm in Scotland, eerily similar to what Laura and I were doing in Nova Scotia. Lennon, meanwhile, was generally making a fool of himself with Yoko Ono, including making bad music.
“Imagine” was the exception, undeniably a beautiful song and a demonstration of his genius. It did not surprise me, however, to learn that it was a song that he was working on for several years—from the “Revolver” days I read somewhere, so it is clearly from the Beatles’ era, not the post Beatles era.
“Imagine” wasn’t a blockbuster, as opposed to the McCartney “Uncle Albert” medley, which shot up the charts to #1. Over time, however, it has been recognized as one of Lennon’s great masterpieces. Deservedly, so.
Rolling Stone: Did you like McCartney’s album “Ram?”
SM: Never listened to it, so no opinion. McCartney stayed on the pop charts, so he seemed to be the Beatle who was “keeping on.” And I totally identified with how he was living his life, moving to Scotland, having his kids attend public school with the locals, etc. I naturally fell into his camp, as opposed to Lennon’s, which involved high art, celebrity, drugs, and boorish behavior.
But, in terms of the music, in the early 70s, it seemed time for us to move on from The Beatles, so that’s what we did.
Rolling Stone: So was 1971 really :the year the music changed?
SM: I thing it was and, ahem (clears throat), since I am a spokesperson for a generation, I think it was for many others, too. But that’s only in hindsight. We weren’t aware of a seismic shift at the time.
Rolling Stone: Seismic change? What does that mean?
SM: It means that the earth shakes for a few seconds and afterwards, everything has changed. I’ve lived through three such eruptions … Elvis, The Beatles, and, to a lesser extent, Nirvana.
Rolling Stone: What about Taylor Swift?
SM: Good question, but I think not. I like her, like her music, and she seems to be a solid citizen, but the girl’s been around a long time. She’s immensely popular … so was Michael Jackson, but seismic? Not by my definition. Nirvana was only with us for a few short months, but they were an eruption.
Rolling Stone: So why was 1971 so significant?
SM: You had the veterans of The Beatles’s quake- those who survived- growing into their maturity. By now they had nearly a decade to hone their craft. Their music was better than ever.
Rolling Stone: Examples?
SM: There are many. Look at The Kinks with “Muswell Hillbillies.” Laura and I were in London in 1972 when we started listening to this. The Kinks were at the height of their creative powers and their craft, plus the world was finally beginning to understand them.
But, the pop music scene had moved on to the next thing, which was glam rock. I could never really get into it.
We saw The Kinks at Imperial College in London, just up the street from where we lived on Onslow Gardens. Great show. The band had finally worked some things out with the sound, which was always uneven when we heard them in the States. Some girls even rushed the stage a la early Beatles. It was all in good fun.
In our little basement flat, this cassette was on constant rotation with other Kinks’ albums as well as The Who, and, later, Leo Sayer, who hit big while we were there.
Another example would be the Stones. I’d rank “Sticky Fingers” about where I’d rank most of the Stones’s material, just above the mediocre, but this was better than their previous albums and better than any that followed. Their formula of 1. Provocative title + good guitar riff + raunchy posturing + solid back beat is tried and true for an r&b rooted band. It’s a formula that has stood the test of time, although the Stones were never, as they claimed the “world’s greatest rock ‘n roll band.” They’ve always been amusing, however.
Rolling Stones: You mentioned “glam rock.” Why couldn’t you get into that?
SM: A revolution took place in the 1960s. A real revolution that was authentic. Glam rock took the good part of music and gussied it up so that it would play to the cheap seats. It commodified a tribal experience and turned it into a spectacle.
The name says it all. Glam rock is sham rock. Any idiot can put on make-up and a wig. Slade was big when Laura and I were in London (1972/3). “Cum on feel the Noize” was everywhere. The press tried to make them out as the second coming of The Beatles. Obviously, they fell short. It was all appearance and posturing. Very superficial. T. Rex was another band that I couldn’t get into.
Rolling Stone: What about David Bowie? He’s stood the test of time.
SM: True, but his Glam period was good. Luckily he grew out of it. I think he started getting good after “Rebel, Rebel.”
Rolling Stone: A lot of people say that the artists of the 60s were over the hill by 1971? Do you agree with that?
SM: I agree with Ray Davies who said “Let’s all raise a glass to the rock stars of the past, those who made it, those who faded, those who never even made the grade, and those that we thought would never last.”
Rolling Stone: Examples?
SM: The Doors. They were one of the hottest products of the 60s. I remember in my freshman year in college, my friend David Larkin was a DJ at the campus radio station WYBC. The station was sent all kinds of complimentary, promotional, new releases which David would bring home and drop off, saying “tell me what you think.” Most were forgettable, but one, called simply “The Doors” knocked my socks off.
From the opening riff of “Backdoor Man” to the crescendoing wail of “Light My Fire” this album was something special. I was right. So … I didn’t discover The Doors, but I did find them about six weeks before they hit it big time. By the end of the summer in 1967, they were superstars.
Their career followed the predictable arc. The more popular they became, the more indulged they were. The more indulged, the worse the music, the more unsympathetic the personalities. Jim Morrison died in 1971 in a bathtub in Paris, France. It was only 4 years since I “discovered” him, and now I wasn’t overly moved by his death. Such is fame in America. I always wanted it, so that I could reject it. Thank God it never happened, because I’m sure I would have been as vulnerable to its intoxication as every other Tom, Dick, Jim, Jimi, Janis, and asshole.
By the time this happened we had stopped being shocked by the sudden, premature death of one of our musical superstars.
Rolling Stone: But weren’t there heroes of the 1960s who had just worn out their welcome or run out of new ideas?
SM: Yeah, definitely. The Velvet Underground jumps to mind. They were not a band so much as a sensation, with the album cover with the banana that actually could be peeled. The band was an Andy Warhol celebration of celebrity. Glam rock in reverse!
Nico was cool, but not a musician. Her finest moment was in selecting a song written by her then-17 year old boyfriend, Jackson Browne, whose musical legacy with “These Days” has outlasted the rest of the band combined. Lou Reed went on to become a star of some note, but in my eyes, his reflected his ability to hang on to an image of “cool” rather than a reflection of musicality. The reason I don’t remember “Loaded” is because it was probably a load of shit, and by that time, everyone had caught up to the reality of the Velvet Underground.
Leonard Cohen was another artist who just ran out of gas, or who lost interest. I never listened to “Songs of Love and Hate”, because I didn’t want to spend good money to be depressed although I later became familiar with “Blue Raincoat” from his greatest hits compilations. Sandy and I saw Leonard in concert at Radio City Music Hall when he was 79 years old. He said he was going to start smoking again when he hit 80! Sandy went through a late-in-life romance with his music. Leonard’s best line has always been “They say I know only three chords … I know five!” (Laughs)
Sly Stone, Carley Simon, the Allmans, and The Beach Boys had peaked and were in some level of decline. I owned the “Surf’s Up” album, and the title song is amazing, vintage Wilsons. The rest of the album was not, and shouldn’t haven’t been released. The Beach Boys were in a deep downward spiral. Unlike The Beatles, who all had credible (note the absence of “in”) post-group, individual careers, the Beach Boys, with the possible exception of Dennis, could never do anything other that be the Beach Boys circa 1967.
They never came close to recapturing their brief magic. “Surf’s Up,” the song, not the album comes the closest. It’s another Carl Wilson vocal, I believe.
Hey … you want a beer!
Rolling Stone: (Morris goes into the main house and returns with a tall glass with a frothy head. “My homebrew,” he announces proudly. “I’ve also got blackberry wine that you can sample, or some of my homegrown pot!’ I politely decline.) Let’s keep going with the music, then we can move along to some other things. What artists were just hitting their strides in 1971.
SM: Carole King comes to mind, Joni Mitchell, for sure, and Marvin Gaye, too, although I was a big fan of his genre. What tragedy … shot by his own father.
Rolling Stone: Tell us about the other two.
SM: I was happy to move along from the disintegration of the 60s self-indulgence to the more measured maturity of the 70s, and no one personified the changes more than Carole King. Here are a few reasons why:
1. She was there. She was in the Brill Building churning out hit after hit in the early 60s.
2. She had written a lot of songs that went beyond the genre of 60s’ pop. When you learned that something like “I’m into Something Good” by Herman’s Hermits was hers you’d think, “Oh, I thought they were just growing up on their own.”
3. In her own interpretation (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”) her music took on a new and nuanced depth and meaning.
4. Her new material like “It’s Too Late” was subtle beyond what we had come to expect from pop music.
5. Surprise … She was a terrific performer!
6. The title and packaging of “Tapestry” reflected the sense of maturity we were sensing in our lives. We’re no longer kids, and that’s ok.
Carole King helped an entire generation turn the corner into adulthood. Me? … age 23, just graduated college, recently married … I was turning the page as well.
And Joni?? … Joni Mitchell was another of the musical artists that we adopted as we exited adolescence and entered into young adulthood. I was first exposed to her in college by listening to Tom Rush, who included several of her songs on his “Circle Game” album. “Tin Angel,” “Urge for Going,” and “Circle Game” were both pleasing tunes, but also had a depth of lyric and emotional sensibility that we rarely glimpsed in popular music.
We (that is, “me” and a zillion others) went from discovering Joni via Tom to discovering her for ourselves. There was her first album, then “Ladies of the Canyon,” then “For the Roses,” then “Blue,” then “Court and Spark.” I may have the sequence wrong, but they were all great works of art that commanded our attention throughout the 1970s.
In later years these performers remained, more or less, in our lives. Joni, alas, turned away from pop and descended into less accessible stuff. (I ran into her once in a tiny jazz club in NYC.) Tom Rush resurfaced when Laura became Program Director for Chandler Music Hall. He became her first sold out show. I even did a telephone interview with him for The Herald. I did a second one a few years later when he was booked to perform at our 50th Reunion gathering for the Yale Class of 1970.
Most recently Joni has been the honoree at the Kennedy Center for winning some lifetime achievement award for whatever. She’s now back performing, albeit about two octaves lower. Joni (always just “Joni”) is, was, and will always be.
Rolling Stone: I know this is an unfair question, but if you had to point to just one song that captured what was going on in the music world in 1971, what would it be?
SM: Actually, this one is easy … “20th Century Man” by The Kinks. This is one of Ray Davies’s best, a visionary view of the culture at the turn of the century. “This is the age of machinery, mechanical nightmare …” Apochalyptic future “Controlled by civil servants, and people dressed in grey.” He clearly would prefer to live in the past. “I’ll take Rembrandt.” Match this lyrical genius with a great guitar riff, simple, yet driving, and an octave jumping vocal and you’ve got one of the best Kinks songs ever. (Also, a shout out to Mick Avory’s drums.)
The 1960s was all about music, but in 1971 the times they were a’changin’. Other forms of expression, such as film, were ready to be front and center.
Rolling Stone: Stop right there! That’s a perfect segue into tomorrow’s session, when we turn away from music to see what else was going on in the world of art. So we’ll see you tomorrow?
SM: Same time, same place, same channel.
Chapter 13: The Rolling Stone Interview with Stephen Morris, Part 2
Rolling Stone: We’re back with Stephen Morris, but what a difference a day makes. Something that he describes as “UFFC” which he identifies as “Unidentified Falling Frozen Crud” is coming out of the sky, bouncing off the roof of the unheated playhouse. After a few minutes, he suggests moving into the kitchen, where Sandy serves us green tea as we sit on kitchen stools.
SM: I wonder how the daffodils like it? This is pretty classic Mud Season Yin/Yang. At least we’re cozy in here.
Rolling Stone: Do you think the music scene had run out of steam by 1971?
SM: No, you still had strong offerings by great artists. You still have up-and-comers, and you still have wannabees. It’s the audience that had changed, at least that’s what was happening with me.
Rolling Stone: Describe your personal life in 1971.
SM: Laura and I married and resolved that whoever got a job first, that’s where we would move. I flubbed around trying to get a job in publishing, but not knowing where to start. Laura almost immediately got a job with her alma mater, Bradford College, as an admissions recruiter. The college hired a second recruiter, also a Bradford alum, Louise Eastman, whose claim to fame is that she is the sister-in-law of Beatle Paul McCartney. Louise later married Chuck Weed, who, coincidentally, was Bill Peck’s best friend from high school. Several years later we were invited for a weekend at the Weed family farm in New Hampshire, and it was there that our son Jacob was conceived! But that’s another story.
We lived in a small apartment at 23 Wonalancet Drive in Haverhill, MA that we rented from a guy named Ronnie Boisselle for $28 per week. We had only a tiny black and white TV, so I don’t remember ever watching any television aside from Boston Bruins’ games. Neither of us had ever been hockey fans, but the NHL had just expanded, meaning that the talent pool was diluted and established teams like the Bruins could beat up on their opponents night after night. You could barely see the puck on our television, but that didn’t stop us from becoming Bruins groupies.
I can name the starting line-up: Phil Esposito (center), Ken Hodge and Wayne Cashman (forwards or wings), Bobby Orr and Dallas Smith (defense), Ed Johnston and Gerry Cheevers (goal). The second line was Johnny Bucyk, Pie MacKenzie, and Fred Stanford; Terrible Teddy Greene and Carole Vadnais on defense. Derek Sanderson, the team hipster, centered the third line. Every night was like a home team slaughter, even when they were on the road.
The movie about wife-swapping called “Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice” had come out a couple of years earlier, and now the Bruins defensemen were “Bob, Carole, Ted, and Dallas!” Har-har!
It’s amazing how our brains are filled with trivia like this. Then again, I can still name all the members of The Animals, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and more.
Even Laura became a big hockey fan. Bill Peck, rudderless after college, moved to Haverhill, and I got him a job at Graphic Litho where I worked. He watched hockey games with us, and we played table hockey in between periods. To time periods we played The Who’s “Pure and Easy,” and many a thrilling game was played to the chrescendoing Keith Moon drum rolls at the end.
My day job was selling advertising for “Power Boat Annual.” In my mind this was the start of my career in publishing. My pay was $2.00/hour as a draw against future commissions. I hated it. I worked with a guy named Dave Allen who chain-smoked and talked incessantly about what a great salesman he was and what a bitch his wife was. The truth is, however, that he never picked up the phone to call anyone, because he was spending so much time yakking at me. By the end of the year I was outselling him by a long shot, because I made the damn calls, and he didn’t!
Our hearts, however, were set in this completely unrealistic dream of emigrating to Nova Scotia where we would live off the land. What a joke! And yet I was the one who didn’t get it. There’s never been a person less capable of living off the land than me in 1971.
Rolling Stone: What did you do for Valentines Day of 1971?
SM: What a silly question. Seriously? I remember no specifics, but it was our first Valentine’s together, so it would have been special and romantic, at least by our standards. It probably was not a dozen roses, but a single rose. It wouldn’t have been a fancy dinner out, but rather breakfast at Angelo’s (our favorite greasy spoon).
Laura and I were well-matched in that way. Her need for acknowledgement were high, but her expectations were low. I had no difficulty remembering what Valentine’s was all about, but I thought it silly to squander our thin resources on frivolity. She was fine with that. Her birthday was critical, enough so that we celebrated her half-birthday, too. So long as I remembered, a card or poem was sufficient.
The modest expectations of Valentine’s were a microcosm for the rest of our financial life. Laura came from a wealthy family (compared to mine), and yet she never showed any sign of special privilege. I always insisted that we live within our own means. She was fine with that, even though in the beginning, those means were barely modest.
When we had dreams of moving to a rural paradise in Nova Scotia, she was all for it. When we found a broken down farm to buy for $8,000 and the only way we could afford it would be to combine our savings with money from selling the shiny, orange Camaro that her parents gave her as a graduation present, she was quick to say ok. Finances were never an issue with us, even when we didn’t have a lot.
When we went to live for a summer in our broken down farmhouse with no electricity, no running water, and an outhouse … Laura loved it!! She was very happy spending hours picking tiny raspberries that she would make into jam. When we moved to London in 1972 (another story) I remember going through customs wearing a duck hunting jacket with the game pouches stuffed with jars of raspberry jam. It’s funny how your priorities change over time.
She must have been in love. There’s no other explanation. From the perspective to committing to a partnership where finances were fully shared … she was perfect.
Rolling Stone: Were you still following the music scene?
SM: Not as much. I remember the clock radio going off every morning and, likely as not, Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” was playing. In many ways I felt like I had outgrown AM radio. I was listening more to WBCN which was playing so-called progressive or album rock. Then, after seeing “A Clockwork Orange” I started listening to Beethoven and other classical music.
Rolling Stone: Were movies filling the cultural void?
SM: Not “movies,” so much as “film.” The foreign directors— Fellini, Goddard, Antonioni— were becoming all the rage. I remember going to some pretty pretentious movies and pretending that I loved them!
Rolling Stone: Explain the significance of “A Clockwork Orange.”
SM: This was in the pseudo-intellectual period of my life. I was quite impressed with myself, I must say.
Not content to simply read the book, I taught myself a few sentences in Nadsat, the fictional language spoken by the teens in this apocalyptic novel and would say things like “I hit her in the vissy with me rooker and watched the krovvy flow between her groodies real horrorshow.”
Even now, it’s hard to believe I was actually this cool. I don’t remember where I saw the movie, but I was equally enthralled by the young Alex (played by a young, but still too-old-for-the-part Malcolm MacDowell) who ended part 1 by declaring “And me, Alex, being only 14 years old.”
The movie, like the book, went straight downhill after the visionary opening. I can’t tell you to this day, how the story ended, but for several years thereafter, dressing up like Alex with a derby and a cane was my go-to Halloween outfit (complete with eyelash). (Laughs)
Rolling Stone: What other movies interested you?
SM: The American directors started hitting their strides. I adopted Robert Altman as my favorite director. I fetishized “Brewster McCloud” which introduced me to Bud McCort as an actor. That, in turn, led to “Harold and Maude.”
“Harold and Maude” was not a blockbuster hit when it first came out. It was more of a cult movie that we learned about from our friends Dennis and Sharon.
Dennis Scanlon was the son of a wartime friend of my father’s. They had served together in China at the end of WW II. Dennis had graduated from Ohio State with a degree in veterinary medicine, and had moved to Providence for his first job. He arrived in about 1969. He drove a Corvette and briefly dated my sister, but his real heart throb was a girl who went to Alabama University. Sharon was unlikely student at Alabama, a northern Jew who bore a passing resemblance to Cher and who once dated Joe Namath. (“He was a shithead.” —Sharon).
I didn’t pay much attention to Dennis originally. He was more connected to my sister and father, but he was an occasional houseguest with whom I increasingly became familiar. Eventually, Sharon moved to Providence and they married. She was an English teacher and connected with me on the level of writing and literature.
Time passed, and Dennis started identifying more as a hippie. He grew his hair long, word tie-died shirts and a headband and dumped the ‘Vette in favor of a VW van. His values began aligning much more with mine, and as I began going out with Laura, we became as a couple increasingly friendly with (and influenced by) Dennis and Sharon. They were the ones with the homesteading dream of Nova Scotia, and they made it happen!
But that’s another story. Jeez … how did I get onto that tangent? You’re going to edit this down, right? A lot of this is just personal rambling.
Rolling Stone: Don’t worry about it. Just keep going.
SM: OK, you asked for it. Dennis was quite a pothead, and a visit to them always involved smoking a joint, but, more importantly, smoking a joint and doing something really fun and interesting. They introduced us to some of their favorite music and movies, two of them being “Harold and Maude” and “Brewster McCloud.” They became role models for Laura and me, because they showed you could be married, hold down responsible jobs, and still be kids at heart.
My interest in H&M was further piqued when my mother told me that Ruth Gordon had lived on Post Island. She was a Quincy girl, but I was never able to verify the Post Island connection.
Meanwhile, Dennis and Sharon emigrated successfully to Nova Scotia. We tried, but eventually ended up, very happily, in Vermont. We tried to maintain connections, most memorably on a trip to Nova Scotia to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving in 1991 (long story), but inevitably, we drifted apart. We tried to keep the generational connection going when both their son, Noah, and Jake were both guitarists at the Berklee School of Music, but the magic didn’t happen.
Dennis died at age 72, not long after attending a ZZ Top concert. I wonder what happened to his mint-condition Star War toys and complete set of 1951 Topps baseball cards? RIP, friend and inspiration. “Lather was 30 years old today, and they took away all of his toys.” That’s Dennis, except he kept the toys. For about a decade (1970 to 1980), Dennis and Sharon Scanlon were the most influential people in our lives. Music was still a big part of the equation and connection, but literature, film, and theater now played major roles.
Rolling Stone: What other movies, sorry “films,” influenced you?
SM: Let’s run down the list. “Last Picture Show” was a hip favorite. I tried to like it, but couldn’t muster much enthusiasm.
“James Bond” and “Klute” were solid, mainstream entertainment.
“Bananas” (Woody Allen) and “Play Misty for Me” (Clint Eastwood” were promises of things to come.
“Big Jake” was a dying gasp from John Wayne. Do you see the parallels between music and film. John Wayne was The Beach Boys, while Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood were the Bonnie Raitts and David Bowies. They would become the major influences of the 80s and beyond.
“Billy Jack” was one of the early pissed-off, wronged dude movies, a story that is still be played out in America.
“Carnal Knowledge” another attempt to push the sexual envelope. Try watching it today. Not so good.
“Fiddler on the Roof” … Broadway stuff held no interest for me, until “Jesus Christ, Superstar.” That one hit the nail on the head.
“Shaft” … the first of the Blaxsploitation films. An interesting cultural development. I didn’t see the film, but I feel like I was witnessing history. Still do, still am, still are.
Most of what happened in my 20s is an embarrassment now. It’s a decade when you’re just feeling your way a long, and making things up as you go. Like I said … you’re going to edit this, right? Most of it is meaningful only to me.
Chapter 14: The Great Beer Trek
Meryl Streep, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Erich Segal, John Kerry, George W. Bush, Henry Winkler, Gary Trudeau—there were a lot of soon-to-be famous people hanging out at Yale during the late 1960s. And what did this embryonic celebrities have in common? That’s right … that they did NOT know me.
Laura and I married in June, 1970, right after graduation. Another couple, Jane and Michael Stern, were married in New Haven at that same time. They floundered about in the early 1970s before deciding on becoming writers, specializing in books on travel, food, and popular culture. Their first book “Road Food” was published in 1977, and they’ve built solid careers around this central core.
I, too, floundered about in the early 1970s, having vague notions of being a writer, but not having a clue what to write about. Laura did not flounder, because she was bright enough and personable enough that someone was always willing to give her a job, and, unlike me, she did not have huge ambitions to become a beloved, intergalactic celebrity.
In 1972/3 we lived in London, she being gainfully employed and me floundering, where I learned to make beer. Returning to the U.S. in the summer of 1973 I decided to pursue my new hobby, only to find that brewing your own beer in the United States was not only illegal, but a felony.
What? Something is screwed up here. How can it be illegal to make a product that has the same basic ingredients as bread? The seed for The Great Beer Trek, thus, was planted. I would become an expert on beer, and I would be the one to explain to the American public why, in a varied world of wonderfully flavorful brews. Americans were limited to a choice of bland, yellow, pissy fizz and bland, yellow, pissy fizz lite.
I was on a quest! I would be the savior of beer!
Meanwhile, life intervened. I had to get a job. From London we returned to Post Island, but summer ended, and the cottage needed to be closed up for the winter, so we shared a winter rental with college friend John Newberry, my ex-NROTC buddy, currently stationed in Charlestown, MA. The rental, a converted cottage near the beach in Scituate, MA. Laura immediately got a job working at an Italian bakery in Quincy while I started pounding the pavement.
My pounding led to a nearby company called South Shore Publishing, which actually did publish some local newspapers, but whose main business was printing circulars for grocery and discount chains. Well-l-l-l, it wasn’t exactly the publishing I had in mind, but printing is kind of adjacent to publishing, right?
I was hired for unspecified duties, the first of which as cleaning up the machine shop, a hodgepodge of tools and rags and discarded coffee cups. At the end of the first week the guy who had hired me (and who I had not seen since the initial interview) stuck his head into the machine shop and said “I’ve never seen this place so clean!”
In short order I became personnel manager, assistant platemaker, account executive, then customer service manager. It’s all a blur, but when the dust had settled I was in charge of a bunch of other people servicing national accounts for a fast-growing junk mail printer.
One of our most important customers was a New York regional chain called Spartan Atlantic. My boss, the General Manager named Mel Small, instructed me “Just make these guys happy. I don’t care what it takes, just make them happy.”
Once a week Spartan Atlantic released their circular to be printed. I would drive into Logan Airport to meet the Eastern Shuttle to pick up their Ad Manager and his flunky (i.e. assistant). I’d greet them, and the Ad Manager named Tony Portello would say “Never forget … I am the Client. I say, you do. Where are we going to lunch?”
I took them to a nearby restaurant in Boston’s North End to a restaurant named Polcari’s, which still exists but that, like many of the North End’s first generation residents, has since relocated to Boston’s North Shore. Tony entered the restaurant with a flourish and asked to be seated at a prominent table. Flunky and I slinked behind. He placed his order … stuffed lobster and a bottle of Verdicchio (an Italian white wine).
It didn’t take many visits for Tony to be greeted by name by the maitre d’ and fawned upon by the waitstaff. One day Tony summoned the maitre d’ and said “I would like my lobster stuffed with something other than breadcrumbs.”
“Whatever you’d like, Mr. Portello.” Tony chewed on this for a moment, then said “Then I would like my lobster stuffed with another lobster.”
“Of course, Mr. Portello.” Tony made sure I left I particularly generous tip that day. Later that afternoon I went in to sheepishly explain a ridiculously large expense account, and all Mel asked was “Is Tony happy?” Some months later, when I complained about a hard-to-please female clients, he said “I don’t care if you have to fuck her in the parking lot, just make sure she’s happy.”
Polcari’s today, but not the North End original
As I shot up the ranks in the junk mail business I attracted the attention of one of the companies co-owners, Irving Greenblatt. Irving and his wife, Helen, hosted champagne brunches on Sunday mornings. These were leisurely affairs that featured a coterie of colorful guests who were personal friends. Laura and I were invited and soon became regulars, which was odd, because no one else from the company was ever included. It didn’t become apparent why we were thus-anointed until later.
It was also during this time when I first had an article published. There is a sign on Route 3A in North Scituate for a waterway called Bound Brook. Everyone knows the sign, but no one knows anything about the brook. I proposed to the editor of the local paper that I write an article about a canoe trip down this little stream. I even suggested a visual of me portaging my canoe on my back over the busy Route 3A roadway.
A few weeks later the article appeared with the title “I Braved Bound Brook.” In it I detailed a frustrating, but ultimately rewarding, voyage down the trickle. And sure enough, there was the picture of the intrepid author, obscured by the canoe on his back portaging across Route 3A. The account as humorous and self-deprecating and generated a number of comments, all positive. I was finally a published author.
There was only one problem. The entire article was a lie.
I didn’t get the memo that was sent out about journalistic integrity. It turned out that Bound Brook was so overgrown and weed-choked that it was impenetrable. I had a tough slog making it more than a few feet at a time. It did give the chance to describe the wilderness that is not visible from the passing car, but the envisioned voyage of discovery was a figment of my imagination.
Even the staged visual of the author portaging the canoe across the road was fake. I took the picture of someone else, pretending to be me.
Nonetheless, I soldiered on writing the piece as originally envisioned, all the while asking myself, “Who’s ever going to know? Who else would be stupid enough to try to take a canoe down this worthless, little trickle?” And I was right. No one ever questioned the veracity of the story, and … no … one cared.
Thus, my writing career with hallmarks of laziness and lack of fact-checking began. Now, with some dozens of books and hundreds of articles to my name, and a member of the Author’s Guild for decades, the Truth is finally revealed. And the Truth is … (drum roll, please) … don’t take yourself too seriously (cymbal crash!), because no one else does.
Oh, The Great Beer Trek. I was making steady progress. I did more and more research, brewed more and more beer, and became convinced that this was my best idea ever. Unknownst to me, there were several other beer fanatics out there who also believe that the best days for the America were not in the past, but the future.
I started roughing out a voyage. My tact was to take an actual trip, learn the terrain first hand, and turn it into a book (like Bound Brook on steroids).
Irving had a plan, too. He wanted to sell South Shore Publishing and to use the money to buy an inn or hotel in the Caribbean. Laura and I would manage it while he shuttled back and forth while he shuttled back and forth between Paradise and Reality.
Irving’s resume as an entrepreneur was stronger than mine as a writer, yet things were not falling into place. Laura and I set a drop-dead date for going on The Great Beer Trek. In March I began writing letters and setting up appointments. Around that time Irving and I flew down to the island of Vieques, off the east coast of Puerto Rico to look at a promising place called Casa del Frances. I came back and gave my notice at South Shore Publishing.
On May 1, or thereabouts, we found out that Laura was pregnant, due at the end of November. The next week we took off on The Great Beer Trek, a 22,000 mile trip that would bring us to every operating American brewery—all 42 of them! We returned home in August. Irving was negotiating on Casa del Frances, but the prospects varied day to day. I wrote feverishly on the manuscript, but I knew that by October, I would need to get a job.
October arrived. Irving said the negotiations were going well; my New York literary agent said things were encouraging; but my deadline for job hunting had arrived. In November I applied to an employment agency for a job that turned out to be for a woodstove company in Vermont. On November 29, Jacob Carpenter Morris was born. In early December I visited the company, called Vermont Castings, in Randolph, Vermont. A job offer came a day or two later. I gulped hard, did a final check-in with Irving— no progress— and accepted the job.
The winter of 1979 was one of the coldest on record in Vermont. My first day on the job I walked to work on a morning when it was -24 degrees. I with my beard a solid block of ice. I went to my department and was given an empty desk. Everyone else was busy talking on their phones, but, oddly, they were all standing on their chairs. “That’s strange,” I thought. The offices for Vermont Castings were located in what had been an old foundry site on the banks of the 3rd Branch of the White River. The building had large, old windows, covered in plastic, leaky as hell. After a few minutes my lower extremities started to go numb. There was the equivalent of a 20 mph draft about 18 inches off the floor. Not being a dummy I dutifully climbed onto my chair.
There was no looking back.
Chapter 15: The Defiant, The Vigilant, and The Resolute
I met Charlie Page on the day of my job interview at Vermont. A gangling puppy-dog of a man, Page had worked both as a logger, but also as a technician for Jotul, the Norwegian stovemaker. He was effusive in his praise for Vermont Castings and was hoping to land a position in the technical department. His enthusiasm was the sole extent of my due diligence before accepting the position as Customer Service Manager. A month later, on my first day on the job, I went into the Men’s bathroom and found myself next to Page at the urinal.
“Hey! You got the job!” I said, delighted at encountering a familiar face. “Congratulations!”
“I hope you didn’t take that Customer Service position,” he replied. “That department is a mess!”
I knew nothing about the woodstove industry, other than it was jump-started during the First Arab Oil Embargo of 1973. A bunch of bright, educated ski bums in the Mad River Valley—looking for ways to be employed educated ski bums—had a competition to start woodstove companies. Vermont Castings, whose product combined the airtight efficiency of Scandinavian stoves with the traditional American aesthetics of a Franklin stove, emerged as the eventual winner. Duncan Syme, a Yale grad ten years my senior, was one of those ski bums. Here’s the company’s origin story:
Murray Howell shows off the Vigilant woodstove.
Two guys meet in a bar in Crested Butte, Colorado. It is 1970, and the United States is embroiled in the Vietnam War, trying to comprehend the assassinations of not one, not two, but three of the country’s most charismatic leaders. The two guys are in search of their paths in life. Wouldn’t it be great, they muse after a few beers, to follow Joni Mitchell’s advice to “get back to the garden” and to find a way to do something significant … something real and tangible that they could create with their own hands?
Five years later, the two have taken different paths, but are now linked by marriage … brothers-in-law. Murray Howell has taken the proven path to wealth on Wall St. Duncan Syme in Warren, Vermont is barely eking out a living as an architect. Howell hates his job and wants out. Syme likes his profession and likes Vermont, but will need to invent gainful employment if he wants to escape the most hardscrabble existence.
Necessity becomes the mother of invention. Like many in Vermont, Syme can’t afford the skyrocketing price of oil, so he burns wood, lots of wood. What if? … What if you took the combustion technology from one of these airtight, efficient Scandinavian stoves and put it in the skin of the more traditionally-styled Franklin stove? He broaches the idea with Howell who, from his background in financial analysis, knows that the country’s problems with imported oil will not be solved soon. Count him in.
The Defiant woodstove, named both for its ability to defy the cold of winter and as testament to a legendary defender of America’s Cup, made its debut in 1976 and their fledgling company, Vermont Castings, prospered. So, for a while, did every other woodstove company in the country. When the inevitable industry consolidation occurred in the early 1980s Vermont Castings, fueled by innovative design and engineering, fanatical attention to manufacturing quality, and uncompromising customer service, was able to maintain its momentum while competitors slid back. By the mid-80s, Vermont Castings had become the worldwide leader in its category.
In an era when America forgot how to make things, Vermont Castings stoves were made by bearded, flannel-shirted Vermonters. While manufacturing facilities were proliferating in whatever foreign land had the cheapest labor, Vermont Castings built a state-of-the-art foundry and enameling plants in the shadows of the Green Mountains. While standards of quality universally were subjugated to the priorities of the bean counter, Vermont Castings stayed true to the exacting standards set by its founders. Best of all, they maintained the youthful idealism of their conversations in Crested Butte.
Murray Howell, sadly, passed away much too young in 1983. He missed the entire ride, but he was there for the best part. After he was gone, the company’s trajectory was filled with bumps and twists, but always headed onward and upward, finding its center in the clarity of the original vision.
Howell once said “I’m as creative as the sole of your shoe, and Duncan is as organized as a bowl of spaghetti.” With a roster of accomplishments that includes the Defiant, the Vigilant, the Resolute, and even the Vermont Castings Owners Outing, Duncan Syme has transformed that tangled bowl of spaghetti into a memorable and remarkable feast of a career.
Air Don and The Chateau Morris
America, which had been so rudely shocked by the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, was more responsive when the 2nd Embargo happened in the spring of 1979. Vermont Castings, the sleepy woodstove company located in an abandoned foundry in tiny Randolph, Vermont became a rocket ship— a cast iron rocket ship. For the next few years the challenge was clear, to keep up with burgeoning demand.
My tiny customer service staff of 5 by August of 1979 had grown to 65. The ones who thrived were those who could swim the fastest. Initially, the company sold direct to consumers, which was great for high profit margins and building brand loyalty, but was very limiting in terms of “keeping big machines running fast,” which business people like to do. In order to keep their state-of-the-art foundry and enameling facility running efficiently the company had to reach beyond those consumers willing to purchase a 400 pound woodstove through the mail.
This meant establishing a national network of independent dealers, and this became the job of the customer service guy … otherwise known as “me” … for no other reason than I was willing to take it on. Towards that end I was the one person in the company, other than the two owners, who were authorized to use the company airplane.
Why the company had its own airplane, a twin-engine Mitsubishi turbo-prop jet, no less, defied logic, but could be understood from the motto of co-founder Murray Howell, “Bigger, faster, higher, better.” Murray, in other words, was going to see how far he could take this cast-iron rocketship.
The company had a full-time pilot in the person of Don Larriviere, a soft-spoken, bearded, counter-culture kinda guy who lived off-the-grid in a log cabin with his wife, Cassie. The entire company, I should add, was counter-cultural. Beards and flannel shirts were the norm. The suits, personified by President Ronald Reagan had taken over the government and Wall Street, but here in the northwoods, the hippies were in control.
The Intrepid woodstove kept all the traditions alive.
Yikes! What a crazy time. While interest rates hovered in the mid-teens and “greenmailing” was the current craze in the financial world, Don Larriviere and I flew around the country in the chariot we deemed “Air Don.”
The acme of the absurdity came in 1983 when the national woodstove convention was held in New Orleans. This represented a great opportunity for me, as the creme de la creme of the nation’s woodstove dealers would be in attendance give me the opportunity to meet and evaluate many of them in the concentrated period of a few days.
Don and I and some key staff flew to New Orleans a couple days in advance of the convention. We would be headquartered at the Hotel Vendome in the French Quarter. Although we flew in a company jet, Vermont Castings was notoriously unpretentious in its travel ethics. Luxury, no; modesty yes. Ostentation, no; simplicity, yes.
The Vendome, now long gone, seemed an appropriate choice for our New Orleans home. It had some touches of elegance, but was clearly past its prime. A little frayed and shabby, consistent with our self-image.
The function room on the top floor, however, was an entirely different animal, an ornate, palatial space with crystal chandeliers, a plush purple carpet conference table and small dance floor. “Holy shit,” I said, my jaw dropping to the floor, “Murray’s going to kill me.” Murray Howell was notorious for his disdain for trapping of wealth and pretention.
Meanwhile, the company jet, Air Don, was enroute to Vermont to pick up Duncan and Murray. Everyone else on the Vermont Castings shared my sense of trepidation, but in the meantime, had to admit that these surroundings, while incongruous with our company image, were pretty damn nice.
Prospective dealers lined up in the hallway to make the case for local dealerships. We had the luxury of being able to be selective, making the use of my time extremely efficient. The selected dealers were invited back for a hospitality event on Saturday evening. I selected the food and beverages from a roster of packages that struck me as extremely reasonable, particularly compared with those offered by the convention providers associated with the New Orleans Super Dome.
Duncan, Murray, and entourage flew in on Saturday morning and they came straight to the Convention center. This give me the opportunity to at least prepare Murray for the hospitality event. I didn’t want a scene at the event proper. He grunted his usual blunt acknowledgement, then set out to check out the competition. At least he had been warned. (Duncan, by contrast, was not a concern. While he presented the requisite counter-culture exterior, he could instantly revert to child-of-privilege mode.)
Murray arrived as the event was in set up mode. “Holy shit,” he said, mirroring my initial reaction. “Welcome to Chateau Morris. This has to be the fanciest venue in New Orleans.” The pregnant pause … lasted until he added “and why the fuck not, because we’re the best stove company in the world!”
It was a triumphant event. I seem to remember Duncan going crazy when he found out that platters of oysters and crawfish could be ordered from room service. The proverbial good time was had by all. Events like this end early, giving conventioneers the opportunity to go out for dinner on the town. The Vermont Castings staff, however, just hung out at the Chateau Morris. The food and wine was incomparable, the tab was on Murray and Duncan, and the service, everyone noticed was beyond impeccable. The wait staff, all of whom were black, were unusually friendly and attentive, but also quite theatrical. Every table cleared or platter presented was done with a distinctly theatrical flair, a little flourish of song or dance. It was well beyond what any of us bearded rubes from the backwoods of Vermont had experienced, and it made an extraordinary night even more memorable.
As the evening reached its conclusion, I made a point of seeking out the service captain and telling him how impressed we were by the competence of his staff, but also their unflaggingly cheerful presentation. He smiled graciously, thanked me for the compliment and said “We all happy, because y’all Vermont Castings, and we all want to be in the movies!”
That’s how things were for Vermont Castings in 1983. Flying high.
Chapter 16: Beyond Yonder
[In an impressive display of professional incompetence, I managed to screw up my own life story by publishing Chapter 16 (Tales and More Tales of Beyonder) BEFORE Chapter 15 (Beyond Yonder.) My apologies, Dear Reader. Thank you for sharing the mis-adventures of this sometimes-not-too extra-ordinary life. SM]
From “Autobio-grafitti,” the rap version of “Extra-Ordinary:”
“That’s when it all came together
writing, woodstoves, Vermont’s crappy weather”
In the summer of 1979, the Morris family of three, the same three (albeit one “in utero”) that a year earlier had travelled across the country on a quest for beer, bought a house in West Brookfield, a small hamlet located on a dirt crossroads. It’s a cluster of less than a dozen houses, including a church, a one-room schoolhouse, and a dairy farm. It’s a place unlike any other place.
We didn’t know it when we bought the house, a circa 1850s cape, but it was a place of unique personalities, as well. And the statement holds true no matter who moves in or out.
We didn’t know it when we moved, but there were also a number of young families of our same vintage in the village and the surrounding area. We were now firing on all cylinders— the family front, the professional front, and the community front. To say I was a happy guy is to underestimate the all-encompassing power of the word “happy.”
Soon thereafter, Laura became pregnant with our son, Patrick. “Happy” became “happier.” But, you ask, what about your ambition to become a famous writer? That piece, dear reader, was soon to fall into place as well.
Life was chaotic, but happily so. I re-established my home brewery and formed a group called the Cram Hill Brewers, named for a nearby landmark. It was Vermont’s first homebrewing club. One of the earliest photos I have of Patrick is of him pulling himself to his feet using a 5-gallon carboy as a prop. It was published in the national magazine, “Zymurgy.”
On a frigid New Year’s Eve gathering at a neighbor’s, a few of us having recently crossed the threshold of 30 were lamenting the fact that we were no longer the young studs of our recollection. Our New Year’s resolution was that we would get ourselves into such good physical shape that we would be able to run, without stopping!, the entire 8-mile loop that defined the Valley of West Brookfield. On Labor Day of that year we held the first Classic, a road race that would be held, officially for the next ten years and, unofficially, for another 10.
In 1981, Patrick was born, and the second annual, modestly titled “Classic” was held in conjunction with the first-ever Vermont State Homebrew Competition, an event of such newsworthiness that it was covered on the front page of The Boston Globe, New England’s largest newspaper. (I still scratch my head over this one!)
But, you persist, Dear Reader, what about the famous writer part of your life? Hold on, I’m getting to it.
Vermont Castings continued its rocket ride. The company was presented with a myriad of business opportunities of debatable merit. One such opportunity was from a book packager named Bob Entwhistle who suggested that the company write a book on the burgeoning practice of heating with wood. Duncan and Murray thought it was a good idea, but … who’s got time to write a book?
As with establishment of the dealer network, I had firmly established established myself as, in the words of Duncan Syme, “Vice President of Projects That No One Else Wants To Do.” Four months later “The Book of Heat” written by the staff of Vermont Castings and edited by Stephen Morris and Bill Busha was published.
************************
Back to Baseball … Opening Day in West Brookfield
(Here’s a reminder of how life is a game … baseball is serious.)
The Morris family of my youth moved four times in eight years. My dad was moving up the professional ladder at the American Red Cross. Our lives were exceptionally white, middle class, and average, establishing the tone for my life. Not just ordinary … extra-ordinary. For our family the constants were not the apartments where we lived, but rather the things that did not change–Post Island, baseball, and our family friends, the Lukeharts. Howard “Luke” Lukehart held a similar position to my Dad’s at the Red Cross, my sister Jan and Nancy Lukehart were best friends, youngest daughter Betty and I were besties, and older sister Sue was engaged to a Yalie, giving me a role model for later life.
Perfect Game
The story begins on October 8, 1956. World Series time. Autumn in the air. Leaves turning. Lots of commercials for Gillette razors on television. (The Gillette company always shot its advertising wad by offering premiums during World Series time.) The school bell rang at Bellevue Elementary School. I took off running across the schoolyard, across the foot bridge crossing the creek, onto West Wakefield Drive and to the Lukehart’s apartment where I knew my mother would be playing bridge with her lady friends.
Not only was this the shortest route to my Mom, but I knew that Viola “Vi” Lukehart was a real baseball fan, and would certainly have the game on the TV in the background, making this also the shortest route to the World Series.
I burst into the room. No locked doors in those days. Four ladies are fanning their cards and take little notice. Finally, Vi, not looking up from her cards, addresses me. “The Yankees are leading, but something else is going on. I think maybe the pitcher hasn’t given up any hits.”
The “something else” turns out to be the final inning of the only perfect game ever thrown in World Series history. Turning up the volume is not an option, so I get within a foot of the small black and white television. This is exactly what I saw:
Dale Mitchell is sent up to pinch hit. Three quick strikes later (yes, the last pitch was six inches off the plate) Mitchell is arguing futilely with the ump while Yogi has flung himself into Larsen’s arms. I have witnessed baseball history and I have no one with whom to share the moment.
“Two no trump,” one of the ladies says.
********************************
It’s a long winter. All winters are long. But finally, daylight savings time. For the first time in many months you can go outside to play AFTER dinner. Then, at long last, opening day.
The Opening Day ritual is an annual indulgence. I am allowed to skip school. I drag chairs from around the house and drape hats over them to simulate the ballpark crowd. I open all the windows and turn the television volume way too loud. My mom serves up boiled hot dogs in soggy buns with bright yellow mustard, just like at the game. I’m allowed to throw peanut shells on the floor. Just not on the rug, Buster!
Living in the metro-DC area gives Opening Day a little added spice. The home town team is the Washington Senators–First in War, First in Peace, and Last in the American League. The Senators give the home town fans little to cheer for, although as the seat of government, the team does have the distinction of playing the very first game of the season, with the President throwing out the ceremonial first pitch.
One year my father arranges for me to attend Opening Day in person. I prefer the home routine.
Play ball!
(Footnote on the Lukeharts. Our families separate a few years later when my father is transferred to Providence, Rhode Island to be manager of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Red Cross. A few months I receive a package from middle daughter, Nancy, who has a babysitting job with the rookie third baseman for the Senators who moved in to our old apartment with his young family— Harmon Killebrew! Even more amazingly, he signed a baseball for me! Happy Boy!)
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Flash forward a full generation. Many, many opening days have passed since Don Larson threw his no-hitter. The Young Lad is now fully grown. He now lives in a Brigadoon village in rural Vermont in a hundred year old farmhouse with his pretty wife and two young sons, both of whom are afflicted with the dreaded “Red Sox Disease.” He even went to Yale like Sue Lukehart’s beau.
It’s Opening Day, even though in Vermont that likely means there’s still two feet of snow on the ground, the sap is flowing, and the roads have turned to mud. Younger son, Patrick, is feeling under the weather with a sore throat and lobbies to stay home from school. Hard-ass Dad knows the ruse, but soft-touch Mom over-reacts and wants to keep him home so that she can administer to his whims and needs. To demonstrate her sense of motherly responsibility, she has also procured an appointment with our local pediatrician. Of course, she had also indulged Patrick in allowing him to set up chairs with hats between the couch and the television, and has stocked up with all his favorite snacks.
I say. “Go Sox! Who’s pitching today?” I ask Patrick–wink, wink, nudge, nudge, knowing it is a trick question. Who else is it going to be except Roger “Rocket” Clemens? Mid-morning, the phone rings at the office. It is Laura. There is tension in her voice. “We’re just getting into the ambulance, heading to Dartmouth (meaning the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center). The doctor thinks Patrick might have epiglottitis.” Stunned, I barely have time to ask “What’s epiglottitis?” before she says, “Gotta go.”
“Epiglottitis is a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when the epiglottis — a small cartilage “lid” that covers your windpipe — swells, blocking the flow of air into your lungs.
Epiglottitis – Mayo Clinic”
The medical center is an hour away. I catch up to the ambulance mid-way, and, siren blaring, follow them in. Patrick is confused; I am confused; Laura is confused.
Laura and Patrick had gone to his appointment with Dr. Louis DiNicola, who looked in Patrick’s throat, then quietly went to the telephone and ordered up an ambulance before saying anything to patient or mother.
There is no room for Patrick at the hospital, so he is set up temporarily on a bed in the corridor until a room opens up. By now the game has started, but our lives have been overturned by a drama more serious than … baseball. Eventually we are shuttled into a room and a nurse comes by with some medications. “We can’t have you swallow these,” she says cheerily to Patrick, “so we’re going to give them to you … through your back.”
Patrick nods obediently. We Morris Men are like that. Slowly, however, a thought bubble rises over his head …
“What exactly does she mean? Through my back? … YEOW!” (This is now the stuff of Morris-Boy legend, and is re-told at every family gathering.)
Eventually we actually watch an inning or two of the game on some TV in a waiting lounge, but the game is now a footnote in a different drama. Patrick, thankfully, turns out to not have epiglottitis and is released after a night in the hospital. Did Dr. DiNicola overreact? When it comes to health of my children, I WANT him to overreact, so thank you, Doctor!
When we come home, the chairs are still set up between the couch and the TV. I can’t remember if the Red Sox won on this opening day, but another season of baseball has begun.
Chapter 16 Tales and more Tails of Beyonder
Remember “The Book of Heat?” The ink was barely dry on that project when the publisher approached me, asking “What are you going to do next for us, Stephen?”
What’s this? Rather than me groveling before publishers whey were asking me what I was going to do next? The shoe, I realized, was now on the other foot. “Would you be interested in a book on beer?” And that’s how “The Great Beer Trek” finally saw the light of day.
Even though five years had passed since the manuscript was completed, the book created a modest stir and the publisher was back again … now what? Still nurturing thoughts of being a great novelist I proposed a book of fictional stories set in a rural Vermont hamlet, not unlike West Brookfield. And thus, “Beyond Yonder.”
Soon thereafter I began writing a bi-weekly humor column for the Vermont Sunday Magazine called “Tales of Beyonder.” I was the Dave Barry of the Northwoods, the Garrison Keillor of the Green Mountains. I was a Vice-President of the hottest woodstove company on the planet, originator of the Classic, head brewer of the Cram Hill Brewers, husband, father … in short I was The King of Vermont (the title of my next novel).
Here are the types of vignettes that I published:
LAMSON’S BUS, A Christmas Story
The yellow school bus is as much a part of the rural landscape as the red barn or the hay silo. Sometimes we forget about the precious cargo.
I’ve never met Lamson. I don’t even know his first name (or is “Lamson” his first name?), but for the past eight years I have entrusted him, twice a day, with the safety of my children. Lamson is the bus driver who has the route that extends to the far reaches of our hamlet. Although less than ten miles between here and the school, it is a forty-five minute bus route that takes place almost entirely on unpaved, hilly back roads. The route passes dairy farms, rushing brooks, sugarbushes-the best of Beyonder. But to experience it, one must brave the nether side of Vermont’s scenic roads-mud, washboard, and ice.
Lamson spends little time sightseeing. The challenge of maneuvering a yellow steel box jammed with kids from five to thirteen does not permit the luxury of leaf-peeping. Although I’ve never met him, he’s like one of the family. He takes care of nosebleeds and other unexpected emergencies. The children tease him, and he gives it right back. At Christmas he provides candy, and on the last day of school, sodas.
I hear about it at the dinner table. It is the highest form of compliment when I say that Lamson is a Beyonder kind of guy.
Last year, on the Friday just before Christmas, a drizzle, so fine as to be almost imperceptible, began around noon. I realized there was a problem when I fishtailed on the Interstate. It was one of those situations that the veteran Beyonderite recognizes as Trouble-moisture meets frigid pavement, resulting in ice. Conditions get even worse on the back roads.
The mist became a light rain. In offices around the state holiday revelry was curtailed in favor of driving home while there was still daylight. Even with last minute shopping and errands, these were conditions to grind Vermont to a standstill, with residents content to make it to the comfort of the hearth, and no further.
The real extent of this particular Trouble became evident when I saw seven cars awaiting the sand truck at the bottom of the hill leading to Upper Granville.
“The hill’s an ice ball,” said one of the stranded seven, a native Beyonder, and no foreigner to Trouble.
“Any word on the school bus?”
“It’s late, but that’s all I know.”
The school bus is late. These four words bring many elements of life in Vermont into sharper focus. This is a world where the elements must not be taken for granted. A small slip, an error in timing, an unseeable patch of ice and our entire lives can instantly be inverted in a ditch.
Because I am not too bright (and because I felt emboldened by my four wheel drive vehicle), I charged up the hill, taking with me two neighbors who balanced my chances of making it positively against the time it would take for the sand truck to reach our neck of the woods. Piece of cake (well, maybe not for the ordinary guy, but for someone with my driving abilities, no problem, ma’am).
There was tension apparent in the village, settling in as visibly as the fog and the darkness. The reports were grim. Yes, the bus was stuck, caught between two hills too steep and icy to climb. The sand trucks (both of them) were shuttling back and forth to help, but the rate of icing was too great for them to keep up.
Maybe we should have voted for that third truck at town meeting. It had not seemed necessary at the time, but the kids-our children-had not been stuck in the cold, dark, middle of nowhere then, with no one to comfort them and keep them safe.
Except Lamson. That’s when we all began appreciating the guy. We gathered in the kitchen, warmed by the stove and cups of coffee, and the mood lightened as the ice worsened. ཁPoor kids,ཁ we thought, then, upon reflection, “Poor Lamson!”
The phone network kept us informed. After the obligatory Christmas parties at school, the kids had been put on the bus early, where Lamson provided them with even more candy. Now the guy was captive in his steel box with forty-five sugar-juiced, hyper-banshees looking forward to Santa. The man was probably tied to his seat, the wheel commandeered by a ten-year-old.
It was pitch black, nearly three hours late, when we heard the sand truck grinding up the hill. The schoolbus was inches behind. The kids poured out, bubbling tales of adventure, none the worse except for one common woe-everyone had to pee. As the children ran to bathrooms, Lamson barely had time for a wave, let alone the formal acceptance of accolades. Like another man who delivers precious gifts at Christmas, he had more promises to keep. All was well once again in the land of Beyonder, and I swear, as Lamson and his yellow sleigh clattered down the hill, the chains on his tires sounded like jingle bells.
**********************
Did I let my success go to my head. You bet I did. The one capacity that I possess in limitless supply is self-delusion. There is almost no success that I cannot imagine for myself. Since we’ve had a Christmas story, let’s balance it with an Easter story in which I seemingly bring the puppy back from the dead.
The Resurrection of Cimarron, an Easter Story
Easter is the spring holiday, a time of resurrection and redemption. But Easter in Vermont is often a time of despair and suicidal thoughts. The rest of the world is awash in daffodils, forsythia, and cherry blossoms. We are awash in ruts and mud. The local road crew has never been so important. Their loads of gravel sink into the ooze, turning it into lumpy, barely passable porridge that provides a lifeline to the civilized world.
It’s not pretty in Vermont at Easter.
According to the English Book of Common Prayer, “Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon, or next after the 21st day of March (the vernal equinox); and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after.” Translated, Easter can fall on dates between March 22 and April 25.
While the rest of the world celebrates Easter with parades, new clothes, bonnets, and colorfully-dyed eggs, these seem inappropriate in a state where the only thing pushing up through the snow are the winter’s accumulation of frozen dog turds.
Photo by Alexey Demidov on Pexels.com
But it came to pass this one Easter, and a particularly early one, that fortune smiled on the state of Vermont. Even though it was still March, a warm sun poured down on a budless state, swamped in mud, with maple sap coursing through its veins.
In our hamlet of West Brookfield, populated by a potpourri of flatlanders and natives, we celebrated with a community brunch. It was an odd sight to see people clad in Easter finery still wearing Sorels, arriving with their covered dishes.. The menu was cholesterol laden– cheesy quiches, bacon, popovers, and omelets made to order–but indulgence was permissible, at least this one day a year.
The conversation was predictable. The first subject is always the weather. The same people who are the sour complainers (“Can you believe this is Spring?”) become the state’s biggest boosters when the weather gods smile (“Can you believe this is Spring?”). After brunch, we resolved to don our boots and do the unthinkable, take an Easter stroll in the warm sunlight.
Counting kids and dogs, we were at least twenty strong. The dirt road was flaccid, but not unwalkable. It had a springy feel, like a water balloon. An intrepid few shed their boots and walked barefoot.
It was that warm.
Photo by Carolina Basi on Pexels.com
The town had never witnessed such a spectacle. We walked past the church and one-room schoolhouse where Stella, who still lives in town, taught and where, Lynn, who runs the all-encompassing dairy farm, learned. We walked up to the cow barn, but when the cow plops became unavoidable we retraced our steps to the village green which abuts the small mill pond, now pregnant with the melting snow from the hillsides, and brimming to the top of its dam.
The pond and dam date from the settlement’s earliest days, when water power was used for a variety of purposes, but primarily for sawing lumber. According to the town history West Brookfield and Thereabouts by Alice Wakefield (self-published, 1985) “Two separate sets of mills were built to provide lumber, shingles, flour, cider, and other necessities for the entire region.” Although the mills have long since disappeared, the dam that created the pond was maintained by a Wakefield family member for fire safety purposes and simply as a monument to the past. (To some, the town of West Brookfield is itself a monument to the past.)
The crowd gravitated to the adjoining green. Someone found a Frisbee, someone else a tennis ball, someone else a stick. Before long the village green was alive by flying objects, running children, and ecstatic dogs chasing sticks thrown into the pond, newly liberated from its icy surface by the surging spring snowmelt. One of those dogs was Cimarron, a Golden Retriever with a disposition so relentlessly friendly that she was often referred to as the community dog.
Photo by Garfield Besa on Pexels.com
To describe Cimarron as beloved would not be an exaggeration. To say that her face bore a constant smile of beatific grace would be accurate. To say that she had an aura of the divine … well, sure, in a doggy kind of way.
The way a simple dam works is that there is an underwater opening which may or may not be closable that permits a flow though of water that is slightly less than the normal flow of the stream. The underwater opening of the dam in West Brookfield is fixed and cannot be opened or closed. The surplus water backs up to fill the cavity upstream of the dam, creating a pond. If an excess of water enters the pond, such as on warm spring days when the snow melt in the surrounding hills is prodigious, the pond level rises until the excess spills over the top.
On this Easter Day, the pond in West Brookfield was at its brim. The underwater opening was gushing a noisy torrent. The surface of the pond was placid, serene, giving no clue as to the monster beneath.
Photo by Leticia Azevedo on Pexels.com
As the adults surveyed the scene, their bellies full and basking in sunlight, tragedy unfolded. Someone threw a stick a little too close to the dam. Cimarron, obliging as ever, splashed after it, but as she turned to swim back (she’s a retriever, remember?), she was caught in the under current from the opening in the bottom of the dam.
In Hollywood a drama unfolds over two hours. The progression is: “things are good, things get bad, things get worse, things get better.” But this wasn’t Hollywood. This was bedrock Vermont, on an unusually warm Easter Sunday. The progression from good to worse took only a few seconds. Cimarron swam harder, still obediently holding the stick in her mouth. For a moment she held her own, then she started to be pulled under. She swam harder, but moved in the opposite direction. She disappeared.
We watched silently and helplessly. A child spoke “Will she come out the other side?” The menfolk studied the tops of the shoes. The dam had been rebuilt only the previous summer, a community project where we had cheerfully pushed wheelbarrows of dirt and concrete. We put into place the heavy iron grate designed to prevent the lower opening from being jammed with logs, or golden retrievers. Now, as a community, we shared the vision of a motionless dog, pinned against this same grate by the unrelenting force of the melting snow.
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com
The children began to wail.
But this is an Easter story, remember? And Hollywood has nothing on Vermont. Our anguish was disturbed by movement to the right. We turned in unison. It was a creature. It was coming our way. It moved unsteadily. It was a Golden Retriever. … a very wet, very bedraggled Cimarron wobbling towards us from downstream.
The cries of the children are replaced by hugs of a still quivering dog. The Easter clothes are getting wet and doggy, but there is no parental admonishment. Clothes, after all, can be washed and even hung out to dry on this lovely, wonderful, warm, sunny Easter day.
Photo by urtimud.89 on Pexels.com
Things get better. The spectrum of human drama takes place in less than a minute in a small community on a warm Easter day in a tiny hamlet on a dirt crossroads in Vermont. With order restored, it is left to the menfolk to create the narrative to explain the myth. How did Cimarron get through the dam? Perhaps the force of the water was so great that it created a passage under the dam. Perhaps the bones of a dog are flexible enough to be compressed enough to fit between the bars of the grate.
Perhaps there is no explanation, other than that it was Easter.
Photo by Bruno Cervera on Pexels.com
Chapter 17: Tales, and More Tails, of Beyonder
Remember “The Book of Heat?” The ink was barely dry on that project when the publisher approached me, asking “What are you going to do next for us, Stephen?”
What’s this? Rather than me groveling before publishers whey were asking me what I was going to do next? The shoe, I realized, was now on the other foot. “Would you be interested in a book on beer?” And that’s how “The Great Beer Trek” finally saw the light of day.
Even though five years had passed since the manuscript was completed, the book created a modest stir and the publisher was back again … now what? Still nurturing thoughts of being a great novelist I proposed a book of fictional stories set in a rural Vermont hamlet, not unlike West Brookfield. And thus, “Beyond Yonder.”
Soon thereafter I began writing a bi-weekly humor column for the Vermont Sunday Magazine called “Tales of Beyonder.” I was the Dave Barry of the Northwoods, the Garrison Keillor of the Green Mountains. I was a Vice-President of the hottest woodstove company on the planet, originator of the Classic, head brewer of the Cram Hill Brewers, husband, father … in short I was The King of Vermont (the title of my next novel).
Here are the types of vignettes that I published:
LAMSON’S BUS, A Christmas Story
The yellow school bus is as much a part of the rural landscape as the red barn or the hay silo. Sometimes we forget about the precious cargo.
I’ve never met Lamson. I don’t even know his first name (or is “Lamson” his first name?), but for the past eight years I have entrusted him, twice a day, with the safety of my children. Lamson is the bus driver who has the route that extends to the far reaches of our hamlet. Although less than ten miles between here and the school, it is a forty-five minute bus route that takes place almost entirely on unpaved, hilly back roads. The route passes dairy farms, rushing brooks, sugarbushes-the best of Beyonder. But to experience it, one must brave the nether side of Vermont’s scenic roads-mud, washboard, and ice.
Lamson spends little time sightseeing. The challenge of maneuvering a yellow steel box jammed with kids from five to thirteen does not permit the luxury of leaf-peeping. Although I’ve never met him, he’s like one of the family. He takes care of nosebleeds and other unexpected emergencies. The children tease him, and he gives it right back. At Christmas he provides candy, and on the last day of school, sodas.
I hear about it at the dinner table. It is the highest form of compliment when I say that Lamson is a Beyonder kind of guy.
Last year, on the Friday just before Christmas, a drizzle, so fine as to be almost imperceptible, began around noon. I realized there was a problem when I fishtailed on the Interstate. It was one of those situations that the veteran Beyonderite recognizes as Trouble-moisture meets frigid pavement, resulting in ice. Conditions get even worse on the back roads.
The mist became a light rain. In offices around the state holiday revelry was curtailed in favor of driving home while there was still daylight. Even with last minute shopping and errands, these were conditions to grind Vermont to a standstill, with residents content to make it to the comfort of the hearth, and no further.
The real extent of this particular Trouble became evident when I saw seven cars awaiting the sand truck at the bottom of the hill leading to Upper Granville.
“The hill’s an ice ball,” said one of the stranded seven, a native Beyonder, and no foreigner to Trouble.
“Any word on the school bus?”
“It’s late, but that’s all I know.”
The school bus is late. These four words bring many elements of life in Vermont into sharper focus. This is a world where the elements must not be taken for granted. A small slip, an error in timing, an unseeable patch of ice and our entire lives can instantly be inverted in a ditch.
Because I am not too bright (and because I felt emboldened by my four wheel drive vehicle), I charged up the hill, taking with me two neighbors who balanced my chances of making it positively against the time it would take for the sand truck to reach our neck of the woods. Piece of cake (well, maybe not for the ordinary guy, but for someone with my driving abilities, no problem, ma’am).
There was tension apparent in the village, settling in as visibly as the fog and the darkness. The reports were grim. Yes, the bus was stuck, caught between two hills too steep and icy to climb. The sand trucks (both of them) were shuttling back and forth to help, but the rate of icing was too great for them to keep up.
Maybe we should have voted for that third truck at town meeting. It had not seemed necessary at the time, but the kids-our children-had not been stuck in the cold, dark, middle of nowhere then, with no one to comfort them and keep them safe.
Except Lamson. That’s when we all began appreciating the guy. We gathered in the kitchen, warmed by the stove and cups of coffee, and the mood lightened as the ice worsened. ཁPoor kids,ཁ we thought, then, upon reflection, “Poor Lamson!”
The phone network kept us informed. After the obligatory Christmas parties at school, the kids had been put on the bus early, where Lamson provided them with even more candy. Now the guy was captive in his steel box with forty-five sugar-juiced, hyper-banshees looking forward to Santa. The man was probably tied to his seat, the wheel commandeered by a ten-year-old.
It was pitch black, nearly three hours late, when we heard the sand truck grinding up the hill. The schoolbus was inches behind. The kids poured out, bubbling tales of adventure, none the worse except for one common woe-everyone had to pee. As the children ran to bathrooms, Lamson barely had time for a wave, let alone the formal acceptance of accolades. Like another man who delivers precious gifts at Christmas, he had more promises to keep. All was well once again in the land of Beyonder, and I swear, as Lamson and his yellow sleigh clattered down the hill, the chains on his tires sounded like jingle bells.
**********************
Did I let my success go to my head. You bet I did. The one capacity that I possess in limitless supply is self-delusion. There is almost no success that I cannot imagine for myself. Since we’ve had a Christmas story, let’s balance it with an Easter story in which I seemingly bring the puppy back from the dead.
The Resurrection of Cimarron, an Easter Story
Easter is the spring holiday, a time of resurrection and redemption. But Easter in Vermont is often a time of despair and suicidal thoughts. The rest of the world is awash in daffodils, forsythia, and cherry blossoms. We are awash in ruts and mud. The local road crew has never been so important. Their loads of gravel sink into the ooze, turning it into lumpy, barely passable porridge that provides a lifeline to the civilized world.
It’s not pretty in Vermont at Easter.
According to the English Book of Common Prayer, “Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon, or next after the 21st day of March (the vernal equinox); and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after.” Translated, Easter can fall on dates between March 22 and April 25.
While the rest of the world celebrates Easter with parades, new clothes, bonnets, and colorfully-dyed eggs, these seem inappropriate in a state where the only thing pushing up through the snow are the winter’s accumulation of frozen dog turds.
Photo by Alexey Demidov on Pexels.com
But it came to pass this one Easter, and a particularly early one, that fortune smiled on the state of Vermont. Even though it was still March, a warm sun poured down on a budless state, swamped in mud, with maple sap coursing through its veins.
In our hamlet of West Brookfield, populated by a potpourri of flatlanders and natives, we celebrated with a community brunch. It was an odd sight to see people clad in Easter finery still wearing Sorels, arriving with their covered dishes.. The menu was cholesterol laden– cheesy quiches, bacon, popovers, and omelets made to order–but indulgence was permissible, at least this one day a year.
The conversation was predictable. The first subject is always the weather. The same people who are the sour complainers (“Can you believe this is Spring?”) become the state’s biggest boosters when the weather gods smile (“Can you believe this is Spring?”). After brunch, we resolved to don our boots and do the unthinkable, take an Easter stroll in the warm sunlight.
Counting kids and dogs, we were at least twenty strong. The dirt road was flaccid, but not unwalkable. It had a springy feel, like a water balloon. An intrepid few shed their boots and walked barefoot.
It was that warm.
Photo by Carolina Basi on Pexels.com
The town had never witnessed such a spectacle. We walked past the church and one-room schoolhouse where Stella, who still lives in town, taught and where, Lynn, who runs the all-encompassing dairy farm, learned. We walked up to the cow barn, but when the cow plops became unavoidable we retraced our steps to the village green which abuts the small mill pond, now pregnant with the melting snow from the hillsides, and brimming to the top of its dam.
The pond and dam date from the settlement’s earliest days, when water power was used for a variety of purposes, but primarily for sawing lumber. According to the town history West Brookfield and Thereabouts by Alice Wakefield (self-published, 1985) “Two separate sets of mills were built to provide lumber, shingles, flour, cider, and other necessities for the entire region.” Although the mills have long since disappeared, the dam that created the pond was maintained by a Wakefield family member for fire safety purposes and simply as a monument to the past. (To some, the town of West Brookfield is itself a monument to the past.)
The crowd gravitated to the adjoining green. Someone found a Frisbee, someone else a tennis ball, someone else a stick. Before long the village green was alive by flying objects, running children, and ecstatic dogs chasing sticks thrown into the pond, newly liberated from its icy surface by the surging spring snowmelt. One of those dogs was Cimarron, a Golden Retriever with a disposition so relentlessly friendly that she was often referred to as the community dog.
Photo by Garfield Besa on Pexels.com
To describe Cimarron as beloved would not be an exaggeration. To say that her face bore a constant smile of beatific grace would be accurate. To say that she had an aura of the divine … well, sure, in a doggy kind of way.
The way a simple dam works is that there is an underwater opening which may or may not be closable that permits a flow though of water that is slightly less than the normal flow of the stream. The underwater opening of the dam in West Brookfield is fixed and cannot be opened or closed. The surplus water backs up to fill the cavity upstream of the dam, creating a pond. If an excess of water enters the pond, such as on warm spring days when the snow melt in the surrounding hills is prodigious, the pond level rises until the excess spills over the top.
On this Easter Day, the pond in West Brookfield was at its brim. The underwater opening was gushing a noisy torrent. The surface of the pond was placid, serene, giving no clue as to the monster beneath.
Photo by Leticia Azevedo on Pexels.com
As the adults surveyed the scene, their bellies full and basking in sunlight, tragedy unfolded. Someone threw a stick a little too close to the dam. Cimarron, obliging as ever, splashed after it, but as she turned to swim back (she’s a retriever, remember?), she was caught in the under current from the opening in the bottom of the dam.
In Hollywood a drama unfolds over two hours. The progression is: “things are good, things get bad, things get worse, things get better.” But this wasn’t Hollywood. This was bedrock Vermont, on an unusually warm Easter Sunday. The progression from good to worse took only a few seconds. Cimarron swam harder, still obediently holding the stick in her mouth. For a moment she held her own, then she started to be pulled under. She swam harder, but moved in the opposite direction. She disappeared.
We watched silently and helplessly. A child spoke “Will she come out the other side?” The menfolk studied the tops of the shoes. The dam had been rebuilt only the previous summer, a community project where we had cheerfully pushed wheelbarrows of dirt and concrete. We put into place the heavy iron grate designed to prevent the lower opening from being jammed with logs, or golden retrievers. Now, as a community, we shared the vision of a motionless dog, pinned against this same grate by the unrelenting force of the melting snow.
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com
The children began to wail.
But this is an Easter story, remember? And Hollywood has nothing on Vermont. Our anguish was disturbed by movement to the right. We turned in unison. It was a creature. It was coming our way. It moved unsteadily. It was a Golden Retriever. … a very wet, very bedraggled Cimarron wobbling towards us from downstream.
The cries of the children are replaced by hugs of a still quivering dog. The Easter clothes are getting wet and doggy, but there is no parental admonishment. Clothes, after all, can be washed and even hung out to dry on this lovely, wonderful, warm, sunny Easter day.
Photo by urtimud.89 on Pexels.com
Things get better. The spectrum of human drama takes place in less than a minute in a small community on a warm Easter day in a tiny hamlet on a dirt crossroads in Vermont. With order restored, it is left to the menfolk to create the narrative to explain the myth. How did Cimarron get through the dam? Perhaps the force of the water was so great that it created a passage under the dam. Perhaps the bones of a dog are flexible enough to be compressed enough to fit between the bars of the grate.
Perhaps there is no explanation, other than that it was Easter.
Photo by Bruno Cervera on Pexels.com
Chapter 18: Getting Real … The Trip to Yelapa
All good things come to an end. Isn’t that the cliche?
After its dizzying ride in the 1980s Vermont Castings ran into financial trouble in the early 1990s. Murray Howell died way too young, so did Don Larriviere, of Air Don fame. The company jet was sold. Duncan Syme was booted out of the company, followed shortly thereafter by anyone else associated with the old company culture.
I found myself with a small severance, a house on a dirt-crossroads, a wife and two sons, and a diehard attachment to the backwoods culture of Central Vermont, the area I had deemed “Beyonder.” If I wanted to keep the Morrises here, I’d have to figure out some form of self-employment.
Writing was not really an option. I had made nothing on “The Book of Heat,” peanuts on “The Great Beer Trek,” and double peanuts on “Beyond Yonder.” Despite my meteoric ascendency in the literary world, if I wanted to maintain the family lifestyle in Vermont, it would have to be as a business consultant.
I hung out my shingle: Stephen Morris, Consultant.
What kind of consultant? Whaddya want? Marketing? Sure. Sales training? Got ya covered! Technical writing? Piece of cake! Cleaning bathrooms? One of my specialties! Famous writer? That would be me!
My first real client was the appropriately-named “Real Goods,” a company that specialized in products for living independently, free of the power grid. They had been a Vermont Castings dealer and were familiar with me from the company’s heydays.
The founder of Real Goods, John Schaeffer, is a good-natured bear of a man with a trademark goatee. On my first visit to the company in Ukiah, California he reminded me that I had once rejected him for a job as a sales representative. He had even kept the rejection letter in which I referred to him as “too entrepreneurial” for the position.
“The biggest favor I ever did for you,” I responded, as statement that that has been validated by John’s success over the years. Most recently, he has started a pickleball camp on the magical homestead he has established on a mountaintop in Hopland, California. As I said … “Too entrepreneurial” to be a sales representative.
I claim no credit for the subsequent success of Real Goods, although I was instrumental in getting the company to articulate and refine its brand identity. As John and I worked closely, albeit separated by a continent, we became closer personally, too, especially as we each had young families that were, more or less, contemporaries. We visited the Schaeffers when the Morrises vacationed in Northern California and the Schaeffers visited the Morrises when they came to New England. We had a lot of fun.
Patrick Morris faces down an iguana.
One Christmas John told me that they were going to spend a week on a remote peninsula in Mexico. It was not far from Puerto Vallarta, but it was isolated and off-the-grid. John, family, and another family were going there between Christmas and New Year’s. Would we be interested in joining them?
It sounded like an exciting opportunity for the Morris family. None of us had been to Mexico and we’d be staying in an open-air tent in a tropical paradise. You bet!
We booked ourselves on a charter leaving on Christmas Day. We would meet up with the Schaeffers at the airport in Puerto Vallarta, and, should anything go wrong we were to ask at the airport for “Jaime,” (“Jim”). What could go wrong?
Here’s a list:
1. The flight could be 12 hours late, arriving at 11 pm.
2. There was no one named “Jaime” at the airport.
3. I spoke no Spanish.
4. This was pre-cellphone. There was no way to contact the Schaeffers. Also, since Jelapa was entirely off-the-grid, there was no way to be in touch with anyone.
5. We had no pesos.
Nonetheless, I was the alpha male, and so I did what alpha males do in times of adversity. I went to the nearest cab driver and said “Hel-l-l-p!” Luckily, he turned out to be a resourceful, trustworthy guy and soon the bedraggled Morrises were checked into a respectable hotel and the boys were watching “The Simpsons” in Spanish on the TV. All was right with the world. I even had information on the once-a-day ferry to Yelapa the next morning.
We showed up at the ferry dock the next morning with a renewed spirit of optimism. That faded instantly, however, as there was a notable absence of passengers and ferry. It turns out that we were on time, but Eastern Standard time, not local time.
The alpha male again launched into action bleating “Hel-l-l-p-p-p” to a cab driver. “I know a guy who will take you to Yelapa,” he said, an despite the growing (and entirely justified) misgivings of my family, I told the driver “Vamos” (“Let’s go.”)
Shortly thereafter, the Morrises and all their luggage were in a wooden skiff powered by an outboard motor that had no housing, heading out to sea. Maybe a half-hour later we were about thirty yards off-shore from a beach that the boatman gestured at and said “Yelapa.”
Ok … but my puzzled countenance perfectly communicated “How the hell are we supposed to get to shore?” Words were unnecessary as he shrugged what I translated as “This is as close as I can get.” I told Laura and the boys that we would be wading ashore.
That’s when Jake’s own alpha male hormones kicked in. Now 14, they had been bubbling near the surface for a few months now, and he screamed at me “You’ve completely lost it, Dad. This is crazy. We’re going back to the city!!”
I did what the alphas do; I jumped in the water with a suitcase over my head. I must say, I got some weird looks from these little brown kids playing on the beach when the dripping white Gringo emerged from the ocean, then turned around to portage another load, then another. Before long the Morrises of Beyonder were safely on the beach, once again, with absolutely no idea of what to do next.
Many adventures ensued, but the highlights were that we wandered on some jungle paths until we eventually came to a place that looked as if … maybe … it was the place we were supposed to be staying. There was no one around to ask. Then again, there wasn’t anyone around to tell us not to make ourselves at home, so we moved in.
But, then, as if someone waved a magic wand, things got better. we wandered back on the path through The Jungle and came across the Schaeffers, returning from the beach. After that it was non-stop fun—the beach, horseback riding, big combined family dinners, pods of dolphins, iguanas, the scorpion.
Oh yes, the scorpion. In our tented palace Laura, Jake, and I slept in beds covered by an insect net. Patrick slept on a couch. One night at bedtime we spotted a scorpion on his blanket about chest high. “Don’t move,” I instructed Patrick, then batted the scorpion off the blanket onto the floor where I cornered him. “Give me something to hit him with,” I said holding out my open hands while I kept the scorpion locked in my sites.” “Give me something— a newspaper, a spatula, a pan …”
Jake handed me a wine bottle.
Somehow, we all survived.
Chapter 19: Getting Real … The Cauldron
The lure of Real Goods became so strong that I eventually accepted an offer to become the company’s Chief Operating Office. It was a decision fraught with uncertainty, as it meant relocating the Morris family from West Brookfield, Vermont to Ukiah, California. It meant tearing the boys from their friends, their teams, their rock ‘n roll band, and their familiar to start anew and afresh.
It meant a new job, a new home, and new relationships. On the professional level there were opportunities and risks. Real Goods had conducted two successful sales of its stock to the public via a Direct Public Offering. I found myself sitting on stock options that were potentially very valuable. The company was suddenly cash-rich, and in a position to take advantage of a range of business opportunities. On the other hand, the company’s recent growth which was fueled by a renewed public interest in environmental products, was proving both fragile and fickle. A major competitor, Vermont company Seventh Generation was involved in a major retrenchment due to slowing demand.
There were other risks, as well. Although John Schaeffer and I got along very well professionally, Real Goods was a critical juncture where it required a level of professional management rather than being pulled behind the energy of a diehard entrepreneur. Schaeffer, like many entrepreneurs before him and since, was struggling to see the difference between a company that belonged to its stakeholders, and the company that he founded and had guided to its current heights.
There were some personal agendas at play, as well. My business success to date, had been largely based on my ability to help other entrepreneurs realize success. Now, I was seeking a platform where I could see my own ideas and practices enacted. I thought, naively perhaps, that John would see that and step back to let it happen. I grossly underestimated his willingness or ability to do that. Real Goods was always his baby and his sandbox.
On a personal level there was a secondary agenda on my part, as well. Laura and I, in my perception, had a great partnership. As a family unit, housemates, and financial partners we were doing just fine. On a personal level, we were on automatic pilot, and not in a good way.
I continued to embrace a lifestyle path that was set when I was in my 12th floor dorm room in my senior year at Yale, when my future course was guided by The Whole Earth Catalog. I embraced renewable energy and conservation, treating my food as medicine, and working to keep myself in good physical shape by regular exercise.
I dedicated myself both to family and to my professional career. I rarely missed a Little League game or theatrical performance. Laura and I rarely disagreed on issues of parenting or finance. And we communicated well, so long as the issue was family -related. On the personal level, however, feelings were being swept under the rug, and it happened so gradually I’m not sure either of us were entirely conscious of it.
My hope was that the move to California— new home, new environment, new social circle— would give Laura and I a fresh start as a couple. That did not happen, however, and the same patterns only became more entrenched.
I had several business successes during my consulting period. One was with Chelsea Green, a small book publishing company that was founded overlooking the town green in Chelsea, Vermont by Ian and Margo Baldwin.
In a business dominated by Manhattan-based behemoths, Chelsea Green had scored some remarkable successes, most notably with a new edition of Jean Giono’s classic “The Man Who Planted Trees.” I was attending a convention at the Javitz Center in NYC when I checked my office phone and found a desperate-sounding message from Margo. “We need help … now!”
The Baldwins and I did not know each other well, but Vermont is a small place, and so they knew me both from the business success of Vermont Castings and my reputation as a published writer. I took a crash course in the publishing business and learned a.) It’s a business where all the cards are stacked against the little company, and b.) The Baldwins published good books, they just had difficulty living under the same roof, a common affliction in husband/wife entrepreneurial business ventures.
I didn’t have to advise them to separate the business and personal lives. Margo beat me to the punch by announcing summarily that she “never, ever” wanted anything to do with Chelsea Green again. This left me with only piece of advice, to pick one category of book publishing and to devote 100% of the company’s resources to the category. I helped Ian identify the company’s current categories, which included nature, humor, photography. “Choose one, ” I said.
Ian was resistant. He didn’t want to be pinned down. I sympathized, but held firm to the recommendation. “You only get one category, put it all on double-zero.” Ian squirmed and tried to wriggle free. I’m sure there were discussions with Margo to which I wasn’t privileged. In the end, Ian chose the category of “sustainable living.” It was not an establishrd bookstore category, but it fulfilled the assignment admirably. Sustainable Living was now the single arrow in the Chelsea Green quiver.
I tried hard not to influence this choice, but I highly approved. There were plenty of other specialty publishers doing good jobs with photography, nature, gardening and traditional categories. Ian (and Margo, I’m sure) picked the category that they could define and dominate. Over the next of decade, that’s what happened.
With both Chelsea Green and Real Goods I felt like I was living my personal values in a way that I envisioned while browsing through my “Whole Earth Catalogue” back in 1970. My classmates had long since put their tie-dyed tee shirts in the bureau drawer and become doctors, lawyers, and business professions. I, alone, had maintained my back-to-the-land values and persisted in my quest to educate the masses to the need to adopt different practices of living.
I was half a hero and half an idiot. This essay, written in 2007 and subsequently revised several times, describes the situation:
“The Caldron”
Al Gore accepts the Nobel Prize for raising consciousness about global warming. The New Oxford English Dictionary declares “locavore” its Word of the Year. Community groups nationwide meet to discuss strategies for coping with Peak Oil. Wal-Mart announces plans to expand their efforts to “green” their operation.
Paradigm shifts? Sea changes? Overnight sensations? Not really.
New ideas go through stages on the path to acceptance. First, they are ignored, then ridiculed, then resisted, then finally accepted as obvious. The gestation period for innovative ideas can be many decades. We’re now officially thirty years into the idea of Real Goods, but the roots go back even further. British scientist James Lovelock, upon seeing the first photos from outer space of the blue/green orb known as earth, said “It’s alive.” For many years neither he, nor anyone else knew quite what he meant by that statement, but gradually the notion coalesced into the Gaia Theory by which we recognize, even if we can’t fully articulate it, the interconnectedness of everything on the planet.
That same image of earth from space found its way onto the cover of the Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand and a freewheeling bunch of intellectual crazies in Berkeley, California in the late 1960s. Their goal was to provide “access to tools” to a generation of kids raised in the splendid isolation of suburban America.
One of those kids was John Schaeffer. He was a Berkeley student who smoked dope, howled about the Vietnam War, even found time for some studying (in his case anthropology). He celebrated the first Earth Day, survived the draft lottery, hitchhiked around Mexico, worked odd jobs, and escaped whenever he could to the redwoods to the north.
Berkeley was a caldron of new ideas at the time, and John Schaeffer was one of the folks stirring it actively with a paddle. Across the country was a similar caldron. In Maine the Nearings were teaching people how to live “The Good Life.” On Cape Cod the New Alchemists were developing the prototypes of a “living machine,” and some brash scientists at MIT, Dana and Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers, were using their access to the new tool called the computer to create models that predicted that we would deplete certain natural resources such as oil in a finite time.
After his arms grew a bit tired from stirring the frothing caldron, John Schaeffer headed north to join the Rainbow Commune in Mendocino County where he unlearned his suburban past. Food comes from the ground, not the store. Shelter comes to those who build it. The entitlements taken for granted growing up in LA now had to be planted, earned, or harvested. Always entrepreneurial, Schaeffer began contemplating a business that would provide the materials essential to an independent life. As he drove the hills of Mendocino in a Volkswagen Bug that had a redwood stump for a front seat, he came up with the name of the products he would sell … the “real goods.”
Meanwhile in the solar biz … well, there was no solar biz. In addition to the photo of earth, the NASA space program had developed a variety of products that were finding commercial niches. Who can forget Tang, the instant breakfast drink? Other outputs were freeze-dried foods and solar panels. Even a dozen years after the moon landing there was no commercial availability of panels, because … who would want them? Electricity comes from the flip of a switch, not the sun.
While you can take the boy out of the suburbs, but you can’t completely take the suburbs out of the boy. As much as Schaeffer embraced commune life, he did not subscribe to the ethic that modern amenities had to be sacrificed. He found a source for appliances that could be operated with direct, as opposed to alternating, current. He could connect these to the battery from his VW Bug, and … voila … instant Saturday Night Live!
It was a decidedly inelegant solution, but it worked. Not only was in inconvenient, but it relied on the consumption of oil, part of the environmental problem, not the solution.
History has not recorded the first person who married a solar panel to a storage battery, but that’s the person who rightly deserves the Nobel Prize. Now electricity could be created sustainably, without noise, fossil fuel, or connection to the power grid. And the implications were astounding.
The first Real Goods store opened in Willits, California in 1978. Several months later the company sold its first solar system. There were no stores or industry associations or installers. The only customers were people who had no other option.
The business grew, but haltingly. By 1982 there were 3 stores, but by 1985 there were none. In 1986 Schaeffer reformulated Real Goods as a mail order business, operating out of his garage. Solar energy, the idea, was firmly ensconced in its “ridicule” stage, the prevailing image that a single lightbulb dangling from an exposed wire. Hadn’t one of Ronald Reagan’s first official acts been to take down the solar panels that Jimmy Carter had installed?
The 20th anniversary of Earth Day provided a boost, as did–ironically–the First Gulf War when the Real Goods catalog depicted a split image of troops entering the bay of a C3 cargo transport and a picture of a beautiful solar home. But the biggest factor fueling Real Goods’s growth, now synonymous with that of the fledgling solar industry, was its own ability to shout the solar gospel. In 1990 the company declared war on global warming with its “Billion Pound Goal” to eliminate a billion pounds of CO2 production. The next year the company declared a National Off-the-Grid Day, a cheeky promotion that evolved into the National Solar Tour, an annual event that today demonstrates the elegance of green building to tens of thousands each October under the auspices of the American Solar Energy Society.
Now growth was more sustained. Accolades came in the 1990s–the Inc. Top 100, the SBA “Person of the Year,” and the Rodale Award three years in a row. The company made several successful direct public offerings of its stock and used the funds to build a “place in the sun,” the Solar Living Center. At last there was a place where people could see the ideas of Real Goods integrated–green building materials, ecological landscaping, renewable energy. Lovelock would say “It’s alive.”
That a comfortable, non-polluting lifestyle … let’s call it “the good life” … is possible is no longer in question. What comes next is that this lifestyle will become inevitable. People will eventually get the message. The future will see will be real world solutions to life’s inconvenient truths.
Had John Schaeffer followed the proven path he would have gone to law school, earned a pile of money, run for public office, and perhaps have been John Kerry’s running mate in the 2004 election.
And the Nobel Prize goes to … Al Gore? How about Lovelock or the Nearings, or Stewart Brand, or the Meadowses, or Baldwin or Schaeffer.
John Schaeffer
Or, for that matter, Morris. If I can just remember to “Accept With the Left!”
*****************************
A friend asked me when I realized the move to California had been a mistake. “Around Buffalo,” I answered.
Perhaps it was a foregone conclusion that my tenure at Real Goods would be brief, perhaps it was my perception, perhaps it was clarity of vision on my part. It didn’t take long for me to conclude that the Real Goods world that I entered at Chief Operating Officer was vastly different from the one I had experienced in the previous three years as visiting guru. Some of it was personal: the same people who had welcomed me warmly, now acted as if I was a threat to the beloved founding father. Some were openly hostile and defiant. But there was a business disconnect, as well.
One incident summarizes the situation: The company was displaying at an event called the EcoExpo in Los Angeles. Real Goods, riding the coattails of its successful public offering was the belle of the ball. We had a modest contingent working at the booth, a display that included a six-foot tall wind generator, placed front and center.
As the new kid on the block, I was in learning mode. I watched as technical expert Doug Pratt, nicknamed “Doctor Doug,” was surrounded by a cluster of people peppering him with questions and requesting technical information. It was very reminiscent of early days with Vermont Castings when the demand for information wood heat devices exploded. A member of the Real Goods Board of Directors, Michael Potts, was also among the company contingent at the show. Michael lived off the grid and was known for his technical savvy. Marveling at the non-stop crowd surrounding Dr. Doug I asked Michael “About what percentage of these onlookers will eventually convert to actual sales?” I’ll never forget Michael’s response:
“Rounded to the nearest whole number, I would say zero.” The problem, he explained, was while the concept of small-scale wind energy was appealing to a homeowner, the technical requirements were prohibitive. A lot of Doctor Doug’s time was spent educating homeowners to that reality.
Not long after that, a project was footballed onto my desk (meaning that no one else at Real Goods wanted to deal with it.) It was a very professional manuscript for a book called “Wind Power for Home and Business” by Paul Gipe. I asked Doctor Doug if such a book would be helpful and received a double thumbs-up as an answer. I contacted Ian Baldwin at Chelsea Green and was told that the subject was so narrow in scope that the book couldn’t be produced cost-effectively.
“What if Real Goods purchased a large quantity in advance?” I asked … Bingo! Selling information became a major source of revenue, both for Real Goods and Chelsea Green, eventually extending beyond renewable energy products to lifestyle subjects such as organic gardening and natural building. Information turned out to be a better vehicle to sell the dream of an energy-efficient, organic, and sustainable lifestyle than actual merchandise.
This was, in my opinion, the tragic flaw of Real Goods. There was no roster of products to support a retail business. Catalog sales were increasingly dependent of solar novelties such as solar mosquito guards, Poopets (dried manure representations of political figures), and laundry balls that were proven to not work. Solar panels, on the other end of the spectrum, were extremely low margin and required local servicing. An experiment in local retailing, with prototypes in Eugene, Oregon; Amherst, Wisconsin; and Hopland, California failed, and yet the company was fueled by visions of retail success in malls across America, in the mode of Banana Republic, The Gap, and Patagonia.
*****************************
Meanwhile, back in Vermont, Ian Baldwin had wearied of the publishing business and was devoting his creative energies to other pursuits, such as oil painting. He confided in me that he was recruiting for a new publisher to replace him. I threw my hat into the ring.
Before long the Morris family was moving back to Vermont. The “year abroad” was over.
Chapter 20: The Big Shabby
Chapter 21: Unsustainable Living
As usual, I didn’t do my due diligence.
I had been so busy preaching the gospel of Chelsea Green being the nation’s leading publisher of information on the “ideas and practices of books for sustainable living” that I neglected to do a reality check.
When I arrived at the company’s modest offices in the red brick, Brigham Building attached to the Hotel Coolidge in White River Junction, the marketing manager had just just left. Within days the editor, Helen Whybrow gave her notice to assume a similar position at nearby Countryman Press. Associate Editor Jim Schley worked on the only manuscript that the company had under development, an underwhelming book on community gardens. Ted Mortimer kept the books tidily in between making bookings for himself as a popular local musician. Ian Baldwin showed up at the office in between sessions at the Ava Gallery where he was struggling to express himself via oil painting.
There was nothing there. What the company did have, however, was a revenue stream, fueled largely by the unlikely success of a title “The Straw Bale House.” This was a project that came to my attention during the Real Goods days that was funneled to our publishing partner, Chelsea Green, who turned into a beautiful, coffee table book, complete with color photos. I had no role in the actual development of the book, but I had a lot to do with recognizing the sales potential of the straw bale dream.
At the time of its publication there were fewer than twenty actual dwellings constructed of straw bales in the U.S. It was a construction technique originally developed on the Great Plains by pioneers who had neither stone nor wood as a construction material. The notion that a contemporary, energy-efficient home could be constructed from inexpensive, widely-available, renewable building blocks was irresistible, and Real Goods and Chelsea Green took full advantage. Before long the companies had collaborated on a series of natural building books that benefitted both companies.
Chelsea Green used its prominence in the niche to more solidly establish itself as a leader in the still fledgling world of sustainability with a solid backlog of books on building, organic gardening, and other facets of the lifestyle. Over the next half-dozen years we built a solid team and workplace that, from my perspective, integrated product and mission in a way that defined what “sustainability” was all about.
The fortunes of Real Goods, however, were not so benign. The demand for so-called “natural products” once again receded into the background as the perceived threats from the Gulf War, Three-Mile Island, and the Exxon-Valdez Oil spill disappeared into the rear view mirror. Real Goods pursued its dreams of a national retail empire and depleted the funds contributed by its investors, the company ownership was assumed first by Whole Foods and later by Gaiam.
I was by this time disassociated entirely from the management of Real Goods, although Chelsea Green remained active in the editing and distributing of the “Real Goods Sourcebook.” The Morris/Schaeffer friendship and partnership has managed to weather the various business and personal storms. After Yelapa, everything else has been easy!
There were major changes looming in my personal life as well.
In California, my frustrations with Real Goods, in combination with my guilt at relating the family to suit my professional ambitions, were gnawing at my soul and eroding my confidence. I would pour out my heart to Laura about the daily slings and arrows and receive only a deafening silence in return. The woman who earned an A in every mothering category, who moved from coast-to-coast with nary a whimper, could care less about the nuances of the Schaeffer/Morris daily combat. I was whining, to be sure, she just wasn’t having any part of it.
She was fully engaged in the kids’ transitions. Once I resigned from Real Goods, there was yet another transition to manage. You want to go for a bike ride, fine. You want to go for a run, fine. You want to whine about John Schaeffer … not interested.
The same dynamic prevailed upon our return to Vermont. Patrick’s soccer game … interested. Jake’s play … interested. Kids band … interested. Book publishing? Ian Baldwin? You feeling isolated and lonely? Not interested, not interested, and really not interested.
I met Sandy Levesque in 1979 when she was among a slew of new hires at Vermont Castings in the wake of the 2nd Arab Oil Embargo. Unlike so many of the newcomers at the company who I would describe a bright, counter-cultural types, Sandy was a native Vermonter, with two young children, married to the President of the local hospital. Unlike the rest of us scruffy hippies down at the foundry, Sandy was a pillar of the local community, well-connected and always presented a professional front.
The rocketship ride Vermont Castings had faltered with the death of Murray Howell, and even as the company emerged as the worldwide leader in its business category there was no shortage of turbulence and drama along the way. Presidents came and went as Duncan never seemed to be able to replace the counterbalance of Murray.
My ride on the rocket ship ended in 1991. The ship was hurtling groundward by then. I hung out my shingle as a business consultant and soon thereafter secured my first major client in Real Goods, While my journey was bouncing me from coast-to-coast, Sandy used the time to earn a college degree in marketing and subsequently put out her own shingle as a marketing consultant with a specialty in event planning. She one of those rare beings who specializes in chaos control.
Sandy’s husband Phil died, much too young, in 1994. When I returned to Vermont to take the position at Chelsea Green, our relationship turned intimate and romantic. By 1999 we decided we wanted to be together full-time.
I was raised in a family where divorce was not only frowned upon, it was unheard of! Leaving Laura was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Even with Jake now in college and Patrick on the edge of the nest, I was ashamed to be letting them down, not to mention shattering our public image as a happy family. (Truth be told, we were a happy family, albeit one with a hollow relationship at its core.) Divorce in Laura’s family was not only more common, it was the norm. Her mother, aunt, and two sisters were all divorced, and all under eerily similar circumstances. While I recognize that the break-up of a relationship is a no fault, 50/50 situation, I can’t help but noticing the parallels.
It shocked the community for Sandy and I to become public with our relationship so quickly. I take the blame for that, and, unfortunately, Sandy paid the price, both in terms with her public persona, but also in my ambivalent, guilt-ridden behavior. It’s on me. Surprisingly, even in the aftermath of the break-up of our marriage, Laura and I rarely had harsh words for each other.
Divorce (I’ve only experienced it once, so it’s hard to generalize) is always difficult, and ours was no exception. Can’t we just leave it at that?
Pieces of Wood
At the time of writing this, I was not conscious of it being a metaphor for the dissolution of Laura’s and my marriage, but now it shouts its meaning. The end of a marriage, like that of a venerable tree, is sad, wistful, heartbreaking, hopeful, and even celebratory when it is flanked by young saplings. Laura and I had over a quarter-century of successful partnership, and we continued to be mutually supportive even after the divorce. It was a relationship that stood the test of time, even though it did not last forever.
West Brookfield is the classic Vermont hamlet—dirt crossroads, a church, a one-room schoolhouse, and a half dozen farmhouses. Stella Maloney, who taught at the schoolhouse until it closed in 1968, lives in one of the homes. The Wakefield family who has operated Meadowbrook Farm since 1852 owns several others. The farming success of the Wakefields has kept the town looking much as it did fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, and a hundred and fifty years ago. As one after another of the hillside farms “gave up,” Meadowbrook Farm expanded to fill.
Another village home, a modest cape built around the time the Wakefields started farming, was for sale when we moved to Vermont in 1979. There is an illustration of the house on the cover of West Brookfield and Thereabouts, a town history written by Alice Webster Wakefield. The image, taken from an advent calendar made by a village resident, portrays a Vermont of our mind’s eye, without junk cars, mud, and houses wrapped in plastic. In the foreground is a house—our house!—that spills its radiant light out onto the immaculate snow. Presiding over all, majestic even without summer plumage, is a towering sugar maple whose branches spread a protective canopy over house and town. Inside the book are a half dozen other photos of the house and tree. The constant is that the horizon, even a hundred years ago, is dominated by the massive maple in our front yard.
We were charmed by the tree, the house, and the village of West Brookfield. We proudly made it our home. The tree even had a thick first limb that would be perfect for the tire swing that our sons, one just born, one not yet contemplated, would forever associate with their childhood.
Not long after moving in we were approached by a neighbor, Gregory Schipa, founder of Weather Hill Company, a firm that specializes in historic preservation and restoration. Schipa seemed determined to keep West Brookfield in the 1850s.
“Those trees, especially the maples, are getting on. You should think about replacing them.” Part of me thanked him for his advice, but another part—the speaking part—said, “Those trees are good for another fifty years.”
“I know,” Schipa replied, “That’s why you should be thinking now about replacing them.”
Schipa proved a man of his convictions, and helped me plant a line of maples over the next two years. The saplings looked slightly ridiculous dwarfed by the behemoth, but he assured me I would thank him some day. For the next few years the saplings grew much as did our young family. We were shaded by the big trees in the summer as we watched the kids take countless rides on their tire swing. In the autumn I raked leaves into playful piles. The favorite game was “Leafman,” in which one person buries another in leaves, then lures an unsuspecting third person to the pile. Upon the pronouncement of “Leafman” the pile stirs and a roaring, snarling leaf monster emerges. Works every time.
After the leaves were pulverized by the glee of kid power, they became winter mulch for the perennials, as purposeful on the ground at thirty below as they had been on the branches providing summer shade. The first official act of spring was removing the leaves to give the crocuses a better look at the sun. Afterwards we took the leaves to the vegetable garden, tilling their remaining organic matter into the rocky soil.
Just as Gregory Schipa had been our partner in planting young trees, Bruce Cameron became our partner in keeping the maturing trees healthy. (Our signature maple was flanked by a lanky Dutch elm and a second maple that would have been impressive anywhere else but alongside its larger cousin.) Cameron, Central Vermont’s resident tree expert, is an ex-Shakespearean actor with a soft voice that still manages to articulate each syllable so that you can hear clearly from the cheap seats. Cameron explained to us about the lifecycle of maples, how they start breaking apart in chunks when they reach a certain age. How they die from the center out. And ours had reached that age, give or take a few decades. Through proper maintenance and strategic cabling, the maples should last our lifetimes, said Cameron. The Dutch elm, however, even though it looked healthy, was living on borrowed time.
Mere months later it was gone, a victim of the disease that bears its name. I spent a frustrating summer trying to split elm with my maul, using the stump as my base. When I was done dealing with the sinewy wood, I kept right on banging on the stump to reduce it to ground level. For all the aggravation it caused in splitting, the elm kept us warm that winter.
The next summer disaster struck the lesser of our maples. I got the call at work, one of those traumatic moments frozen in time. At least it hadn’t fallen on the house. I had another stump to keep me busy for the summer. And another warm home that winter. The saplings now had six or seven years’ growth and were sturdy young trees whose vitality took some of the sting away from our loss. Schipa had been right, and if I didn’t thank him properly then, I do now.
With two of the three down, we redoubled our efforts to keep the remaining maple standing. Cameron ordered specific care and maintenance, which included me climbing into the tree’s central cavity and removing all accumulated soft material with a post-hole digger. This unique chore yielded exquisite compost for the garden, as well as an assortment of golf balls, Star Wars figures, MatchBox cars, Whiffle Balls, and Transformers. This unexpected “trip to the toy store” so delighted my two sons that they wanted me to perform this maintenance on a weekly basis.
The maple held up well for the next dozen years. A chunk or two fell off, but the basic canopy remained intact. The trees I had planted with Greg Schipa were now in an adolescent growth spurt, just like my boys. Each year Bruce Cameron would stop by, tighten the cables, and give us a progress report. He’s the kind of guy who will do this whether you ask him or not and whether you pay him or not. With Bruce, the tree comes first. The maple, he reported, was holding it’s own.
But meanwhile, life around the maple changed. Flash-forward what seems like an instant but was in reality a decade. The family has spent a “year abroad” in California and returned. They’ve moved in town to be nearer the school and all things teen-aged. The boys are poised on the brink of the nest. Strangers pay rent to live in the house and to enjoy the maple’s shade.
Eventually the strain of being absentee landlords took its toll, and we put the house up for sale. Prospective buyers were interviewed as much for their willingness to keep alive ancient maples as for their ability to meet the asking price. Eventually, a deal was struck. The new owners, a young couple from California, brought new energy and vitality to the homestead, as well as a reverence for the intact Vermontness of West Brookfield. They put a new tin roof on the house. Soon a baby was on the way, and within a year the big tree was down, practicality overruling sentiment.
I stumbled, unprepared, upon the scene with my younger son, now a young man. We turned the corner into the village to see a massive stump surrounded by dismembered eighteen-inch sections. It was overwhelmingly sad. The new owners were in the front yard. They, too, are saddened by the loss, but felt they had no choice, citing Bruce Cameron, the patron saint of venerable trees, as advising them that it was time to put it down. My son asks if they found any toys in the cavity. Turns out, they did.
(Months later, I see Bruce at the local bank, and he mumbles condolences about the tree, as if he had somehow failed. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m glad he was the one to bring it down. I’m sure he did it with love.)
A hidden blessing is the sudden prominence of the line of sturdy, young maples, now some twenty-five feet tall and producing their own sap, shade, and foliage. We request, and are given, some lengths of the fallen maple.
My wife bursts into tears at the news. It is months before she is able to go back to West Brookfield. I harbor thoughts, maybe delusions, that I am going to transform the chunks of maple into hand-sculpted keepsakes of our years beneath her canopy. I tell the family that this will be my Christmas gift for the next year. I contact a friend who had a similarly sentimental maple taken down in her front yard. She contracted with a local artisan to work with her downed wood. After many hours struggling with old, punky wood he produced a disappointingly small number of artifacts for a disappointingly high price. I can tell from her cocked eyebrow that I am setting myself up for the same fall.
But my plan is different. I will work the wood myself, freeing bowls and spoons and toys and tops and trinkets from the heavy blocks. I have visions of myself, Gepetto-like, working by firelight. I see my sons, unwrapping their Christmas packages, and the look of awe as they recognize the simple treasures that have been created by my hours of loving labor.
By the following December, with Christmas season in full swing, my forward progress consists of buying a book on woodworking and staring forlornly at maple chunks that look much as they did when thrown into the back of my pick-up. It has taken a year, but I now recognize that I lack the skill, tools, knowledge, time, and will for this plan. Having created the expectation of Christmas gifts from the maple, I resort to Plan B. I go to the local dollar store and find some wooden spoons stamped “Spain.” I leave on the 99-cent price tags, wrap them in dollar-store paper, and write a sentimental story about the mighty maple. On Christmas Eve the family convenes over coffee—we’re all adults now—and I make the presentation. There’s a moment of silence between reading the story and unwrapping the presents. The silence is repeated as they see the simple spoons, read the price tag, and see “Spain” stamped on the back.
One son says, “This is so lame.”
The other says “This is so you.”
Then we laugh. Together. The maple has delighted us once again.
The story has an epilogue, and a new hero. Later that same day I am at a seasonal craft show staged for the holidays at Chandler Gallery in Randolph. A handsome wooden pen catches my eye, and the signage tells me it comes from Fat Rooster Farm in nearby Royalton. I know the farm as a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). As have many of today’s practitioners of sustainable farming, the folks of Fat Rooster have broadened their definition of “farming” by offering diversity in an increasingly commodified world. Although only six years into its existence, Fat Rooster has already been immortalized in a handsome coffee-table book “Harvest: A Year in the Life of an Organic Farm”. (The Lyons Press, 2004).
A few days later my mind links these pieces of wood, now resting atop my stacked woodpile, with the pens. Then, things happen fast. I wonder if Fat Rooster has a website? Click. Do they say anything about their wooden pens? Click, click. Hm-m-m. They will work with your wood or theirs. Light bulb. Click, click. Contact us. Click, tap, tap, tap, click.
That evening there is a return email in my inbox from Kyle Jones of Fat Rooster Farm. The next day I deliver five lengths of maple, formerly of West Brookfield, to Fat Rooster Farm. Two friendly dogs (one with one blue and one brown eye) and a pair of intimidating “watch” geese herald my arrival. I am about to leave when Kyle emerges from the barn and calls after us. Along with Gregory Schipa and Bruce Cameron, Kyle becomes the third hero of this story.
Kyle tours us through his shop, examines the pieces of wood, and tells us how he happens to be turning out hardwood pens from a remote vantage overlooking the second branch of the White River. An ecologist by profession, he works two days a week with the National Park Service in Woodstock. The rest of the time he tries to make ends meet at Fat Rooster Farm. He is a native of Ohio who married a Vermonter. He’s not a woodworker by trade, but he has developed a woodworking sideline as a way to generate some revenue during the cold weather. He’s an easy guy to like.
He walks us through the process. The wood is chain sawed into rectangular slabs measuring roughly six inches thick. On a band saw in the shop the wood is sliced again and again into sticks ¾” x ¾”. The wood is dried for about a year before being worked. Pieces are then cut to length, drilled, and the internal fixtures glued in place. He then takes upwards of an hour turning each pen on a lathe, feeling the grain, giving each a unique look and curve, and applying the finish. If all goes well, pens can be ready for Christmas.
He looks at my wood, says it appears to be good, but he won’t know for certain until he looks inside, i.e. rough cuts it with a chain saw. The next day I receive an email titled “Grand Opening” that says “I was very impressed by the wood in your logs. Lots of color, a little spalting and crotch grain. I reply back that I hope “spalting” and “crotch grain” are good, and he responds “Trust me, they are.” So I am trusting Kyle to take this special wood and to give new life as pens, and maybe even bowls. In the process he can redeem me for trying to preserve with a lame joke the memory of a tree that gave us buds in the spring, shade in the summer, piles of joyful leaves in the fall.
Next Christmas Eve we’ll convene over coffee. I will let them unwrap their pens, and then tell them that these came from our majestic sugar maple in West Brookfield. Use the pens, I will say, to write poems, love letters, or to sign autographs. They will look for price tags or telltale stamps of origin, but won’t find them. Not this time.
(This piece appeared previously in The Vermont Sunday Magazine and Northern Woodlands.)
Chapter 22: Shades of Green
Sandy and I began our lives together at The Parsonage, located on Gilead Brook Road in Bethel, Vermont.
We’re not similar people at all. The phrase “Vive La Difference” gets invoked a lot in this household. She’s a perfectionist. I am, to use an Italian word that I can’t find in Google translate, brucchiamata. It translates to “half-assed.” People describe us both as stubborn. We are, undeniably, fully engaged.
My colleagues at Chelsea Green were shocked in the abrupt change in my personal life. They had accepted the veneer of happiness that Laura and I presented to the world. Thankfully, they were also receptive to the new reality. The company was a nimble tugboat, navigating steadily in the turbulent world of book publishing. Amazon was turning the staid, labyrinthine industry on its head. Bookstores were closing in droves. Chelsea Green, with its focus on sustainable living and seasoned crew, was well-positioned to handle choppy waters.
The company’s relative stability, gave birth to an unexpected, and for me, entirely unwanted sub-plot. At a trade show a woman introduced herself to me as a new investor in the company. As President and Publisher of a small, closely-held company, I should be highly aware of any such transactions. While I was politely skeptical, the woman, who seemed credible enough, persisted in her story, even referencing another Board member by name.
The game … I realized … was afoot. It was a game I was reluctant to play, because it was one I had no chance of winning. The mystery investor, I came to realize, had been brought in to buy the shares that I owned in Chelsea Green. The Baldwins wanted back in to the company they had left in my care to manage seven years earlier. When all was said and done, it was their company. Like it or not, I was out.
I was now in my mid-50s, not exactly prime time for finding a new professional position. After an abortive mis-step as Executive Director at a dysfunctional non-profit, I had my fill of office politics, employees, and boards of directors. I had been preaching the politics of sustainable living since that fateful day in New Haven in 1970, looking down from the twelfth floor of my dormitory at Yale . The time had come for me to begin practicing what I preached. Whatever came next, I resolved, had to suit my chosen lifestyle. It had to be meaningful, if only on a personal level. And it had to be enjoyable.
And, Sandy had to approve!
Towards that end, I did three things. 1.) I re-booted my writing which had been put on hold as I endeavored to make the authors of Chelsea Green successful; 2.) I started a micro-publishing venture called The Public Press, which would help authors manage their own publishing ventures; and 3.) I bought a small magazine called “Green Living Journal.”
All of which, from a commercial perspective, were … searching for the right word here … laughable. At one point in my tenure with Chelsea Green we were doing some private fundraising, and I showed our offering prospective to my college roommate Bill Peck. When last seen in this memoir Bill and I were in a furious game of table hockey while the Big, Bad, Broons beat up on some expansion team. Like so many of my classmates, Bill had come to his senses, went to graduate school to get his MBA and was now launching a hedge fund.
“The numbers look good,” said Bill about the prospectus, “but where are the zeroes?” What he meant was that Chelsea Green was too small to be of interest to any serious investor. Good thing I didn’t have a prospectus for The Public Press!
Here’s an essay that has been published in several venues:
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Shades of Green
As the publisher of Green Living Journal, a quarterly publication that explores “green” living, I was recently asked “So, what does it mean to be ‘green?’” It’s not a simple question and does not have a simple answer. It’s almost as complicated as that crossroads you face at the end of the checkout line, “Paper or plastic?”
Green can be a verb, noun, or adjective. “Greenmail” refers to the Wall St. practice whereby undervalued companies are acquired, chopped into little chunks and sold piecemeal, a reminder that only a single letter separates the word “green” from “greed.”
Green is the color of money. A dollar bill is a greenback, not to be confused with a “wetback,” slang for an illegal alien who does not possess a green card. A ring of cheap or false gold will turn your finger green.
Within the business community a topic of hot debate is greenwashing, what happens when a company cloaks itself in a mantle of green, not as a commitment to the environment, but as a marketing strategy. You can attach solar panels to Wal-Mart, say detractors, but what you get is Wal-greens. Beware of wolves with green fur.
Green politics can be confusing. The Green Party, a political organization that supports an environmental agenda, is widely blamed for costing Al Gore, an environmentalist, the Presidential election.
Perhaps Kermit the Frog said it best when he lamented “It’s not easy being green.” Some real world frogs, living in altered natural habitats, are finding that to be true.
Has the concept of “green” been so co-opted? No, it is the flexibility and resilience of “green” that give it staying power. Other words have tried to replace green. “Natural,” “authentic,” “organic,” “ecological,” “sustainable,” and, currently, “local” have their moments of linguistic glory, but we always return to green.
A rookie in baseball is green. Green is the relaxing backdrop for ballparks, and at least at Fenway, you can watch a ball disappear over the Green Monster.
Green is ephemeral, but green can be precious and enduring. Emerald is at once a gem and a shade of green. Forest, lime, olive, sea, Hunter, Kelly, and British Racing are distinct shades of green.
Mix them together and you get camouflage, often associated with hunters and the military. Deep green describes the most committed environmental stewards, such as members of Greenpeace. Think of what will be possible if we can get these green extremes to recognize that they are different hues of the same color.
The Green Room is where actors relax before a performance. You might find the band Green Day hanging out there, or Al Green, or Tom Hanks, who starred in The Green Mile. Green is the color of envy, but also the color around our gills just before we get sick.
Green is the patch of grass around which our village is centered, but it’s also the finely manicured spot on the golf course where you hear lots of cursing.
My most exciting moment of the year is in April when I peek under the mulch that covers the garlic planted last fall. The garden is half mud, half frozen dirt, with nary a sign of life. I brush away the snow and gently lift the straw. There it is … a delicate slip of green reaching for the sun.
Soon the landscape will be roaring with green. Nature will be abhorring vacuums and filling every void with life. Vermont, itself an anglicized combination of the French “vert” and “montagne” will be resounding with the meaning of green.
At a recent conference I saw a t-shirt that proclaimed “Green is the new red, white, and blue.” I disagree. This would mean that green somehow belongs to America. Although I am completely in favor this country setting a green standard for the rest of the world (we’ve got a long way to go), the common ground of our environment must transcend political boundaries.
Another t-shirt at the same conference stated “Green is the new black.” The wearer was African American. This a provocative statement open to varying interpretations. The one I prefer is that matters of environment supercede those of race. Global warming, after all, is an equal opportunity natural disaster that promises to affect people regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin … unless we all start to live more green.
Green living, therefore, is the winning strategy for people, community, and planet in the future. Green, we will learn, is the new gold.
*************************************
For the next few decades, in reality more like “for the rest of my life.” I have been what I call “a white collar woodchuck.” In Vermont a “woodchuck” (not the rodent kind) is short for “wood chucker,” meaning a guy who doesn’t have a real job, but manages to get by by cutting some firewood, plowing driveways, boiling sap, and transporting things to the dump is his trusty pick-up that boasts “some rust, but runs good. (A tip of the hat to Midnight Dan and the Plowboys who made an album with this title.”)
So I write stuff, publish things, do some consultin’, and make silly videos. In between I tend the garden, keep the front stoop clean, take stuff to the landfill, and generally do what I can to keep the old lady happy. (Take it easy, Sandy, I’m jus’ tryin’ to soun’ like a real Vermontah!)
I don’t keep score, but the unofficial life tally is:
- Ten published books, plus three revised editions.
- Published over 200 books by other authors
- Published three class books for the Yale class of 1970, Yale’s last all-male graduating class.
- Wrote over 350 published articles
- Have made over 1500 posts on Silverback Digest
- Posted 250 thoroughly amateur videos on YouTube
- Wrote more than 300 restaurant reviews for TripAdvisor until I got pissed off at them. (Yes, I wrote a story on that, too.)
- Wrote, with my high school bandmate, Greg Morrison, the musical magnum opus, “Old Rockers: The Musical Journey of Grendel
- Wrote this the story of my extra-ordinary life.
In between Sandy and I have been to many exotic places and had joyous family times with her kids, my kids, and occasionally a mixture thereof. We created, and survived, many years of Cousins’ Camps with her grandkids, and are now enjoying Morris Boy Seaside retreats on the weekend after Labor Day.
And we’re not done yet. I don’t make a lot of money, but I don’t need to make a lot of money Sandy and I travel wherever we want. We get up and go to bed as the spirit moves us. We haven’t missed any meals. It’s a good life. It’s a great life.
Here’s a snippet from my life. It first appear in The Herald of Randolph, our beloved, home town newspaper:
Me, with a prized daikon radish
The Master Speaks
By Stephen Morris, M.M. (Master of Mulch)
People are always asking me “What is the best newspaper in Vermont?” As a seasoned media pro, it’s natural for people to seek my professional insight.
Actually, I’m lying to you. No one has ever asked my opinion about Vermont newspapers. Not once. It is a subject about which I have thought deeply (well, deeply for me). When comparing papers, I disregard the political orientation or the quality of writing, design, layout, and photography. I have one criterion—the paper’s suitability for mulching.
Of all Vermont spring rituals—sugaring, opening day of trout season, sliding off the dirt road into a ditch, the first creemee, my personal favorite is “the laying of the papers” when I mulch around the perennials in the garden.
I’ll explain.
We used to recycle our newspapers at the landfill. Then I took the Master Gardener course offered by the UVM Extension Service up at VTC where I learned the merits of mulching, the gardening practice where you control weeds by laying down a layer of light-impenetrable organic material such as sawdust, compost, straw, bark chips, or dead fish (not recommended).
Mulching appeals on several levels. Every weed that doesn’t grow is a weed that doesn’t have to be pulled. Mulching can be done in that cold, wet period before you can plant anything. (Some people refer to this period as “May.”) Mulching improves the soil, and, finally, mulching saves you a trip to the dump.
Because I passed my final exam, I am entitled to the rights and privileges conferred upon one who successfully satisfies the requirements of an institution of higher learning. Therefore, I insist on being addressed by my title, “Master.” Some people think I take my new credentials too seriously, but I’m the same humble guy I’ve always been, although I have begun referring to myself in the third-person. Because of my specialty is mulch, my full title is “Master of Mulch,” but to my friends, I’m simply “Master.”
A generous person, I walk around the neighborhood dispensing free advice such as “Master thinks you shouldn’t have planted that tree there,” or “Master says cabbage will never grow in that spot.” Recipients are so respectful of my credentials that the response is usually respectful silence, often accompanied by a gesture that I interpret to mean “You’re #1” (although, don’t most people use the index finger for this?).
Mulching is not rocket science. Any moron can design a rocket. While anyone can lay a newspaper on the ground, very few can do it in an efficient, Master of Mulch kinda way. It starts with how the newspapers are stacked for storage over the winter. My partner in life, an otherwise intelligent woman, has had to be completely trained when it comes to newspaper management. She attacks a newspaper like a terrier in a roomful of rats. When she’s done snapping, folding, and clipping she leaves the spent newspaper in a haphazard pile, as if it’s a piece of trash.
Master doesn’t like this, because crumpled newspaper doesn’t lay down flat on the ground. The ideal newspapers for mulch have never been read. They lay flat as my hair after I haven’t showered for a few days. If you insist on reading newspapers, they should be crisply refolded, sections separated, color inserts removed, and stacked with folds to the left. Master has explained this patiently to his partner. She, in turn, thinks Master should get a life. She has also suggested that Master do things with newspapers that are not physically possible.
Laying down the papers provides a great opportunity to review the previous year, although not in chronological order. This spring while mulching the blackberries on a gray March afternoon, these are a few headlines that caught my eye. “Football Player Slugs Gate Agent.” I stop to read this story because the slugee is an old friend and neighbor. “New Brewery in Barre.” Hm-m-m. I’ll have to stop there. “Rochester Boys Have Best Season Ever.” I have no interest in the Rochester Boys Basketball Team, but I read about them anyway.
Some would call these stories “yesterday’s news,” but I think of them as nicely composted. Some stories I missed the first time around; some I have forgotten about; some deserve to be forgotten. Collectively, however, they comprise a discombobulated collage of life since the garden was last in bloom. I think it would be a good idea for the television networks to begin composting the evening news.
On we go to the blueberries. The years scrolls by in jumbled order. “Another Democrat Enters Fray.” Oh yeah, this is an election year. Didn’t we just have one of those? I work my way back from the President’s plunging popularity to the groundswell of hope when he was elected.
“Slain Rapper’s Mother Remembers Son’s Success” catches my eye. Mom explains that her gangsta’ son really had a heart of gold. The Yankees win the World Series. I had repressed that.
Which brings us back to the question of the best newspaper in the state, mulchingly speaking. The winner is Seven Days. It’s a tabloid that lies flat even in a moderate wind. (Master has learned the hard way that mulching in the wind is a bad idea.) Moreover, Seven Days is free, so if you get caught short, you can just go pick-up another armful. And if you want to take a break, you can read those titillating classifieds to see if you recognize someone you know.
The Master has spoken.
Stephen Morris observes the media and other cultural phenomena from his lofty perch overlooking Gilead Brook Road.
Green Living Journal is not the best for mulching.
Chapter 23: Sandy and The Spaceman
Del Shannon was one of my heroes. No one ever said Del was cool.
I got to meet many of my heroes along the way — Del Shannon, Bobby Orr, Carlton Fisk, Bill “Spaceman” Lee. And I got to meet so many people who became personal heroes—Irving Greenblatt, Duncan Syme and Murray Howell, John Schaeffer, Ed Koren, David Aldrighetti (Bethel Volunteer Fire Department).
I met the girl of my dreams in Bermuda when I was 19. The two of us grew up together. And later I met the love of my life. The two of us are growing old together.
My new home is The Parsonage, built in 1826 to attract a Parson for the Episcopal Church across the street. While I loved The Big Shabby as a teenager’s party house, this is much more to my personal style. Meticulously restored and maintained by Sandy, she raised her son, Stephen, and daughter, Heather, as the wife of Phil, the President of the local hospital, Gifford Medical Center, who had passed away in n 1994 at the age of 56.
Who knew we would someday be together?
We began our lives together in 1999. We shared a love of exercise. I began, under Sandy’s tutelage to learn how to cook, not that, I would aspire to the kitchen throne. We go on walks, we work in the garden, we keep up with family. Her son Stephen, in 1999, was on the West Coast studying for his advanced degree, beginning his own brood. We knew each other already from times when he would stop by our home in West Brookfield to challenge me to spirited one-on-one games of basketball. Heather and her husband Matt were on the West Coast at that time, too, but soon to return home to Burlington. Shortly thereafter, she gave birth to her son, Tully Luke.
(To jump ahead a few years, Tully is now, like me, a Yale Bulldog.)
Patrick began studies at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, while Jake pursued musical ambitions at Oberlin College in Ohio. It was a “mixed-up, jumble-up, shook-up world,” as Ray Davies said in Lola, except I was finally with a soulmate with Sandy.
The gardens at The Parsonage were already beautiful when I arrived, but now, with my addition of energy, compost, and a strong back, under Sandy’s guidance they reached a new level. She was particularly enamored of standing stones. We’d walk from The Parsonage down to the Third Branch of the White River, and inevitably, she would find one in the woods, a vestige of a long-ago farm.
“This would look great in the garden,” she say, and I would counter with “Are you nuts? There’s no way to get a vehicle anywhere near here. Do you know how much that thing weighs?” She’d accept the rationale, but back in the garden, she perfected an expression that said plaintively “Wouldn’t that stone look great right here?”
“All right,” I’d sigh and head for the wheelbarrow.
These days we have a spring ritual, just as the ground has recovered from the snow-melt, of going stone-to-stone, straightening them. I have a heavy iron rod for tamping the dirt while she finds the chinking stones for holding the pillars in place for another season. At some point we take a break, look at each other, and one of says “How’d we ever do this?”
Baseball is not a game so much as a sacred ritual of the human species. It is for this reason that even a humble low-life like me can watch a game and think of himself as continuing a tradition of profundity.
I grew up with baseball. I lived baseball as a kid. I was going to batting champ of the American League. Someone should have told Wade Boggs.
But there came a time when Life, Art, Girls, Beer, and Rock ‘n Roll (all subjects that deserve capitals) replaced Baseball as a priority in my life. I drifted apart from my beloved Red Sox. In ’67, perhaps the most amazing year in recent Red Sox history, I followed the series only tangentially. I was a sophomore in college and somehow the Meaning of Life seemed more important than whether or not the Red Sox won their first pennant since 1918. Only now, with the wisdom filter of age, do I realize how totally wrong I was.
After ’67, the next half decade was an anti-climax for the Red Sox fan. For the average person, it was an era when events such as Woodstock, a man on the moon, the end of Vietnam, Earth Day, and Watergate made baseball seem, like….well, a game.
I still went to Fenway Park semi-religiously. This was before enormous ticket prices and perpetually sold-out games. You could decide during the second inning of a Sunday double-header to hit the game. For a few bucks you could relax in the bleachers and watch some ball.
Pudge wasn’t happy about signing one card to two people. (You get paid by the card.)
I became re-engaged with the game thanks to a few young players, all my same age, who joined the Sox at this time. Pudge Fisk provided a foundation behind the plate. Rick “the Rooster” Burleson turned the shortstop position into a combat role, and a left-handed pitcher named Bill “Spaceman” Lee brought something to the pitching mound, and to baseball, that had been missing for too many years- a sense of humor.
My reconnection with baseball came after a spur of the moment decision to attend a double-header. These were the days when you could hear the start of the game on the radio at Post Island, hop in the car, drive to Fenway, park for free, pay your buck for admission for a seat in the bleachers, and watch the start of the second inning.
Between games Bill Lee motioned for us to throw the Frisbee down, promising he’d throw it back. We did and he did. It was cool, a sailing plastic connection between mortals and a god. Bill Lee was letting us know that he was one of us, a mortal.
In 1975 Bill Lee was at the height of his powers. So were the rest of the Red Sox. They charged to the American League East lead and looked like a good bet to go all the way.
A moment of pure joy occurred when Carlton Fisk rocketed a ball of the left field foul pole to win the sixth game of Series. I writhed in front of the television set, bleating “I’m going to the Seventh Game. I’m going to the Seventh Game.”
Bill Lee, now dubbed The Spaceman, pitched the Seventh Game. He was masterful until the seventh inning when one of his slow blooper curves was sent into the stratosphere by Tony Perez. The Sox eventually lost, relegating another generation of fans to the unique frustration of rooting for Red Sox.
Flash forward. It is the summer of ’94, and I’ve taken three boys to see the new kids in town, the Vermont Expos. It’s a great night of relaxed baseball, the way it’s supposed to be played.
“We have a special guest tonight,” says the announcer. “Bill Lee, ex- major leaguer, is in the stands tonight. Let’s have a big hand for The Spaceman, Bill Lee.”
A man with graying hair, wearing a purple polo shirt stands and waves. The crowd applauds politely. A line of kids form to get autographs.
I bide my time until the thrill seekers subside, then my boys and I make our way toward The Spaceman. He is holding a baby. He appears to be about my age. I tell him that we used to play Frisbee at Fenway Park. I can tell it’s not the first time he has heard this.
I ask about the Seventh Game. Perhaps, I suggest, they should have left him in. After all, one bad pitch is all he made. “Naw,” he answers, “They should have taken me out even earlier. I popped a blister. I was bleeding all over the ball.”
I spend minutes kibitzing with The Spaceman on that warm evening, rare for Vermont. The kids aren’t much interested. He’s my hero, not theirs. They would be much more excited by members of the current Red Sox. Bill addresses me as “Mr. Morris,” a odd token of deference. He lives in Vermont now.
Now … fast forward. The boys are grown and making their ways in the world. I have a new profession as a book publisher. I have a new partner who will eventually become my wife. A lot of water has flowed both over and under the dam. In hindsight … wow.
It is June, 2003. The setting is the Tunbridge Fair Grounds, the setting for the famous Tunbridge World’s Fair each September. The setting is right out of Vermont Life Magazine. right down to the baseball player in a vintage uniform. The occasion is the Vermont History Expo, a gathering of 100 of Vermont’s local historical societies.
The player in vintage garb is Bill Lee, here as part of the “celebrity box lunch auction,” a fund-raising event in which box lunches to be shared with local celebrities. The governor is there, and there’s Senator Leahy, and Bernie Sanders, and the TV weatherman from WCAX … and Vermont’s own link to the major leagues, The Spaceman.
“Are you going to bid on him?” asks Sandy, my partner who also happens to be the event director of the History Expo. She knows of my baseball fetish. She also knows that it was I who suggested Lee as a Vermont celebrity to be included in the auction.
I hesitate, hedging. “We’ll see how the bidding goes.” She also knows how reluctant (read “cheap”) I am, especially (read “cheap”) when it comes to anything that could interpreted as a luxurious (read “cheap”) self-indulgence. In other words, I am cheap.
The way the auction is supposed to work is that the celeb is brought to podium, the bidding takes place, the high bidder and the celeb go off with two box lunches for an intimate picnic. As Bill’s turn comes, she asks again, “Have you decided yet?”
“A hundred bucks,” I state definitively. Her walkie/talkie crackles and she disappears. The bidding starts at a hundred bucks, and I am left in the dust before even getting my hat in the ring. Probably a good thing, too, as I note that one of the active bidders is Peter Mallory, another known baseball nut who is also Chairman of the Board for the Vermont Historical Society, sponsors of the History Expo.
The bidding spirals upward, past the bid for Bernie and past the Governor. Soon it’s down to Mallory and one other, but when the bid hits $250, he, too, deems it too steep. “Sold to the lady with the clipboard for $250!” says the auctioneer. Mallory cranes his neck to see who the high bidder is. So do I and many others. It’s Sandy.
That’s the kinda girl she is. She makes dreams come true.
Bill Lee takes the microphone from the auctioneer and says to her “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to offer a raincheck on lunch, because I’m scheduled to play in a Senior League game that starts in just a few minutes. What I’d like to do instead is to invite you and a guest to have lunch at my home in Craftsbury. Will that be ok?” She nods. “Call me and we’ll set it up.” And The Spaceman is off. He’s got a game to play. Mallory, meanwhile makes a beeline for the lady with the clipboard. He’s got a deal to propose to his Event Director.
Several weeks hence we–Sandy, Peter, and I– are pulling into the driveway of Bill Lee’s home in Craftsbury. I remember thinking that his driveway must be a bitch to get up in the winter–this is how Vermonters think. Inside we meet Bill’s wife, Diana, and his Aunt Annabelle Lee, who was a pitcher in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Before any of us can say “Isn’t that …?” It’s confirmed that this was the inspiration for the movie (A League of Their Own) starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Rosie O’Donnell, and Madonna. Annabelle was a star left-handed pitcher who threw the first perfect game in league history.
“She’s the one who taught me to pitch,” says Bill.
If there was any concern about conversation lagging, it was misplaced. In fact, Annabelle was the only one who seemed to be able to squeeze in a word edgewise, with Bill. He shows us his stretching routine, and tells us about his bat company, and fulfills nearly every baseball fantasy Peter or I ever had. He is a great host, as well, grilling a delicious, marinated flank steak that proves him as proficient on the grill as on the mound. Diana, meanwhile, exchanges a couple of eyeball-rolling moments with Sandy. “Can you believe what I have to put up with?” her expression asks. Sandy’s smile is sympathetic and indulgent, as if she is watching men being boys, which was exactly what she is watching.
It is an afternoon more memorable than any at the ballpark, and all made possible by the generosity of someone who thinks that baseball is just a game.
Welcome to my world, Sandy, and thank you for letting me be part of yours.
Chapter 24: Play Loud, Play Fast, and …
It’s time to wrap this sucker up, or, as I say in my epic rap, “Autobio-graffiti,” “The kids are grown and doing fine, from here I see the finish line.”
Notice the small window at right, reflecting the sunset over Gilead. It’s symbolic of something or other, not sure what.
- No employees
- No Board of Directors
I was as glad to be rid of them as they were of me. As Sandy says in the garden when she reaches back to unclasp her bra, quoting Martin Luther King, “Free at last!” That’s how I felt. For over 35 years I had been chasing various indicators of success. No more.
Thus, began the next and most pleasant chapter of my life and professional career, one in which my success was determined by whether the seeds germinated, lunch tasted good, or someone in town commented that they enjoyed my most recent story. Work, relationship, and homestead were now rolled into one and shared with Sandy.
This was much like the philosophical workday of Scott and Helen Nearing, the legendary homesteaders and back-to-the-landers whole divided their time into periods of bread labor, leisure, and other distinct functions that added up to a balanced day.
Each morning Sandy and I make the arduous thirteen-step commute down to the kitchen for breakfast. This is followed by separate exercise routines (stretching, breathing, and calisthenics for me, yoga for her). Then we hit the offices for an intense couple hours. Then lunch, then whatever-the-hell needs to be done, followed by whatever-the-hell we want-to-do. In the end we might be engaged for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, but in ways that are fulfilling and productive. As a major benefit, our work can be done from anywhere, a fact of which we take full advantage.
If it sounds idyllic, it’s pretty damn close. We live in a beautiful home (The Parsonage), in a place that we love (Vermont), travel to exotic places, and have plenty of time for family. An additional bonus for me has been inheriting four grandkids of Sandy’s that I’ve been able to watch grow up– Rhaine, Tully, Alex, and Cassie. Now that my boys have started their own broods (Hunter and Elle), I have some practical experience under my belt!
I shuttered Green Living Journal on December 31, 2019. Sandy and I both officially retired the next day. This meant that we pretty much continued what we were doing the day before. On February 3, 2020 I had my left hip replaced, giving me a matched set. Then on March 1 came the pandemic.
I was on the home stretch of a major book project, the 50th Reunion Book for the Yale Class of 1970. We were in full sprint mode to complete the project in time for the May reunion. The good news is that we made the deadline; the bad news is that no one else did, as the reunion, along with everything else on the planet, was cancelled.
And, although we met the deadline to get the books into classmates’ hands prior to the reunion, no one shared the memo with the U.S. Postal Systems, so the scheduled reunion weekend for me meant a non-stop barrage of messages from classmates demanding “Where’s my book?”
But the book project was complete, Green Living Journal was no more, and it was time to turn the page. Thus was born “Silverback Digest.”
The Silverback Film Society was formed to give a bunch of oldsters in Vermont an excuse to watch a movie on cold, dark, winter nights. Originally conceived to feature frozen pizza, cheap beer, and forgettable films the institution thrived despite the fact that the Green Mountain great apes rejected the original values of the group’s founder (that would be me.)
The Silverbacks of Vermont. (They prefer not to be identified.)
When the Pandemic arrived, the gatherings ceased, and I was faced with a void. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I reasoned, “if I could find a way to share the spirit of the Silverbacks with Great Apes worldwide?” The rest as they say, is history. In The Jungle of the Silverbacks the lines between my life and reality, fact and fiction, and good taste and poor taste are often blurred. Here’s a sample the content at silverbackdigest.com:
************* The New, Hip Me
As publisher of The Silverback Digest, I’ve struggled to reconcile my recent encounter with the health care system with my environmental philosophy. There comes a time when the male of the species realizes that the herd has left him behind. As the lions circle and the hyenas hang back to pick off the stragglers, the herd takes off in magnificent unison. A single one lags behind, a fringe of grey around his muzzle, hobbling to keep up. That would be me.
The lions and hyenas lick their chops.
My strategy regarding the health care system in America can be summarized succinctly: “Avoid it at all costs.” Thus, I was in a dilemma when an orthopedic surgeon told me that my old hip had worn out.
“Should I get a second opinion?” I asked.
“Only if you like to hear the same thing twice,” he said.
I countered with “Food is my medicine. Can I eat my way out of this?” He shook his head.
“Can I exercise my way out of it?”
“Sorry, no.”
I am now officially the straggler. No matter how tough and stringy the carcass, it looks tasty to the lions and hyenas out there.
“What are my options?”
“Continued pain and deterioration,” said my doctor, “or a nice new, synthetic hip.”
Hello, traditional health care! Howyadoin’? Bionic hip replacement, here I come.
My doctor is tall, good-looking, has white, even teeth, diplomas up the ying-yang, and the sublime self-assurance of someone who knows he is a superior human being. He uses big words as if he knows what they mean, even if he knows that I am nodding in dumb agreement. While I would resent these qualities in a next door neighbor, I am happy to have a smart-ass, on-top-of-the-world surgeon, brimming with confidence. I hope his wife is beautiful, his children perfect, and his car pretentious.
The surgery went fine. I will spare the horrific details of what they did to the holy temple of my body, but in less than two hours I was sitting up happily pressing on my self-administered morphine drip. My care was turned over to the hospital staff, whose collective job is to get you out of the hospital as soon as possible. The liberating event is dependent on passing a two question quiz.
“Did you pee?” and “Did you poop?” Of course, they have fancier terms. I could write an entire essay on the importance of stool softeners, but I can’t imagine any subject that could get you to hit delete faster.
After 36 hours the health care system was ready to return me to the cruel world of decent food and afternoon television. I left with of Chinese-made gew-gaws that looked to have been purchased from a late night cable TV info-mercial. “And if you place your order within the next ten minutes for your Deluxe Home Hipster Kit you will receive not only the Super-Stretch Shoe Horn, the Sock-a-Matic, the Gizmo Grabber, AND the Extend-a-Throne toilet.
Next, my care has been turned over to … (cheesy background music, please) … visiting nurses. No term is more provocative to the male libido than “visiting nurses.” Well, maybe “twins,” or “stewardesses,” or the “Swedish National Bikini Team” but guys know what I’m talking about. You’ve been reading about them since those steamy Grade B novels in the 1950s. The nurse comes in, acting all buttoned up and professional. You’re sitting there, vulnerable in your bathrobe and three-day stubble, ready to be taken advantage of.
For the record I had two visiting nurses, an RN and a Physical Therapist. Both nurses were completely professional, but that’s part of the ruse. They changed the dressing of my wound, gave me exercises, and explained my medications. They were quite complimentary about my progress. That was enough, even in my weakened state, to tickle my vanity.
After each session I was asked to sign off on what we had done. The notes were cryptic and scrawled. Maybe it was code. I did note the frequent use of “SS” which I took to be the abbreviation for Super Star or perhaps the more provocative Super Stud. The next time I was asked to sign off, I pointed to the “SS” and asked my physical therapist. “And this is short for … ? “Stool Softener,” she answered without hesitation.
Somewhere out there in The Jungle, a visiting nurse is laughing her ass off at this.
What’s next, Big Boy?
***************************
All That Remains if the Lifetime Achievement Award
The truth is, I’ve been doing the same thing … over and over … my entire life. And what exactly, is that? Telling the deluded story of my Extra-Ordinary life. I’ve told it in fiction (“Beyond Yonder”), music (“Old Rockers”), video (oops, that’s the next project). I just don’t get tired of it.
But what about the Lifetime Achievement Award? Turns out I’ve done that too, more than once.
This particular Lifetime Achievement Award was created by Silverback Mark Jewett upon the occasion of my 70th birthday.
Here, fermented and composted many years after Mrs. Monahon advised us to accept with the left is how the experience came tumbling out onto the pages of “Livin’: The Vermont Way Magazine.” I think I was paid about the same amount as I made playing “Screwin’ Around in G” with Mason Watson.
The Lifetime Achievement Award
How many feminists does it take to …
THAT’S NOT FUNNY!
How many animal rights activists …
THAT’S NOT FUNNY!
A Chinese guy walks into a bar …
THAT’S NOT FUNNY!
A Lutheran, a Catholic, and a Jew …
THAT’S NOT FUNNY! THAT’S NOT FUNNY! AND THAT’S NOT FUNNY!
It’s not easy being a funny guy today. For many years you could get by being the eternal sophomore. You know … chew some gum from under the table, eat some pudding off the floor, or drink a glass of water from the toilet bowl, but now there is so much sensitivity to political correctness that you need to combine the ethics of a mortgage lender with the wordsmithing of a politician (“I did not have sex with that woman.” I think that is sex, Bill.)
It all had me feeling pretty depressed. Between the election, the economy, getting older, winter, global warming I could not think of anything cheerful that did not fall into the category of Can’t Afford It, Illegal, or Bi-i-i-g Trouble. Then it came to me in a divine flash. What I need is a Lifetime Achievement Award.
I perked right up, because I’ve never received an LAA (as we insiders call it) before. Come to think of it I’m not a member of any Hall of Fame, nor have I ever received an honorarium. Let’s make it a trifecta. I ran the idea past my Publisher who had but one question: “Will it cost any money? I will bestow any title or recognition you want so long as it doesn’t cost money.”
I explained that the honorarium is technically a payment for professional services for which custom forbids a price to be set, but that the amount can be symbolic. “By ‘symbolic’ you mean I get to determine how much the honorarium is for?” he asked. I nodded yes.
So I notified myself, by registered letter, that I would be awarded the “Livin’ Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award for Humor Writing,” plus an honorarium, plus membership in the Livin’ Hall of Fame, whenever it is created. To my knowledge I am the first and only humor writer to ever write for this publication, not that this in any way tarnishes the accomplishment.
It was overwhelming. I had to sit down. I did not dance around the room, pumping my fist. I did not dump a cooler of Gatorade over my own head. I did not speak in tongues. I just smiled my cocky little grin and said to myself “Good things happen to those who wait.”
Suddenly there were a lot of details to think about. The only first hand experience I have with awards was when I graduated from high school. The teacher who rehearsed us said “For godssakes just remember when you reach the stage, accept with the left hand and shake with the right. Every year there’s at least one nitwit who ties himself into a knot because he accepts with the right.” Accept with the left … Little did I suspect how those words would hold me in good stead throughout life.
I began to fantasize about my big night. It would be a black tie affair, star-studded with prominent Vermonters. Before going up to the stage (maybe I should say “ascending the stage” … sounds more awardish) to accept with the left, we would sit through one of those fawning, multi-media tributes that shows the highlights of my literary career. Heh-heh. There’s me as a long-haired college student getting my first rejection letter. There’s me tearing it up. There’s me wall-papering my room with more rejection notices.
The crowd starts chanting my name.
There I am showing the cover of my first published book. And there I am at the book signing where no one came. There I am at a different book signing where no one came. And finally, there I am at the book signing where the old lady that came thought she was coming to hear the president of the Sierra Club. And finally, there I am in my moment of greatest glory (until now), being interviewed on the local talk show, “Across the Fence.”
The fawning tribute reaches its climax. The follow-spots are scanning the crowd; the balloons are descending; the kettle drum begins its roll. The master of ceremonies, what the heck, let’s make him the Governor, says “… and this year we are proud to present the Lifetime Achievement Award to …”
The roar of the crowd drowns him out.
The crowd leaps as one to their feet. I give a kiss to the little woman next to me whose frozen smile speaks volumes. Uh … but let’s not go there, not tonight. I proceed to the stage, mentally reviewing my speech and repeating the mantra “Accept with the left, accept with the left, accept with the left.”. I want to thank my Mama and my Pa. And I want to thank all the members of the Academy. And I want thank all those faceless voters on the Internet who made me the people’s choice for this … this … … (I’ll look as if I am searching for just the right word. I’ll even lower my voice so that it sounds as if it coming, literally, from the bottom of my heart.) … this profound honor.
And I’ll thank the Governor who is beaming at me as he announces I will now be given my honorarium. I had anticipated the oversize check, but my Publisher has come up with the more creative idea of a handful of nickels. “Don’t forget to accept with the left,” he reminds me. Did you know that you can hold almost four dollars in nickels in your left hand?
Meanwhile stocks plummet, bombs drop, politicians bicker, and the Smugglers’ Notch Road is closed for yet another winter. Heating oil is an all time high, and dammit, your neck size has increased by another half-inch. Unidentified frozen crud is falling from the sky even while Bill McKibben blithers on about how we’re all going to fry. Mud Season is not even a glimmer of hope on a bleak horizon, yet I soldier on, buoyed by my Lifetime Achievement Award for Self-Congratulation and Delusion.
Just remember when you reach the stage, to accept with the left.
And here it is, interpreted in a song I completed in 2014.
Accept with the Left
I want to thank my Mama
I want to thank my Pa
I want to thank the little people
For making me a star.
I believe in God and country
I hope you’re suitably impressed
That I remember as I reach the stage
To accept with the left.
I want to thank the Mayor
For giving me the key.
I want to thank the members
Of the whole academy.
And to the faceless voters,
On the Internet.
I will remember as I walk to the stage
To accept with the left.
Oscar, Tony, Pulitzer Prize
My future never seemed so bright.
But on my mind as I walk down the aisle
Is to remember that you shake with the right.
I’ve prepared a couple comments
That I hope you’ll like,
But there is no other option,
I’m the one who has the mike.
For the moment please indulge me
Be like monkeys in a cage
‘Cuz my message is short and sweet …
Life is but a stage.
I thank you all for coming,
but it’s time for me to go.
Rest assured another player
will continue with the show.
What it really all comes down to,
Yeah, the litmus test
Will you remember when you reach the stage
To accept with the left?
Oscar, Tony, Pulitzer Prize
They all seem to come my way.
Nobel, Clio, and Peoples’ Choice
This dog sure is having his day.
I want to thank my Mama
I want to thank my PA
And my friends up in the cheap seats
Yeah, you know exactly who you are.
I will share with you my mantra
Then I’ll quickly turn the page
It’s “Play loud! Play fast!
Then get the hell off the stage!”
***************************
The Mantra
I was at the 50th birthday party for my friend, Ed Koren. It was held in the middle of nowhere. The keg of beer was working its magic, and we were dancing like fools to the sounds of a good rockabilly band. They had a fiddler who played many of the instrumental leads. He was much more a rock ‘n roller than an old timey type. He played a solid body fiddle that was wireless, which enabled him to periodically wander in with the dancers.
Occasionally he would offer his fiddle and bow to a dancer who typically reacted as if they had been offered a live rattlesnake. When he offered it to me, I surprised even myself by taking it without hesitation.
I’ve never even held a fiddle before, let alone played one, but I put it under my chin. I waited until the end of the measure, then attacked with gusto. I moved the bow with the same rhythm I would use with a flat pick on my guitar, and moved the fingers on my left hand with the confidence of anyone who has played air guitar. The resulting noise was both powerful and godawful. After a few seconds of loud, fast cacophony, I finished with a flourish and handed the instrument back to its rightful owner. That’s when something weird happened.
People cheered.
When the song ended and a friend said “I didn’t know you could play the violin.” Others came by to chip in their own congratulations. The rest of the evening, and even into the next week, I received compliments on my brief performance. I had learned that world can be very forgiving if you “Play loud! Play fast! And get the hell off the stage!”
Play loud … play fast … and get the hell off the stage.
Hmmm-m-m-m. These sound like famous last words* to me.
(* My favorite “famous last words” story is that when Mexican General Santa Ana was lying close to death, thousands held vigil outside. He summoned a trusted aide to come close enough to hear him whisper. “Tell them I said something,” he said, then died.)
Epilogue: Next Year in the Garden
Delusions of Grandeur
There have been a number of significant portals in this Boomer’s life. There have been the cultural doors that we’ve all experienced–Elvis, the assassinations, the Beatles, the draft lottery, the Berlin Wall, and 9/11/01. Overlaid on these are the personal doors. Arriving on the Yale Campus as a Van Gogh, and becoming Midshipman Morris the next day. 1971 was the watershed year, for music and personally, as well. The choice between Vermont and Vieques was another. Parenthood, divorce, and getting fired (three times!) are others. But the constant has been “the other door” that has subsequently appeared. It will be the same with death. I’m confident of it.
Reunion tour for The Van Goghs?
Doors open and close within the connective tissues, as well. With Post Island, the door never entirely closed, but the connection ebbed and flowed like the tides. As the cottage survived hurricanes, nor’easters, and snow storms, bending, but never breaking, my connection became sporadic. My parents retired there, living in the other house that was built by my grandfather, so there’s always been occasion to visit. In the past ten years, however, I’ve found myself becoming delightfully reconnected with the community. It served as the model Indian Mound, the setting in my novel “Stripah Love.” My neighbors are Bobby Pearson (the same one) and Stevie Hawes, the little squirt who grew up on Poplar Avenue. The bay has been cleaned up, the striped bass are back, the sewage treatment plant has been closed. And my cousins now return each summer to celebrate being on the right side of the ground.
In music, The Beatles just marked the 50th anniversary of their appearance on Ed Sullivan. For my most recent birthday, my son Jacob gave me a capo for my guitar. This musical strand definitely stretches across generations and connect us. This book, which pivots on my fictional two-part interview in Rolling Stone. I can hear Sandy saying “You couldn’t be satisfied with merely a cover story and one-part interview? What other self-aggrandisements do you claim?”
I’m glad you asked.
Beer, of course. Would America have set the new world standard for beer drinking if not for The Great Beer Trek? I don’t think so.
Would the world still be careening towards environment collapse had it not been for the yeoman’s world you did with Vermont Castings, Real Goods, and Chelsea Green? No, but let’s not claim victory yet. Saving an entire planet takes time, don’t you know?
Would despondent garage band veterans be without a glimmer of hope if not for Old Rockers? Don’t be ridiculous … no!
Is there no end to this man’s delusion? Is there possibly anything else for which he is going to claim credit?
What else would you expect from a man who titled his second published book The King of Vermont? You forgot the Red Sox winning the World Series.
The Red Sox finally winning a championship!! … how were you possibly part of that?
I haven’t told you that story? Here goes … The Red Sox suffered under the Curse of the Bambino, blowing championship opportunities in 1946, 1948 (coincidentally the year I was born), 1967, 1975, 1987, and, most painfully, 2003. They finally succeeded in 2004, and have gone on to win championships three times since. What was the key to opening this door that had been locked for 87 years?
That would be me. Or more correctly “me” and Donahue, or more correct grammatically, Donahue and I. He’s the fictional character whose name in real life is John O’Donnell and who was my neighbor and fellow Red Sox junkie in West Brookfield.
The Year We Broke the Curse
STILL CHAMPIONS
And then one year, they did us proud.
Summer is so precious here in the North Country. We cling like rejected lovers to those last moments of buttery sunshine. We glory in the bounty of the summer’s harvest. We wallow in the rituals of the Tunbridge Fair, the Milk Bowl, and the final strand of summer–the World Series.
Vermont holds a special status in the Red Sox Nation. We are a divided state–chucks and flatlanders, Yankee fans and Red Sox faithful. Is it coincidence that the state’s most famous baseball son, Carlton Fisk (born in Bellows Falls) insists on calling New Hampshire “home?”
Red Sox fans in the Green Mountains are like junkies. They can recognize each other by the desperate look in the eyes. A nod speaks a thousand words. Covert meetings are arranged. Soulful itches are scratched.
“What did you think of last night?”
“What could Shilling have been thinking? An 0-2 pitch across the plate? He had at least two pitches to waste.”
“It’s a macho thing. The splitter’s been his out pitch all season.”
“That’s fine, but does he have to throw it over the plate? Get him to chase it.”
“Pedro was the same way. I thought it was a Latino thing.”
“What could he have been thinking?”
The conversations take place in aisles at the grocery story, while filling up at the quick stop, or between pick-ups, facing opposite ways, stopped in the middle of a dirt road. My own Red Sox needle swapper is a neighbor who will be identified only as “Donahue.” He moved to Vermont from the Boston area many years ago, and he has the proverbial map of Ireland on his face and Southie twang to his voice that marks him as a Red Sox lifer. I don’t see him a lot, but when I do, the ritual is always the same, fifteen minutes or so of detailed Sox analysis followed by a perfunctory inquiry about the state of the family, or maybe the weather. It’s been this way for, oh, the past twenty years.
I was driving by Donahue’s house in October, 2004. He was in his garage, throwing around junk and looking generally disgusted. This I could understand, as the previous night the Red Sox had lost their third straight to the Yankees in the playoffs. More humiliatingly, the score had been 19 to 8. For a Sox fan, this was a new low.
I rolled down the window and said something along the lines of “Whaddya think?”
“I’m done!” said Donahue, his lips tight and his jaw set. “I mean it! I’m done.”
“What … what do you mean …done?” I stammered.
“What do you not understand about ‘done’? I mean finished, kaput, fini. I am not putting up with it any more. It finally came to me last night. We’re like battered wives with alcoholic, abusive husbands. We get the shit beat out of us night after night, season after season, and the next day he comes back and says ‘Oh, honey. I’m sorry baby. It will never happen again. I promise …’”
Donahue stopped only long enough to throw a length of 2 x 4″ against the wall. “But last night I finally realized. It’s never going to stop so long as we keep letting it happen, as long as we keep letting them back in. It’s OUR fault this keeps happening, because we are the ones who keep opening the door. But not me and not any more! The door is slammed shut, because I am done! I am not getting battered by the Red Sox any more! And I’m not watching that goddamn game tonight.” Another piece of wood hit the garage wall. This one even harder. He turned away. The discussion was over.
I drive off, too shocked to reply. Donahue … “done” as a Red Sox fan? You can shave your head, grow a beard, change your address or political affiliations, but you can’t change your DNA, and isn’t that where the heart of the Red Sox gene resides? Isn’t that how my daddy raised me? And his daddy before him? Don’t my sons wear the blue, red, and white? Do I want them to live lives of frustration, as I have, because my preferred team has gone 87 years without winning the championship is what is, after all, a silly game?
I mull over Donahue’s declaration. I understand and share his pain. And he’s a guy of unquestionable loyalty and integrity. But to give up? It was Bill Buckner, not the Buddha, who taught me about humility in life. It was Bucky (insert swear) Dent who defined “vale of tears.” Can you dismiss a lifelong quest, a crusade by saying “I’m done?” On the other hand, there was a logic, a foundation of wisdom, a truth to his conviction.
Donahue had stated flatly that would not be watching tonight’s game 4 of a 7 game series. I envied his strength and conviction. After debating it in my mind the entire day, I grabbed the remote … and … opened … the … door.
When it seemed that things could not get any bleaker for the Red Sox, things got bleaker. After coming within a few outs of defeating the Bronx Bombers in 2003 American League Championship Series, now they stood on the brink of being swept. No team in history had come back from being down 3-0 to win a best of seven series. Suddenly it was the eighth inning and Mariano Rivera, the Yankees’ closer was brought in to shut things down as he had so many times before.
Rivera was one of a new breed of Yankee who performed with class and dignity, making it impossible to personally despise him. Ditto Derek Jeter. Granted, A-Rod is a good, old-fashioned asshole, a throwback to when the entire Yankee organization from owner to batboy were detestable to the core.
Rivera immediately shuts down the heart of the Red Sox order, including a strike out of David Ortiz. Uh, another gut punch. As the bottom of the ninth arrives, with the Red Sox three outs from another humiliation. I stand up. Donahue was right. We’re like battered wives, letting the abusive husband back in the door. Not any more. I am making my stand.
“I will not bear witness to this,” I say to the television, “I will not watch jubilant Yankees swarm the pitcher in celebration. I will not watch them in the locker room, spraying each other with champagne! I am closing the door!” With that I click the remote and toss it onto the sofa, not quite as dramatic as had Donahue’s violent toss of the 2 x 4”, but the same underlying conviction and sentiment.
“Get out!” I hiss, then take to my bed, clinging to a fragile tendril of dignity. “I’m done!”
The rest is history. Donahue (presumably) and I awoke the next morning to discover that literally moments after I tossed the remote onto the couch, the Red Sox started on what has been called the greatest comeback in sports history. It extended through the next three games against the suddenly hapless Yanks, then continued unabated through a perfunctory four game route of the St. Louis Cardinals.
It took me only nano-seconds to jump back on the Red Sox bandwagon, and no one cheered more gut-wrenchingly when The Curse had officially ended. While some, to this day, still credit the clutch hitting of Ortiz, Damon, and Ramirez or the gutsy pitching of Schilling, Martinez, and Lowe, I know, and now you know, that it was really two courageous guys in Vermont who stood up and broke the cycle of abuse. Through our courage, through our strength, and conviction, redemption was found for millions of members of Red Sox Nation.
Without Donahue … without Morris there is no Dave Roberts steal of second; there is no clutch hit from David Ortiz; there is no Curt Schilling and the bloody sock; there is no heroic performance by Derek Lowe; there is no two-homer shutdown by Johnny Damon; there is no four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals in the Series.
Had Donahue and I not had the courage to just-say-no, it all ends with Kevin Millar striking out against Mariano Riviera. It ends with Dave Roberts still on the bench rather than joining Bernie Carbo and Dave Henderson as the brightest lights in the Pantheon of Red Sox history.
We … Donahue and I … are the ones who broke the curse. And we did it for you, Red Sox Nation.
Lest we forget … and I’ve said this before.
It was a couple of weeks later, after the champagne and the Duck Boat parade, when I ran into Donahue at the landfill. I was about to close my car trunk and head home. “Hey, we did it!” I chortled. Donahue and I shook hands, two loyal fans after a lifetime of service, .
“And the best thing is, we’re champions at least until next October. The Curse is broken.” He laughed.
“Ironic that the two biggest Red Sox fans in Vermont missed the magic moment,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Donahue looked bewildered.
“Roberts’s steal of second,” I returned. “The biggest moment in Red Sox history, and we missed it.”
“I didn’t miss it,” Donahue said getting back into his truck. “What kind of fan do you think I am?” He drove away, back to reality, leaving me to linger at the landfill, my mind suddenly swarming with thoughts, sounds, images, and implications. I … didn’t … miss … it. Like the minions in Red Sox Nation, he was prepared for yet another in an endless string of humiliations while I, alone, pressed the remote and went to bed. The penny dropped, the lock clicked. I did it. Me … I … whatever. The Red Sox hat that Charlie Johnson gave me, but that I would only wear when the Red Sox were at bat, “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you,” the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, February 9, 1964, looking down at the National Guard from my dorm room on May Day, 1970, James Lovelock seeing Earth from outer space and saying “It’s alive!” It suddenly all came together … the writing, the woodstoves, Vermont’s crappy weather … a butterfly flaps its wings in China and leads to a thunderstorm in Ireland … It’s all related. For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Play loud, play fast … Nova Scotia … I did it. I broke The Curse. I … littly Steppy Morris, had the courage to turned off the remote. I was the butterfly in China making it rain in Ireland.
I closed the trunk of my car and drove home from the landfill. One extra-ordinary guy.
********************
Next Year in the Garden
“You should write more poetry,” said Sandy one day in the garden. She’s always after me to write poetry. but I don’t “get” poetry in the same way I don’t “get” NASCAR. What, exactly, is poetry?
A short while, forty-five minutes by my estimation, I was back to her with this:
Part I–Spring, Famous Last Words
Next year in the garden I won’t plant my seeds too early just because I am excited by a warm day in April. I will wear a long sleeve shirt while pruning roses, raspberries, and blackberries. I will open seed packets the right way so that they reseal. I won’t just rip off the tops, then wonder why my pockets are filled with spilled seed.
Next year in the garden I will read the instructions before planting the seeds. That is, I will read the instructions IF I remember my reading glasses. Gardening is yet one more activity that now requires those damn things.
Next year in the garden I won’t read the newspapers as I lay down the mulch, and I will take off my muddy boots before coming into the kitchen.
I won’t shout “Ignition!” when I see the first green dots of germination. I won’t pump my first and say “Yes!” when green shoots of garlic poke through the hay. I will take it in stride, with the right stuff of the Master Gardener that I am.
Want to see my certificate?
Next year in the garden I will keep detailed records of what I do, when, and where. I won’t mark planted rows with little sticks and kid myself that I will remember what I planted.
And I won’t plant too many zucchini, or too few. I promise.
Part II–Summer
Next year in the garden I won’t wander out after showering and changing clothes to admire my work and bend down to pluck just one errant weed, because I’ve learned that one good weed deserves another.
I won’t work with my shirt off, even though it feels so good, because I know the sun is bad for me. I will always put on sun screen (SPF 45) and wear a wide-brimmed hat.
I will make myself smile by singing “Inch by inch, row by row…”, and not once will I think about the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I will, however, wonder who the Red Sox will use as a fifth starter and marvel at the ability of David Ortiz to deliver in the clutch.
Next year in the garden I will do successive plantings so that I always have tender lettuce. I won’t say “What the heck” and empty the rest of the packet.
I won’t plant peas in August that don’t have a prayer of bearing fruit before the frost. Next year in the garden I won’t curse potato bugs, but will accept my responsibility for the pests I attract. I will outwit potato bugs by not planting potatoes. Next year, that is.
I will de-sucker the tomatoes religiously, and I will build those groovy bent-wood trellises I saw in the gardening magazine. I will say a prayer when I eat the first red fruit.
I won’t let the rogue squash grow, thinking it might turn out to be the elusive “great pumpkin.”
Next year in the garden, at least once, I will strip off all my clothes, lie spread-eagled in the dirt and say “Take me, God, I’m yours!” Then I will take a an outdoor shower, scrubbing every noon and cranny, and feel like the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
Part III–Fall
Next year in the garden, as I pull weeds, I won’t think that I coined the phrase “Nature abhors a vacuum.” (Who did coin that phrase, if not me?).
I won’t wonder why I planted mustard greens, because I won’t plant them, even if I have leftover seed.
I will wear a long-sleeve shirt while pruning the blackberries. Did I already say that?
I won’t start the chipper-shredder “just to see if it will start,” then put through a sunflower stalk “just to see what happens,” especially when I am just killing time before we go out to dinner.
Next year I won’t bore visitors with extensive garden tours, filled with eloquent soliloquies on the virtues of compost. I won’t describe myself as the “poor man’s Eliot Coleman.”
I will pick the chard before it becomes tough and stringy.
I won’t stand speechless before a ten foot sunflower and marvel at the memory of pressing a single seed into the soil with my thumb. I won’t laugh out loud when I see three blue jays hanging upside down on the foot-wide seed pods, possessed by gluttony.
I won’t be disappointed when the Sox fall by the wayside, because I know there is always next year.
Next year in the garden, I will cover at the hint of frost.
I will plant my bulbs and garlic before the ground freezes, but I won’t cover them with mulch until the ground is hard and critter-proof.
I won’t pretend not to be disappointed when my garlic and cherry tomatoes fail to score ribbons at the Tunbridge World’s Fair.
Next year in the garden I won’t break into Joni Mitchell’s “Urge for Going” when I see a chevron overhead.
Part IV–Winter
Next year in the garden I won’t get delusional when I see this year’s seeds on sale. I won’t buy enough to feed all of central Vermont and I won’t think I’m a rich man as I flip through the colorful packets in January. I won’t question why I bought two types of turnips. I hate turnip.
I won’t delude myself into thinking I can grow seven varieties of pepper from seed.
I won’t buy seeds for inedible greens with exotic Japanese names.
I will store my squash properly, so they don’t rot.
I will give gifts of garlic and blackberry wine as if I am bestowing frankincense and myrrh (The blackberry wine is actually pretty damn good). I won’t take it personally when I see how cheap garlic is at Costco.
I won’t check the mail for the first seed catalog the day after Thanksgiving.
I will think good thoughts when we eat last summer’s pesto.
Next year in the garden I won’t think I am part of life’s great cycle just because I pee on the frozen compost.
Cribbage, anyone?
There will always be a garden. There will always be a next year. There will always be love.