Zelda

Zelda was a beautiful redheaded southern debutante when F. Scott Fitzgerald met her in the waning days of World War One. He was a soldier from Minnesota stationed near her Alabama hometown, wondering if he would be sent to France and join the fight before it was over. Zelda loved flirting with all the new boys who were training nearby, they all had possibilities.

After some heavy flirtations, Zelda rebuffed Scott because he hadn’t “sufficient prospects.” As the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge, she’d been raised with some measure of status and privilege, in a small town sort of way. A Princeton dropout with good genes and no money wouldn’t give her that life. She sent Fitzgerald away.

Scott Fitzgerald didn’t go to France, at least not then, the war ended too soon. He retreated into his literary dream world, creating, revising, reliving his hopes and dreams. The final fruits of that struggle would be This Side of Paradise. It was a best-selling sensation. Zelda married Scott and they became the darlings of the post-war era that Scott Fitzgerald himself dubbed “the Jazz Age.”

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald took Manhattan by storm. Her face was the cover girl image of the “flapper,” wife of the handsome, glamorous. best-selling author. They flaunted Prohibition, starring at all the best  speakeasies, famously dancing on the top of a limousine while cruising down Fifth Avenue. He wrote about it all and his tales filled the pages of popular magazines like Cosmopolitan and the Saturday Evening Post.

When they tired of New York, Zelda and Scott took their party to Paris. There they were, the stars of of the literary set of American and British ex-patriots known as “the Lost Generation.” James Joyce, Ford Maddox Ford, T.S. Eliot, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter and Josephine Baker would gather in the salon of Gertrude Stein and her lover Alice B. Toklas in what must have been electrifying sessions.Scott met the little-known Ernest Hemingway during this period and mentored his early career.The good times carried on to the south of France, where the Fitzgeralds’ “movable feast” made the French Riveria fashionable in summer. It is also where Zelda took a handsome French aviator as her lover, nearly destroying Scott and their marriage. Yet they danced on.

Scott was devastated by her infidelity. He never stopped loving his Zelda and took her back. Ernest Hemingway always felt that Fitzgerald’s blind love of Zelda ruined him, that her insatiable needs drained him of his life force and creativity, forcing Scott to write short stories instead of the higher-concept literature he was capable of.Scott Fitzgerald dealt with his pain in the pages of his typewriter. And the party went on.

Perhaps Zelda Fitzgerald was bipolar, a manic-depressive. In 1927, Zelda decided that motherhood and marriage had also repressed the talents of the the prima  ballerina she felt was buried deep inside her 27-year old body. her manic months of training took its toll physically, emotionally and mentally. Zelda ended up in a Swiss mental institution.

The Fitzgeralds returned to the United States and Zelda to a series of mental institutions. She determined that her own career as a novelist had been stunted and even preempted by her husband mining their life stories for his fiction, including The Great Gatsby. While institutionalized in Maryland, she wrote own unsuccessful novel, Save Me the Waltz in 1932. The overlap in story lines and characters of her prose with his was more than noticeable; Scott was enraged, which did nothing to help their troubled marriage. Scott fictionalized their marital drama and his own version of similar material in his 1934 novel Tender is the Night.

F. Scott Fitzgerald never gave up on their marriage, he never stopped loving Zelda. He wrote more and more short stories for popular magazines to pay for her ongoing mental health care. Scott Fitzgerald would die in Hollywood, where he gone to earn money in the movie industry as a screenwriter. Zelda died six years later in a fire that she’d started inside her final mental home.

Part of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald’s legacy is based upon her high-profile lifestyle, her embodiment of the Roaring Twenties flapper, her artistic aspirations. Literary history will always remember her  inspiration as the beautiful muse of one of the Twentieth Century’s greatest authors, my personal favorite.

Yosemite

             How does one begin to tell of the wonders etched in the famed granite faces of the fair Yosemite? The smell of the pines, firs and sequoia? The bird songs floating in rarefied mountain air? The taste of the freshest water on earth shimmering over mossy stones before plunging hundreds of feet into deep emerald chasms?

What of Half Dome, El Capitan, the Three Graces, Vernal, Nevada and Bridalveil Falls? The breath-taking views from Wawona Tunnel, Sentinel Dome or the crest of the mighty Half Dome itself? Perhaps we could should see it through a child’s eyes, through my son’s and a reflection upon my own memories of this wondrous Eden.

My sons first viewed Yosemite in the summer of 1997, on a visit to my home state from Northern Virginia where we then resided. They  were astounded. My elder boy Alex, then eight, was captivated not only by the sights, sounds and smells of the park, but by the words of a park ranger. “To understand Yosemite, ” he said, “you must see it in all four seasons.” When we discussed moving to California later that year, Alex quickly recalled that message: “Dad. if I’m moving to California, promise me you’ll show me Yosemite in all four seasons.” The promise was given, and that promise was fulfilled to the ever-lasting joy of Alex, his younger brother J.D. and myself.

The many natural wonders of Yosemite were a gift to me from my parents who dragged their brood of five kids to Yosemite every summer to camp in the “incomparable valley.” My siblings and I fell in love with the Yosemite,and we shared that pleasure with others, returning again and again.

But for all the natural beauty of fair Yosemite, I still miss one man-made wonder that no longer plays out on warm summer summer nights in Yosemite Valley., the Firefall:

The Firefall depended on the juxtaposition of Glacier Point looming atop a sheer 3200 foot cliff above the valley. Wood was foraged in the 7000 foot-plus high country during the day to fuel a pyre built on the very edge of that cliff which would burn to red-hot coals by dusk. Above and below, at Camp Curry, fireside programs on nature, history and lore would be carried on to the delight of visitors. As the skies darkened—shortly after nine PM in mid-summer–two lone men, one above and one below, stepped to the fore. Old man Curry dubbed these men his “stentors” since he selected them for their loud, sonorous vocal abilities. 

The man below would begin a call up the 3200-foot distance: “Hello, Glacier!”

The reply from above, “Hello, Camp Curry!”

“Is the fire ready?” The upper bonfire was now reduced to red-hot embers.

“The fire is ready!”

“Then let the fire fall!” came the command at last. At Glacier Point, a man would then begin to slowly and steadily rake the embers forward over the sheer cliff.  From below, the cliff appeared starkly black silhouetted against a navy blue sky sprayed with pinpoints of stars. Suddenly, a bright red spark appeared at the apex of the silhouette, spilling downward, cascading like a waterfall, or a cauldron of red-hot molten steel. The overall shape mimicked the famously beautiful proportions of the upper fall of Yosemite Falls. The Firefall poured down, and the collective audience from Curry, Camp 12’s amphitheater, the Ahwahnee Hotel and trampled beaches and meadows throughout the eastern end of the Valley held their collective breaths. It was beautiful, “A blizzard of tumbling fireflies” one man said.  It couldn’t have been more spectacular. It was over in only a few glorious minutes. By the clear light of day, one could see the mark down the cliff’s upper third and the diagonal ledge the stopped its flow every night. It was as if the circus were over. Lord, it was magnificent.

~ excerpt from my novel  “Late Boomers”

Xanadu

“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery“

                                                        ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1797)

          

Paradise, Utopia, Shangri-La, Xanadu…synonyms for heaven-on-earth fantastical destinations that evoke beauty, peace, tranquility and happiness. These are dreamy visions of perfection we have all come to know through famous literary and cinematic interpretations.

Paradise itself is the original image of a perfect place. Paradise is, perhaps, a concept or state-of-mind, its roots are found in Genesis representing the perfection of  the Garden of Eden. The original concept was one of pristine nature that was despoiled by the sins of human inhabitants. Paradise may have been lost, but it has been eternally sought-after since.

Utopia is similarly conceived, dating from the text of the same name by Sir Thomas More (England, 1516) which described a perfect society in a contained environment, a mythical island in the Atlantic Ocean. There have been many attempted replications here on Earth in the the form of idealized egalitarian communities, usually centered on a particular shared religious doctrine. Alas, the success of these Utopian communities have been fleeting at best.

Shangri-La evokes a mountain paradise where people not only live in perfect harmony, but they don’t seem to grow old. This is a purely literary creation of English author James Hilton in his novel Lost Horizon (1933) and recreated beautifully on film  in 1937. Were he alive today, I am certain the author would disavow the horrendous remake of 1973.

Shangri-La is described as an isolated valley in Tibet that is termed idyllic because it is cut-off from the outside world. When President Franklin Roosevelt established his presidential retreat in 1942, he named it after James Hilton’s vision of paradise. President Eisenhower would later rename FDR’s Shangri-La the more American-sounding Camp David, the site for President Carter’s greatest triumph.

Xanadu was a real place, not a religious metaphor for human innocence nor a democratic egalitarian ideal. Xanadu was the cool mountain retreat where the most powerful man in the 13th century world built his summer palace. Kublai Khan, the grandson of the fierce world-conqueror Genghis Khan, had his Xanadu built around 1256, and hosted Marco Polo there approximately twenty years later. It was an imperial paradise created for the incredibly wealthy ruler of Yuan dynasty China. Marco Polo’s account of his visit inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge five hundred years later; in turn, Coleridge’s poem resonates in English classrooms today, more than two centuries after he penned it.

Alas, Hollywood has muddied the history here, too. Film buffs recognize CharlesFoster Kane’s “Xanadu” as the dark and gloomy stand-in for William Randolph Hearst’s luxurious San Simeon castle in Citizen Kane (1941).  

Worse yet, is the 1980 musical film featuring Olivia Newton-John that was a box-office disaster while the soundtrack was a hit.

Perhaps the closest we can come to paradise on earth is the gorgeous Yosemite Valley

;

or if we seek a man-made paradise we could take a trip to the very real Hearst Castle.

But as the temperatures drop, and the cold winds blow, our Xanadu just might be a humble abode with a blazing fire and the comforting company of the family and  friends who we love and cherish.

Winnie the Welder

Picture Rosie the Riveter: a tough woman doing a “man’s job” in the World War Two shipyards, leading the victory effort on the home front. Winnie was Rosie’s best friend, only she was a welder. My mother was one of those.

I first learned of my mother’s blue collar talents when she found me playing with her old welder’s mask in the garage. I’m the youngest of five, so my mother had her hands pretty full as a a stay-at-home mom. She opened my eyes to equity of workplace equality. The idea of my mother working such a tough job seemed odd at first, but then only a little and not for very long. Mom was what we used to call a “doer.” She loved a challenge and she got things done. If her country needed her (and she certainly needed the money), her response was always “Can do!” It made perfect sense, even to her six-year old son.

They say the ones that do the most, talk the least. Mom didn’t talk much about her years in the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, California. You’d think she would have, since that’s what got her out to California in the first place. It wasn’t a secret, it just didn’t come up too often.

One roundabout way was her affiliation with Kaiser hospitals. Kaiser was essentially the first HMO in the USA. Founded for health and wellness care to keep shipyard workers healthy and working to win World War Two, my mother loved her Kaiser healthcare. I was even born in a Kaiser hospital in San Francisco. Years later, when my mother moved to live with me in Northern Virginia, she only agreed to move because Kaiser had medical facilities in the National Capital Area. They tried to take her Kaiser card away and assign her a new local number, but she  fought the medical bureaucracy–and won. Her Kaiser number, which was almost all zeroes, was her trophy from those years in the shipyards.

There is a national monument in Richmond, California, dedicated to all the Rosies and Winnies who served their country in its time of need. I remember the great pride my mother demonstrated when she read about the plans for that tribute in the Washington Post. We talked about visiting the site together when those plans came to fruition, but my mother died before the monument was dedicated. I’ve been there, more than once. I’ve walked along the empty docks, perused the memorabilia, stood in her very footsteps; only time will tell if I ever manage to fill them.

Vineyards

 

If you think I mean Martha’s Vineyard, then you’re an East Coaster. I’ve been to “The Vineyard” off of Cape Cod a few times, and enjoyed it tremendously. Martha’s Vineyard is a beautiful blend of pastoral seascapes with quaint villages like Oak Bluffs and Edgartown.

 

 

During the summer, the island is crowded with thousands of people escaping one jam-packed venue for another; but one five-minute hop on the “On-Time Ferry” and you’re on sparsely populated Chappaquiddick Island, leaving most of the tourists behind.

 

 

 

If you’re in Northern California, vineyards mean Wine Country. For me, that evokes the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma counties turning red and mustard-colored in the warm afternoons and chill nights of November. These are our “Fall Colors,” the time that my brood repairs to the lovely Alexander Valley for our traditional California Thanksgiving.

 

 

Driving past innumerable acres of vineyards stretching between the mountain ranges framing the vine-laden fields is a welcoming sight that recalls our many years of family escapes. I can recall our first balloon ride, the night we slept in a boxcar turned hotel room, or the high-end Serengeti experience of Safari West where we slept within earshot of African beasts. Fine dining, exquisite vintages, lovely views and charming venues await at every turn.

 

 

 

The essential core of my family’s November trips to Wine Country is Thanksgiving at my sister’s home on a hillside over-looking the quiet town of Cloverdale and (of course) distant vineyards. These extended family feasts run upwards of twenty guests devouring a veritable cornucopia of seasonal foods, ranging from the classic stuffed turkey to the traditional bourbon pumpkin cheesecake.

 

 

This year we had an extra special reason to give thanks. Our hostess, my sister Sher, was celebrating her on-going triumph over breast cancer. Post-surgical and midway through chemotherapy, she’s doing great (thank you very much). I decided to surprise her by matching my haircut to her new chemo hairdo. We never looked so much alike.

 

 

So pass the chipotle whipped sweet potatoes and give me a second helping of chorizo cornbread stuffing. Let’s all enjoy the fruits of the vineyards. We all have so much to be thankful for this year and all the years yet to come.

 

United We Stood

 

Fifty years ago, Americans stood as one to mourn the tragic passing of President Kennedy. News coverage was wall-to-wall in an era when there were only three national television networks. From midday on Friday the 22^nd through Monday the 25^th, the nation collectively mourned. Together. In a time of extreme sadness, we stood united as one people.

 

At the time, comparisons were frequently made with the passing of Abraham Lincoln 98 years before Kennedy. More contemporary parallels were drawn with the funeral observances of President Franklin Roosevelt who had died suddenly, yet peaceably, eighteen years before Kennedy. Unlike JFK’s brief tenure, FDR had been president for more than twelve years, the longest of any president. He had guided Americans through times of the Great Depression and to the brink of total victory in the greatest of all world wars.

 

Imagine, if you will, the great shock I experienced some years later upon reading that not all Americans mourned the passing of President Roosevelt. I happened upon the memoir of one author who recalled that, as a little girl, she was awakened the evening of FDR’s passing by the sounds of wild revelry in her back yard. Her very Republican parents were hosting a party to celebrate Roosevelt’s passing, symbolically dancing on the president’s grave.

 

There are happier examples of national unity: the national war effort during World War Two, VE Day (end of the war in Europe), VJ Day (victory over Japan), the first man walking on the moon, and…? Less universal celebrations can be tied to sports victories, political triumphs and even prize awards. But it is tragedy that unites Americans like nothing else.  

 

Natural disasters often elicit national empathy and massive relief efforts (Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, Loma Prieta Earthquake). Violent tragedies can create a great upwelling of national sympathy (Challenger explosion, Boston Marathon), but many acts of violence stimulate political backlash from gun nuts with deep pockets (Columbine, Sandy Hook Elementary). The high-water mark of tragedy-cum-unity is clearly 9/11.

Perfect and universal national unity may be too much to ask for with the current state of political polarity. There is something ironic when none other than Rodney King is so frequently quoted in juxtaposition to the current state of affairs: “Can’t we all just get along?” We need to stand together, we really need to.

Texas Schoolbook Depository

      I was only eight, trying to make sense of how the Texas schools related to the killing of the president. My third grade class had been sent home from school. I have no idea if my mother knew I was coming home. Since it was only a two-block walk, I found out soon enough.

     All the curtains were drawn, my mother was in her favorite chair, pulled up close to the television, a box of Kleenex in her lap, used tissues surrounding her. She explained, but I was still confused, “But Mom–you voted for Nixon…”

   “You just don’t understand!” I understood the president was dead, I would come to understand that Lee Harvey Oswald worked in the Texas Schoolbook Depository, a high-rise warehouse in downtown Dallas with a sharpshooter’s view of President Kennedy‘s motorcade. I would, over the next three days, find out a great deal more about the world.

     As was my habit, I ended up two doors down the street at my friend Bobby’s house. Their television was tuned into the wall-to-wall coverage as well. After the umpteenth reference to to President Kennedy as the first and only Catholic president,” I asked Bobby’s mom to help me understand the problem.

     “But Ellie, why is it such a big deal that he was Catholic? Everybody’s Catholic but my family…” She roared, perhaps the first and only time time she would laugh that weekend. I didn’t understand what was so funny.

     My housing tract was full of World War II veterans and their little baby boomer broods. German-American  Catholics had founded the little community that became South San Francisco. As Irish and Italian Americans raised their standard of living, many moved out of the city to the nearest suburb (mine) that already had Catholic churches and communities. Hispanic families soon swelled the neighborhoods, likely for the same or similar reasoning.

     My neighborhood was so Catholic, that one day almost my entire second grade class was missing. All five classes of seven year-olds had been combined into one group of five kids for the day: the two Jewish kids, two Protestants and me. It was First Communion day at St. Veronica’s and the rest of the 150 or so second graders were at mass. So yeah, to me, the world was overwhelmingly Catholic.

     My family made one of their intermittent forays to the First Baptist Church in San Francisco that weekend. It was important to pray for our country that horrible weekend. As I waited for my parents and older siblings to finish readying for church, I sat in front of the TV again. The newsfeed was coming in from the garage of the Dallas police station.

     “Oswald is going to be on TV!” I shouted, but no one came. Then, live on television, I saw the assassin get murdered. The on-camera death of the lone gunman from the Texas School Book Depository would forever be featured in perhaps the most infamous live moment in TV history. A handcuffed prisoner, surrounded by law enforcement officers in the bowels of their very own building, killed on my own television set.

     Sometimes, the adult world just doesn’t make any sense at all.

Cousin Stewart

The Golden Boy

Cousin is a flexible term. Going back to Shakespeare, it could mean “close friend” or a generic relative of most any kind. Even if you limit the term to blood or in-law relations, I still have lots of cousins. If my father hadn’t been an only child, my large family would really be out of control.

I even went to school from K to 12 with two female cousins, one a year older, the other a year younger. Their mother was my mother’s kid sister. Those girls had a family of first cousins on the other side of the golf course, the four children of their father’s kid brother. Stewart, the second of those four; became my favorite cousin, hands down. Since he was a cousin-of-my-cousin, he wasn’t a blood relative at all. But there was no way to explain our relationship other than “cousin,” so there it was. 

He was three years older than I, a very quiet boy. My first memory of Stewart was coming over to his house when I was about six, he would have nine. Painfully shy, the lanky boy didn’t talk to me at all. He did get out his six-foot tall unicycle and rode up and down the hilly neighborhood like the most agile of circus acrobats. He may not have been big on conversation, but Stewart sure did know how to make a lasting impression.

When I was in junior high, my parents separated for the umpteenth time before an eventual divorce. My mother decided that she needed to start becoming a regular at church again. As her youngest child, she took no excuses from me and I soon found myself spending time at the First Baptist Church. I knew no one there except Stewart and his two younger sisters. He still didn’t talk a whole lot, but the taciturn teen made it clear I was family and he took me under his wing. We became instantly close, as if we’d been hanging out since that day with his unicycle years before.

Stewart’s family took the moralistic tenets of the Baptist church seriously: No smoking, no drinking, no dancing. My family was a bit more flexible. I never could stand cigarette smoke, but I loved to dance and I’ve been known to liken champagne to mother’s milk. Stewart became what we now would call my “designated driver.”

Goofing with his sisters

 

Cousin Stewart never wanted to go to college. He worked for Sears and later in an industrial gold mine near Fairbanks, Alaska. In the spring, he would drive a truck from San Francisco up to Canada and follow the Al-Can Highway all the way to Fairbanks. When the ground thawed, they would resume digging for gold. When the ground froze again in the fall, Stewart would return to California.

My cousin would come up to visit me at college for a weekend of partying during those long winter breaks. I would party, he would just hang close. On his first trip to see me, I had prepared my female friends who’d become enamored of his photos. “Stewart is a good-looking kid, kinda like the actor Jan-Michael Vincent. Only taller. But he doesn’t drink and he won’t dance,” I warned them. Of course, a major part of the agenda that weekend was a college dance.

Everything during his visit went just about as expected. Stewart and I had a good time together, but he was mostly a handsome fly-on-the-wall during the bacchanalian events. Then came the Saturday night dance. While I was on the dance floor, my friend Kira grabbed me and pulled me close. 

 

“Hey! I thought your cute cousin didn’t dance?” There was Stewart, dancing like a stiff cracker with my friend Mary. “So..?” She asked.

 

“Well, I guess he does now. Maybe you should just ask him to dance, then?” 

She did. Stewart’s reply? “Sorry, I don’t dance.”  

 

Kira slapped me right across the face, hard, and stalked off.

 

“Stewart, what the hell?” I whined. “Why’d you turn her down?”

 

“You know I don’t dance,” he said.

 

“But you did, with Mary.”

 

“I didn’t have a choice, she dragged me out there.” That didn’t exactly take the sting out of my cheek.

 

I have lots of stories about my enigmatic, contradictory cousin. Mostly about skiing–water skiing, that is. His fluid athleticism intimidated me too much to invest in a snow ski trip when I knew I would end up skiing by myself anyway. Stewart would return to California permanently, got married and had two daughters. My cousin bought back his father’s old ski boat, a wood-hulled gem that his dad built with his brother (my uncle Bob). My squeaky-clean tea-totaling cousin rechristened the boat “My Vice.” As far as anyone could tell, it was the only vice he ever indulged.

With his wife and one of his daughters

After I moved back to California in ’97, I was fortunate enough to spend time with Stewart and his family water skiing. Whether it was a long summer day on Turlock Lake or the week-long water-ski orgy during our four-family houseboat excursion on Lake Shasta, skiing with Stewart was something special. His boat was beautiful,and he certainly was a generous and patient teacher and host. But the best part of any ski day was at the end, when Stewart got in the water. Considerate to a fault, he always waited for his guests to exhaust themselves first before allowing himself a turn behind the boat.

 

When Stewart skied–on two skis, one or even none–he was a vision to behold. Calm, strong, graceful, acrobatic, I have never seen a more beautiful skier cut through the water, not even professionals. Our mutual cousin Jackie said he was the most gorgeous man alive when he was barefoot-skiing. She dreamed of those afternoons watching our cousin glide over the boat’s wake like a bird on the wing. We believed he could walk on water if he’d cared to. Diligent, humble, kind, giving and quietly religious, he was the perfect embodiment of what a man should be. 

But no man is perfect.

Our cousin Jackie called me up one day with the most incredible of news: cousin Stewart, our golden boy, was dead. A suicide. 

Stewart at 52

 

Reunions

 

The mere mention of the word “reunion” sends many people running for cover. Of course, some people love them, as I often do. Naturally, it depends upon the kind of reunion that’s up for discussion: family, school, neighbors or the old gang from that job you had ten years ago. Those last two usually revolve around some social opportunity like a wedding or a funeral.

 

 

 

Some reunions I skip right off the top (they have to sound like fun), some are conflicts on my schedule, or the effort is  just too much to make them worthwhile (ROI analysis). If the event has passed the screening process and I can make it happen (and I want to make it happen), I go. I’d be hard- pressed to think of any reunion I attended and regretted. These events are the epitome of the old adage: It is what you make it out to be.”  But a word to the wise: don’t subject your spouse to these more often than once, if you want to stay married that is.

The family reunion I attended recently was centered on my aunt’s 90^th. The actual reconnecting with her and my cousins was just as warm and affirming as I’d hoped. The pleasant surprise was how much fun and interesting it was to meet their relations from the other side of their family, those who are unrelated to me. The common platform that brought us together was enough to break the ice and more. Soon we were sharing stories and perspectives, feeding off of one another’s enthusiasm. It was great fun.

 

 

The classic vision of a reunion is school-related. Some dread these like the plague: “I didn’t like those people when I was in school,” “I’m afraid my ex will be there,” or the ever-popular “I feel too fat.” My favorite is “Who else is going?” Why don’t you go and find out? Heavens knows? It could be as whacky as that classic comedy, Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion (click on the link to refresh your memory).

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYPnUrREbRg

With my fraternity Little Sister Susie and my roommate Kevin

 

Just last month was a reunion at my college. University of the Pacific no longer has a football team (sadly), so they don’t focus on a football game. They can get creative. For years this meant holding the event in June, but I (for one) complained that it was too darned hot for outdoor activities in Stockton that time of year. Add to the above list of complaints: “I don’t look my best bathed in sweat.” And don’t we all want to look our best at a reunion?

With two of my Theta sorority favorites, another Susie and Luann

 

 

Recently, my college reunions returned to October. Hooray! Of course, it now conflicts with other reunions as October is just that perfect time of year for such things. This year shouldn’t have been a conflict with my high school’s reunion. However, the university rotates events to focus on selected fraternities and sororities. This year, they featured my frat and the sorority where I worked in food service (Yes, I was a “hasher” at the Theta house). I love my frat brothers and my Theta girls.

 

Was it fun? In the words of my best bud Mike, “I wish I could’ve been there.” The pleasure I get at a reunion is not so much “reliving old times,” it is reinvigorating the positive connections with people whose friendship and company I enjoyed (and still do). There were satisfying connections with old friends, catching up on newer times.

But what of the high school reunion that I blew off? I followed up with another friend and old neighbor John, who did attend. Even though we were blended with the rival high school surprising number of my old high school classmates had attended. Hearing some of the names made me smile and think, “”I wish I could’ve been there.”

Quince

One summer day, when I was a college, I spent some time working on my father’s place in near Sebastopol in Sonoma County. One particular afternoon, I was helping him dig a new septic line. It was pretty hot, and I worn out, and pretty darn hungry.

“Lunch?” My dad said,  “You want lunch already?” It was pushing 1:00 mind you. Yes I wanted lunch. I needed fuel.

“I’m a growing boy, Dad. I need something for energy, even if its just an apple. .”

My father scowled. This was a very touchy subject.  After my father left my mother, he and his new wife had settled on this five-acre apple farm. My father didn’t feel he had to pay alimony or child support, so he didn’t. “I don’t have a dime, judge. Everything I own is in apples,” he’d claim.

So one day, he and wife #2 showed up at the home he’d abandoned. They presented fifteen year-old me with a dozen or so boxes of Gravenstein apples. “You can make apple sauce, apple pie, apple butter…you won’t go hungry,” my stepmonster cackled.

Dad never paid up. My mother arranged for me to get free lunches at school, and I learned the benefits of hanging around my friends’ houses around dinner time to score a meal.

Three years later, I’d been coaxed into augmenting my summer income by helping my father with some projects. “Free room and board”, he promised. “And I’ll pay you what you’re worth.” I thought it might be a chance to mend fences with my father.

After five hours of manual labor in the hot August sun, lunch seemed to be a reasonable request.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Dad said. He walked over to a nearby tree and plucked a rather strange-looking fruit. He tossed it to me, along with a pocketknife.

“What’s this?” I said.

“The fruit of the quince,” he replied. “You never heard of it, college boy? It’s in a lot of the food you eat every day. Have a bite.”

Yes, I was a city boy, a suburban kid. I’d done a lot of hiking and camping in my day, I even lived on a farm one summer. But there was still a lot I didn’t know about the more agrarian side of life. Of course, you’d think that I’d learned to be wary of my father’s odd sense of humor by then, too.

I sliced a wedge and took a big bite. Sour, bitter and tart only begin to describe the explosion of horrid tastes that seared my mouth. Major food ingredient? Well, yeah, technically. Quinces are a source of pectin, an essential element in the processing of jams and jellies.They are not fit to be eaten raw and unripe by anybody. I bent over our newly-dug ditch and retched.

“Lunchtime!” my stepmonster yelled.

“Well, c’mon,” Dad said. “Hurry up…you said you were hungry.”

The pretty flower of the quince tree