The story of the pets who shared the house in Enfield with Sue and me begins here. It recounts the first fifteen years of our lives there with, for most of the period, two cats named Rocky and Woodrow. Rocky died in the summer of 2003 after a very full life.
In late 2003 or early 2004 Sue’s sister Betty told us that a friend of hers had a family of cats that were too much for her to manage. Sue went to meet her one evening and chose on the spot to adopt a long-haired black male that was about the same size as Rocky and Woodrow. The woman called him Fluffy, which, of course, would never do. I dubbed him Giacomo after my favorite opera composer, Giacomo Puccini, and Giacomo della Chiesa, better known as Pope Benedict XV.
For a few weeks Giacomo was, to put it mildly, very wary of his new surroundings. We did not keep him cooped up for more than a day or two, and thereafter I personally spent a lot of time looking for him and trying to remove him from various hiding places. I remember that one day he somehow crawled under the dishwasher in the old kitchen. Fortunately, he was just shy, not a bit aggressive or even defensive. As soon as I got a good grip on him he let me pull him out of his hiding spot without much of a struggle.
Giacomo on the chair showing off his thumbs and his anteater tail. Woodrow looks up from the floor.
Finding him when he hid outdoors was even more challenging. He liked to retreat beneath some evergreen bushes on the north side of our house. When I approached him from one side, he slipped over to the other. It took me at least thirty minutes to retrieve him whenever he did this.
Woodrow, who made new friends very easily, took the new kid under his wing. Giacomo followed his lead in nearly everything.
Eventually, Giacomo became comfortable in both our house and our yard. However, he did not seem to comprehend the value of the cat door (described here). It looked like a trap to him.
Finally, one day Sue and I decided to team up to help him understand it. Sue held him on the outside of the cat door and pushed him through. I was in the basement standing on a chair by the cat door. When he appeared on the top shelf of the bookcase, I grabbed him, took him in my arms (which he liked), and walked around the basement enough so that he could figure out where he was. I then returned him to the top shelf by the cat door and pushed him back through it. Sue grabbed him and held him for a minute or two. Then she pushed him back through to the basement again.
All of a sudden I could see the light bulb appear over Giacomo’s head as he emerged into familiar surroundings. The message penetrated through all the fear to his little brain. He finally realized that this little door meant that he could come and go as he pleased. It was no trap; it meant freedom!
Meanwhile, to our surprise, Giacomo continued to grow. After a couple of months he was a good two inches taller than Woodrow and three or more inches longer. He had one broken (or at least shorter) fang that bothered him not even a little. He also had polydactyly on both front paws. Each had an extra toe sticking out on the inside. They looked a lot like thumbs. One other thing was quickly noticeable about Giacomo—he was left-pawed. I called his left front paw “Lefty”. If it came towards you, it generally meant business.
During his first summer in Enfield Giacomo cleaned out the mole colony that had resumed residency when Woodrow retired as master exterminator a few years earlier.
For the most part Giacomo followed Woodrow around the house and the yard. Woodrow habitually came in to the bedroom every morning when my alarm went off at 5 AM. Giacomo began to join us. I was expected to acknowledge both of them, although Woodrow wanted nothing more than a rub or two on his head. Giacomo liked to be rubbed all the way down his spine, but he did not like his belly rubbed.
In the summer the coolest sport for a nap was this sink. Giacomo learned this trick from Woodrow.
From the start Giacomo preferred me over Sue. Whenever I sat down on a chair he jumped onto my lap. If I was seated at my desk (which was really a tabletop astride two file cabinets), he often got bored and went exploring on the table. If I was watching TV, he lay lengthwise on my lap (on a stadium blanket that I always set there) when he was younger and across it when he got older. I don’t know why he changed. Whenever I lay down he walked (he was so long that he hardly needed to jump) up onto the bed and settled himself next to me.
I never teased Giacomo in the way that I tortured Woodrow with that stick and feather. However, I occasionally took advantage of the fact that he allowed me to do almost anything to him. I liked to lift him up over my head and make him pretend to walk on the ceiling.
Woodrow and Giacomo were left “home alone” during our trips to Village Italy in 2005 (described here) and Eastern Europe in 2007 (described here).
Suburban raccoons are too fat for cat doors.
Woodrow was still around for a startling occurrence in May of 2008. The cat door drew the attention of a masked varmint, a raccoon that was too chubby to fit through the opening. Raccoons are known to be very crafty, but this one used brute force to solve the problem. He made short work of my (very) amateurish carpentry by pulling the door out of its wooden frame in the window. Sue and I knew that the rascal had made it all the way into the house when we found the cat bowl empty and water all over the floor. Cats are very meticulous when drinking water; they seldom spill a drop. Raccoons are meticulous in a different way. They wash their food before they eat it; they always spill water, and they never clean up after they are finished eating.
Chick Comparetto let us borrow his Havahart trap, and he showed Sue how to use it. She then put it outside near the cat’s entrance (which we had temporarily closed off) and put some food in it. On the very first night the raccoon got caught in the trap. Sue and Chick then transported the raccoon—still in the cage—in her car across the Connecticut River to Suffield, where they released it in a wooded area.
Sue immortalized the raccoon adventure by recording a video of the release in Suffield. You can watch it here.
I bought a new sturdier cat door and affixed it to the board blocking the window a little more securely.
In the late summer of 2008 Woodrow died. He was eighteen years old, the same age that Rocky was at his death. Woodrow was weak and very ragged looking the last week or so. I stayed home with him on his last day.
Despite my closeness to him, I wasn’t overcome with grief when Woodrow died. The Woodrow that I wanted to remember was the devious rascal and hunter, not the decrepit bag of bones of his last few days. I still retain so many vivid memories of him. He was an immediate friend to everyone whom we let in through a human-sized door, but I think that, at least in his younger years, he would have fought to the death to defend against an intruder trying to get through the cat door.
I buried Woody under the burning bush, his favorite outdoor napping spot. I don’t honestly know whether Giacomo missed him as much as I did. He could not have missed him more.
Franklin.
For about a year Giacomo was our only pet. Then Sue learned that Betty’s friend, who was absolutely thrilled to find out how much we liked Giacomo, told Sue that she could have Giacomo’s litter-mate, whom she had named Frankie. I insisted on elongating his name to Franklin.
Franklin was black, like Giacomo, but he had short hair, and he was not as long and lean as his brother. I thought of them as the anteater and the aardvark. Giacomo was the bigger anteater with his luxurious fur coat. Franklin was the much less attractive aardvark.
Giacomo on the futon.
Giant Anteater
Aardvark
Pretty good analogy, no?
Franklin did not share Giacomo’s pleasant disposition and love of human companionship. He never fought with his brother, which we recognized as a big plus. However, Franklin did not especially like either Sue or me. He would only occasionally let us pet him. mostly when he was outside. Once or twice, however, I actually found him up on the bed with Giacomo, but after a couple of strokes he became antsy and departed.
This sturdier version of the cat door was installed with the new addition in 2013.
The aspect of living with us that Franklin hated the most was the monthly application of flea drops. I suspect that he had never been allowed outdoors at his previous residence. He discovered the cat door in the basement without our assistance, and he seemed to appreciate the freedom that it provided. However, he had never learned the fundamental lesson of civics class: with all freedom comes responsibility. In this case, the monthly flea drops were the price civilization exacted for his liberty.
This is the basement side, with a ramp down to the floor.
When the weather was warm Franklin put me through a frustrating and exhausting ritual every month. When I was sure that Franklin was in the house, I shut the door to the basement so that he could not retreat there. I then chased him from room to room trying to corner him. Sometimes he hid under one of the barnboard shelves in the library. When he did, I had to wait for him to move. Eventually I always trapped in the bedroom, where he would take refuge under the bed. I had to remove the mattress and box springs to get at him. I always eventually managed to apply the treatment, but the experience was a gigantic pain in the coondingy1.
In contrast, I merely waited for Giacomo to jump in my lap. He did not mind getting the drops at all. He trusted me completely.
Giacomo and Franklin stayed home together while Sue, I, and our friends the Corcorans toured Paris and the South of France in 2009 (described here). We also took a Russian River Cruise in 2010 (described here) and an ill-fated tour of South Italy the following year (described here). I learned of no untoward incidents either caused by or inflicted on either cat.
Franklin on the futon.
For some reason Franklin insisted on exploring our neighbor’s3 property. The gentleman who lived there called me aside while I was trimming the forsythia bush near his property one day and informed me that he had a problem with our cats. They made his dog bark too much. I told him that I would see what I could do.
I thought of responding, “Oh, you have a dog problem. I thought that you said that you had a cat problem.” After all, in Enfield, although dogs must be fenced in or kept on a leash, there is no law against cats roaming free.
I was pretty certain that Franklin was the instigator. Whenever I saw him near the neighbor’s property, I chased him back to our yard. However, I worked all day, and I slept at night. Franklin had ample opportunities to roam. One day, when I was not home, the dog owner accosted Sue and told her that if he caught one of our cats on his property, he would kill it. I won’t repeat Sue’s precise response, but it was not neighborly.
The situation did not escalate any further. I wrote a letter to the neighbors that explained the situation with our cats and offered to pay if they did any damage. Shortly thereafter the family got rid of its noisy dog, and eventually the man of the house departed as well.
In 2012 Franklin got hit by a car on North Street. I did not dig a grave for him, the only domestic animal that I have ever really disliked.
After Franklin’s death Giacomo was our only pet3 for quite a few years. He went through a period in which he spent a lot of time on Allen Street, a dead-end street that was directly across North Street (the site of Franklin’s untimely demise) from our house. Quite a few outdoor cats lived in the neighborhood and congregated informally. The situation reminded me of the old Top Cat cartoons.
I did not like this new lifestyle, but there was not much that I could do about it without turning Giacomo into an indoor cat. Sue was equally concerned. She came to see me when I was in my easy chair wearing my cardigan sweater and reading a magazine. She said, “Ward, I ‘m worried about Giacomo.”
Giacomo on the bed.
Although I don’t remember attributing his injury to the evil influence of the other gang members, one day Giacomo came home with a wound that had formed an abscess. The vet who examined him told me that if this happened again, we might need to keep him inside. That was something that we really wanted to avoid. She also told me that he definitely had a heart murmur, but she did not recommend doing anything about it. It made me think, however, that Giacomo would probably not match the longevity records of Rocky and Woodrow.
Bob in 2017.
Eventually Giacomo’s wanderlust subsided. By 2016 he almost never left the property. That was the year that another black cat decided that he wanted to take up resident at the Slanetz house, home of Sue’s siblings, Don and Betty, and their father, Art. Betty and Art were quite fond of the newcomer, a very stocky fellow with an inflexible tail that measured only four or five inches. Betty named him Bob in honor of his tail—bobcats are sometimes seen in the area. The tail reminded me more of a crank or handle.
A good view of the crank.
Unfortunately, Betty’s own cat had a fiercely hostile reaction to Bob’s presence. Betty therefore asked Sue to adopt him, and, needless to say, Sue agreed. Bob moved into our house on December 8, 2016, and for about two or three weeks Bob and Giacomo hissed at each other. They eventually became tolerant and, in time, quite friendly.
Giacomo held down the fort in Enfield by himself on several of our tours and cruises. Bob and Giacomo stayed in the house by themselves while we took the bridge trip/vacation in Hawaii in 2018 (details here).
Giacomo was much longer.
Not to mention his tail.
Bob exploring in the back yard.
Bob developed one very peculiar tendency. From the beginning his joints were not very flexible, especially by cats’ standards. Something also seemed to itch him on his spine, and he tried desperately to get at it with his teeth. To do this he rested his weight on one shoulder and used a back leg to spin around furiously. It reminded me of someone breakdancing.
After a while some tufts appeared on Bob’s spine. They looked like matted clumps of fur, but he would not let us touch them at all. They kept getting bigger, and eventually it became clear that they were growths of some kind. Maybe we should have taken him to the vet, but at the time Bob would not let me touch him under any conditions. Sue decided to let him be. Every so often she would say to him, “Oh, Bob, what am I going to do with you?”
Prior to Bob’s arrival Giacomo almost never made a sound unless I rolled over his tail with my office chair. Bob was quite talkative, and he had a pleasant voice. Giacomo began to vocalize, too, but he almost always squawked at a high volume. He sounded just like a blue jay. This was his only bad habit. We just had to put up with it.
Giacomo and Sue sometimes napped together.
Meanwhile, Giacomo was definitely beginning to show his age. Whereas he formerly sprang up to my lap or to his favorite perch on the back of the sofa, by 2019 he didn’t jump at all. He had to climb. He had also lost the ability (or at least the inclination) to retract his claws. When he walked on a bare floor, he always made click-click sounds. His right front paw also definitely bothered him. He never ran, and he walked with a noticeable limp.
This is a rare shot. B0b was seldom allowed in Giacomo’s main napping spot atop the couch. Bob always stuck out his right rear leg when resting.
I spent the week after Thanksgiving in 2019 in San Francisco at the NABC4 tournament (described here). Between and after the rounds my thoughts often turned to Giacomo. I really feared that he might die while I was gone. I would not have been too surprised if Bob had died as well.
I was wrong on both counts. Both Bob and Giacomo were still reasonably healthy and active when the Pandemic changed all of our lives in March of 2020.
1. I learned this word while I was in the army. I think that it is derived from a Korean word that sounds similar.
2. Because of the location of our house, we really had only one next-door neighbor, the residents of 1 Hamilton Court. I think that the person with whom I conversed was named Chris Simons. He no longer lives there in 2022, but I think that his wife still does.
3. I am not counting our third rabbit. At some point before, during, or after Franklin’s stay with us at 41 North Street, Sue accepted (without consulting me) another rabbit from a relative or a friend of a relative. She explained that it could live outdoors, and she promised that she would care for it. She neglected it, and it died within a month or two.
4. Prior to the Pandemic three North American Bridge Championships were held every year at rotating sites by the American Contract Bridge League.
If I had read TheInnocents Abroad, I might have brought a notebook on the trip to London. I definitely brought at least one to Milwaukee.
In December of 1989 I had won a story contest (described here) held by the Hartford Courant. The prize was a two-week trip for two to England!
I should mention at the outset that neither Sue nor I took any notes on the trip to England. I think that Sue must have brought her camera, but I have not located any of her photos. I definitely took no photos. So, all of the following content was based on our memories, and the photos that are include, with the sole exceptions of the tattered notebook on the right, the shot of Rocky perched on the toilet, and our souvenir coaster, were all taken by others.
I might have made a mistake in the dates, but the schedule worked out so perfectly that my confidence level is rather high, especially considering that the events happened more than thirty-one years ago.
My preparation for my first trip across the Atlantic was, by necessity, greatly inferior to my efforts for our twenty-first century vacations. Research was much more difficult in 1990. The Internet sort of existed, but there was no Google or Wikipedia. We had Cox cable in our house, but Cox did not offer Internet services until the last half of the nineties. Even AOL dial-up was still three years in the future.
Moreover, I had no time to research. The installation of TSI’s AdDept system at Macy’s in New York was entering phase two (as described here), and, at the same time, we were desperate to sign up a second large retailer to use the system that we had worked so hard to develop for Macy’s. TSI was in a rough spot. We no longer had a dedicated marketing person, and we were also quite short on cash.
The Enfield Public Library.
We obtained a guidebook somehow, probably from the library. Sue and I decided that we wanted to see as many famous sights as possible, but, despite what I had said to Lary Bloom at the Courant, on the way we would also try to investigate some places that were related to the Arthurian legends.
Sue worked with the Jameson Travel people that the Courant had hired to handle the details of trip. The newspaper provided enough money to cover all transportation costs (including auto rental) and lodging. We had to pay for food and anything else that we wanted. Our basic plan was to eat big breakfasts at the hotels and either lunch or supper at a restaurant. The other meal would be snacks that we picked up at whatever store we chanced upon.
We had a pretty good plan with four bases of operation:
London for three nights. Starting with our arrival early in the morning on Thursday, February 22, 1990, and ending with a car rental on Sunday the 25th.
Wells for three nights with side trips to Glastonbury Tor, Stonehenge, Wookey Hole, and Cadbury Castle. We drove through, or at least very near to, Bath (BAHTH) on the way.
Plymouth for two nights with a side trip to Tintagel (tin TAH gehl) and a stop in Bristol on the way to York to enable Sue to shop for miniatures on her thirty-ninth birthday.
York for three nights with a drive through the Dales and, on the return trip to London, a short stop in Barnsley so that Sue could see Locke Park as well as an afternoon stop in Warwick Castle.
Back to London for two nights. Since we gained five hours flying west, we would arrive in Boston at lunch time or even earlier.
The story of my trip actually begins on a February flight from Bradley not to London but to Chicago. It was an early morning United flight on Monday the 19th. For some reason most of my airplane horror stories have involved flights on United airlines. The one to Chicago, however, was quite uneventful.
One IBM Plaza.
From O’Hare I took a cab into town for a meeting at One IBM Plaza with some IBM sales reps who specialized in the retail sector. Some really big retailers had headquarters in Chicago. Sears and Walgreens came to mind. Marshall Fields still had its headquarters in Chicago at that point, too. I tried to explain AdDept to them, but they had trouble understanding it. I am not sure that they even realized that retailers had advertising departments.
From IBM regional headquarters I took a cab to the train station, where I bought a ticket on the next Amtrak train to Milwaukee. The schedule said that it was a ninety-minute journey. Unbeknownst to me, this train happened to be the famous Empire Builder, which went from Chicago all the way to Seattle and Portland. Union Station in Milwaukee was its first stop.
When I boarded my car, it was rather empty. I found a seat by a window, lifted my suitcase up to the overhead rack, and sat down to read.
To my surprise, a man who may have been in his sixties approached me and asked if he could sit next to me. Here was my chance. All that I had to do was to utter the word “No.” I, however, chose politeness. This would be a better story if I had introduced myself and asked the gentleman his name, but I was not that polite.
I didn’t say that it was an express train.
My unexpected companion explained that he and his wife were traveling together to Oakland, CA, to visit their daughter. They liked to take trains, but on long trips like this one they soon tired of each other’s company. So, they each sought out other people to sit with and engage in conversation.
The gentleman was certainly friendly. He asked me where I was getting off and, after I responded, what I was going to do in Milwaukee. Nobody could explain TSI’s unique business in just a few minutes, and my activities that day would seem confusing to anyone. I did my best, and he listened politely.
The cars were a little sleeker, but this was still the Milwaukee Amtrak Station in 1990.
Then, without being asked, he told me that he was from a small town south of Chicago. He may have also worked the price of corn into the conversation at some point as I glanced longingly at the mystery novel balanced on my lap.
Somehow the topic worked its way around to his daughter’s marital status, which was evidently “divorced”. She had moved to the west coast and was living by herself “because, you see, he turned out to be one of them gay fellows.”
Fortunately, this revelation came just as the train was pulling into Milwaukee’s Union Station. Some other passenger would undoubtedly get to hear the rest of the story. Actually, probably several unsuspecting people would be subjected to it. In the cab from the station to my first appointment it occurred to me that the idea of sitting with strangers on the train was probably the wife’s.
My destination in Milwaukee was the office of an ad agency, the name of which I don’t remember. I met there with some people to discuss the possibility of the agency purchasing an AS/400 and running ADB, the version of TSI’s ad agency system designed for that computer, on it. The employees at the agency treated me very nicely and seemed quite interested in what the system had to offer.
The Mark Plaza is now a Hilton.
At the close of the business day I took another cab to the Mark Plaza Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, which was within walking distance of the Boston Store. P.A. Bergner and Company owned that store and a large number of other department stores in the north-central states. The advertising department for the entire chain was located on one of the top floors of the store.
Before going to bed I called Sue and told her about the two meetings as well as my encounter with the long-distance rail traveler.
At Bergner’s I met with the production manager, Dan Stroman, and the loan room manager, Sheree Marlow Wicklund. Their loan room was much simpler than Macy’s. The merchandise seldom was sent to outside photo studios. One person could really run it without a computer.
We had not written a system for keeping track (called “trafficking”) of the status of the various aspects (copy, layout, art, photography, etc.) of production jobs yet. So, what Dan was interested in was a new area for me. I also met with the finance and newspaper people. More details are here.
In 1990 a small restaurant in the Milwaukee Airport sold these delicious brats.
After an entire day gathering system requirements, I left with a lot of notes in my spiral notebook, a folder full of sample reports, and my suitcase. I took a cab to the airport. I bought two Usinger’s brats for supper, spent a few minutes in the airport’s used book store, which, as I recall, had a set of Goethe’s complete works that was short a couple of volumes.
Nobody made this drive in an hour in the evening on February 13, 1990.
It was snowing lightly when I boarded the plane. My journey home went through Chicago. That first leg was always so short that the seat belt light was never turned off.
We had barely taken off when the pilot announced on the intercom that O’Hare Airport had just closed because of an ice storm. So, the plane was being diverted to the nearest available airport, General Mitchell International Airport, the same one from which we had just departed.
When we had landed, an agent proudly informed us that United had hired buses to transport all the passengers to O’Hare. So, evidently the airport itself was still open, even if all of the runways were closed. I was a little fearful of a bus ride in a storm that was ferocious enough to frighten the airport that was a hub for two of the nation’s largest carriers, but I really needed to get back to Enfield to attend a meeting scheduled for the next day.
The rest of the trip went as smoothly as could be expected. The bus that I was on made it to O’Hare. I had to wait in line to speak with a United agent, but I was then booked on a flight to Hartford that was scheduled to depart early the next morning.
Since the cancellation was due to the airport’s decision, United did not offer to put me up at a hotel. I had no credit cards and too little cash remaining from all of those cab rides to pay for a room on my own. So, I snatched as much sleep as I could in one of the seats that were specifically designed to prevent people from nodding off and missing their flights. I had a lot of company.
For the next two decades I was a regular at Executive Valet Parking.
The flight the next morning left on time and arrived in Hartford on time. I took the shuttle to the airport parking lot, ransomed my car, and then drove back to Enfield.
I arrived at our house a little before noon. I called the office and told them that I would take a shower, grab an hour or so of sleep, eat lunch, and then come into work. I did not sleep much, but otherwise I followed that plan.
In the afternoon a couple from New Jersey appeared at our office. I don’t remember the details of this meeting. I seem to recall that it had something to do with our pitch for Paramount, which is described here. These people had experience with UNIX, the operating system preferred by Paramount. “UNIX” had always been sort of a dirty word in our office.
After they left I formalized my notes from my three meetings in Chicago and Milwaukee and sent letters to the people with whom I had met. That is what you had to do in the days before email. Because we were scheduled to depart for London the next evening, I left it up to Kate Behart to follow up on the phone with them.
I did not feel hopeful about the meeting in Chicago and the meeting at Bergner’s. The last meeting in our office was just a flyer. On the other hand, my hopes for the ad agency in Milwaukee were pretty high. If someone from the agency called our references, I thought that we could get it. Our clients loved us, and they always praised our work.
After supper I packed. I remember bringing along several books by Jack Vance. Chick Comparetto1 had volunteered to take care of our cats, Rocky and Woodrow, while we were absent. It was not a weighty responsibility. They had their own door. I had purchased plenty of Cat Chow. If Chick forgot to give them water, they were not shy about helping themselves to the toilet. If they got hungry, Woodrow was adept at ripping open the bag of food. They probably also had two or three survival tricks that I had not yet discovered.
We must have brought either travelers’ checks or a lot of cash on the trip. I am quite sure that we had no credit cards.
Someone drove us to Logan. I have a vague recollection that it might have been Sue’s sister Betty.
I remember nothing about the experience in the airport in Boston. Our plane did not leave until late in the evening. We must have eaten something in the airport, but it was not memorable.
We lost five hours in the flight across the Atlantic, and so it was rather early in the morning when we landed at Heathrow. We had no trouble with our luggage or with customs. That aspect of travel was much easier in those days.
We also had no difficulty finding the driver who had been hired to meet us. I don’t remember his name or what he looked like, but I recall him being very welcoming in a reserved, British manner. He asked about the contest, and he recommended that we invest £5 each in the double-decker bus tour of London.
I am pretty sure that the Camelot was somewhere on this map.
He drove us right to the Camelot Hotel2, our home for the next three nights. It was located on or near Sussex Place quite near Hyde Park. As soon as we entered the hotel, Sue and I had the same thought: “We are staying at Fawlty Towers!” Manuel was missing, and the details were all different, but the feel was remarkably similar. I suppose that at one time there were small urban hotels run by amateurish entrepreneurs in the United States, but by 1990 they were pretty much extinct.
We had to sign the guest registry, which was a huge book lying open on a desk, not a counter. A television was on behind the desk, and—I am not making this up—an episode of Fawlty Towers was playing.
My recollection is that the hotel comprised eight or ten nondescript rooms.We found ours and unpacked. We were both tired, but adrenaline overpowered the jet lag.
The person at the desk told us where we could catch a double-decker bus. We left our oversized key at the desk, walked to the location described to us, mounted to the second level of a bus, and took the tour. It was, as our driver had promised, a good way to get a feel for the city.
I don’t remember where we ate lunch, but afterwards we took a stroll in Hyde Park. It was very relaxing. I was surprised to see that people still used the Speaker’s Corner as a public pulpit. At some point an interesting thought popped into my head. I looked at my watch and then remarked to Sue, “Do you remember that guy on the train to Milwaukee that I told you about? I just realized that he is still on that same train.”3
That evening we walked a few blocks over to Baker St. I don’t remember what our motivation was originally, but when we arrived there we naturally tried to locate 221B. It didn’t exist. Moreover, there was no 221 at all.
We did find a steakhouse near that location, and, although we knew that the English were not famous for their cuisine, we gave it a try. The restaurant had a sound system that played pop tunes. The one that was playing as we walked through the door was “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty, which had been released twelve years earlier. The coincidences on that day were truly unbelievable. The food was OK, and Sue and I had fun trying to name the other songs. “Baker Street” never came up on the sound system again.
I only remember one other restaurant that we patronized in London. It was a Greek restaurant4 that was a block or two from the hotel. My recollection is that it was in the basement of some building, but I may be wrong. I distinctly remember that the food was absolutely delicious, by far the best of any of the food that we ate in England. I also remember that there were only two other people in the restaurant. They were seated at a table as far from us as was possible. They seemed to be just chain-smoking, drinking coffee (or something in coffee cups), and speaking in Greek. I struggled to hear a familiar word or phrase, but since the only Greek I knew then was thousands of years out of date, the task was hopeless.
In London we walked and/or took the tube everywhere. I thought that London’s Underground system was wonderful. It was so easy to figure out. I was used to the mass transit systems in New York and Boston. They were both haphazard and uncomfortable by comparison. I even bought a tee shirt advertising the London Underground. Here are things that I remember Sue and me doing in London:
We definitely went to the British museum. I was thrilled to see the real Rosetta Stone there. It was right out where you could touch it. They had lots of other stuff, of course, but the most memorable for me were handwritten lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Those were definitely kept in cases where no one could touch them. I also remember the pigeons on the steps. There must have been a thousand of them.
We spent the better part of a day at the Tower of London. I was very impressed by the armory and the Yeoman Warders in their fancy dress. I had no use for the massive collection of shiny rocks, but others stood in line for a chance to adore them. One of the few souvenirs that we bought on the entire trip was the coaster shown on the right.
We walked to Buckingham Palace, but we did not watch the changing of the guard. It was chilly that day. While we were in the vicinity, we went to Westminster Abbey and were a little grossed out that so many people were entombed there. I guess that they have to put the cadavers somewhere. We also saw Parliament, #10 Downing Street, Big Ben, and the Thames.
Sue wanted to visit St. Catherine’s House in London to look up information about some of her ancestors on her mother’s side, the Lockes and Kings. I didn’t go in with her. I don’t remember what I did, but just looking in windows is quite entertaining in London. I think that I might have found a bookstore.
We were very impressed with the retail on Oxford St., which I found much more exciting and dynamic than the stores on Fifth Avenue in New York.
The ducks in the ponds in Hyde Park were very striking. They had complicated and beautiful markings. Neither of us had seen the like, not even in zoos. I also really liked the coots. Their oversized feet impressed me.
From Hyde Park we could see both Kensington Palace, which at the time was the home of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Royal Albert Hall. We didn’t visit either one. It probably would not be cool for someone from the Colonies just to drop in on Chuck and Di, and we already knew how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
We did not find that being a pedestrian in London was too difficult. At the enormous intersections there were usually pedestrian subways. The hardest part for us was remembering to look to our right first when attempting to cross a side street.
On our very last night in England we went to see Agatha Christie’s play, The Mousetrap, at St. Martins Theater. It was very enjoyable. Maybe we should have tried something a little more daring, but I am very happy to say that I viewed this play when it was only in the thirty-eighth year of its record run.
The worst part of our entire trip began when we picked up the rental car. I think that the travel agency provided us with transportation to the car rental agency. It was only then that Sue revealed that she had specified a standard transmission car, and she was afraid to try to drive it. So, I needed to learn how to shift with my left hand on a perilous journey from the very heart of London to the M4 during the morning rush hour.
I made many mistakes. Other motorists even honked at us a few times, probably the only horns that I heard while we were in the U,K. The British seemed more reluctant than their American counterparts to draw attention to bad driving. Embarrassed and frustrated, I did manage to get the car onto the freeway without causing any accidents.
A little west of Reading Sue suddenly announced, “There he is! I just saw a bear!”
Intent on my driving, I dared not gawk. I took a quick peek in the direction that she pointed. I saw nothing. At the time I did not know that bears had been extinct in England for fifteen hundred years. It probably was just an ordinary Bigfoot.
We took the M4 almost all the way to Bristol. Driving on the M roads in England was no more challenging than driving on interstates in the U.S. However, when we exited from the M4, the rest of the drive was on the A roads, which were very narrow by American standards. I remember that when we drove through the outskirts of Bath I was fearful of scraping against the stone walls that formed the border of the road. Fortunately, we encountered very few cars coming in the opposite direction. When we finally reached our destination in Wells, I was happy that the trip was over and more than a little anxious about the next nine days on the road.
In Wells we stayed at the Red Lion Hotel, which is described here. I think that the building at some point was converted to other uses. I remember that our room had a four-poster bed. I had seen them in movies, but I don’t think that I had ever slept in one.
We spent the rest of that first day in Wells exploring the town. The focus of attention was definitely the huge Gothic cathedral that is dedicated to St. Andrew the apostle. Although it is now the see of the Anglican Bishop of Bath and Wells, it was constructed in the late middle ages when England was a Catholic country. It seemed totally out of place. Wells is little more than a village, and the cathedral is actually set apart from the town. I would have expected the town to have grown up around it.
The Bishop’s Palace was equally awesome or perhaps even more so. His Lordship George Carey5 evidently was not apprised of the arrival of the esteemed visitors from across the pond. We saw his home from a distance, and we were even treated to the sight of some episcopal long-johns hanging out to dry. However, we were not invited into the palace grounds where, according to Wikipedia, croquet games are rather common. I would have loved to hear someone explain the rules of the English version of the game.
Rand’s jump.
A word about the weather: Although all of England is well north of New England, the weather in late February and early March was much nicer than what New Englanders would expect. It seemed more like mid-April. Flowers were out, and the grass was green. We wore jackets every day, but we were seldom cold. We also were lucky not to encounter much rain.
For me the most interesting feature in the town of Wells was the memorial on the sidewalk to Mary Rand, a resident of Wells who won the gold medal in the women’s long jump in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. The plaque measured out the exact distance that she jumped.
What I remember most about those days was the driving. No matter which of us was at the wheel, both of us became irritable. For some reason the roundabouts gave us the most difficulty. It was bad enough to have to remember to go clockwise. The big problem, however, was the signage. The highway numbers were seldom provided at the exits. Instead a sign displayed the name a town that was somewhere on that section of road. This was, I am sure, useful for people who knew where all of those towns were, but they did not help us at all. Furthermore, it seemed as if at least half the time the name on the sign was “Taunton”, and visiting Taunton was not on our agenda
I am not sure where we went on which days, but I am sure that we went to all of the following places:
Our guidebook described a place called “Cadbury Castle”. It was supposedly someone’s idea of where Camelot (or maybe Camalet) was. We had a lot of trouble finding it. Finally we came upon the village of North Cadbury. We asked someone at a pub where Cadbury Castle was, and they directed us down a one-lane road that was actually just two tracks. Those were the last humans that we encountered on this adventure.
We went as far as we could by car. We stopped the vehicle, locked it, and set off on foot.
Ahead of us were two troughs, a lot of thick underbrush, and a formidable grassy mound. We made our way through the underbrush for thirty or forty yards. Sue got attacked by stinging nettles and was forced to retreat in agony.
In those days if there was a hill in front of me, I climbed it. I made it to the top of this so-called “hillfort”, but I saw no trace of a fort. On the top of the hill a dozen or so cows were peacefully grazing. They ignored me. I could also see Glastonbury Tor in the distance. That was something, I guess.
Nettle.
To be fair, I should add that the sun was out. The legend is that on a misty day you can see the Once and Future King and his famous knights.
Dock.
When we arrived back at the hotel, Sue asked someone what to take for stinging nettles. They informed us that the best treatment was a plant called “dock”, which always grew near the nettles. That was not in our guidebook.
We also drove to Glastonbury Tor, another ancient hill in Somerset. A lot of people think that this is a magical place. it certainly has an unusual shape. Evidently in the middle ages a monastery was there. Legends abound about it being associated with King Arthur, but there is a dearth of evidence.
A paved path now leads to the tower atop the tor. I don’t think that it existed in 1990.
I don’t remember a lot about our visit here. I don’t clearly recall the tower at the top of the hill at all. Therefore, I was skeptical as to whether I climbed to the top. Sue, however, has told me that I did. Evidently I don’t remember the tower because no one was allowed to enter it. Therefore, its distinguishing feature—no roof!—was not visible to me.
Sue also reported that a dozen or so New Agers were busy absorbing Glastonbury’s vibes.
The good thing about it was that the town of Glastonbury was actually fairly easy to find. I can’t say that about most of the other sights in Somerset. We had a devil of a time finding Stonehenge. Surely, there must have been a lot of tourists who wanted to see these big old rocks. Nevertheless, there was precious little signage to indicate their location.
We were not allowed as close to the stones as the people in this photo are.
We did find it, but it was probably the biggest disappointment of the entire trip. At the time no one was allowed to approach, much less touch the stones. I don’t recall that we ever were within one hundred feet of them. I honestly think that we would have gotten more out of a film about the place.
By this time we were getting rather tired of driving around Somerset searching for legendary hills and ancient inanimate objects.
Our last stop in Somerset, however, was delightful. Wookey Hole is a set of caves that are located just a few miles to the northwest of Wells. We knew about the caves from the guidebook, but we were surprised by the fact that there were actually other really enjoyable things to see and do nearby.
The caves were quite interesting. We took a little tour with a local guide. The best part of it was the way that she pronounced Wookey Hole. The first syllable was at least a fifth higher than the rest of the name. Since we had heard no human speech anywhere near any of the other attractions in Somerset, it was nice to have someone explain the geology of the caves.
In addition to the natural formations, someone had constructed a small museum6 that emphasized a few diverse elements of the culture in and around Wookey Hole.
Cheddar Gorge.
The paper-making demonstration was the most educational. Until then I had absolutely no idea how trees and rags were turned into paper. The penny arcade machines were also something that I had never seen before. Visitors could even play the games using old-school pennies that they could buy there. The carousel section had complete carousels (going clockwise, of course), as well as stunning individual statues. I remember seeing a beautiful lion, but I was unable to find a picture of it on the Internet.
Sue and I found our visit to Wookey Hole both fun and relaxing. We then undertook the drive up to Cheddar Gorge. I am not sure why we did not stop here. Sue absolutely loves cheese. In retrospect I have trouble understanding how she could have resisted the temptation to stop and sample one of her favorite cheeses.
Our next destination was Plymouth, which is a genuine city on the south coast. On the way there we took a slight detour to drive through Exmoor, which includes some really diverse and beautiful areas.
Our hotel in Plymouth was not as memorable as the first two. I have a vague recollection that it also had a restaurant. We took a short pedestrian tour of the city, mostly so we could say that we had seen the spot from which the Pilgrims departed.
I remember that at the restaurant I was served some Devon Cream. I had never had this before and remarked about it to Sue. My face must have registered disgust because the waiter rushed over to ask me if there was something wrong. This, by the way, never happens to me in the U.S.
The main reason that Sue and I bothered to come this far west was to have somewhere to stay while we ventured to Tintagel, the ruins of a real castle in Cornwall on the Atlantic coast.
Tintagel ruins.
A different angle.
Merlin’s Cave.
Tintagel7 was definitely worth visiting. However, it was a difficult drive from any direction. Furthermore, a fairly long walk was (and evidently still is) required to reach the ruins from the parking lot. We went there in February, and a very cold wind was blowing in off the Atlantic. We did not get as much out of this experience as we might have if the weather had been nicer or we (i.e., Sue) had been in better condition. We did get a look at the castle ruins and Merlin’s cave. The view of the ocean was stunning.
I am not sure about this, but I think that we decided not to drive directly back to Plymouth. Instead we headed to Barnstaple, a city with which we were familiar from playing the British Rails game. All of the cities in this section are at the base of a very high cliff. This accounts for the peculiar fact that all of the rivers flow to the south.
On Sue’s birthday we left from Plymouth with the intention of reaching York by supper time. I asked Sue what she wanted for her birthday. She said that she wanted to shop for miniatures at a store she knew about in Bristol. So, that is what we decided to do.
Somehow we came up with an unusual plan. We drove to a location on the outskirts of Bristol, which in 1990 had about 400,000 inhabitants. We parked the car and took a city bus downtown. Sue somehow knew which bus to take and the stop at which we needed to exit. When we got off of the bus, Sue looked around but could not see any familiar buildings or street names.
She did find a Dr. Who-type phone box (not booth in England). Somehow she figured out how to make it work. She called the store. The woman who answered asked her what she could see from the phone box. Sue told her. The woman merely said two words: “Turn around.”
Sure enough, Sue found herself looking at the miniatures store. She went in; I did not. I had enough trouble—even at that age—dealing with full-sized objects. While Sue was shopping for tiny things, I walked around and looked in windows. If I discovered a store that sold books or games, I probably went inside. I don’t think that I bought anything, but Sue definitely did. Good! It was her birthday.
We somehow caught another bus that brought us back to the car park. We fired up our vehicle and easily found our way back to the M5. Sue received one more present. We got off of the throughway at Cheltenham and drove through the Cotswold country to Bourton-on-the-Water the home of the Model Village. It took about half an hour.
I think that this is the model, not the real village.
I probably would not have made this side trip if I had been by myself. However, Sue has always felt a special attachment to the Cotswolds and particularly its thatched roofs. The Model Village itself is definitely worth seeing once. It was a nearly exact replica of the real Bourton-on-the-Water within which it resides. What I found the most interesting was that the model itself is indeed modeled at the same one-ninth scale. I naturally wondered if that model included a one-eighty-first model of the model and so on. I mean, some people write on grains of rice; what is the limit?
My attitude might help explain why, although everyone likes working with me, nobody ever asks me to go anywhere with them.
Royal York Hotel.
The remainder of the trip to York was uneventful. We stayed for three nights at the Royal York Hotel, a huge very old hotel near the train station. In one way I was glad that we did not go any further north. The people in the north spoke perfect English, of course, but the accent was so strong that it was difficult to understand.
National Railway Museum.
The other memorable supper that we ate might have been our first night in York. I don’t remember the rest of my order, but the vegetable was broccoli. It had been cooked so long that it had turned grey. The waiter, who had emigrated from Greece, noticed my horror. He told me that the English always overcooked the vegetables. I conversed with him a little. I told him that I had taken ten semesters of Homeric and Attic Greek in high school and college. He did not seem too impressed. He probably knew that these classes would not have helped me understand him. I later learned that while modern Greek grammar has not changed much through the millennia, the vocabulary and pronunciation had evolved drastically.
The view from the central tower.
I think that Sue let me do most of my exploring of York on my own. While I was out walking around the city I think that she visited the Railway Museum, which was very near the hotel.
I never pass up a chance to walk the walls of a city. York’s were probably the best.
I remember visiting the stunning York Minster, which was awesome both inside and out. It must surely be the most impressive church in England. I am quite certain that I climbed as high as they allowed in the ancient cathedral. The view of the city and the countryside was breathtaking.
I also walked around atop the ancient stone walls of the city. I cannot remember whether I made it all the way around, but I recall thoroughly enjoying this experience.
York was such a delightful old city. It was very pleasant to experience it both from street-level and from above.
Sue and I definitely visited the Jorvik Viking Center8 together. This museum emphasized the history of the area before the arrival of the Normans in the eleventh century. Many lifelike displays depicted the lifestyles of the Vikings who inhabited the area. The details were based on archeological excavations that produced thousands of objects.
We watched ACG&S the first time around.
We also went for a drive in the Yorkshire Dales that we knew from the television series All Creatures Great and Small. We stopped at a house or store for some reason. We talked with a lady there who used the word “fortnight”. I told her that no one in America ever used the word. She asked me what Americans said instead. She seemed mildly surprised when I replied “two weeks”.
Joseph Locke’s statue.
After we left York we made two stops on our way back to the Camelot Hotel in London. The first was in Barnsley, where we searched for Locke Park, named after one of Sue’s relatives, a railroad magnate named Joseph Locke. We stopped to ask for directions. We were told that it was at the corner of Locke and Park. Where else? Sue is not a direct descendant, however. Joseph and his wife Phoebe had only one child, whom they adopted.
Our second stop was at the fabulous Warwick Castle. This stop was recommended by one of TSI’s clients, Mary Lee Pointe at Avon Old Farms School. I had mentioned to her that we were going to England and wanted to see at least one castle. She said that sh had visited several of them, and Warwick Castle was the most interesting.
The castle and its grounds made a fitting end to our motoring excursions. I cannot imagine a more awe-inspiring setting that was matched by the opulent displays in the interior. As I recall, we had a picnic lunch together on the grounds.
We made a memorable pit stop on the way to London. The facilities themselves were mediocre at best. What got my attention was a sign at the entrance demanding “NO FOOTBALL COACHES.” A “coach” to Brits was a tour bus. “Football” referred to the game called soccer in the states. So, the rest area actually prohibited busloads of soccer hooligans.
We managed to locate the car rental agency in London. I don’t remember how we got ourselves and our luggage to the hotel for the last two nights.
I don’t remember which of the activities that I listed in the first London section were actually performed on our last full day in London. I am pretty sure, however, that, as I mentioned, Sue and I attended the theater on our very last evening.
“Memorable” is definitely the right word for this”‘fortnight” in England. I can hardly believe how many things we did and how vividly they have remained in my memory and Sue’s—with no notes at all. How times have changed! It is now a titanic struggle for both Sue and me to recall what we did the day before yesterday.
One thing that I cannot remember clearly is what we did about the business. In the course of the two weeks, we must have called the office at least four or five times. I cannot recall needing to deal with any pressing problems.
1, Chick Comparetto was the father of Sue’s first husband. He lived less than a mile from us. He died in 2020. His obituary is here.
2. Alas, there is no longer a Camelot Hotel in London, and I was not able to identify any hotels that might be successors. Perhaps the building was converted to some other use.
3. This is my favorite shaggy-dog story of all time, and it is 100 percent true.
4. I think that this restaurant might still be in business in 2021. A restaurant called Halepi seems to be in the right location, and everything mentioned on its website, which can be visited here, rings true.
5. His Lordship George Carey became Archbishop of Canterbury, England’s ranking clergyman, in the following year. He retired in 2002. Like most bishops everywhere he got entangled in scandals about reporting clerical sexual abuse. In 2017 he resigned his last formal relationship with the church, which meant that he was no longer allowed to officiated at services.
6. Not many people were at Wookey Hole when we visited. I remember thinking in 1990 that this place needed some good old American marketing. Maybe Ambrose could have helped. Subsequently it has been Disneyfied into a real touristy place. Check out its website here.
7. Tintagel has changed in the three decades since we were there. A visitors’ center has been added, a footbridge has been constructed, and someone was allowed to carve a gigantic image of Merlin’s face on the side of the cliff.
8. The Jorvik Viking Center is still in operation. Its website is here.
Until I was almost forty years old I did not have much of a relationship with my sister Jamie1. I remember being quite disappointed when I learned that the sibling that I knew was coming turned out to be a girl. I was in second grade at the time. The girls whom I knew there were all hopelessly stupid. THEY PLAYED HOP-SCOTCH AND PAT-A-CAKE AT RECESS!! I had no use for them at all.
I was nearly seven and a half years older than Jamie, and that half year was significant. I was a freshman in high school when Jamie was in first grade. I had graduated from college before she started high school. During her high school years I was in the Army and then working halfway across the country. We went to different kindergartens (both public), different grade schools (both parochial), different high schools (hers parochial, mine Jesuit), and different colleges (hers a small Benedictine near home, mine a huge state university over seven hundred miles away.
The Kinks on Shindig in 1965. Jamie was 9; I was 16.
So, the only times that we were together were before and after school and during the summers. I remember watching bits of Captain Kangaroo with Jamie before school and some TV shows in the evenings. Batman and Shindig in the evenings. We sat on the floor of the family room watching the tube while mom worked and dad lay on the couch reading a magazine or newspaper punctuated by an occasional “Mmm hmm”. However, I often withdrew to my bedroom to read or work on a project or to the basement to shoot pool and listen to records.
The time between returning from school and supper time was precious to me. I spent very little of it in the house. I either stayed after school to take part in some activity or came home, set down my books somewhere, and dashed back outside to play with my friends. I felt the same way about the summer. If I wasn’t earning money mowing lawns, I was probably out of the house.
So, I never really developed a close relationship with Jamie. We had no great family crises to create bonds of shared suffering. We also did not do that much together as a family. The whole immediate family went on summer vacations (as described here) together, but my only clear recollection of any interaction with Jamie on these trips was when I became very upset that our parents “could not find” the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. She tried to calm me down, which was nice (but ineffective).
SSG Barry Sadler would not have approved of our dance.
We did have a few moments. Perhaps the best was when we invented a dance to perform during the hit song “The Ballad of the Green Berets”. There were not many games that we could play together. War was no fun; Jamie always won Inspired by Sheepshead, I invented a gambling game called “Sevens and fives” and revealed the rules to her one at a time as they came up. I enjoyed that. Of course, I gave her back the money that she lost. Well, most of it.
I also remember spending an afternoon or two helping to teach Jamie how to drive my brand new Datsun in an empty parking lot. This must have been in 1972 after my own stint of heroically defending New Mexico against peace-crazed Ghandiists. Barry was two ranks higher than I was, but I never went to prison.
It was not anything about Jamie’s personality that made me limit our time together. I just enjoyed being with my friends and being by myself a lot more than being with family.
Maybe I was not a very good big brother. Decades later Jamie told me that she had been bullied (or worse) when she was on the way to kindergarten at a public school. I would have been in the eighth grade. If I had known about this, I would probably have tried to enforce the Law of the Jungle (“If you so much as touch my sister, I will …”). I would have, too. I was at least two years older than anyone at her school, and kids who attended public schools were presumably heathens. Also, I knew some moves. I watched a lot of wrestling in the eighth grade.
I don’t know how I missed this. Maybe I was just oblivious; I often am.
Jamie and I had similar senses of humor, and we were both rather tall and quite thin, but those were almost the only things that we had in common. She was always the cute one. When she was little, she had blonde hair that she evidently got from a relative that I had never met and her mother’s dark eyes. She was also a much better athlete and was tremendously more sociable than I was. I did better in school, and I was almost never in trouble.
This is Jamie on her prom night. I was long gone by then.
From 1966, when Jamie was ten and I had left for college, through 1985 I had minimal contact with Jamie. She made a mysterious visit to our apartment in Plymouth (described here), and Sue and I visited her and her husband, Mark Mapes2, once in Iowa (described here).
Other than that, we might have talked on the telephone a few times, but that was it. Why didn’t I call her? It did not occur to me. I didn’t call anyone. I have always hated talking on the telephone, and in those days long-distance calls were expensive.
In late 1985 Jamie was living in the Chicago area with her two daughters, Cadie3 and Kelly4. How they got there is a long story, and I am ignorant of most of the details. Cadie was, by my calculation, eight years old, and Kelly was a couple of years younger. Jamie was working at O’Hare airport for American Airlines. There she met Joe Lisella Jr.5, a fellow employee. I think that they got married in 1985. Jamie has told me a few stories about the travails of working in baggage claim. She may have had other responsibilities there, too.
In 1985 the newlyweds moved to an apartment in Simsbury, CT. For a time both Joe and Jamie worked for American Airlines at Bradley Field in Windsor Locks, CT. Their family grew rather rapidly. Gina6 was born in 1988, Anne7 in 1989, and Joey8 (Joseph III) in 1991.
During the fourteen years that Jamie lived in New England I worked at least seventy hours per week. Sue and I found time to visit Jamie and Joe a few times in Simsbury. I remember that we ate supper with them at least once at Antonio’s Restaurant near their apartment.
Joe and I played golf together quite a few times, first at a course in Southwick, MA, called Edgewood and then, after they had moved to a house in West Springfield, at East Mountain Country Club in Westfield, MA.
I had a good time, but I still took golf too seriously to have many enjoyable conversations with Joe. Another problem was that we both sliced the ball. He was, however, left-handed. His ball was therefore usually in the rough to the left. Mine was usually pretty far to the right. Talking is, of course, discouraged on the greens and tees.
East Mountain Country Club.
Joe’s brother played with us a few times. I have forgotten his name. Jamie was a very good golfer when she was a teenager, but she never played with Joe and me. It never occurred to ask her why not.
We always played very early in the morning. I sometimes stopped at McDonald’s on the way to the Lisellas’ house and bought Sausage Biscuit with Egg sandwiches for them. Once I evidently messed up about whether we were scheduled to play. They were sleeping in. Someone with bleary eyes came to the door. I apologized when the situation was explained to me, left the McDonald’s bag for them, and drove back home.
At left is a satellite view of the Lisellas’ house on Lancaster Ave. in West Springfield. In the nineties a basketball goal occupied the space where the big white truck in the photo is.
When we visited the Lisellas’ house, there was often a half-court basketball game there. I declined to participate. My skills at basketball were limited to running, jumping, disabling opponents with my sharp joints, and drawing fouls. My jumping days were behind me, running was of no value in a half-court game, and my other abilities were under-appreciated.
The most memorable of these game was the one in which my dad, who at the time was at least pushing seventy, tried to play. He lost his balance, fell down, and broke his arm. He had to be rushed to the emergency room.
The only photo that I could find of Joe Lisella is this one from 1973 on Gina’s sixth birthday.
The menu at the Lisella house was usually hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. Joe had a Weber “kettle” grill, and he used a lot of charcoal. I never asked him about this, but I have never understood how anyone could control the temperature of one of these grills. I have always strongly preferred the ones that allow either the fire pit or the grill to be raised and lowered.
Joe watched a lot of sports on television. In fact the TV always seemed to be on in their house, and it was always set to a sports broadcast. His favorite teams were the Red Sox, the Green Bay Packers, and Notre Dame. I am not sure which team he rooted for in basketball.
When I was at their house I spent most of my time playing with the kids. Jamie always seemed to be cooking, cleaning, or collapsed from exhaustion. Occasionally she took a break for a cigarette.
I did not talk much with Jamie. On the sidelines at the kids’ soccer games she would sometimes keep me apprised of the their progress. I seldom had much to contribute to these conversations. In those days TSI was definitely the focus of my life. Unless I could think of an amusing story, I did not say much.
I clearly remember doing one thing with Jamie. She had somehow scored some tickets for a WWE wrestling card at the Hartford Civic Center, and she invited me. This must have been in 1990. I think that Gina and Anne were there. I am not sure whether the other girls or Sue attended. The girls were really into it. They cheered and booed at all the right places.
The only match that I remember at all was between André the Giant9 and Jake the Snake Roberts10. Although André was way past his prime, he was still enormous and powerful. He could probably have defeated Jake from his hospital bed. However, every move he made seemed to cause him pain, and his back was bent over at a 45° angle when he lumbered from one place to another.He even had difficulty entering the ring. I found the performance rather sad, but I enjoyed the experience of being with the kids.
I marveled at how different this experience was from the other match that the high-school version of me had seen in person. It is described here. In the match in Hartford there was a lot of flash, but very little in the way of wrestling. Vince McMahon had not yet admitted that his events were scripted, but 90 percent of the people over five in the arena could predict the outcome (barring disqualification) of every match. It was kind of like a circus with trained over-developed humans.
In the fall of (I think) 1986 or 1987 Sue and I drove Cadie and Kelly to the Catskill Game Farm11, a private zoo in New York state. This had always been one of our favorite day trips, and it was more fun with the kids. Fall was the best time to go there. The weather was ideal. The deer were in rut, and the cries of the stags could be heard all over the park.
We spent a fair amount of time in the petting area of the park, which was loaded with immature animals that had been handled by humans since birth. That did not in any way mean that they were tame. I had never noticed this in previous visits, but they formed a herd of six or seven species and walked around the petting area as a group.
An priceless trading card from her soccer days autographed by Kelly.
Kelly had been petting one of the fawns, and she did not notice a baby donkey behind her pitching forward on its front legs and aiming a two-legged kick at her back side. Fortunately, the hooves missed by an inch or two.
I also remember feeding the giraffes. The girls got a figurative kick out of that.
Cadie’s glamor shot.
I attended at least one of Cadie’s softball games. I don’t remember too much about it. She was not a star. She was more of an intellectual than an athlete. More than anything else she has always been very artistic. I seem to recall that she studied art at Hampshire College for one year. I don’t know what happened after that.
For my mom’s seventieth birthday in October of 1995 Cadie flew with me to Kansas City. I gave a little speech to a gathering of my parents’ friends about my relationship with my mom. I am sure that my mom, who was already experiencing some dementia, appreciated that we both came. However, it was obvious that Cadie was uncomfortable throughout the entire trip.
My dad took Cadie with him on his trip to Ireland. They both enjoyed the trip, but my impression was that their personalities did not blend too well. No blood was spilled.
My most vivid memory of Kelly is from the day that she helped plant flowers around a tiny pine tree in our yard on Hamilton Court. The tree, which is now more than thirty feet high, was only a little taller than Kelly at the time.
Kelly was a good soccer player. I remember watching her in at least one game. She was a defender. I don’t know too much about soccer, but the other team never came close to scoring. Her team’s goalie need not have attended.
Kelly had trouble with math in high school. Jamie once asked me if I would be available to help her with it. I said that I would, but I never heard about this again.
Sue and I were invited to attend Kelly’s graduation at the horse show building at the Big E in Agawam. We went, but I don’t remember any details except that I was surprised that the students were mostly wearing casual garments (even shorts) under their graduation gowns. I also recall at the subsequent get-together at the Lisellas’ house. Gina and her classmates humiliated me on the basketball court.
Kelly left West Springfield shortly after finishing high school. I knew that she moved to a western state, but I did not know what she was doing there. I haven’t had any contact with her since then.
This is the oldest photo that I could find of Anne and Gina. If I had waited much longer to ask them to pose with me, I would not have been able to lift them.
I tried to see Gina and Anne as often as I could. One weekend day they stayed with us for a few hours in Enfield. They were delighted to discover that we lived right behind a school that had monkey bars and other athletic equipment.
I usually bought the kids some kind of board game at Christmas. When I was at the Lisellas’ house in West Springfield, I spent most of my time on the floor. In retrospect I wonder if the games were a good idea. Some of them had a lot of pieces.
I bought a Foosball table for them one Christmas. I probably should have asked if it was OK to do so. They seemed to enjoy playing it that day, but I noticed the next time that we went to their house that it was on the front porch and positioned so that it could not possibly be used. If I had been considerate enough to ask ahead of time, Joe or Jamie might have mentioned that there was no possible place to keep it.
This is the West Side girls’ soccer team for 1997. Anne is on the far right in the front row. Gina is second from the right in the back row. In the team photo for 1998 Anne is second from the right in the front row. Gina is in the middle of the back row.
Sue took this excellent photo of Gina, Anne, Joey, and snow.
I watched Gina and Anne play soccer several times. Anne was a fast runner, but Gina made up for lack of speed with determination and grit. No one ever called Anne gritty. In fact, no one ever called her Anne either. It was always Annie, Princess, or Prinnie.
I also watched Gina play basketball once. The opposing team had one player who was much better that everyone else. Gina’s coach assigned her to guard her even though Gina gave up several inches to her. Gina hung tough with her throughout the game. Unfortunately, it was not enough. The West Siders came up short.
I bought three tickets for the Connecticut Opera’s production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the Bushnell Auditorium in Hartford. I made plans for them to attend with me. I was convinced that they had agreed to go, but somehow the plans got messed up. I ended up sitting between two empty seats for the evening. I should have called to confirm, but …
Anne (on the phone) and Gina.
I have one memory of Gina as a teenager. She was on the computer with three or four chat windows open with her friends. She could move among them very rapidly. I was impressed.
My parents came up to visit the Lisellas occasionally. They stayed at the Howard Johnson’s on Route 5. I remember that the first time that Anne saw me beside my mom, she blurted out, “You two have the same hair!” I don’t think that she realized until I told her that her grandma was my mother.
From the time that Joey was old enough to walk, or maybe even before that, he was consumed with sports. He liked all sports, and he was quite good at them. Some of his peers caught up with him later, but I doubt that there was a more athletic four-year-old in all of New England than Joey Lisella.
Joey and I played one-on-one tackle football in the living and dining room when he was a toddler. As soon as I entered the house, he grabbed onto one of my legs and tried to bring me down. Then he picked up the football and tried to burst past me. He could not have known that that his opponent starred in 1961 as the wingback/defensive back of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Rockets, as documented here.
On August 6, 1995, Jamie brought Joey to a party at Betty Slanetz’s house in Enfield. He carried a Whiffle ball and a plastic bat around with him all afternoon. I volunteered to pitch to him. He was batting right handed. I stood about ten or fifteen feet away and threw the ball underhand to him. Rather than swing, he took his left hand off the bat, caught the pitch one-handed, threw it back, and announced, “Overhand!” My recollection, which may be faulty, is that he hit every pitch that he swung at. I was duly impressed. He was four years and zero days old.
I saw Joey play soccer several times. The first time he was on a mixed team. He was too young to play legally, or at least that was what Jamie told me. He was certainly the shortest participant on either team, but he was positioned as the striker on his team. After he scored his fourth goal in just a few minutes, the umpires (!) overruled the coach’s assignment and made him play defense for the rest of the game. The final score was 4-0.
I don’t remember this game. It is hard to believe that Anne is only two years older than Joey.
The last soccer game that I recall involved Joey’s high school team. Joey was still one of the smallest players, but he was still quite good. He did not dominate this game the way that he dominated as a youngster, but he was a force to be reckoned with.
I had the same impression the only time that I watched him play high school basketball game. His lack of size was a serious detriment in this game, but he was a good ball-handler and shooter, and he played tight, aggressive defense.
During these years Joey (and just about everyone else his age) was obsessed with sneakers. I am not sure how many he pairs he had, just for basketball.
Joey and I shared one great adventure. In the summer of 1998 (I think that it was) I drive him in my Saturn to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Sue and I also made this trip during most summers to attend operas at the Glimmerglass Festival.
The Doubleday Cafe.
Joey and Babe Ruth.
It was a long drive. By the time that we reached our destination it was time for lunch. We stopped at the Doubleday Cafe because I knew from experience that it would be a waste of time to try to find a better place. Cooperstown is not known for its cuisine.
I had never been to the Hall, and I was a little bit disappointed. I think that Joey enjoyed it, however, and I definitely enjoyed the time with him.
On the way home I think that we stopped at Friendly’s near Albany. I have a vague recollection of a misadventure in the process, but I cannot recall the details.
Jamie arranged for a party in August of 1994 for our dad’s 70th birthday at Simsbury 1820 House. The celebration got off to a terrible start. When my dad went to sit down by the table, his chair collapsed beneath him, and he fell onto the floor. He wasn’t badly hurt, but Jamie was infuriated. She later told me that she had refused to pay the bill.
I tried something that was too clever by half. I asked a question of Anne that I thought that she could answer and a slightly more difficult one of Gina that I thought that she could answer. After the second failure, Anne rebuked me, “Uncle Mike, we’re just kids!”
So, I set that aside and instead led everyone in a rendition of my dad’s favorite song, “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”12 I am sure that that buoyed everyone’s spirits.
In 2000 Joe drove Gina, Anne, and Joey to Kansas City for my dad’s seventy-sixth birthday. Sue and I were already there.Here is what I wrote in my notes about the occasion:
We had a good time on my dad’s birthday. I brought a wrestling card game that Sue gave me for my birthday. I played it twice with Gina, Annie, and Joey. They all enjoyed it. When Gina beat Joey in the first game, he got angry, accused her of cheating, made a mad dash at her and started pulling her hair. She just laughed, and Joe broke it up.
We went to an Italian restaurant for supper. It wasn’t very good, but Annie lit up as I have never seen her do. She was animated and talkative.
I continued to drive to Massachusetts to watch the kid’s play on sports teams after Jamie left (described here). Sue and I even went to Joe’s wedding with Jenna. It was a rather strange event, held on a boat, as I recall. Joe’s father was wearing shorts and buying everyone drinks. The highlight for me was when Jenna, Gina, and Anne sang along with “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
When my dad died in 2011 he left $18,000 to each of Jamie’s five kids. I administered the will and sent the checks to them.
In 2012, give or take a year or two, Sue and I drove up to have supper with Gina in a town north of Springfield. We tried to arrange a second get-together a few times, but it never seemed to work out.
1. I think that in 2021 Jamie still resides in Birmingham, AL. I am not sure what she is doing there. Her Facebook page is here. I am embarrassed to say that I could locate only one photo of Jamie in all of our junk.
2. All indications are that Mark Mapes lives in Davenport, IA.
3. Cadie Mapes still seems to live in Massachusetts, but I am not sure where. Her business website is here.
4. Kelly Mapes went off on her own at an early age. If I had to guess, I would say that she probably lives in Tucson in 2021.
5. Joe Lisella still lives in West Springfield. He works for McDonald’s. His LinkedIn page is here.
6. In 2021 Gina Lisella lives in the Westfield, MA, area. Her LinkedIn page is here. I think that she recently bought a new house.
7. Anne Lisella lives in San Antonio, TX. She is a nurse. Her LinkedIn page is here.
8. Joey Lisella lives somewhere in the Boston area. His LinkedIn page is here. I follow him on Twitter. He posts about nothing but sports.
9. André René Roussimoff died in January of 1991.
10. In 2021 Aurelian Smith, Jr., is retired from playing Jake the Snake Roberts, but I bet that he would listen to offers.
11. The Catskill Game Farm closed in 2006. It is now reopened as a historic tourist attraction in which one can camp or stay in a Bed and Breakfast inside the compound of the old zoo. The website is here.
12. My dad was tone-deaf. He was—bar none—the worst singer that I have ever heard. He agreed with Pope Pius X that Gregorian Chant was the best music ever produced by man. He could remember some of the words of songs, but the melody he produced bore no resemblance to the original.
The years that we spent in Rockville were mostly happy ones, but we had neither the time nor the money to take much in the way of vacations. The two that we took were for only a week each in 1985 and 1986. They are documented here.
We also made very few exciting or life-enhancing purchases. As in the other blogs about non-business events, the timeline is shaky. I am only certain of the dates of a few events.
The most exciting news of our first year in Rockville came in a phone call in the spring of 1981 from Gerry Cox. He announced that he and a group of Wayne State debaters wanted to pay us a visit in the summer. We looked at our schedules and told him that that would be fine, as long as they could come in June, July, or August. We quickly agreed upon a set of dates. The debaters were Nancy Legge, Al Acitelli, and Mark Buczko.
They drove from Detroit to Rockville. We gave them directions to our house. I think that we advised them to get off of I-91 and take Route 83. We told them that when they could smell the cows they would be in Ellington, the town just north of Rockville. At that point they needed to watch out for the turn. We told them that they should turn uphill (left) onto Upper Butcher Road and then downhill (right) onto Park St. Both of these hills are short, but quite steep.
They found the house. They parked in back, as we directed. We helped them move in. The guys stayed in the bedroom at the top of the stairs, where we had set up bunk beds. Their room was directly above the office. Nancy slept in the waterbed in the spare bedroom, which had not yet been converted into an office for Sue.
They stayed with us for a few days. Everyone had a splendid time throughout the visit. I remember three activities.
We all spent one day at Rocky Neck State Park. I don’ recall any specifics.
We devoted one day to Dungeons and Dragons. I am pretty sure that my friend from my insurance days, Tom Corcoran, joined us for that occasion. He played a dwarf fighter. I don’t remember what the other characters were, and, even though I designed it, I don’t remember the dungeon. I also have a vague recollection of creating an adventure for Mark’s assassin character, Cnir Edrum.
We enjoyed a communal supper, presumably after the D&D game. Al insisted on making pasta from scratch for us. It was definitely good, but I don’t think that he convinced anyone that it was worth all of the effort. He did not insist on making the sauce from scratch. It came from a jar.
Canada Post truck.
Nancy stayed with us for another week or two. We put her to work stuffing envelopes for one of our mailings. This is when I bestowed on her the title of Executive Vice President for International Marketing. We must have included one Canadian addressee.
Gerry came back to visit us a year or two later with a friend of his. I remember much less about that occasion. They stayed with us for a night or two. They probably made additional stops in the Northeast.
I also remember that Craig Kolbitz, a good friend from my army days in Albuquerque in 1971, evidently somehow found my telephone number and address. He called and then came over and visited us one evening. I don’t remember much about the occasion. I don’t think that he revealed much about what he had been doing in the interim. I have not heard from him again in the subsequent decades.
Sue’s sister Betty and her husband Shawn (or maybe Shaun or Sean) Arrowsmith came over for supper at least once. At the time he was a sous chef at the restaurant at Bradley International Airport. That restaurant, which has been closed for decades, was outside of the secured area in the old terminal. It had quite a good reputation.
Their visit to Rockville must have been in late fall or winter. Shawn and I went searching for firewood in the nearby woods. He was a big guy; he brought back a lot more than I did. I started a fire in the fireplace.
They invited us over to their place, too. Their house was surrounded by maple trees. I have a strong recollection of hearing the sounds of the droppings of gypsy moth caterpillars on the roof.
Shawn and Betty did not stay together very long. I don’t know what happened.
The Corcorans—Tom, Patti, Brian and Casey—also came over at least once. I fixed country-style ribs and sauerkraut for them. The meal was a big hit, especially for Brian who had understandably low expectations for such a foreign-sounding meal.
We might have had other visitors, but I don’t remember them.
We made the drive from Rockville to the Corcorans’ house many times. We usually came over for supper and then played games until well after midnight. We were especially appreciative of the suppers. Throughout this period we seldom had, in my dad’s words, “two nickles to rub together”. We almost never went to restaurants. The Corcorans almost always had a special meal for us, often steak. Of course, there was plenty of beer.
This is the good version.
Among the games Trivial Pursuit was a definite favorite. We played many different editions. Careers was also a favorite, but we soon discovered that the original version, which had uranium prospecting, Hollywood, expedition to the moon, and at sea as possible careers, was a much better game than the more recent versions. Clue (regular and its expanded versions) were pretty good. When everyone got tired we played Yahtzee.
I also remember enjoying a murder mystery game based on Clue that required playing a scene on a VHS tape. We tried dozens of other games as well. Our basement is full of games, and the Corcorans had more than we did.
We also often celebrated New Year’s and several other holidays with the Corcorans. We watched Brian and Casey grow up. Casey was an acrobat, and Brian excelled at taking things apart and putting them back together. He loved to play with go-bots and transformers.
I also remember showing Brian how to do both types of Indian wrestling—standing up and lying down, the way that Andy Burnett did on Walt Disney.
The closest thing that we had to a vacation during the “anything for a buck” days was a Murder Mystery Weekend near Lancaster, PA. It was staged by some actors in and around a fairly nice hotel in the countryside. The theme was a set of killings in a mob family. My character was one of the family members. He was named Dominic (called “Nicky”), and he was newly married.
I picked up a white fedora somewhere and rented a realistic stage pistol with a shoulder holster from a costume shop in Hartford. I was really ready to get into it. After all, even by that time I had read at least a hundred murder mysteries.
The organizers made me stow the pistol away. Didn’t they know that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun? I should have quoted Charlton Heston to them: “I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.” I still wore the shoulder holster.
Could you stab him in the heart with a pocketknife?
The first murder occurred pretty much in full sight of everyone at the first gathering. A fairly large Italian guy wearing a three-piece suit was found dead. He had been stabbed in the heart with a pocketknife.
It is a thoroughly documented fact that all Italian mobsters wear sleeveless undershirts.So, the knife, even if it missed the broad lapels would have needed to penetrate the suit coat, the vest, the shirt, the undershirt, the skin, and the rib cage. Maybe Andre the Giant could kill someone who was wearing all this armor with one casual blow with a pocketknife, but I didn’t see anyone in our group who looked capable of such a feat. Even if sufficient thrust was employed, I would bet on the blade breaking or sliding to one side before it penetrated all of those layers of protection..
Several scenes that involved some or all of the actors were staged. One took place on the Strasburg Rail Road. I don’t remember the details.
We were allowed to submit written questions. Mine was about some flowers that a character had reportedly ordered for some reason. I was told that the answer, which I don’t remember at all, had important information, which I should share with the other guests. I dutifully disclosed it to everyone with whom I conversed.
At the end everyone was supposed to write up a solution. The best one, as judged by the organizers, won a prize. No one got the solution right. The person to whom the prize was awarded missed out on most of the clues entirely. She had spent most of her time shopping in Lancaster.
Deadly in the hand of a small woman.
The revealed murderer was the smallest member of the cast, perhaps 5’2″ and 100 pounds. She was absolutely incapable of committing the first murder. In fact, I don’t think she could have killed him with a pocket knife if he was already unconscious and wearing nothing but his sleeveless undershirt.
In addition, she had no motive for the other crimes attributed to her. That is, the personality that we knew had no motive. She supposedly had multiple personality disorder1, and the diminutive body that she shared with two other personalities committed the other two murders. Give me a break.
For Halloween of 1981 or 1982 Sue and I drove to Brooklyn for a costume party thrown for her friend Eddie Lancaster from Brothers Specifications in Detroit. Sue dressed as Peter Pan. I came disguised as a college professor who never got tenure. It was a long drive, but no drive was too long for Sue if friends were at the other end. She loved to sit and talk with old friends, and she made new ones very easily.
We also drove up to Vermont to see Sue’s friend Diane Robinson at least once or twice. I met her husband Phil Graziose, one of the Air Force guys from the Alaska adventure. He seemed like a nice guy. He set up a small business in the St. Johnsbury area as a locksmith. They lived in a trailer park, a new experience for me. There were things that I could talk about with Phil, even football! I had nothing in common with Diane and her myriad relatives, almost all of whom stayed close to home. Sue absolutely adored this family. I have never quite understood this. Maybe she appreciated the way that they all got along.
In 1981 or 1982 we were invited to Dave Tine’s house. His television had a huge rear-projection screen. It was the first “home entertainment center” we had ever seen. His sister (whose name I don’t remember) owned and operated a retail store name Video Land. It sold hardware as well as videos. We watched Nine to Five together. This was something of a real treat for us. We almost never went to movies. They were too expensive.
Sue’s family in Enfield held get-togethers pretty often. I usually accompanied her. I really struggled at these affairs. I had a hard time talking with most of her Enfield relations. The big exception was her youngest sister, Betty. She hosted a large party at her parents’ house most summers. She set up areas for volleyball and croquet. Also, Betty’s mother had a swimming pool. Tom Corcoran also attended most of these affairs.
Jack and his wife.
I think that it was at one of these parties that I met Jack LaPlante, the brother-in-law of Sue’s sister Karen. He worked and coached at Hartford Public High School, which over the years became a rough place. He has been inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame.
I always enjoyed talking with Jack. He was fascinated by the fact that we still played board games with other adults.
Jeffrey Campbell and our guide Jackson in Lake Manyara National Park in 2015.
Betty’s friends were much more approachable for me than the relatives on the Locke side. The lives of the latter seemed to center around trucks and cars. I liked all of Betty’s friends. Karen Shapiro, who worked with disadvantaged kids, ended up marrying Paul Locke, and so I saw her occasionally. Jeffrey Campbell, a pharmacist whom Betty has always called Pancho, was around from time to time. In 2015 he came with us on our epic trip to Tanzania, which is described in great detail here.
I also remember a friend of Betty’s named Harriet, but I don’t remember much about her.
I remember that we drove to Rhode Island once to visit Victor Barrett, with whom Sue worked at F.H. Chase, and his wife, Mary Codd2. They ran a small business called Coddbarrett Associates that developed computer-generated graphics for companies.
It was interesting to talk to another couple who were struggling as pioneers in an infant industry. Their work needed a lot more processing power than ours, and so their financial commitment was greater. On the other hand, they also had better credentials. Actually, everyone had better credentials than we did.
One thing that I remember vividly is that Victor and Mary almost never cooked. They either ate frozen dinners or something from a restaurant. Sue and I never did the first and almost never did the second.
Sue had an annual tradition of visiting her land in Monson, MA, on the weekend of Columbus Day when the foliage was at its peak, and the weather was to her liking. I accompanied her a few times. She actually built an outhouse and a tree platform up there. The outhouse was trashed by someone and the tools that she left up there were stolen.
She could sometimes talk her nephew, Travis LaPlante, and/or Brian Corcoran into making the pilgrimage with her.
Sue planned a weekend outing for us in Mt. Washington, NH. We stayed at the famous hotel5 in Bretton Woods. We took the cog railroad up to the top of the mountain, which is one of the windiest places on earth.
Sue planned on me playing golf on the links course that is adjacent to the hotel, but I did not feel like it.
I think that Tom and Patti Corcoran joined us for one day. I seem to recall that Sue and Patti played Tennis. Well, Patti played, and they both chased Sue’s errant shots.
I remember that the hotel hosted a Trivial Pursuit game in the evening. Sue and I played as a team. We really cleaned up. One of the other guests asked us if we had memorized all the answers.
Sandy Bailey, whom we knew from our installation at Harland-Tine, invited us to her house in Manchester, CT, for an evening of games. We were, as usual, late. A group of people were playing Dark Tower, the game advertised on TV by Orson Wells. It seemed like a very interesting game, but I never got around to playing it. I later tried to purchase a copy, but I could not find one.
We met Sandy’s housemate, a guy who worked for the Digital Equipment Corporation. Of course, he tried to convince me that we should convert our ad agency software to run on DEC machines. He even gave me a handbook for DEC’s version of the BASIC language.
In the fall of 1987 Sue and I decided to drive to Washington, DC, for the weekend. We left on Friday afternoon, October 9, and got as far as New Jersey. We stopped at a motel off of the Interstate. The person at the desk seemed surprised that we wanted to stay the whole night. When Sue asked for more towels, he went across the street to a store and bought some.
We laughed about it; it was not that sleazy-looking from the outside.
When we arrived in Washington we spent the day at the National Zoo. We got to see the baby pandas. A male orangutan effortlessly hurled his poop over the fence at the tourists. Overall it was a very pleasant experience, even though I was never able to spot the kiwi in its dark cage.
We stayed overnight at Howard Johnson’s. When we went to supper, the other people in the restaurant seemed somehow different. It wasn’t until later that we realized that we had chosen to come to Washington on the same day as about 200,000 gay people who were in town for “The Great March”.
On Sunday the parking was a nightmare, but the Smithsonian’s museums were not crowded at all.
In late 1985 my sister Jamie surprisingly reentered our lives She had recently married Joe Lisella. Joe, Jamie, and her daughters moved to Simsbury, CT. For the next fourteen years I spent as much time as I could with her and her family, which grew fairly rapidly after she came to New England. Those visits and trips are documented here.
1. This phenomenon is now known as dissociative identity disorder, which is a better name because of the vague nature of the word personality. I personally suspect that the kind postulated in this story occurs more often in the movies than in real life.
2. Mary Codd’s story can be read at her website, which is marycodd.com.
3. The Whalers’ last season was 1997. The Civic Center underwent drastic remodeling in 2004 and in 2021 it is called the XL Center.
4. My recollection of the event was faulty. When I have told this story to people I have claimed that neither of the teams made the playoffs that year. I apologize for the unintentional misinformation. The Whalers lost to Montreal in the first round of the playoffs.
5. Since 2015 it has been called the Omni Mt. Washington Resort.
Enfield is the northernmost town in central Connecticut. Historically it was noted for its two industrial giants, the Hartford-Bigelow Carpet Mill and the Hazard Powder Company, which manufactured gunpowder.1 The town had two claims to fame. 1) Enfield Square was the only mall between Hartford and Springfield, MA. 2) Enfield was at one time home to the great Paul Robeson2, or at least to his family. For some reason almost no one in the area seemed to care about the second distinction.
The Neighborhood: Our ranch house on North St. was much more modest than the Robeson’s stately dwelling, and so were those of our neighbors. I did not really know how to be a good neighbor. In the years following our move to Enfield I only really met one of our neighbors. A man named Fred, who was perhaps twenty years older than I was, told me a little about the history of our property. I never really got acquainted with anyone else in the neighborhood.
Part of the reason for this might involve the house’s peculiar layout. The front door to our house faced North St., but the driveway was on Hamilton Court. Fred was our neighbor on that side. The west side of the yard was fenced to separate it from the driveway and sidewalk leading to Hazard Memorial School. Directly across Hamilton Court from us was a two-story house that was divided into four units. It had dozens residents over the years. We seldom interacted with any of them. On the other side of North St. was Allen St., which had only a dozen or so houses before it dead-ended. There was also a house directly across North St. from ours, but I don’t think that we ever met the occupants.
Every year Fred got out a stepladder and trimmed the bushes that separated his backyard from the western side of our yard, which we thought of as the back yard. He informed me that the line of bushes was actually in his property.
Yard Work: That was fine with me, but when Fred and his wife moved to Florida a few years later, the first thing that the family that moved in did was to install a wooden fence adjacent to the bushes. So, the responsibility for maintaining the bushes fell to me willy-nilly.
Those were by no means the only bushes on our property, There were good-sized forsythias in both the northeast and northwest corners of the property. Large burning bushes flanked the house on both sides. Knee-level evergreens decorated the north side of the garage and part of the front. We had at least one rhododendron and two mountain laurels. There were hollies in the front side of the house, but I think that Sue put those in later to replace something else. A hedge of some kind that was about eight feet long, two feet thick, and four or five feet high was positioned fifteen or so feet in front of the door leading to the entryway.
I suspect that the power hedge trimmer might be in this box.
I was well aware that grass and weeds grew, but it had never really occurred to me that these bushes would keep growing all spring and summer, as well as most of the winter. Keeping all of these bushes from overgrowing the house was a task that I had not reckoned on. I bought a power hedge trimmer, but it was heavy, and it could not handle some of the thick branches. I used it on the hedges sometimes, but for most of the other bushes it was easier to use old-fashioned hedge clippers and a lopper. Of course, since we had never faced the issue of bushes before, I had to buy those as well.
Then there were the trees. The property had a spindly pine tree on the east lawn and nine maple trees—seven big red maples that encircled the house, one even larger green maple, and one small Japanese maple that really seemed out of place. In the spring the maples shed thousands of those little helicopter seeds, many of which took root in our gutters. In the fall, of course, the trees discharged all of their leaves.
The very best thing about life in Enfield in those days was that the city had hired a company to come around once a year to vacuum up leaves from the curbside. In our neighborhood it occurred a little after Thanksgiving. I bought a backpack leaf blower, but it still took a lot of time and effort to blow all those leaves down to the street. Even though our corner lot provided us with more footage on the two streets on which we lived than any of the neighbors had, it still seemed as if our mountain range of leaves was as lofty as anyone’s.
The leaf blower has rested in the garage for years.
The town eventually discontinued the blatant socialism of this service. It was replaced with leaf pickup days. The leaves all had to be bundled in large paper bags, and there was a limit to how many could be left at one time. I seem to remember that they allowed twenty bags at a time. When the objective was changed to getting the leaves in bags rather than down to the street, the usefulness of the leaf blower decreased markedly. I eventually abandoned it in favor of old-fashioned rakes. Sue insisted that the best way was to rake the leaves onto a sheet and then carry the sheet to the destination. I tried this, but found the extra step saved no time or effort.
At some point Enfield stopped accepting the bags, too. Instead brown tipper-barrels were supplied. Every week a truck came to collect their contents, which could include any type of lawn waste. Well, my yard’s leaves could fill dozens or maybe even hundreds of those barrels. I decided to just chop up the leaves in October and early November using the lawnmower with its mulching setting. I have been satisfied with the results.
I also had to take care of the 10,000 square-foot lawn, of course. When I say “take care of” I actually mean “mow”. I never fertilized or watered it, and I only spent any time weeding it once—on August 17, 1988, as explained here. I probably should have bought a small tractor as soon as we moved in. It would have paid for itself several times over. However, I was a several decades younger when we moved to Enfield, and I actually liked the exercise of mowing the lawn—as long as the mower was self-propelled.
I went through three or four lawnmowers before I purchased in 2011 or thereabouts a really good one from the Honda dealer across the street from TSI’s office in East Windsor.
Gardening: Vegetable gardening was my primary hobby when we lived in Rockville. When we looked at houses, I always tried to imagine where a garden could be located. It was not easy to find a decent spot on a lawn that also featured so many maple trees that became very leafy just when the crops needed sunlight.
My main garden was a square patch—perhaps fifteen feet on each side—of land right in front of the bushes on the north side of the house. It was between two trees and far enough away from the house that it received six or seven hours of direct sunlight during the summer months. This was adequate for most popular plants, but it was a continual frustration for me, especially since I understood that over time the trees would only get bigger.
That small piece of land was thickly covered by a thick mat of zoysia grass. I needed to use a spade to remove the turf during the first spring. It was backbreaking work, but I persevered. Then I borrowed Betty Slanetz’s rototiller to cultivate the soil. That was much easier, but in the process I accidentally punctured one of the hoses for the sprinkling system that lay beneath our entire lawn.3
I planted the usual crops—tomatoes, peppers, beans, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and peppers. I had very little luck with root crops—onions, garlic, and carrots. I never did figure out what was wrong with my technique. My carrots never got more than a few inches long. The onions that I produced were scarcely larger than the sets that I planted in the spring.
In later years I purchased the starters for my tomato plants from Jeanie Smith, who lived at the northwest corner of North Maple and Moody Road. I tried several different kinds of tomatoes, but my favorites were (if I remember correctly) Red Rockets. Unfortunately after a few years of spectacular harvests, they got the blight, and it apparently leached into the soil. Thereafter, my harvest were not very good, and there really was nowhere else on the property suitable for growing tomatoes.
In point of fact, I really was not that big a fan of tomatoes per se. However, the chili that I made with freshly picked tomatoes was just delicious.
My favorite crop was green beans. I tried both bush beans and pole beans. I had some really good harvests, but the Mexican bean beetles, which seemed to arrive en masse in early July were devastating. During the first year I went out every morning and pulled off beetles with my fingers. They always hid on the underside of the leaves. I really did not want to use an insecticide, but I could not come up with another way of keeping the beetles and their voracious larvae from destroying the entire crop. In most other cases I eschewed the use of pesticides in order to protect the cats.
One Christmas Tom and Patti Corcoran gave me a book by Mike Wavada entitled All I Know about Beans and Beetles. Every page was blank.
Since I lived in New England I felt compelled to grow squash and zucchini. Nice crops of broccoli and cauliflower resulted after I learned about bacillus thuringiensis (BT), the environmentally safe way to eliminate cabbage worms. I grew some Brussels sprouts that produced little cabbages well into December. One mild winter one of the plants even wintered over and produced more little heads in the spring!
On the west side of the lawn by the fence I grew some asparagus and strawberries. These plants required an awful lot of weeding and attention, but they both produced nice crops for several years.
I gave up on the main garden after a few years. The growth of the surrounding trees had made it increasingly difficult for the crops to receive sufficient sunlight. I kept up the asparagus and strawberries for a few years after that. At some point I probably just became too busy to pay them the attention that they needed.
The Basement: The house on North St. had a full basement. The staircase down was in the hallway that led to the bedrooms, and the door was directly across from the entrance to the kitchen.
The washer and the shelves. The dryer is long gone.
Two large shelving units were built into the walls of the basement. It would have been a huge undertaking to remove them. We did not even consider doing so. The one on the north side we used for storage of books and games that were seldom used and the indoor side of the landing spot for the cats coming through the cat door. Next to it on one side was the case that held the fuses; on the other were the washer and dryer.
A small piece of plywood served as a ramp from the cat door to the top shelf. From there the cats made a right turn and walked over to the edge, jumped down to the washing machine and from there to the floor.
The sprinkler unit is in here somewhere near the shelves.
Next to the shelves on the west wall was the control unit for the underground sprinkler system. I played around with this enough to figure out that I did not want to use it. I saw two disadvantages: 1) Our water bill would increase. 2) The grass would need to be mowed more often.
For my fortieth birthday Sue bought a ping pong table. Evidently I had once told her that I played some ping pong at Allen Rumsey House in the sixties. It was not one of my better sports, and it certainly was not hers. I set it up near the shelves that held games and books.
We played a few times, but it frankly was not much fun. The area where the table was installed was not really suitable. There was not enough light and room for a good game. Furthermore, Sue experienced a lot of trouble keeping the ball on the table.
I drew a red box around the Mateus bottle on the edge of the ping pong table. This is, I think, the bottle from this story.
At some point Sue became interested in N-gauge model trains. She converted the ping pong table into a small train layout. For all that I know, that may have been part of the reason that she bought the table; I certainly never suggested that I wanted one. She and Brian Corcoran also formed a company for purchasing gear called the B&S railroad. All of that stuff is still down on the table in the basement, but only a trained archeologist could unearth it today.
After we got our new kitten, Woodrow, I found an old door that somehow had appeared in our basement. I converted it into a ramp for him from the top shelf down to the ping pong table. A box was strategically positioned to make it easier for him to reach the table. Woodrow used the ramp to get down for the rest of his life, but he preferred to climb up the bookshelves when he wanted to go out. He also like to shinny up trees when he was chasing squirrels in the yard. However, he did not like to climb down, and I had to rescue him a few times.
The rest of the basement was soon filled with boxes of Sue’s junk. Many of them have never been opened since we moved into the house, a period of nearly thirty-four years!
Sports: My interests in most sports waned considerably after we moved to Enfield. I still watched Michigan football games on television, however. Someone even gave me a license plate holder that celebrated Michigan Football. In 2021 it is affixed to its third car.
I began to take jogging more seriously. Enfield is one of the flattest towns in Connecticut, a distinction that made it rather easy to design a course of almost any length that did not involve hills as steep as the one on which we lived in Rockville. I often took a long lunch break that consisted of a run of a few miles, a shower, lunch, and a short nap before I returned to the office.
I buried Woodrow beneath this burning bush
In good weather I ate lunch at our picnic table and napped on the small mattress that came with the camping cot that Sue had purchased when we lived in Rockville. Rocky, the cat that moved with us from Rockville, would emerge from his favorite sleeping sport in the forsythia bushes and beg for a morsel of human food. The tiniest bit satisfied him, and he returned to his bush. As soon as I lay down for my nap, Woodrow, the trailer-trash cat that Sue brought home from St. Johnsbury, VT, generally ambled over from his napping spot beneath the burning bush and plopped himself next to me on the mattress.
4.25 miles between the canal & the river.
I also found two other very enjoyable places to run. The trail at Windsor Locks Canal State Park, which started in Suffield, CT, and the trail that stretched from Northampton to Amherst in Massachusetts.
I became rather serious about the activity. I tried to run as much as possible, even in the winter, although I never ventured out in ice, snow, or, for that matter, rain. I ran eighteen miles one morning in the fall. I refused to carry water, but I did place water bottles at two places along the route. Those were my only stops. I am not sure of the date, but I do remember mentioning it to prospective clients on the trip that I took to Seattle, and that was in 1992 or thereabouts.
I also remember that I ran a few miles the next day. That allowed me to brag to a serious runner, who was a friend of Sue’s from high school, that my personal best for a marathon was twenty-five hours.
This is #12. Feel free to hum along.
Classical Music: While running I listened to music on a Sony Walkman with headphones. I bought a lot of cheap cassette tapes of orchestral works by an eclectic group of classical composers. I made an effort to become familiar with most of the popular composers. My collection included only a few operas. Cassette tape drives were installed on both my Saturn and the Honda that I bought in 2007.
I remember mentioning one afternoon to someone at TSI’s office that while jogging on South Road I had been listening to one of the Hungarian Rhapsodies. I was startled to find myself leaning so much to one side that I almost lost my balance. Then it dawned on me why it had happened. I had just been Liszting.
Entertainment: I have difficulty remembering what we did for amusement during these years. We certainly visited the Corcorans often, and I attended a number of softball and soccer games that involved my sister Jamie’s kids. We went to a Springfield Indians hockey game with Sue’s dad once.
On March 11, 1988, Sue and I saw Roy Orbison at Symphony Hall in Springfield. The warmup act was a comic whom I had never heard of. This was perhaps the most well-behaved crowd in the history of concerts. People who left the concerts patiently waited for “Walk” lights before crossing the deserted streets.
We also enjoyed seeing Sam Kinison at the Paramount Theater in Springfield. I don’t know the date, but the comic died in 1992.
For several summers after we moved to Enfield Sue’s youngest sister hosted a day-long “Betty Bash” at the house in which she lived with Don and their parents. I really enjoyed these events. I always participated in the volleyball games and the epic croquet games (played with Slanetz rules). The food was typical picnic fare combined with special dishes that Betty concocted. Tom Corcoran always came. I remember that Jamie brought her son Joey on his fourth birthday.
I got to meet quite a few of Betty’s friends. They were all considerably younger than I was, but it was easier to relate to them than to the Enfielders that I knew.
Trips and Visits: Sue and I took two big international vacations during our first years in Enfield. The fortnight in England is described here. The write-up of the Turkey-Greece cruise begins here.
Sue and I almost certainly took some shorter trips, but the only one that I remember was the visit that we made to one of Sue’s high-school friends in Austin, TX. That trip involved a drive in a rental car from Dallas, where I did a presentation of the AdDept system for Neiman Marcus. That successful experience is described here.
My parents made at least one trip to New England during our first years in Enfield. I don’t think that they ever stayed in our guest bedroom. Instead, they stayed at a hotel near my sister Jamie Lisella’s4 house in West Springfield, MA. My recollection is that the hotel was a Howard Johnson Motel on Route 5. I think that this hotel shut down, and in later years they roomed at the Hampton Inn that was built almost directly across the street.
My parents spent most of their time with Jamie and her kids. I remember, however, that Sue and I drove mom and dad to Old Sturbridge Village once. I remember only that it was quite cold, and we ate lunch or supper at the Publick House or the Bullard Tavern. They seemed to like the idea of having a genuine (well, sort of genuine) New England experience.
I am pretty sure that they came to Enfield for a picnic lunch or supper in our back yard at least once during these early years. I don’t remember the details.
A fairly recent view of the mall from the north. The big building in the center is a Target that was added in 2001
Retail: The mall in Enfield, which is now known as Enfield Square, was developed by the May Company, one of TSI’s primary customers. It opened in 1971, just before I met Sue in my first stint in Connecticut. The mall originally housed three anchor stores—G. Fox (one of May’s department store chains), national chain JC Penney, and Steiger’s, a small chain of department stores based in Springfield. Dozens of smaller shops and eventually a twelve-screen theater were housed in the mall.
You won’t make it in less than ten minutes. There are eleven stoplights on Hazard Ave.
Four large strip malls were built on three sides of the mall. A fifth was positioned a block to the east near several auto dealerships and the post office. At least two or three very large grocery stores have been located in them throughout the years that we have lived in the area. Nearly every type of retailer could be found in a fairly small area. All of these stores were easily accessible from I-91 and Route 5. It was (and still is in 2021) the only large shopping area between Hartford and Springfield, MA. For almost two decades Enfield Square was the only enclosed mall in the Hartford area that was east of the Connecticut River.
Great numbers of people came to Enfield to shop in the years after we moved to Enfield, and the people who lived in Enfield felt little reason to go elsewhere for retail therapy. It was very convenient for Sue and me; our house was less than three miles away.
Sometimes individual retailers seemed guilty of very poor planning. For several years there was a McDonald’s across the street from the mall on both the north and south sides as well as one inside the mall. That last one closed when the mall began to deteriorate.
There was also a RadioShack on the south side of the mall. In the late nineties I made numerous trips to the company’s headquarters in Fort Worth. One day someone in the advertising department heard that I lived in Enfield and told me that the Shack was opening a new store there. I told them that there was already a store in Enfield and asked for the address of the new one. It had a low number on Elm St., which is the street bordering the north side of the Enfield Square. Shortly thereafter a new Shack appeared in the strip mall north of the mall, but—no surprise to me—it lasted less than a year. Many more details concerning my experiences with RadioShack’s advertising department, the other divisions of Tandy, and Fort Worth(less) are recorded here.
Restaurants: By the time that Sue and I moved to Enfield a large number of restaurants had sprung up in and around the mall. The former group included Ruby Tuesday’s and a few transitory fast food places. Of the ones on the periphery The restaurant that has lasted the longest is Olive Garden, which was and still is on the edge of one of the strip malls south of Enfield Square. I went there for lunch with clients or employees a few times.
Originally the building adjoining the Olive Garden was occupied by another Darden Restaurant, Red Lobster. When Red Lobster closed a new restaurant called the Hazard Grille5 opened there. Of all of the local eateries it was our favorite. Sue especially liked it when local musicians performed there.
We went to Ruby Tuesday’s fairly often. We liked the salad bar. We picked up fried chicken from KFC on Route 5 with some frequency until its owner retired and closed the store. We tried most of the other restaurants at least once, but we never became regulars at any of them. My dad and I often ate lunch at the Friendly restaurant in the mall’s parking lot. Our orders were totally predictable. He always ordered a senior turkey melt and a coffee. I always got the Reuben SuperMelt and a Diet Coke. Details about my dad’s life in Enfield are posted here.
Among the restaurants that we definitely did not frequent were the other two restaurants with stand-alone buildings on the grounds of Enfield Square. We went to Chi Chi’s once; we did not enjoy it at all. We found the fancy Italian restaurant, Figaro, to be grossly overpriced. I don’t think that Chi Chi’s made it to the twenty-first century, but Figaro is still operational. Sue and I dined there once with my Advanced Italian class.
The Lockes: Sue’s mother’s maiden name was Effy Locke. She had four brothers, three of whom lived in Enfield, as did almost all of their offspring and their offspring’s offspring. So, during the first years of our residence in Enfield Sue and I became much more involved with both her many relatives and the few of mine with whom I had any dealings.
It frankly astounded me that so many people in one family lived so close together. My relatives for the most part spread to the four winds as soon as it was feasible.
I must admit that I had a hard time adjusting to the Lockes. They all had a lot in common and seemed to get along well with one another, but I could not seem to find a way to fit in. I could seldom find anything to talk about with any of the male members of the clan. Most of them drove trucks as part or all of their jobs. The family game was a very simple trick-taking card game called Setback.
The exception in Sue’s family was her uncle Bob Locke, who lived with his wife Carol6 in western Michigan. He worked as an engineer. Their family, which included three daughters named Deb, Wendy, and Sandy7, drove out to Connecticut in an RV at least a few times. Whenever they did, one of Bob’s siblings threw a party that inevitably included a softball game. All the cousins attended. I played too, at least once.
Of all of Sue’s uncles the one whom I knew the least well was Chet Locke, whose wife was named Elsie8. They had two sons. Tim and Natalya live in Stafford Springs in 2021. I never got to know them very well at all. Paul married one of Betty Slanetz’s best friends, Karen Shapiro. Sue and I went to their wedding, which occurred in the early nineties. In 2021 the couple have two grown children.
I knew Charlie Locke because he worked as an electrician for the Slanetz Corporation. I am pretty sure that he and his assistant did the wiring for our office in Enfield. His wife’s name was Gene.9 They had two daughters, Patti Caswell10 and Kathy Stratton. I hardly knew either one of them.
Ted and Judy’s house.
Ted Locke and his wife Judy lived in the house right across the street from the house in which Sue grew up. Since both Don and Betty lived there with their parents (until they moved to Florida), Sue and I saw Ted and Judy quite often. Until she died in 1990, Sue’s grandmother Molly Locke lived with Ted and Judy.
Ted and Judy’s family family included three children. Sue Tkacz is a very perky lady, with whom I have exchanged greetings on a few occasions. Sue and I went to a Christmas party at the home in Somers of Glen Locke and his wife at the time, Sue. The youngest son, Jim, lives in Enfield. His wife Ann worked for TSI for a while.
Almost all of these people—or maybe I should say almost all of the males listed above—were very much into cars and, especially, trucks. So was Don Slanetz. They also knew a lot about who was building or buying real estate or equipment in Enfield and the vicinity. I found it extremely difficult to avoid being a bump on the log at the frequent family gatherings of the Locke clan. My fields of interests are quite diverse, but none of them seemed to overlap the interests of any of these people.
The only exception to the above statements that I can think of was Sue’s Uncle Bob. He seemed different from his brothers. I also got along with Sue’s mother and her sisters and most if not all of the women in the extended Locke family, and I do mean extended. Almost all of Sue’s cousins have at least two children and some members of that generation also have children.
The Slanetz Reunion: Seldom had I ever even met any of the relatives of Sue’s father, Art Slanetz. I have a very vague recollection of meeting Sue’s cousin Diane Davis11 back in 1972 or 1973. We encountered her by chance on the street in Rockville. I don’t remember any more than that. I also have a very hazy recollection of going to the house in Enfield of Art’s sister, Margaret Davis12. I remember being told ahead of time that Art and Margaret did not get along very well. I retain a very strange recollection of having brought her a doormat as a present. I have no idea as to what the context could possibly have been. Other than those two events I had no dealings with or information about Art’s side of the family—with one exception.
Mark Davis and Sue.
I had heard stories about the wunderkind, Margaret’s son Mark. He was reported to be the smartest of all of Sue’s cousins, and in fact the smartest person in his age group in all of Enfield.
I am not sure who came up with the idea of a reunion of the Slanetz family in 1992. It might have been Mark. It was held during the summer at the house in which Sue grew up in 1992. I am not sure why it was held in Enfield. In some ways it was a central location. Carloads of people drove from Long Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont. A few also came from much farther away.
I must admit that I was dreading this event. My only dealing with in-laws13 had been at the get-togethers of the Locke family in which I always felt ill at ease. In point of fact I would have skipped it if I could. However, I did attend, and I was very glad that I did.
The Slanetzes were nothing like the Lockes. Although quite a few had been born in the Enfield area, only Art and Margaret had stayed there. They seemed to have spread out all over the country, and their number included an impressive array of intellectuals, businessmen, and creative people. There was no family business, as far as I could tell. Most importantly, the conversations never approached the twin topics of trucks and Enfield gossip.
I don’t remember too many of the details. I do have a clear recollection of avoiding being included in the inevitable group photo.
Bill Slanetz.
The most famous attendee was Dr. Charles Slanetz Jr.14, a heart surgeon and researcher from Long Island. The most memorable connection that I made was with Bill15 and Norma Slanetz of Keene, NH, and their children Diane Patenaude, Jack, and David16.
Sue and I made several very enjoyable trips to visit with Bill and Norma. Bill was an avid gardener, and his garden was so large that, compared to mine, it seemed like a farm. I liked to wander around in it and examine the produce.
Their house was high up on a steep hill, and it was not easy to reach. Nevertheless, friends and family were always dropping by. The conversations were always interesting, at least to me, and some sort of activity, planned or spontaneous, always seemed to be happening.
Bill also liked to play bridge, and after I took the game up again in the twenty-first century, we sometime discussed the world’s greatest card game. Norma played too, but she was not as involved as Bill.
1. Both companies are defunct. the buildings of the carpet company have been transformed into apartments. Its Wikipedia page is here. Large portions of the powder factory were destroyed by a tremendous explosion on January 14, 1913. Its Wikipedia page is here.
2. Paul Robeson (1898-1976) is most famous for his portrayal of Joe in Show Boat, and especially for his unforgettable rendition of “Ole Man River”. However, acting was the least of his talents. He was a two-time all-American football player at Rutger, and he was such an outstanding student that he earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa and the Cap and Skull Society. He was also elected Valedictorian of his class. While he was earning a law degree at Columbia he played on two different NFL teams and appeared in several professional play productions. He spent much of his life giving concerts and lectures, often speaking about how much better he was treated by Europeans, especially Russians, than Americans. He was blackballed in the fifties and not prohibited from traveling abroad because of his political views. In 1940 he moved his family into a large house at 1221 Enfield St. (Route 5) in Enfield, which he owned for thirteen years during the highlight of his career as an entertainer. He was on the right side of history from start to finish but the wrong side of politics for most of the rest of his life.
3. This was not a great loss. If I had maintained the system over the decades that we have lived in Enfield, the sprinkler system may have significantly enhanced the value of the property. However, I had no intention of doing something so foolish as to pay higher water bills just to encourage the grass to grow more rapidly. So, the system probably would have ceased functioning properly at some point anyway.
4. A lot more about Jamie and her family has been posted here.
5. The Hazard Grille closed without warning in 2013. A couple of other restaurants succeeded it at that location with no success. In 2021 the building was torn down and replaced by a smaller building that is shared by Starbucks and Jersey Mike’s.
6. Carol died in 2018. Here obituary is here. Sue and I drove out to Michigan in the fall of 2008. We saw Bob, Carol, and their family on this trip, which is described here.
7. All three of the daughters are now married. Their names in 2021 are Deb Batts, Wendy Ahearne, and Sandy Mulder, and they all live in the Grand Rapids area.
8. Both Chet and Elsie are deceased in 2021. I could not find an obituary for Chet. Elsie’s is posted here.
9. Charlie and Gene are both deceased in 2021. Charlie’s obituary is posted here, and Gene’s is posted here.
10. Patti Caswell died in 2019. Her obituary is here.
11. Diane has apparently been married a couple of times. Her last name in 2021 is Clark, but her children are named Quinn.
12. Margaret Davis died in 2010. Her obituary is posted here.
13. Sue and I were not married then, but we were in the second or maybe even third decade of our whirlwind courtship. Everyone expected me to be at the family reunion.
Dr. Charles Slanetz Jr.
14. Dr. Slanetz died in 2006. The newsletter of the John Jones Surgical Society of Columbia University published a long obituary. It is posted here. Scroll down to page 11 or search for “Slanetz”.
15. Bill Died in 2017. His obituary is posted here. Sue and I drove up to Keene for the funeral.
16. David Slanetz died unexpectedly at his house on the island of Dominica in 2004. His obituary is posted here. Sue and I attended the memorial service.
