I found an album with my dad’s name engraved in gold on the inside front cover. It contained thirty-five snapshots of celebrations at my dad’s employer, Business Men’s Assurance (BMA), an insurance company based in Kansas City1. This brought to … Continue reading →
I found an album with my dad’s name engraved in gold on the inside front cover. It contained thirty-five snapshots of celebrations at my dad’s employer, Business Men’s Assurance (BMA), an insurance company based in Kansas City1. This brought to mind the fact that I had written very little about my dad’s business career.
The original BMA Building was across the street from Union Station.
At some point in 1982 I received a very surprising telephone call from my dad. He had decided to retire—at the age of 58! His employer for over thirty years1 was downsizing by offering attractive severance packages to its employees. He helped to design the program, and when the president of the company learned that he was on the list of people taking early retirement, he protested, “But Jim, this wasn’t designed for people like you.”
My dad told me that he replied, “True, but it didn’t exclude me either.”
In March of 1951 my dad presented a birthday greeting to the president of the company.
When did my dad start working at BMA? I remember thinking at the time of his death in 2011 that his life was perfectly divisible into three units of twenty-nine years each. However, that would mean that he started work in 1953. That cannot be true. I have recently discovered proof that he was employed there in 1950. Furthermore, I know that I spent a lot of the time in the hospital in my first year of life. If he had not had a good insurance policy—and BMA employees had excellent policies—I doubt that my parents could have afforded the hospital bills. Finally, I doubt that John Cernech would have allowed his only daughter to marry a guy without a job. So, I think that Jim probably started working at BMA before September of 1947.
What did you do for a year and a half, Sergeant Wavada?
I have no idea what he did between the time of his discharge from the army as a sergeant in the 300th Infantry Regiment on February 18, 1946, and his wedding on December 1, 1947. He hinted to me once that my mom and her mom, Clara Cernech, saved him from going down a really bad path during this period.
What did my dad do at BMA? I have never been too certain. He probably started at the bottom. He finished high school in 1942, but, despite the fact that he certainly qualified for veterans’ benefits, to my knowledge he never took a college course.
In 1951 he was the president of the KEO (“Know Each Other”) Club at BMA. A photo of him presenting a birthday greeting to the president of the company appeared in the company’s newspaper in March. I think that he also told me that he played for one summer on the company’s baseball or soccer team. He had a first baseman’s mitt that he picked up somewhere.
In 1963 the company moved to the BMA Tower. No, it was never known as Grant’s Tomb.
Maybe he joined BMA’s Sales Department in 1953, and he told me that he had spent 29 years there. That would make more sense. The Sales Department managed the company’s salesmen. I think that what my dad mostly did was write materials used by the company. I know that at one time his title was Vice-president of Public Relations. I also know that during the last few years he spent most of his time writing speeches for the president of the company, Bill Grant. He hated this assignment. Mr. Grant often spoke against Medicare, and my dad understood what a good program it was.
I remember the quite a few names mentioned by my dad. Some of these people I probably met once or twice, but I have seen none of them since high school. Here is the list: John Saylor (his boss) and his son Bill, Bernie Johnson, C.R. Moreland, Lyle Hopkins, Kenny Higdon, Bill Purinton, Roy Uto. I remember that dad’s secretary—or at least one of his secretaries—was named Jeanette. I also remember a woman who attended his wake in 2011 and appeared in some of the photos below. I think that her name was Mary Jean or something like that. If I ever knew her last name, I have forgotten it.2
Here are the photos in the same order that they were in the album. There are two sets of photos. The first fifteen were taken at a banquet at a huge round table at BMA Tower. The second set of twenty were evidently shot on a different occasion in and around my dad’s office. I have added captions when I knew anything about them.
My mom is in white. My dad is to her right. His vision was almost as bad as mine, but he almost never wore glasses except to read and drive. He considered them effeminate. The woman seated at the window came to Jim’s wake. The only other person whom I recognize is my dad in the foreground. No sign of his bald spot yet, and not a single grey hair. Bill Grant, the company’s president collected art depicting western scenes. My mother was either convulsed in laughter or she spotted a huge spider on the ceiling. The man shown in profile is Bill Saylor. I think that this was either Bill Grant of John Saylor. No idea.
I think that this was either Bill Grant of John Saylor.
Bill Saylor.Note the tie bar. By the time that I spent much time with him as an adult both of my dad’s eyebrows were white, but he still had no trace of grey hair. I was the opposite. He stopped smoking in the late eighties. My mom would be upset that this photo showed the very slight bump on her nose. This was the lady who came to the wake, Mary Jean.Kenny Higdon?I was surprised to see my dad reaching with his right hand. He was left-handed. The only thing that he did right-handed was playing golf. Maybe he had a cigarette in his left hand. This is the last photo of the first set. This is the first photo of the second set. The gag gift of the white paint might be a reference to a project that I worked on the summer before I went into the army. I was supposed to paint the house, but I did not finish. It is possible that they never got anyone else to finish it. I think that this cake was for my dad’s retirement. If the golfer was meant to be my dad, his aim was to the right of the hole (with the red flag in it) because he was playing the horrendous slice that accompanied each of his swings. He learned to play golf (and smoke) in high school at Maur Hill. There were no left-handed clubs available. No idea.I think that my dad is holding some golf balls. I think that it is totally unfair that I had more grey hairs before I started working at TSI than he had when he retired from BMA.No idea.One wood and one iron?I think that the big guy in the back with the plaid jacket might be John Bolin. I knew his son in the Boy Scouts. My dad and Mary Jean.A black guy?Mom and somebody.“So, a priest, a rabbi, and an insurance guy go into a bar …”
1. The insurance operations of BMA (the A originally stood for Accident Insurance), which included my dad’s pension and health insurance, was sold to Assicurazioni Generali in 1990. AG sold it to the Royal Bank of Canada in 2009;
2. I spent several hours on the Internet trying to discover what became of the people on this list, but I was unsuccessful.
The Worst Year Ever?: The virus seemed to appear in or around Wuhan, China, in late 2019. It appeared to be extremely contagious. It was given the name COVID-191 on February 11, 2020. In the past such scares (SARS and Ebola) had pretty much bypassed the West, but within two weeks Italy had become a global hotspot. China, South Korea, and New Zealand fought the disease relentlessly, and had very good results. If all other countries had done the same, the disease probably would have run its course in a few months. However, because in many cases the disease had mild or even undetectable symptoms, many people did not take it seriously and were scornful of those who did.
Editorial note: I have decided to capitalize Pandemic as a sign of respect. There have been other pandemics in my lifetime, but Covid-19 was the only one that had a significant effect on the U.S.
Cases began appearing in the U.S. in early February. The first death was reported in the state of Washington on the 29th. On March 11 the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic. Two days later the Trump administration declared a national emergency and issued a travel ban from 26 non-European countries. However, the ban only applied to people who were not U.S. citizens. Need I add that this was an election year?
On Sunday March 15 Felix Springer and I played in a STaC game at the Hartford Bridge Club. The talk that day was largely about Colorado Springs, where a woman who had played in a sectional tournament may have been a super-spreader. She competed in the Bridge Center there in six events between February 27 and March 3. She died on March 13.
I later learned that Fred Gagnon had played in the same tournament, but he never was at the same table with her. Before the Pandemic struck Fred played both in Simsbury and Hartford and frequently partnered with my wife Sue. Details about the Colorado Springs incident can be found here.
Too close for comfort.
New York and its suburbs were hit hard very early. While attending a large gathering at a synagogue in Rob and Laura Petrie’s hometown of New Rochelle, a man who had recently been abroad passed the disease on to many people, including the rabbi. At one time 108 of the state’s 173 cases were in Westchester County, which borders on Connecticut.
My notes about the bridge game at the HBC on March 15 record that despite some mistakes Felix and I won.2 I remember that one woman who played that day wore a medical mask of some sort. We already knew that the club would be closed indefinitely after the game. Felix and I were the last two to leave the Bridge Center. He was responsible for locking up after we left. At the last minute I dashed over to the shelves that contained non-bridge books and selected Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz3 and Fatherland by Robert Harris. Both books resided in my house for much longer than I had planned, but I did eventually return them.
Sue and I had signed up for a bridge cruise on the Danube River with the famous expert, Larry Cohen. We were scheduled to leave on March 17. That cruise never happened. The details of the story are provided here.
Trump at the CDC.
Responding to the Pandemic: Although President Trump had declared a state of emergency, he, like most Republicans, absolutely refused to take the disease seriously. He made it clear that masks were not mandatory, and he refused to wear one. He then proceeded to make an utter ass of himself whenever he tried to talk about the Pandemic. He even predicted an “Easter miracle” that absolutely did not happen. Despite the fact that it was obviously an irresponsible if not evil idea, he actually encouraged everyone to go to church on that day.
Not only did this laissez-faire approach probably cost him the election; it also cost the country several hundred thousand lives. The Center for Disease Control also fumbled the ball. For some reason they refused to accept the test that had been developed by the World Health Organization, and their own test proved unreliable. So, for months as the virus spread geometrically throughout the country, the U.S. had no test. Soon the situation was much worse in America than anywhere else in the world.
To be fair Trump did direct more than a billion dollars to a virtually unknown company named BioNTech to develop a vaccine using mRNA technology. Others also were funded, but BioNTech received the biggest prize because its leaders claimed that with proper funding they could produce a new vaccine in a few months. Their effort was dubbed Project Lightspeed. Obviously Trump hoped that they would deliver by election day, but they missed by a few weeks. In fact, Pfizer, which did not participate, developed and tested a similar vaccine a little sooner, and the Chinese were already using a somewhat inferior vaccine by then.
Although most people who contracted the initial virus recovered after a week or so, the aged and those with comorbidities did not fare as well. The death rate in 2020 was over 3 percent. Nursing homes throughout the country often experienced horrendous situations. Hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly.
Of course, many people still had to work, but most of us hunkered down and stayed in our houses. We had to learn to order groceries—and anything else that we needed—online. I wrote a little program to allow members of the Simsbury Bridge Club to send me descriptions and/or pictures of their new lifestyle. I then posted them on a webpage that anyone could view. A few people sent responses, and I promptly posted them. You can view them here.
Reading: I also posted quite a few entries about my own life. I took advantage of the extra free time to read more. By June 28 I had read nine novels: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Magpie Murders, Fatherland, Supermarket by Bobby Hall, Moriarity by Anthony Horowitz, Two for Texas by James Lee Burke, The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, The Brothers K by David James Duncan, and Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke. Supermarket, which I bought at a rare venture to the Target store, was awful. The others were all pretty good. The Enfield Public Library was closed. I purchased several books from Powell’s in Portland, OR. It took them almost a month for them to send them, but their selection of new and used volumes was outstanding.
What I especially liked about Powell’s was the number of books by Jack Vance that were offered for sale. I found some listed there that I had never seen in a library or bookstore, including the one that won an Edgar award for him, The Man in a Cage.
One of the last books that I later ordered from Powell’s was Jack Vance’s autobiography. Because I like a challenge—especially when I had an enormous amount of time on my hands—I selected the version in Italian, Ciao Sono Jack Vance! (E Questa Storia Sono Io). Vance has always been one of my favorite authors, and his last book was certainly one of his best. What a life he led! He managed to finish the book even though he was in poor health and nearly blind. He had to dictate the entire volume.
I was so inspired by this book that I decided to undertake this set of blog entries, which I later labeled The 1948 Project. The details surrounding its genesis have been recorded here.
Most aspects of life were put on hold in the spring and summer of 2020. The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) canceled all three of its national tournaments and prohibited its units and districts from holding tournaments for the rest of the year. The National Debate Tournament was also canceled. Hollywood closed shop.
Most schools attempted to reopen in the fall, but the result was a huge spike in the number of cases of COVID-19. The election was held in November, of course, but a very large number of people voted by mail rather than in person.
I walked southwest on North St. until it ended at Hazard Ave. (190). I turned left and walked west to Park St. Then a left on Elm St. I walked past Carris Reels to School St. and then north back to North St.
Exercise: I also exercised more during the lockdown. I was walking 35-40 miles per week, outside if the weather was tolerable, and on the treadmill when it wasn’t. On May 2 and a few other occasions I walked ten miles outside.
Later in the summer, however, I could no longer walk more than a mile or two without a pain gradually developing in the top of my right foot. This condition, which caused me to limp, bothered me throughout the year. I still walked, but I had to stop and stretch my IT band for a couple of minutes. Sometimes I would need to perform this ritual two or three times in a 2.5 mile lap. I often stopped after one lap. However, when I walked on the treadmill it hurt a lot less.
Therefore, I began to walk indoors more frequently. On my convertible laptop computer, a Lenovo model called Yoga, I watched many operas from the Metropolitan Opera’s streaming service that were new to me, including Ghosts of Versailles, La Wally, Orphée et Eurydice and many operas by Massenet and Bellini. I was really impressed by performances by Natalie Dessay, Teresa Stratas, and Marilyn Horn. The most bizarre moment occurred when Renée Fleming appeared in Rossini’s Armida. In a tender moment she rubbed cheeks with tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who happened to be black. When they parted more than a square inch of his brown makeup remained on her cheek.
I also watched operas on YouTube while I was walking on the treadmill. The quality was a little spotty—both the performances and the recordings. However, this introduced me to several of the more neglected operas, some of which were delightful.
The best thing about the YouTube operas was that I was able to make MP3 files of them using a piece of free downloadable software called MP3Studio. I had already made MP3 files out of my opera CD’s and downloaded them to a small MP3 player that I had purchased at Best Buy.4 I added quite a few operas from YouTube. My favorite was Tchaikovsky’s Cherevichki. I liked it so much that I purchased a DVD of its performance at Covent Garden in London.
I also downloaded hundreds of great rock and roll songs of the sixties and seventies. I could scarcely believe that most of the best songs from Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones were now available for free.
When I walked around the neighborhood I listened to music on the tiny MP3 play. In the cold weather I used my Bose headphones. When it was warmer I used ear buds.
My new and improved arch supports. The one on the right is inside-out.
Toward the end of the year I misplaced one of the arch supports that I had purchased from Walmart before the Pandemic. These were springy pieces of metal (I think) that were inserted into bands that wrapped around the foot and were secured by Velcro. I bought new ones at the same store that were spongy balls in elastic bands. They cost $10.
After I had used the new ones for about a month, the pain in my foot ceased, and I could walk five miles without stopping. I understand that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a famous fallacy, but I did not even consider reverting to the original pair when I discovered the hiding place of the lost arch support.
The Montalbano crew stayed together through all thirty-seven episodes.
I don’t remember how I heard about it, but on November 2 I subscribed (for only 8$ per month!) to a streaming service called MHz Choice. It had all thirty-seven of the Commissario Montalbano movies that I had learned about in 2016 in Sicily5 as well as dozens of other European mysteries and other offerings. All of them were captioned in English. I started with Montalbano (and a prequel called Young Montalbano), but I soon found many other shows that I enjoyed tremendously. There were also a few mysteries on YouTube, including the entire set of Inspector Morse shows.
During one of my walks around the neighborhood a bizarre event occurred. Just after I reached my house a car pulled into the driveway. It was driven by a man carrying three large cheese pizzas from Liberty Pizza. Evidently my phone, which was securely in my pocket, had somehow activated the Slice app to order the pizzas while I was walking. I was billed for them, but the charge was eventually removed from my credit card account after I complained about it.
On August 4 there was a tornado watch. A branch fell and damaged our gutter. A very large branch fell from a tree near the house on 10 Park St. It landed on and crushed a pickup truck that had been parked nearby. A week or more was required to clean it up. I don’t know what became of the truck.
Translation: In desperate need of a project to occupy my mind during the day, I decided in June to translate one of my travel journals into Italian. My Italian teacher, Mary Trichilo (TREE key low) agreed to read my efforts and to provide suggestions. I chose our 2005 Rick Steves trip to Italy that was billed as the Village Italy Tour.5 It was the first one on which the Corcorans joined us, and the first one for my first digital camera.
Reliving that experience was great fun; some of the best moments in my life occurred during those sixteen days. It was also a pretty good way to build my Italian vocabulary back up. I could only hope that I would be able to use it one day. I discovered a few websites that helped me a lot—translate.google.com, of course, but also Reverso.net and LanguageTool.org.
Masks: In the last three quarters of 2020 masks were required virtually everywhere. During the summer it was discovered that the disease was spread by aerosols from exhaling, talking, and singing. Moreover, being indoors greatly increased the probability of transmission. So, it was generally considered acceptable to go outside unmasked, but people were warned to stay at least six feet away from strangers. The last practice was called “social distancing”.
My favorite mask, but the straps tended to break.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) had a problem. Although they knew that the N95 masks that had been approved for use by NIOSH for painters and others who were often exposed to aerosols were by far the most effective, their official announcements said that people did not need them. Instead they recommended that any type of face covering would work just as well. So, a lot of people made their own masks or even wore bandannas across the lower half of their faces like outlaws in westerns. Others, such as I, purchased ten cheap cotton masks made by Hanes that could easily be washed.
There was a good reason for this deliberate misinformation campaign. A shortage of N95 masks was feared, and it was considered critically important that the best protection (and tightly fitting N95 masks offered much better protection) be available to those who dealt with known COVID patients or with large numbers of people in situations that precluded “social distancing”.
For some people masks, especially the ones that worked the best, were very uncomfortable. They did not bother me much at all. I was, however, quite happy when, during the summer, it became apparent that masks were not necessary outdoors. Still, when I took walks I made certain to keep at least six feet away from other walkers whenever possible.
Health: I was never healthier than in 2020. I experienced no significant ailments at all—not even a cold or indigestion. That pain in my foot bothered me a bit, and on one occasion the nail on my left little finger got bent back and eventually fell off. On the other hand, I was exercising so much that I had to make a shopping trip to Kohl’s to buy a smaller belt to hold up my pants.
My mental state was pretty positive as well. I was able to concoct several interesting projects to occupy my mind when I was not exercising or reading. I would have appreciated a diversion now and then, but most of my life had been good preparation for an extended lockdown. I had a lot of experience at keeping myself occupied.
Sue was also pretty healthy physically, but she got winded very easily. Moreover, she has always been a much more social animal than I was. The strain of the isolation on her spirit was quite evident.
We took a couple of short trips just to get out of the house. At some point in June or July we drove down to Gillette Castle and had a little picnic. We found a spot that was shady and isolated. The walk from the parking lot to our site was uphill, and it definitely wore Sue out. After lunch I took a hike up to the castle by myself. Only a few people were there, and I kept my distance from all of them. This was a very simple outing, but it felt like a small taste of freedom. Perhaps prisoners have the same feeling the first time that they are allowed into the exercise yard.
Lunch at the zoo.
On September 24, when it finally appeared that the Pandemic had abated a bit, we made a road trip to Roger Williams Zoo in Providence. The highlight for me was when we went to see the sloths. I got to show the attendant there that I was wearing a tee shirt with a sloth on it. Sue had bought it for me in Costa Rica.8
On the way back to Enfield we made a stop in Willimantic so that Sue could show me the Shaboo Stage, an outdoor venue that she had frequented to watch local musical performers, mostly blues bands. Sue was friendly with several of these people, and she was very worried for them. The lockdown had eliminated their primary source of income.
We made a third stop at Oliver’s Dairy Bar where we ordered burgers and listened—in our cars—to Bruce John singing and playing his guitar. A few people got out of their cars and danced. It was all a little weird, but it was something to do. Sue had claimed that the food would be very good, but we were both disappointed in it.
People our age were terrified to be among strangers, and reasonably so. Not everyone survived that first year. I did not hear of anyone who died directly from COVID-19, but all of the following members of the debate community died in 2020:
Max Horton, whom I knew quite well from the Simsbury Bridge Club.
David Waltz, whose wife I knew from Tuesday evenings at the Hartford Bridge Club and at tournaments. The three of us even went out to dinner one evening in Hyannis, MA.
Elaine Jaworowski, who was a regular player at the HBC morning games.
Gladys Feigenbaum, who only played occasionally at the HBC and did not seem to be in great health before the lockdown. I did not know her well.
Victor (blue shirt) with Lew Gamerman, Kate McCallum, and Sheila Gabay after a victory in 2019.
The most shocking news was the murder of Grand Life Master Victor King in his own home in Hartford on July 26. He was a very popular player and, to all appearances, had no enemies. His assailant was also his tenant. I had played against Victor a few times and I had talked with him about a few matters concerning the district’s website. At the time the incident was covered in local and national outlets as well as abroad. I was not able to find any information about the disposition of the case.
On July 23 my occasional bridge partner, boss, and good friend Bob Bertoni was operated on for the second or third time in recent years. He recovered enough to continue working as the District Director for the rest of the year, but I think that everyone knew that the handwriting was on the wall.
Sue’s friend and occasional bridge partner, Ginny Basch, also went into the hospital in July. A few days after she had been released she needed to return and have a heart valve inserted. She seemed to recover well enough after that.
On November 16 we learned that Tyesha Henry, Sue’s long-time protégée, had COVID-19. Sue had been with her in an automobile on November 6, but Sue did not develop any symptoms. She dodged a bullet.
Food:Few restaurants were open, and those that were provided only delivery and pickup orders. Most of the time Sue and I ate at home. I continued going to the grocery store, but I always wore a mask (as did nearly everyone else), and I always used the automated checkouts. I seldom was within ten feet of another human. Sue usually ordered groceries online and drove to the store to pick them up.
The hybrid Yum restaurant in E. Windsor.
We ordered pizza perhaps once a month, and we drove to KFC three times7, once in West Springfield and twice in East Windsor. The first drive to East Windsor, which was probably in May, was very strange. There were almost no cars on any of the roads, but there was a long line at the drive-through window at the KFC/Taco Bell restaurant. I did not get my order until twenty-five minutes after my arrival. When I arrived home we discovered that the bags contained both our $20 fill-up and someone else’s Taco Bell order.
On July 18 Sue and I drove over to the beautiful house of Ken and Lori Leopold in Avon, CT. We were originally planning to go to a restaurant for supper, but the negotiations between Lori and Sue for a suitable place with outdoor seating broke down. We enjoyed a very nice supper and then played a few rubbers of bridge. I played with Sue and then Ken. Lori had never played rubber bridge before! That was the only time in the last nine and a half months of 2020 that we dined indoors with other people.
Sue and I celebrated all of the holidays alone together in our house. That was what one did in The (first) Worst Year Ever.
The Neighborhood: The big news was that in the spring the family that lived diagonally across the street from us (“cattywampus” as my Grandmom Cernech would have said) on the southwest corner of North St. and Allen Pl. unceremoniously moved away. This was the family with several trucks and an ATV that the kids rode around on. The father often flew the “Don’t tread on me” flag and other right-wing banners on their flagpole.
The house (a small ranch house with one garage) and yard were both in bad shape when the family abandoned them. Workers spent weeks getting it back in marketable condition. It was auctioned off; no “For Sale” side ever appeared. It was purchased by a woman who has kept it in immaculate conditioned. She even resuscitated the lawn.
The flagpole has never been used since the other family left.
Three doors to the west of them the “patriotic” cause was taken up by a couple. She grew sunflowers accompanied by Bag-a-Bugs and had a statue of an owl that turned its head occasionally. I scoffed at the former and was enthralled by the latter.
He was another kettle of fish. He also had a flagpole. He flew the “Don’t tread on me” flag, but also other flags including a Trump-Pense banner ones about POW/MIAs or respecting the police. Another Trump sign was proudly displayed above the garage. He also had a “concealed carry” sticker on his car’s window. Most bizarrely, he had a fenced-in back yard with red triangular signs on both gates with the word “MINES” on them, as if the back yard contained mines. I took him seriously; he seemed to be retired from both the military and law enforcement, and he was obviously “gung-ho”.
I generally gave these people a wide berth, but my walking took me past their house quite often.
We really only have one next-door neighbor, the residents of 1 Hamilton Court. A couple with children had been living there for quite a few years. He disappeared from the neighborhood at some point before the Pandemic started. A different man moved in and immediately started making over the house and the back yard. I talked to him for a few minutes once. He seemed friendly enough. Anything would be better than his predecessor, who had said he would kill our cats if they ventured onto his property.
This photo was taken from my chair in the office. Giacomo is the one with the long bushy tail.
The Pets: Our two cats, Giacomo and Bob, really enjoyed the lockdown. Sue and I got in the habit of watching television together from 8 p.m. until I could no longer keep my eyes open, which usually occurred between 9:30 and 10. The cats loved the idea that we were both sitting still. Giacomo often sat peacefully on my lap, as he had done for many years. Now, however, the two of them would also sometimes lie together on a blanket that Sue had laid out on the floor. Giacomo seemed to enjoy having a friend. They assumed every position imaginable, including spooning.
Giacomo showing off his thumbs on the bed on November 1.
In October Giacomo surprised me by catching a moth. When he was younger he was a fearsome hunter, but in 2020 that was the only time that he showed much interest in any wildlife.
Sue and I never knew Giacomo’s real birth date, but we celebrated it annually on November 1. 11/1/20 was his seventeenth birthday. When I returned to bed for my first nap of the day I was shocked to find Giacomo had climbed up on the bed. We enjoyed a nap together for the first time in at least a year.
On Christmas Giacomo found a comfortable resting spot. He was left-pawed. Here he is using his business paw to ask for petting.
On August 4th, the day of a tornado watch, I discovered that at least one of the cats (I suspected Giacomo) had stopped using the ramp in the basement that led to the cat door and had instead designated an area of the newer side of the basement as an open latrine. After I cleaned up the smelly mess I drove to Target and purchased a large litter box and some cheap litter.
The cats quickly adjusted to using the litter box, but they tracked litter all over everywhere. I solved the problem by switching to Clean Paws, which was much more expensive but did not stick the their feet as much.
Friends: Sue had many, but I really only had one friend, Tom Corcoran. He left the Land of Steady Habits shortly after the Pandemic struck and rented an apartment in Burlington, VT, which is where his children lived.
In 2020 we only saw him once in person. On August 1 he was back in his house in Wethersfield to take care of some business, and Sue and I drove to meet him there. Sue brought with her and antique ice box that Tom pledged to fix it up somehow.
We celebrated Tom’s birthday with a Zoom call on October 27. You should be able to calculate his age if you have read these blogs carefully.
Bridge: There was no face-to-face duplicate bridge in 2020 after the middle of March.
Many people played online. The ACBL even set up an arrangement for “virtual clubs” that held online sanctioned games of eighteen boards. I did not participate.
On November 18 District 25’s Executive Committee held a meeting on Zoom. It was depressing. The ACBL was probably going to cancel the NABC in the spring in St. Louis and the one scheduled for Providence, RI, in the July of 2021. Most of the members of the Executive Committee, including me, were also on the committee for the latter event. It was crushing news.
The North American Pairs and Grand National Teams would be contested online. I did not like this news at all, but I asked Ken Leopold, Felix Springer, and Trevor Reeves to play with me, and they all agreed. I told Ken that I would practice as much as I could online. We played online on Christmas Day, but that was the only time in 2020. I hated the experience, but this might be my last chance to play in Flight B of the GNT.
Sports: The National Basketball Association, like all other forms of indoor entertainment, suspended play when the Pandemic hit. In order to salvage part of the 2019-2020 season the league spent $190 to build a “bubble” at Disney World in Orlando, FL. Twenty-two of the league’s thirty teams were invited to the city to play the remaining eight regular season games and the playoffs behind closed doors. Of course, the games were televised.
Yes, they actually played all of the games in Disney World surrounded by pictures of imaginary fans.
This approach worked very well. Everyone involved in the games stayed in the bubble and was tested regularly. No cases at all were reported. The season ended on October 11, with the Los Angeles Lakers crowned as champions. The league generated about $1.5 billion is revenue.
Other sports did not follow the league’s example. The only one that I was interested in was college football. The Big Ten was pressured by Trump into playing the season, sort off. All non-conference games were canceled, and the beginning of play was postponed until October 24. Games were played in empty or nearly empty stadiums.
Michigan was ranked #18 in the preseason and beat #21 Minnesota 49-24 in the opening game. This was followed by three embarrassing losses. In week 5 the Wolverines used a new quarterback, Cade McNamara, to beat Rutgers in three overtimes. In week 6 they lost to Penn State at home. Since all of its remaining games were canceled due to COVID-19 outbreaks, the team ended the season 2-4, the worst record in living memory.
The whole idea of playing during a pandemic was idiotic. The NCAA ended up granting extra eligibility to all of the players.
I guess that sports addicts enjoyed watching the competitions in empty stadiums and arenas. I did not watch any sports at all during the entire year.
Miscellaneous: I filed my income taxes in February. I did not receive my refund until August 1. There were two reasons for this: Most IRS employees were working remotely, and a large number were busy distributing the $1400 stimulus checks that Donald Trump made sure had his name on them. I am not complaining.
The class that I took in Advanced Italian held only nine of its ten classes. The last one was canceled (without a refund) because of COVID-19. I signed up for the fall class, but it was canceled on September 9.
On August 8 we received a check from AIG for the trip insurance for our cruise in March that had been canceled. AIG, the largest company in the trip insurance market, must have taken a real bath in 2020.
I purchased and tried to read a couple of Montalbano novels by Andrea Camilleri. They were difficult for me. The narrative was in standard Italian, but most of the dialogue was in the Sicilian dialect, which is much different.
On August 11 Bank of America refused the automatic payment of the bill for our homeowners’ insurance policy. I had received a new credit card and had not yet changed the number on Travelers’ website. It was resolved in a few days.
Beginning on November 10 we enjoyed almost a week of really beautiful weather. Sue and I drove up to her property in Monson, MA. She wanted to walk up to the top, but she got less than a hundred yards before she was out of breath and exhausted. We rested a few minutes and then walked back to the car.
Desperate for something to do, on November 11 I began polishing up my novel Ben 9, which I have posted here. I just had to do this. It had been inside of me, and I had to let it out. I doubt that anyone will ever read it. Who is interested in reading about the clergy in the eleventh century?
What else? I feel as if I have left out something important that happened in 2020. What was it? Oh, yeah, the election. You can read about it here.
1. I don’t know why all the letters are capitalized. It is not an acronym. The five letters stand for Coronavirus Disease. “Corona” is the Latin word for crown. The -19 was added to indicate that it began in 2019.
3. I tweeted that I thought that Magpie Murders was the best mystery that I had ever read. Anthony Horowitz thanked me in the comments and wished well to the HBC.
4. The Best Buy in Enfield was a casualty of the Pandemic. The building was still empty two years later.
5. The journal for the Sicily trip is posted here.
6. The English version of that trip can be read here.
7. The excursion to the sloth sanctuary is described here.
8. There once was a KFC in Enfield on Route 5, but the owner retired, and the store closed. Enfield contains almost every other kind of fast food place, but for years no one sold fried chicken until a Popeye’s opened in August of 2022.
In 1988 Rocky and Jake, the two cats that had adopted us as caretakers a couple of years earlier, made the move with Sue and me from Rockville to Enfield. After spending their first winter indoors in Rockville, they had been allowed to roam in the neighborhood of the Elks Club. They always came back to one of our doors when they wanted food, shelter, or a massage. They seemed to have learned what was dangerous, although for Rocky earning the knowledge probably knocked him down to eight lives, as explained here.
Neither seemed to have much difficult adjusting to the change of scenery. There was so much more for them to explore, both inside and out. Rocky particularly liked the fact that when he was outside he could leap up to the windowsill near the dining area and gaze through the window at the activity going on inside. After we started opening the window for him when he did so, this became his preferred form of ingress. Rocky was a real leaper. None of our other cats ever attempted this feat.
Rocky and I watched football games. Popcorn was one of the few human foods he did not like.
Rocky loved to be petted. His favorite technique was the full-body massage, but he would accept any kind of petting by just about anyone whom he knew well.
Jake was a much more private cat. He always seemed to pick a corner and sit there silently analyzing the situation. He tolerated a little petting as the price to be paid for a constantly full bowl of Purina Cat Chow.
The night of October 31, 1988, was a sad one. Sue and I went out for supper, as I remember, and when we came back we found Jake’s dead body on the street. I buried him in the yard, but I don’t remember where.
Sue and I did not feel devastated at Jake’s demise. We had lost quite a few pets by that time. We liked Jake, and we missed him, but neither of us had formed a strong attachment to him.
I don’t remember where our next pet, Buck Bunny, a very large grey and white rabbit with long floppy ears, came from. I am quite certain that I had nothing to do with the acquisition, but Sue had no recollection of us even having a rabbit during this era until I showed her his photo. Buck’s home was a large wire cage in the westernmost small bedroom. The barnboard bookshelves were also in that room. It was a sort of library, but it held as many games as books.
We kept Buck in his cage most of the time because, like most rabbits, he had an instinct to gnaw on things. Before we released him from the cage, we placed all electrical cables up out of his reach. That was possible because, unlike Slippers (described here), he was not much of a leaper.
Sue visited her friends Diane and Phil Graziose in St. Johnsbury, VT, pretty regularly. Sometimes I joined her, but just as often she went by herself. On one of those solo trips she brought home a tiny tan and white kitten. It was so small that it fit in the breast pocket of her flannel shirt. the mandatory state uniform of Vermont.
The kitten was one of many feline denizens of the trailer park in which the Grazioses lived. It probably should have been allowed to nurse for another week or so. However, this was probably the best chance that it would ever get to avoid spending a Vermont winter outdoors. The situation worked out well. We gave him milk for a few days, and then he found the bowl of Cat Chow and the water bowl on his own.
Rocky enjoyed exploring the big yard.
Rocky had little use for the pipsqueak, but the kitten immediately made friends with Buck Bunny. They really hit it off. The kitten liked to sit near Buck’s cage, and when Buck came out they played together or just snuggled.
When the kittne was more mature we got it fixed, of course. By then it had become rather obnoxious, and so we were not a bit surprised when we learned that it was a tom. I named him Woodrow1 after Woodrow F. Call, one of the protagonists of my favorite novel of all time, Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry.
After his medical procedure Woodrow decided that I was his buddy. He loved to take naps next to me. Almost any time that I went into the bedroom and got into bed, Woodrow climbed up to join me.
Meanwhile, Rocky had claimed Sue as his BFF. When Sue and I sat in the living room chairs (purchased used from Harland-Tine Advertising, which is described here, and draped with white cloth) Woodrow sat on my lap and Rocky found Sue’s. The two cats were totally different.
A very young Woodrow.
Woodrow liked all people. Whenever anyone visited us, Woodrow greeted them immediately. Rocky usually hid.
Rocky loved almost any kind of human food; Woodrow liked only Cat Chow and ice cream.
Woodrow was a hunter; Rocky preferred to snuggle. He exalted in his full-body massages.
Woodrow liked to be carried with his back down and all four legs up. Rocky did not mind being picked up, but he insisted on the chest-to-chest method.
Woodrow liked the top of his head to be rubbed hard, but any other style of petting annoyed him.
Woodrow climbed trees (although he usually waited to be helped down); Rocky never did.
Rocky was mostly silent. In his later years Woodrow gave off all manner of soft sounds as he walked around. I called them his “play-by-play”. Except for that one time in the flea bath he preferred not to speak English.
Woodrow and Rocky eventually became buddies. When I returned home after work, they were almost always together on the lawn next to the driveway waiting for me. The sight of them always cheered up, no matter how rough the day had been. I often sang to myself, “with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard.” Our house was indeed a very fine house.
However, Woodrow did not abandon his first friend, the lagomorph. He still like to lie or sit next to Buck’s cage, and when we let Buck out, the two still socialized.
Actually, they socialized too much. Buck tried to hump the fully grown Woodrow whenever they were together, and Woodrow put up with it. It wasn’t just a phase, either.
Sue and I decided that we needed to get Buck Bunny fixed. I loaded him inside his cage into Sue’s car, and she drove him to the vet. She explained the problem to the doctor. He examined Buck and reported to Sue that “Buck” was actually a female.
Sue asked him why the rabbit was engaging in these activities if he was not even a male. The vet replied that he was only a veterinarian, not a psychiatrist. So, we still let the two buddies hang out together. If the rabbit (who was by then officially renamed Clara, after my mother’s mother, Clara Cernech, who had died in 1980) got too amorous, we just put her back in her cage.
I don’t remember the circumstance of Clara’s death. She was a French Lop, a breed with a lifespan of only five years. She was fully grown when we adopted her.
My favorite moments with Woodrow and Rocky were when I came home for lunch in the summertime. Both cats napped under bushes. Rocky customarily slept in the cluster of forsythia bushes in the northeast corner of our lot. Woodrow favored the burning bush halfway between the house and the driveway to Hazard Memorial School.
The one-piece table in the background was repurposed as a place to pile dead branches when we got the red one.
I liked to eat my lunch while sitting at the picnic table in the yard and reading a book.When I brought my food (no matter what was on the menu) out to the picnic table, Rocky stumbled groggily out from his resting spot. He sat on the ground next to me for a while and looked up hopefully. Then he raised his front paws up to the bench and nudged my elbow with his snout. Eventually he often leapt up on the table. He knew it was not allowed, but he could not help himself.
I always broke down and gave him a tiny piece of meat. No matter how small the morsel was, he purred loudly while he ate it, got down, and retreated back to his bush to finish his nap.
A mole’s-eye view of Woodrow.
After lunch I usually took a short nap in the yard on a mat or blanket. As soon as I had made myself comfortable, Woodrow emerged from his bush to check out what I was doing. I always slept on my side. After I had assumed the sleeping position, Woodrow walked up so that he was about a foot from my chest. He then flopped over toward me, and we both stacked a few z’s.
In inclement weather they repeated their tag-team act. Rocky begged for food at the table in the dining area, and Woodrow climbed up on the bed to join me for a nap.
The boudoir with the modesty curtain held open by the hamper.
When he was not napping with me, Woodrow moved from place to place in search of the best locations for sleeping. One of his favorite places was on a towel in the small storage area in the bathroom. He arrived there by jumping up on the clothes hamper. He then moved aside the curtain with one of his front paws and sprang into the niche. I called this obscure hidey-hole “Woodrow’s boudoir”. Occasionally when someone used the toilet or the shower, he startled people when he stuck out his head from behind the curtain to look at them with sleepy eyes.
Woodrow preferred Cat Chow to all other forms of food except ice cream. The only time that he paid much attention to Sue was when she sat down with a bowl of ice cream. Then he became more of a beggar than Rocky.
Although Woodrow loved to hunt, he was not possessive about his catches and kills. He often was seen parading around the house with a mouse in his mouth. Sometimes he dropped one at my feet or Sue’s. I had to pick them up quickly. There was a fifty-fifty chance that the poor crittur was still alive. I released many outside; after that they were on their own.
Two were distinctive. One day I was taking my daily postprandial nap in the bed. Unbeknownst to me Woodrow brought into the bedroom his latest prey, a small bird. He silently entered, crawled under the bed with his catch in his mouth, positioned himself directly below my head, and commenced to crunch the bones between his jaws. It was a very disconcerting addition to my dreamscape. Needless to say he left the remains beneath the bed for me to clean up.
A dove only weighs about 4 oz. Woodrow could carry one easily.
On another day I came home for lunch to find that Woodrow had apparently brought home a guest, a full-grown mourning dove. Evidently Woodrow had lost his appetite, but the bird may have thought that he was on still on the menu. He flew about, crashing into one window after another in a panicked attempt to escape. I finally chased him into the library, where I opened the window and closed the door. When I came home after work there was no sign of him. We have never found a cadaver, and so I presume the dove found his way out.
Imagine him with 20 sharp claws.
Woodrow was the only pet that we ever had who clearly had multiple personality disorder. His was more like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than The Three Faces of Eve.
I called Woodrow’s alter-ego Nutso Kitty. Whenever he entered this state his eyes glazed over, and he stalked and attacked anything that moved. One day Woodrow was placidly napping with me when, unbeknownst to me, he underwent the demonic transformation. I must have moved my hand a little. He pounced on it with all twenty of his switchblades extended. After literally throwing him out of the room, I rushed to the bathroom for first aid. My hand throbbed in pain for a few days. Fortunately it was my left hand, which has never been much good for anything except typing.
This even looks like Woodrow.
In 1992 or 1993 Sue and I made a trip to Dallas to pitch TSI’s AdDept software system to Neiman Marcus (described here). We then drove our rental car to Austin so that Sue could visit her high school friend Marlene Soul. Marlene exhibited a toy she used to keep her cats active. It was a long very limp stick with a feather on the end. With every slightest move of the hand the cat was drawn inexorably to the dancing feather.
As soon as I got home I purchased one so that I could torture Woodrow. He absolutely could not resist it. After he chased it for at least an hour he hid under a chair so that he could not see it. I pulled it out every time that I thought about that bloody left hand.
We had to take Woodrow to the vet twice to patch him up after fights. Both times he had abscesses that the vet had to drain and then sew up. After the first one, I tried to teach Woody to keep his left up, but he got tagged again a few months later. I never got to see how the other cat did in these scrapes, but I doubt that he escaped without some damage.
I don’t really have many good stories about Rocky. He was consistently a very sweet cat for all of the eighteen years that I knew him. He never got into a fight, or at least he never got seriously hurt. When we brought him to the vet for shots he went completely limp when we put him on the examination table. The vet called him “catatonic cat.”
Once, however, Rocky was missing for three days. Sue and were quite concerned. I had walked up and down the nearby streets looking for him several times. I also took the car and expanded the search area. Sue and I searched everywhere in the house. No luck. However, when I checked the garage for the third time Rocky came slowly out from behind some junk. He followed me inside and nonchalantly drank some water. Within a day he showed no sign of any problem.
How, you may ask, could the cat have hidden in the garage? Why not just pull out the car and search thoroughly? Well, there was no car in the garage. It was full of Sue’s junk, packed from floor to ceiling, as is her new garage as I write this. A thorough search of the garage would have entailed taking all of the junk out piece by piece and piling it somewhere on the yard. Then, whether I found him or not, I would have had to reassemble the mess in precisely the way that I found it.
I did call for Rocky each time that I opened the garage door, but he must have been asleep or just obstinate.
Show no mercy!
Both Rocky and Woodrow stayed outside a great deal during the summer. They both were tormented by fleas every year. I felt great sympathy for them. They were obviously suffering terribly. I tried to help them.
I tried to pick the fleas off. During each session, I slew several dozen by squeezing them between my fingernails. I could hear their shells crack, but a few days later there would be just as many.
I tried flea collars. Rocky, who must certainly have had a set of bolt-cutters secreted away in the bushes, always showed up without it within a few hours. The collar helped a little with Woodrow, but there was no guarantee that the fleas would cross it. He also hated the collar, but Rocky would not lend out his tools.
I tried flea powder. It helped a little for a short time.
Flea baths actually worked, but both cats hated them. After a short struggle Rocky submitted meekly, but he also gave me a look that asked what he had done to make me despise him so much. Woodrow, of course, fought me tooth and nail. I had to don gloves and my army field jacket to pick him up. One time—I swear that this is true—he clearly screamed out the word “NO!!!!” as I dipped him in the medicated water in the tub.
Advantage was even better than Frontline.
Of course, if we did not attack them quickly, the fleas got in the carpet, and, after we got them off of the cats we had to “bomb” the house. That was not a bit pleasant.
Fortunately, the flea problem was solved when our vet supplied us with Frontline2, the monthly drops on the back of the neck, at some point in the nineties. I don’t know if there were side effects, but the product sure worked on the fleas. It was great having flea-free cats and a flea-free house.
Not long after Woodrow established residency with us, I bought a cat door and installed it in a window that led to the top of the basement. It was located just below the bathroom window. Just below the window on the basement side was the top of some shelves that were there when we moved in. From the shelves I placed a spare door at a 45° angle to serve as a ramp down to the ping pong table. A box served as a step up to the table or down to the floor.
Rocky seldom used the cat door. He preferred for a human to let him out through one of the doors or in through his favorite window. When he did enter through the cat door, he did not use the ramp. Instead he jumped from the bookshelves to the washing machine and from there to the floor. He exited the house by jumping up on the picnic table and climbing the shelves.
Other cats occasionally tried to use the cat door. Brian Corcoran gave me his Super Soaker, which proved to be very effective at chasing them away. However, the felines were most active at night, and I was not. Occasionally one would get in and help himself to some Purina Cat Chow.
I often heard the distinctive caterwauling of two or more cats that were about to engage in that furious and bloody activity known as a catfight. Once I saw Woodrow in the basement on the bookshelf near the cat door loudly warning a cat not to poke his head through. He definitely meant business. His body was crouched and taut, ready to for action. His right paw was raised with all five claws drawn. He reminded me of Horatius at the bridge.
Ours was indoors, and I only saw him from the rear before he scurried away.
There were a couple of other uninvited guests. One night I heard some very loud munching coming from the hallway. I jumped out of bed, turned on the hall light, and beheld an opossum helping himself to the Cat Chow in a bowl at the other end of the hall. I assume that the opossum was a male since it did not have a dozen babies on its back.He had evidently found his way through the cat door, down to the basement, and up the stairs. My footsteps frightened him enough that he rushed down the stairs, never to be seen again.
The story of the other remarkable intruder can be read here.
Sue and I took quite a few long trips after Rocky and Woodrow moved in, and the cat door was installed. We also invested a few dollars in a gravity-fed Cat Chow dispenser. Whenever we took a trip we left Rocky and Woodrow “home alone”. We provided them with plenty of food and water, and Sue arranged for someone to check on them every few days. This arrangement worked well for our trip to Texas (described here), our cruising tour of Greece and Turkey (described here), our trip to Hawaii in 1997 (described here), our misbegotten adventure in Maine and Canada (described here), and our first tour of Italy in 2003 (described here).
Rocky died later in 2003 at the age of eighteen. I am pretty sure that he used up all nine of his allotted lives. Even though I was much closer to Woodrow for the many years that we had both of them, I cried when Rocky died. He was so tough and such a nice cat. I really missed him.
1. A better choice probably would have been “Augustus”. His personality was much more like the free-spirited Gus McCrae’s than the rigid Woodrow Call’s.
2. I later switched to Advantage II. It was cheaper and worked better.
My mother’s parents were John and Clara Cernech. I know very little about John’s antecedents. I was told that his father was a Croat. His mother’s name was Rose Duffy. Clara’s maiden name was Keuchel (rhymes with “cycle”), which is pretty clearly German. Her mother’s maiden name was Bartolak, which is, I think, Polish. Somebody on her side was certainly Polish. She considered herself Polish. Of course, being German was not popular in the forties.
I am pretty sure that all four of my maternal great-grandparents were already dead when I was born. In any case, I never met any of them.
My mom was born on October 2, 1925. She died in March of 1998. My grandparents were born near the end of the nineteenth century, and they died in the eighties. I found their grave marker online. She died in 1980; he died in 1985.
My mom had only one sibling, an older brother whose name was Clarence. Everyone called him Dean. I called him Uncle Dean. I don’t know why. He became an Osteopath. Many of his friends called him “Doc”. He died in 1999.
Uncle Dean’s wife was named Dorothy. They had three sons, John (who was sometimes called Johnny Carl to distinguish him from his grandfather), Terry, and Rick. Terry was my age. In fact, although we lived twenty miles apart, we were in the same class of about thirty-five boys at Rockhurst High School. John, who also attended Rockhurst, was two or three years older than Terry and me; Rick, whom we called Ricky at the time, was two or three years younger.
We visited Uncle Dean’s family pretty often, but not when we were still living in KC KS. Since we did not have a car, and they lived in Sugar Creek, on the far eastern edge of the KC metropolitan area, it would have been difficult. It might have been possible to take a bus with several transfers, but I have no memory of doing so. Besides, I was often in the hospital or recovering from the last operation.
I had the gun, holster, and hat, but not the rest of the get-up.
When we did visit them, I was very impressed. I really liked hanging out with Terry. He was only five months older than I was, but he was much more mature, and he had an older brother. I remember that I always wore my toy pistols and holster when we went there in the mid-fifties. There was a play room downstairs. The cushions from the couch would go on the floor, and we had competitions over who could execute the most spectacular death by gunfire. We also had quick draw practice. Terry had developed a move in which he rolled on the ground while drawing his pistol. In those days television was dominated by Westerns. Nearly all boys had guns. I wore mine everywhere.
Also, the Cerneches always seemed to have those highly desirable toys that were on the back covers of magazines. I remember that they had a fort with both soldiers and Indians—all plastic. I coveted it greatly.
They also had one of the first color televisions. I remember being awe while viewing “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.” And get this, they actually flew (flew!) out to California as a family and spent a day at Disneyland. They got to see the hippopotamus sneak up on their boat in person! I was so envious.
Once Uncle Dean took us rabbit hunting. Their dog Buster, a German Shepherd, ran around a field scaring up the bunnies. Uncle Dean (and maybe John, but certainly not the rest of us) shot at them with a pistol. At least one was killed. I remember that he showed us how to clean it.
I remember two other occasions rather vividly. In the first one Aunt Dorothy drove me, Terry, and Rick to a theater to see a Roy Rogers movie. Afterwards, while we were waiting for her to pick us up, a fight broke out among some older kids in the parking lot. I was excited, but a little scared. Terry knew some of the people involved. Nothing came of it.
The other incident must have occurred in 1961. Terry had a 45 of Roy Orbison singing “Running Scared”. I absolutely loved it. It got me interested in pop music. A few years later I became rather obsessive about rock and roll. I knew who recorded every song. This is not an exaggeration.
I am not sure that my cousins ever came to our house in Prairie Village. We did not have a lot of room. It would have been cramped.
Even though they owned the house, I don’t think that my grandparents lived with us in KC KS. If they did, they moved before I knew what was going on. They lived in Grand Island, NE, and then in Leavenworth, KS. My granddad worked for the Boss Glove Company. I don’t know what his job was.
I have a vague memory that we visited them once in Grand Island, but I have no recollection of how we could have traveled there. I remember that their next-door neighbors were Japanese, which seemed very exotic to me. My grandmother liked them, but I did not know what to think. Japanese people were NEVER on television except as the hated enemy in war movies.
We definitely visited my grandparents in Leavenworth. The big tourist attractions there were the high-security federal penitentiary and the the high-security military prison. Residents of Leavenworth always kept their radios on listening for news of prison breaks from either federal prison or from the high-security state prison in nearby Lansing, the last town through which we passed en route to their house on Kickapoo St. The escapees from Lansing were considered more dangerous. Most violent criminals were locked up in state prisons.
Povitica: the c is pronounced ts.
The Wavadas visited Leavenworth on many Easters and Thanksgivings. Uncle Dean brought his brood, too. There were two specialties of the house, czarnina (duck’s blood soup) and povitica (rolled nut bread). Uncle Dean was crazy about the former, which I refused to try after they told me what it was. Everyone loved the latter. No matter how much my grandmother made, we ate it up.
At least once I and a subset of the cousins (Terry and Ricky?) were allowed to stay overnight at my grandparents. This was the highlight of my youth. In the afternoon my grandmother took us bowling. After supper we had delicious root beer floats. There were no extra beds, and so my grandmother lay some cushions on the floor for us to sleep on. Best of all, we got to stay up and watch television as late as we wanted to. We watched an Abbott and Costello movie on the late show (10:30 central time). I assume that we fell asleep in the middle, and the test pattern was on all night.
On one of our last trips to Leavenworth I was exploring either the basement or the garage by myself. I came across a men’s magazine called Argosy. I read one or two scandalous stories. I still remember one line: “She wore a fishnet bra; but it did not contain fish.” I certainly never told anyone about this, which was probably the naughtiest thing that I did as a kid.
I have vague recollections of going to a lot of weddings and funerals involving my mother’s relatives. These were memorable occasions for me because my cousins were always there. I only remember two details: running around at full speed in dress clothes and occasionally being called on to translate for Terry and Ricky, who were less easy for grownups to understand. It’s possible that they just wanted to hear how well the young harelip could talk.
Most of the relatives at these gatherings were vague to me. Two were very clear: Uncle Joe and Aunt Josephine. Joe was a mild mannered and friendly guy. Josephine was, to be kind, portly. But then … a polka would be heard, and the two of them would fly around the room. Everyone always cleared the floor for them and loudly applauded when the song was over.
Everyone in my immediate family really liked my Aunt Dorothy, but she and Uncle Dean eventually got divorced. To my knowledge this was an unprecedented event for that side of the family, which was 100 percent Catholic. Uncle Dean married his medical technician, Mildred, shortly thereafter at Unity Village, a huge Unitarian complex in KC. I don’t remember if my grandparents attended or not. We did.
Dean and Mildred had a son Paul, whom everyone called Paul Stacy. I don’t think that I ever met him. I might have said hello at my high school graduation or somewhere.
My parents told me that it was over 100° when I was born in St. Luke’s hospital in Kansas City, MO, on the afternoon of August 17, 1948. I was two days overdue. I have always claimed that I stayed inside until it was warmer outside. My recollection is that my parents told me that I weighed seven pounds and eleven ounces. In most respects I was quite healthy. My eyes were what people call hazel—brown in places, green in places, some other colors, and changeable. My hair, when it arrived, was a very dark color that matched that of both of my parents.
I lived the first twenty-two years of my life in the KC area, but on the west side of the Missouri River and State Line Road, i.e, in Kansas, the Sunflower State. I have almost no memories at all of my first four years. Since I spent those years in and out of hospitals, it might be a blessing. I was born with a cleft lip, which the doctors fixed with a series of operations that in those days were quite novel. I will spare you pictures of what people with this condition look like.
Fortunately for the family, my dad worked for an insurance company that provided health insurance for all its employees. I am certain that my parents and grandparents would have done anything that they could for me anyway, but it would definitely have entailed some hardships. When I was little, we did not have much money.
I have retained only two memories of being in the hospital during that period. I recall a plastic toy tank that someone gave me. A rubber dart could be mounted on its gun barrel. There was also a round semi-spherical rubber piece on the top of the tank. When you pressed on it the dart went flying. I loved it.
The other memory is shorter but less pleasant. I vaguely remember being strapped down in my bed. Somehow I had become dehydrated. The family legend relates that my grandmother, Hazel Wavada, could see that something was wrong with me, and she raised hell until the hospital staff addressed the problem by pumping me full of something. To this day the only phobia from which I suffer has to do with needles. If you see me with a tattoo or a piercing, you will know that aliens have taken control over my mind.
I think that our house used to be white. The Milgrams’ house is on the right.
We lived in a house owned by my maternal grandparents, John and Clara Cernech. I don’t remember them ever living with us, but they might have when I was an infant. A man whom I called Uncle Richard did live with us. His last name was Keuchel (rhymes with cycle), which indicates that he was related to Clara. He might have been her brother—Clara had lots of brothers and sisters. He might have been a cousin.
I am pretty sure that, as my dad would say, we didn’t have two nickles to rub together. We did not have a car or modern appliances, but I certainly never felt deprived.
I can easily visualize parts of the house. I had my own bedroom. My most precious possession was a green cowboy blanket, which I dragged around with me. I kept one of the corners between my right forefinger and middle finger. Those areas were all worn out. I named the four corners after political figures. My favorite was Adlai Stevenson, my dad’s political hero.
The basement was a spooky place. There was a coal chute. I have no idea how the coal got into the heater. I can hardly imagine my dad shoveling it. Maybe we no longer used coal. I also remember a washtub with a wringer. Later my dad and Joey Keuchel built a rather elaborate train set on two or more ping-pong sized tables. This was supposedly mine, but they messed with it more than I did.
The kitchen was a very wholesome place. My mother painted an apple tree on one of the walls, and she did a very good job. I have no absolutely no artistic taste, but everyone said so.
I sometimes went to the store with my mother. There was a monetary currency that I have nowhere else encountered, plastic coins called “mills”. My recollection is that the green ones were worth one tenth of a cent, and the red ones were worth half a cent. I might have this backwards. They were used for sales tax.
I have a few other vivid memories of those years. I had two friends, Larry Boatman and David Milgram. They were both about my age, but I do not remember going to kindergarten with them. I think that David might have been visiting his grandparents, who lived next door. There was a third kid whose birthday was the same as mine. Beyond our back yard was a alley, and he lived in the house directly across the alley from ours.
There were no girls in my age group in our neighborhood. At least I have no memory of any. It is quite possible that I just ignored them.
I was called Mickey, probably after Mickey Mantle, who played for the Kansas City Blues before the Yankees called him up. My dad told me that he saw him hit two homers in one game—one right-handed and one left-handed.
One day I announced that I would no longer be called Mickey. The other kids had been taunting me: “Mickey Mickey Mickey Mouse; when he grows up he’ll be a rat.” Thus was born Mike Wavada.
We had a black and white dog named Trixie. I think that she was a terrier. I don’t remember much about her except that she could really jump. She might have been my mom’s dog. She must have died before we moved to the suburbs.
Before I was old enough for school my parents enrolled me in speech lessons. Despite my rather severe birth defect, I can never remember anyone having trouble understanding my speech. I am not sure that I needed the speech classes. At any rate I aced them. I got a sticker of a hippopotamus for reciting my assignment well. Because “hippopotamus” was considered a difficult word to pronounce, the hippo sticker was considered a valued prize.
Who was going through the front door and who would sneak around to the back?
I cannot remember much of the pre-television years. A family legend persisted for years about the occasion on which my parents and I were all attending mass at St. Peter’s cathedral. At some point I got bored and started complaining vociferously about the fact that I was missing the Lone Ranger.
Despite the presence of so many heathens there, my parents sent me to Prescott School for kindergarten. St. Peter’s, our parish, had a grade school, but no kindergarten. I do not remember my kindergarten teacher’s name. I think that I walked to school. It must not have been far. (The school does not exist any more. I tried to determine where it was, but I failed.) Maybe a few of us walked together, or maybe my mother walked with me.
I don’t remember learning much in kindergarten except when to keep my mouth shut. I fondly recall that we each had a towel or blanket that we used at nap time. This instilled a napping habit that has served me very well for my entire life. I also remember making an imprint of my hand in clay, which someone painted dark green. It was on display in our house for quite a while.
One kid in our class was BAD. In addition to other high crimes and misdemeanors, he threw rocks at the other kids at recess. Did we even have recess? Maybe it was after school or before.
The boys, of course, would never report him because of the sacred obligation of omertà that males feel instinctively. The girls may have reported him to the teachers; I don’t know. All I know that he was still at large.
Believe it or not, I was the biggest kid in kindergarten. One day I had had enough of the rock-thrower. After school I hid behind a bush that I knew that he had to walk past. When he approached, I sprung out and punched his lights out. Actually, I don’t remember the details. I may have only hit him once, and then he may have run away. The next day my teacher took me aside and told me that I must never do that again. I nodded agreement.
My recollection is that the teacher did not promote the other kid at the end of the year. He actually flunked kindergarten.
I passed with flying colors.The other kids were learning their letters at school, but I was learning to read and write at home. My mother took me with her on the streetcar to the library where I got to pick out a book or two from the children’s section. I favored the ones about cowboys. By the time that I started first grade, I could read pretty well.
All my relatives are Catholics. There was never any question that I would go to St. Peter’s School for first grade. I walked there, too, but I think that a group of us walked together. I remember a candy store near the school. I seriously doubt that I often had any money for candy, but it is possible that Uncle Richard occasionally gave me a nickle or a dime once in a while.
This is St. Peter’s Cathedral. I think that the school building that I attended may no longer exist.
My teacher was a nun; I don’t remember her name either. She was not as nice as my kindergarten teacher. Also, there were no daily naps, and the classes were at once boring and frustrating. We probably did some craft things that I don’t remember. I have always been terrible at anything vaguely artistic. The activity that I do remember involved slates and boxes.
The boxes contained little light green cardboard letters. The other kids’ boxes contained a reasonable number, but mine had between four and five million. The teacher would write a word or a phrase on the blackboard. Each student’s job was to find the letters in their own personal box and to place them on their personal “slate”, which was actually a paper and cardboard arrangement the size of a standard sheet of paper with rows in which the letters could be mounted.
It was kind of like Scrabble, but the letters were smaller and in boxes. The problem was that the letters in my box would hide from me. This shortcoming has dogged me all of my life. If you asked me to get a bottle of Worcestershire sauce from the fridge, I probably would not be able to find it even if you told me what shelf it was on. Other bottles would conspire to conceal it, or maybe the target bottle would don a disguise.
At any rate Sister Whatever concluded that I was dumb, and she informed my parents of this at the parent-teacher conference. I can almost hear my mother saying, “But sister, I know that he can read and write already. He does both all the time at home.”
It does not look familiar, but it is a 1954 Ford.
This episode occurred in 1954. It was perhaps the only bad thing that happened that year. My dad must have gotten a promotion because he bought a blue and white Ford. We had our own car!
From KC KS to PV.
The other big news in 1954 was that the hapless Philadelphia Athletics were moving to Kansas City. We were going to be a major league city!
My travails at St. Peter’s school were short-lived. Early in 1955, while I was still in first grade, we moved south to Prairie Village. For the rest of the year I attended (or at least was enrolled at) Queen of the Holy Rosary School. My teacher was Sister Mildred, and she taught her students to read and write, not to extract nonexistent letters from a cardboard box.
Note: in my day problem students were not diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. Instead they were considered “dumb” or “bad”.
