A Lawrence Block Memory

Yesterday, on Facebook, I posted a little thing about writer Lawrence Block, a post prompted by the recent appearance on my book-nerd calendar of some information about his novel Eight Million Ways to Die (see above, see below). I mentioned in the post that I'd seen Block at a signing in Cleveland, had gotten him to sign a bunch of books.

Later in the day a former student "liked" that post (no comment from him), but seeing his name enlarged my memory. I had taken him and a small group of 8th grade students to see Block that evening! But when?

I was not keeping a regular journal before 1997, but I remembered just a little while ago today that I had kept track of school activities I'd done--a little annual report I submitted to my building principal. And I am going to look right now to see if I can find it ...

PAUSE WHILE I LOOK FOR IT

Found it! (After a five-minutes' search.)

And I discover I was right. That student was among the youngsters I took. (I think.)

The trip was on June 24, 1995 (was school even in session?)--and the event was at the Barnes & Noble store up near Cleveland. I took three kids (I see on my sheet): No names, though. (Grrrrr.)

I see that earlier that month (June 1995) Block had published the latest in his series about Bernie Rhodenbarr--The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart. So ... It was not one of his Matt Scudder novels (books I really loved, by the way).

And I remember something now that makes me blush. In the Q&A after his reading and presentation, I asked with great pomp how he felt about the making of the film Bank Shot (1974) based on his book. (I must have seen the film recently on TV.)

He looked at me as if I were ... challenged.

"Bank Shot," he said, "was based on the book by Donald Westlake."

Oops. Heh, heh.

My students looked at me, watched me diminish before their sight. (Wow, Dr. Dyer does not know everything!)

That night, I had brought with me a pile of Block books, but before the signing, he announced that he would sign only three (or was it five?) by any one person. Jerk.

So ... I distributed the books among my three students, who did the Dirty Work for me. And now I, though somewhat diminished (feeling like a Blockhead), have a pile of signed Blocks.

I have to say that even before I embarrassed myself that day, I was not all that crazy about his presentation. He seemed ... dismissive of questions, annoyed that he had to be there, impatient. Who knows?

But an interesting coda to all of this: Joyce and I started selling our library (well, much of it) on ABE.com a couple of years ago. All the Block books, signed and otherwise are for sale.

And over the past two years we've been in business, we've not sold a single one of his.

I can't say whether I'm pleased or annoyed by that.

PS: Haven't sold any of our Donald Westlakes, either!

Busy Day, Busy Day ...

When I was a kid, there was a Jell-O commercial on TV, a cartoon about a frazzled stay-at-home Mom who, while the jingle went "Busy day, busy day, busy, busy busy day," prepared Jell-O for her family to reduce the frazzle a little.

Just looked on YouTube. Found the commercial (link to it), and I learned a few things: the rhythm was a little different, the tempo was slower than I recall, Mom's on a treadmill, and the commercial (from 1956) was for Jell-O instant pudding--not for, you know, Jell-O. And the, uh, production values of commercials have improved--a tad--since 1956. (I found the photo at the top of this page after I watched the YouTube video.)

Anyway, I was thinking about that old commercial today because Joyce and I have been busier than usual the past week or so.

There was that trip to Chambersburg, PA, last week--and to see family in western Mass. And the long drives there and back.

And when we got home, some old friends wanted to meet up. On Thursday night we went to Chagrin Falls to have dinner with Kim and John Mlinek. John was among the first seventh graders I worked with when I began teaching at the old Aurora Middle School in the fall of 1966. He was in the first play I directed there (spring 1967)--and some others--and returned thirty years later to do a cameo in the final play I did at Harmon Middle School in the spring of 1996. Theater became a big part of his life--high school, college (he played Hamlet in Kent State's production), Macbeth in a Shakespeare-in-the-park in Columbus, OH), and beyond. He's directed countless shows and recently won an acting award for the lead role in The Lion in Winter in Cincinnati.

His wife, Kim, works in video production--working NFL and NHL and MLB games (and many others); she was in Cleveland to do the "away feed" for the Tribe v. Baltimore. A talented couple.

John has been great about staying in touch with us over the years (decades!). And we love the times we get to see them. Hard to believe that that kid I knew at age 12 is now in his early 60s!

And then on Friday morning Joyce and I had coffee with another old friend, this one from my high school and college days. Jim Vincent lived (and lives) in Garrettsville, Ohio, where we was a student of my mom's at James A. Garfield HS. He went to Hiram College (where he was a year ahead of me), and we have stayed in touch over the decades for all kinds of reasons.

Back in the day, we played basketball against each other, and I played, as well, against his brother Harry--a terrific athlete. (Yes, better than I.) One grand summer Harry and I were on the same baseball team, and I can still see him, sprinting around the bases at a speed I could only imagine ...

Jim taught most of his career at Robert Morris in Pittsburgh (though he kept--and keeps--his family home in G'ville) and now globetrots. Turkey, Cyprus, Ireland (his Love). He'll be heading back to Cyprus soon to teach in the fall ... Fortunate students, his.

He is wildly funny and inventive, and seeing him is always a jolt of electricity in our lives.

Oh, and last night (Sunday) our son, daughter-in-law, and two amazing grandsons met us for pizza at the local Zeppe's. Then to Cold Stone, the nearby ice cream shop. Then back here. I had a ball.

All of this, of course, has worn me out. I spend most of my days in Dull Routine, dreading the hour (about 2 o'clock) when I must head out to the health club. (The clock starts accelerating around noon.)

And so ... the visits, the trips ... a demand on My Old Self.

But a demand as precious as sunlight, as oxygen itself. For love, you know, is sunlight, is oxygen.

Sunday Sundries, 156

1. AOTW: The Impatient Dude who tailgated me through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park last night (I was doing 39 in a 35; he wanted ... more). Right on top of me. Lights flashing. When I finally turned off to go to Szalay's Market, he accelerated like someone in a Fast and Furious movie (he was both), letting me know what a Wuss I am, letting me know he was fully qualified for the AOTW award. And so he was ...

2. It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted one of these "Sundries." We've been on the road ... seeing some things ... visiting family ... back home now.

3. Here's a suggestion for all you drivers who like fast-food drive-thrus. You're on the highway, going to turn right into the fast-food place; ahead of you, you see a car that got there before you, waiting to turn left from the highway. Let 'em go first. The other day, we were in the left-turn situation, and two righties cruised right on in and got in the drive-thru line, where they ordered enough food to feed all the warriors at Waterloo.

4. I finished several books since last I posted here ...

     - The first was John Irving's A Son of the Circus (1994), one of my read-a-bit-in-bed-each-night novels. I think I started this book on a earlier occasion but couldn't finish it. And I took a Good Long While finishing it this time too (from March 7 - August 29!). Not only does it have many pages (633), but the pages are big (the font isn't), and the story just didn't really grab me most of the time. I have long been a HUGE Irving fan, beginning with The World According to Garp. I've read everything. Except this one. And now I have. But I didn't really like it all that much. Takes place (mostly) in India; a cop; a movie-maker; a doctor; some twins; a murder; a circus ... couldn't really get caught up in it. But hacked my way through the undergrowth nonetheless.

   
     The Epilogue takes place in Toronto (where a principal character has gone). And then ... here's this on p. 601-02: "It greatly upset him to read about the Heritage Front--those neo-Nazi louts, that white supremacist scum. Since there were antihate laws in Canada, Dr. Daruwalla wondered why groups like the Heritage Front were allowed to foment so much racist hatred."

Rings vaguely relevant, eh?

     - I also finished an early novel by Elizabeth Strout, whose work I'm really enjoying. I'd not read anything by her until she won a Pulitzer Prize (Olive Kitteredge, 2009). So I started in on them ... got hooked. The one I finished last week was Abide with Me, her second novel. Like some of her others, this one takes place in a small town in Maine. It involves a minister, Tyler Caskey, who has a couple of daughters (one is a handful), and is a recent widower. We see him working with his sometimes-troublesome congregation, his troubled little girl, his housekeeper, the small-town choreography.

Strout is an absolute adept with multiple points-of-view, shifting here and there, letting us know what a variety of people think, feel, say. Loved the book. Have started her earlier one, Amy and Isabelle, which I'll post about next week.

     - Finally, I've been reading the William Faulkner novels I've never managed to get around to. (Shame on me--and thanks, Library of America, for collecting them all!) Last week it was his 1935 work, Pylon, which deals with one of Faulkner's loves: aviation. (He had earned a pilot's license in 1933, owned a plane for a bit, participated in air shows.) And air shows are the key in this novel about a group of itinerant fliers and aerial performers--and a local journalist. Things don't go well the few days we are with them--crashes, deaths. And the enormous, painful irony is this: His novel appeared in March 1935; in November that same year his beloved brother Dean died in a crash of William Faulkner's plane. (He'd also learned to fly.)


5. This week we finished the latest available (Netflix) season of the Welsh cop drama Hinterland, which (as seems to be a popular thing these days) involves a dark, depressed detective who has many Personal Issues as well as grisly crimes to deal with. This recent series dealt (among other things) with an old child-abuse case in a children's home ... were the police incriminated?

6. Final Word--a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary--a word that fits more and more these days ...

unlustiness, n.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: unlusty adj., -ness suffix.

Etymology: < unlusty adj. + -ness suffix, after lustiness n.

1. Lack of enthusiasm or willingness; laziness; disinclination.

?a1425   tr. Catherine of Siena Orcherd of Syon (Harl.) (1966) 400 (MED)   The þridde chapitil is..of þe inperfeccioun of hem þat ben slowȝ or vnlusty in religioun..& of þe remedy how þei schulen come out of þat vnlustynes.

c1450   Bk. Gostlye Grace (1979) 441 (MED)   We maye behalde þe slewth ande vnlustynes of owre herte aȝenste God.

1506   tr. Thordynary of Crysten Men (new ed.) iv. xxx. sig. JJiv   By vnlustynes in dyffaylynge wtout desyre to do well.

1583   A. Golding tr. J. Calvin Serm. on Deuteronomie x. 54   Wee see what vnlustinesse is in vs when God commaundith vs any thing.

1613   W. Webster Plaine Mans Pilgrimage iv. 111   They which feele their coldnesse & vnlustinesse, doe craue the spirit of feruentnesse & earnestnesse.

(Hide quotations)

2. Lack of health, strength, or energy; listlessness; physical weakness or debility.

1486   Bk. St. Albans sig. b viv   A medecyne that an hawke shall not lie in mew for vnlustynese.

1547   A. Borde Breuiary of Helthe xlix. 15   [Gaping] doth come of unlustines or els for lake of slepe.

1596   P. Barrough Method of Phisick (ed. 3) viii. 470   When..the wearinesse or the vnlustinesse of the sinewes is to bee asswaged.

1620   T. Venner Via Recta Introd. 4   Vnlustinesse of the limmes.

1677   G. Miege New Dict. French & Eng. ii. sig. Hhh2v/3   Unlustiness, debilité, foiblesse.

It's Mom's 98th Birthday ...

Mom's hs yearbook pic.
Thomas Jefferson HS
Richmond, VA, 1936

Today is my mother's 98th birthday. She was born in 1919. Woodrow Wilson was President. World War I had just ended (her uncle Bill was a soldier).  She married my father on October 12, 1939. She bore three sons: Richard (1941), Daniel (1944), Davis (1948). I was born while Dad was in Europe with the U. S. Army (World War II).

I have posted here on her birthday for the past few years, and I don't really want to repeat myself, so here's a link to a post from a couple of years ago. Things have changed a lot for her--and us--the past few years.

Two years ago--hell, last year--she was still in her assisted living place in Lenox, Mass. They loved her there, did all they could to keep her. But Age wins, of course (and entropy), and a couple of months ago she was simply unable to do anything for herself--and so she had to go to the nursing wing of the facility, the place where she'd made my brothers and me promise we would never send her.

But my younger brother, Dave (who lives a couple of hours away and is her principal caretaker), told me that she does not seem upset by the move. Has not complained to him a single time.

And when Joyce and I were there last week, Mom seemed perfectly at peace with her new situation. I'm not sure it's because she's arrived at some understanding; it's due, I think, to her increasing unawareness of what's going on.

Her move has been frustrating for me in one way: While she was in assisted living, I was able to call her several times a week. Not long conversations--she cannot generate much these days. But for five minutes or so, a few times a week, I got to hear her voice. A voice I've known for nearly 73 years now.

But now ... the phone is different. She can't really reach it from her bed. When I was in her room with her this week, I called from my cell; her phone rang; she didn't react at all. So ... unless one of my brothers is there and calls me, I cannot count on hearing her voice. It's a horrible feeling.

She is in a wheelchair now, but the aides at her facility are great about getting her out and about. We found her playing Scrabble one day in a social room down the hall. (Her mother was an ace at that game!)

A great thrill for me last week: She knew who I was. And Joyce. Because of health issues I haven't been able in the last couple of years to hop in the car and drive 550 miles (each way) to see her. And although I still write snail-mail to her twice a week, there's no real connection for me except in my imagination, for she cannot answer those letters. Not anymore. But Joyce and I had a touching conversation with her late in the afternoon before we left. She remembered things. Smiled. Laughed. Touched us as we touched her.

Mom was on email until, oh, a half-dozen years ago or so, but she can no longer do that, either. So my relationship with my mother has gradually evanesced to the point at which it's now mostly on the page--or in my imagination and memory. It's a comfort, sure, to have those memories ... but ... not being able to hear that voice ... that voice that spoke loving words to me before I even knew what a word was ... or love ...

We're Home ... 3

Chambersburg, PA
Aug 30, 2017
photo by Joyce Dyer

Last time I mentioned this statue of the South-facing Union soldier in the center of Chambersburg, PA, which the Confederates burned in 1864. I stole a photo from Google to illustrate the moment, but Joyce reminded me that she'd taken an iPhone photo as we were driving by (I, circumspect driver that I always am, was focused on the road!). Good shot.

Anyway, I mentioned in that post a couple of days ago that the Confederates actually attacked from the west (ha, ha), but more than one friend commented that Art Is Not Always a Xerox of Life and that the South-facing is surely more for aesthetic, symbolic value than for historical accuracy.

Okay. I am chastened ...

As I wrote the other day, we toured the John Brown House in Chambersburg, found (after some doing) the historical marker near the spot where, in 1859, John Brown met with Frederick Douglass and tried (and failed) to convince Douglass to join him in the Harpers Ferry raid.

After all of this, we drove a bit north of town on I-81 and spent the night in a motel before heading out early the next morning to Lee, Mass., near my brothers and mom, some 400 miles to the northeast.

I-81 is a lovely, sometimes mountainous Interstate route, and we've been on it many times (usually a bit farther north), but when I was in my John O'Hara Mania a few years ago, I was on it several times because his hometown of Pottsville, PA, lies just east of I-81 about 100 miles northeast of Chambersburg. And I confess I felt a little palpitation when we drove by an exit that mentioned Pottsville. (But not enough to exit and visit ...)

Once we got to the place where I-81 crosses I-80, we were on Familiar Ground. Since my brothers and parents moved to Mass. decades ago, we have invariably driven to see them on the same way from our home in Hudson, OH: I-80 to I-81 to I-84 to Taconic Parkway to I-90 to Lee, MA, the exit we must take. In later years (in bladder-challenging years) we have opted at times for I-87 over the Taconic (more rest areas), but we always like to go the Taconic on the way home--for several reasons. It's beautiful. There are no trucks. And it has one exit, Bulls Head Road, that has some enormous significance for Joyce, who had relatives who lived in Standfordville, NY (to which Bulls Head leads). She often spent summers there as a little girl, and when we became engaged in the summer of 1969, she said one trip we just had to make was to Stanfordville so I could meet Kathy and Gene.

Gene was a country lawyer; Kathy was a wedding whiz who'd once flourished  in business in NYC (and was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt). Both of them read like manics and smoked like Maniacs. I loved them both immediately. (And they must have offered some sort of approval for me because the wedding plans continued!)

Both Kathy and Gene are gone now, but we have sometimes stopped at the exit, driven into Stanfordville, stared at their old house, visited the cemetery ... remembered ...

We decided to do so this time on our way up to Lee. We just aren't sure how many times--if ever--we'll be doing this drive (health, health, health), so ... another look.

We couldn't find the house for the longest time. The current owners have changed the entrance, have surrounded it with a cedar fence. Nothing much looks the same.

But we found it. Drove a bit up into the driveway so Joyce could hop out and take a quick picture.

Then we stopped in "downtown" Stanfordville (which makes Hiram, Ohio, look downright metropolitan), and Joyce went into the little general store, a place she's known since girlhood. (It's now called Elvin's Market.) The owners are new--but they knew the previous owners (who'd run the place for a half-century) and had stories to tell Joyce. Who absorbed them thoroughly. (As is her wont.)

In the car, she told me that the folks who now own Kathy and Gene's old home are converting it to a B &B. Guess where we'll be staying if we get back up this way?

We're Home ... 2

The Breezewood exit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike has some significance for me. For many years it was a scheduled stop on the 8th Grade Washington Trip sponsored by Harmon Middle School (Aurora, Ohio), where I taught for ... a LONG time. Our buses pulled off at Breezewood, cruised up to the McDonald's parking lot, disgorged the hordes of 8th graders, who promptly consumed mounds of fast food, visited the restrooms, returned to the buses in somewhat different shape. And off to D. C. we went.

I retired from Harmon in January 1997, but ever since then, on our way to D. C. (or, lately, Staunton, VA, to see a production at the American Shakespeare Center), Joyce and I have always stopped at the Breezewood McD's, had a Diet Coke (or worse), and I'd regale her with stories of Years Past when the building was aswarm with 8th graders excited to be Away From Home and on their way to see the Nation's Capital (and to wreak havoc on a motel room).

But to get to that McDonald's, you have to turn left off the I-76 exit ramp and head down into the little town, but we were going another direction this time, so we turned right on US 30 and headed on east toward Chambersburg, PA, where, as I wrote yesterday, we visited some sites related to Abolitionists John Brown and Frederick Douglass, sites important in Joyce's research on Brown.

US 30 (the Lincoln Highway) twists and turns on its eastward leg. My dad, driving us through the Rockies (and/or other mountains), would call these turns crickety-crocks, aping, I'm sure, what one of us little boys had called them. And there are lots of crickety-crocks on US 30--many occasions to slow and marvel.

There is also some ... alarm. In several places are ramps for "runaway trucks"--gravel-"paved" routes heading up slopes designed to accommodate runaway rigs. Here are two concerns:

• All of the ramps we saw had the tracks of wheels in them. Meaning; A runaway truck had visited recently--not a comforting thought.
• Can a runaway really wait until it arrives at one of the ramps? If one is not convenient, must it, oh, roar off a cliff? Or up the backside of the first black Prius it comes to? (Hint: We drive a black Prius.)

Anyway, after the crickety-crocks and the runaway-ramps, we arrived safely in Chambersburg--a mere ten minutes before our scheduled 3 o'clock tour of the John Brown House. Joyce and I joined another couple (both retired); he, we learned, had been an Australian political journalist whose beat was D.C. They loved the nearby mountains. Stayed in them when he retired. And they now travel around looking at historical sites.

As we were walking down to the city square, he pointed out to me the statue of the Union solider, standing, facing the South (the Confederates had burned virtually all of the town, late July 1864). Our Australian companion told us the only problem with the south-facing solider? The Confederates came from the west.

(Not my pic, but you can see the soldier at the far left.)

We're Home ...

I bought a T-shirt a few days ago, a shirt that says this on the front: "I would prefer not to."

Fellow nerds and those who were paying attention in English class (virtually all of you, I'm sure) will recognize that famous line from Melville's celebrated short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street" (1853--a couple of years after Moby-Dick).

I bought the shirt at the gift shop at Arrowhead, the old farmhouse (now museum) in Pittsfield, Mass., the farm where Melville wrote Moby-Dick  (and "Bartleby"). I'd bought another shirt there a few years ago; it says "Call me Ishmael." You know ...

I wear that first shirt about once a week to the health club, where, occasionally, someone will call me Ishmael. I intend to wear the second shirt as a workout top, as well, principally because its message ("I would prefer not to") is so entirely relevant at the health club.

Anyway, we were in Pittsfield (and environs) for a few days because my mom, who lives in nearby Lenox, is turning 98 on September 9, and Labor Day Weekend was a time when my brothers and I could gather to be with Mom as she nears a most remarkable anniversary. (I will write more about her on September 9!)

It's a bit more difficult to get up into the Berkshires now than it used to be. We live more than 500 miles away; health is iffy. But there were years when we thought nothing of driving up there several times a year. I remember one time--at Thanksgiving--leaving for Mass. after I finished teaching school on Wednesday, driving well into the night and early morning. Thinking nothing of it.

And on my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary (1989) we drove up to surprise them at a restaurant (my brothers were there, too, of course), then, after dinner, drove back as far as Syracuse so that I could make it back the next day in time to teach ...

And when my dad was dying in the fall of 1999, I drove back and forth several times to be with him. (He died on Nov. 30; I wasn't there ... a deep, deep regret).

But now? A difficult trip, and in the past few years I have often been simply unable to do it. Medical things. You know ...

But both Joyce and I were feeling fairly stable, so we decided to give it a whirl. So ... off we went, with an overnight stop in Chambersburg, PA, the place where John Brown stayed and stored weapons before Harpers Ferry, the place where he met with Frederick Douglass to try to convince Douglass to join him in the raid. (Douglass declined.) There is a marker near the spot where Brown and Douglass met, and it was something of an adventure, locating that sign. But we did. And Joyce, who has been working on her memoir about Brown for about ten years, got to see the final Brown-related site we had not visited previously. We also toured the old boarding house--now a museum--where Brown stayed in Chambersburg.

And then it was on to see the Dyers in the Berkshires ...


To be continued ...