While On the Front Porch

This afternoon, after 3 days of drippy rain, Topper and I enjoyed some autumn sunshine and watched the world go by from the front porch.  At around 3 p.m., seeing the kids walking home from school reminded me of something from my childhood.  I wrote about this memory in 2007 when I was retiring from Old First in San Francisco.  I'll use this opportunity to get that farewell essay into my blog.

A FEW WORDS IN PARTING

September 2007

I was raised in Connecticut, where I lived near a pond with polliwogs and skunk cabbage, where I played in Mr. Peck's orchard and Mr. Davis's pasture, where I walked past Mr. Davis's big foursquare stone house every day on my way to and from school. Up a long sidewalk with tall hedges on each side, most days on the broad front porch there sat 90-year old Mr. Davis.  Sometimes we just waved as we went by.  But frequently we stopped to visit and most often he was in the midst of putting together a jigsaw puzzle, stabbing and lifting each piece with a dental tool because his fingers were frozen stiff with painful arthritis. We kids sat with him for a while and he often entertained us with adventures of his growing up in the mid-1800's!

Then off I went to a Jesuit prep school and college, where I ingested the lifelong fruits of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola and closely followed the conjugate-able and decline-able exploits of J. Caesar, Marcus T. Cicero, Publius Virgil, and others.

After college I moved to New York City, where for 15 years I played a lot, lived a lot, drank a lot, and found a Higher Power, who saved my life.

In the mid 70’s, a New York management consulting firm sent me to San Francisco to assist Levi Strauss & Co. in managing their phenomenal growth. Levi's was my client for five years; I traveled all over the world coordinating the way they moved their piles of paper from place to place.

Levi's wanted me to work longer in the Far East, but I decided to stay in San Francisco and open a dessert bakery. I supplied restaurants like the Carnelian Room and hotels like The Clift with desserts and made wedding cakes and mail-order cheesecakes. After six years, though, the work was more accounting and personnel than bringing joy to people's palates, so I sold the business and started looking for something else to do.

That was October of 1988, and my partner, Don Briggs, was leaving the Administrator’s job here at Old First. Interim Pastor Bob Vogt (the second in a line of four successive interims) offered me the job, and I took it.

The church was very quiet during those "interim years."  I spent long lunch hours soaking up the sun in Lafayette Park. I had planned to work here for only a short time while I searched for a "real" job. But days turned to weeks, and months to years, and I found that this congregation had a hold on me. I learned this was my real job.

During this time at Old First, most of my good friends died of AIDS. I am very fortunate to have been here. I have relied on the friendships established here probably a lot more than I would have if my personal support group had not dwindled. How lucky I’ve been to be part of the Old First family.

It has also been a privilege to work here. The examples of faith put before me have been awesome. It's going to be hard to break the daily ties, but in some ways I will take a piece of you all with me. So now, 14 pastors, 369 new members, and more than 1,000 Sundays later, it's time again to start looking for something else to do.

I am not going off to O'Malley's Home for Wretched Aging ex-Catholics. I have plans to finish restoring my old house in Healdsburg and take some classes in Botany. I hope to get seriously into sculpture. Maybe during the rainy winters I can finish the quilt I started during a gray 1979 winter in Brussels. Maybe I'll bake a cheesecake.

Each spring and fall, maybe I'll sit on my front porch, watching the kids walk home from school while I put together a jigsaw puzzle that has little holes pricked in all the pieces. Half a century ago, old Mr. Davis gave each of us kids a puzzle after he worked it. This puzzle and I have traveled hither and yon; we've made it this far.

I wonder if the puzzle still has all its pieces. I know some of mine are missing! I’m leaving them at Old First!

Say “Goodnight,” Gracie.

On the Brink of Impending Youthiness (again)

This is McAuliffe Hall, the freshman building where, that September of 1956, we began our 4 years at Prep. It was the perfect ediface in which to inhale the first whiff of the rarified atmosphere that was to surround the next four years' education. A huge circular staircase, wide hallways, creaky floorboards, classroom fireplaces, mammoth windows, drafty rooms with floor grates that blew warm oiled air on snowy winter days, our requisite suit or sport coat with buttoned shirt and tie, and those sit-up-straight, clunky wooden chair-desks straight out of British public school lore. As I said...the perfect place.

Fast forward fifty years...it's now 2010 and we'll all be converging on the Prep Campus Friday evening, June 4th, for a reunion reception where we'll see who's still upright, who's got hair, who's got a waistline, who's compos mentis, etc.  Will those long-saved memories of classmates emerge from deep recesses as soon as I actually see who it is I am looking at?

I'm already reminded of the smartness of the boys at this school.  There was Gerard DeF., sort of a precursor of the Fonz, who was smart.  And Charlie B., who kept us laughing, was big and played football, had a heart as big as can be, and was smart.  And Peter S. who always knew the answers because he was smart.  And Bob J. who sat in front of me (alphabetically) for most of the 4 years, who had the compulsiveness of youth, the guile of a prankster, and was smart.  Even Peter B., who smoked like a chimney and had a beard as thick as a middle aged cossack, was smart.  They were all smart, and at first that was scary.  But it was okay to be smart here; it was a noble goal -- to learn, to achieve.  Good study habits were formed early and "stick-to-it-iveness" was an ideal for which many strived.  Still, sadly, some boys did not return each September.  Most of us did whatever we could to keep that from happening to us.  We knew early on that we had an opportunity that was not to be wasted.  We knew that with these 4 years under our belts, we would have chances at further education better than most.  Yes, even at age 15, we knew it was an honor to be among these "prepsters." 

The Book of Recollections I've been working on has now been sent to the University Print Shop. It's a happy-hands-at-home type of thing; probably won't win any prizes, but should add some fun to the 50th Reunion weekend. 

This is a photo of our brave German teacher, Fr. Butler,

 with 6 of us sixteen-year-olds at a restaurant in Mexico City

during a six-week-long trip he chaperoned in the Summer of 1959.

(The only things German we encountered were the Ambassador's wife and her Mercedes Benz)!

The Reunion Committee has been busy these past months led by John S., our more than capable class president.  Woody S. and Jimmy W. have been busy putting together the events of the weekend.  The main event on Saturday evening is a Pig Roast dinner to be held in a huge tent on the Prep Quad.  Tom C. has been contacting all alums across the country to see who's coming.  Ed K. and Nick P. have been working on getting contributions to our class Gift.  The goal of $200K has nearly been reached by the first 50 classmates reached.  A portion of our gift is being set aside for a full 4-year scholarship so a bright young man can experience what we have experienced.  (Our yearly tuition of $315 is now in the $15K range!).  We all get to meet him at some point during the weekend. 

On Sunday, we "graduate" with the Class of 2010.  We receive our "golden diplomas."  Are we now actually peers of Betty White and Bea Arthur?  It'll be "real cool" going up individually to shake the hand of the young President of the school.  Then being set free again!  Free to go out into the world to do good things.  Gimme a break -- I'm 67 years old -- it'll be time for a snooze.

Memories of Young Men in the Great Class of 1960

The weekend of June 4-6, 2010 is fast approaching.  It's the weekend that I get to share with 50 or so fresh-faced, smart, grateful, and still eager 68 year-olds the golden anniversary of the culmination of one of the most important opportunities of our lives.  It's the reunion weekend of Fairfield Prep's Great Class of 1960.  It's the weekend when doctors, lawyers, judges, writers, scientists, monsignori, brokers, educators, and we regular folk get together to honor each other for the part we played, and still play, in each others' lives.

For this event, I've been charged with the task of putting together a book of recollections.  So I've solicited each member of the class to send me some unforgettable feelings, happenings, or events that pop to mind when he thinks of his 4 years at Prep.  Some thing that may have bored the daylights out of family members when Dad got in a story-telling mood over the years.  Some thing that only we, as co-conspirators, would fully appreciate.

I've gotten some wonderful responses.  How nice to be reminded of things I have totally forgotten.  How could I not remember the tale of the firecracker and the beehive?  Hearing about it again puts me right back there on that warm spring day when McAuliffe Hall was closed down for an afternoon due to invasions of nasty yellow jackets.  

Interspersed with the classmates' memories, I'm inserting scans of memorabilia like this calendar that made it through 50 years of cross-country moves stashed in a carton with report cards, reading lists, class notes, programs, and some text books.

I expect I'll write more about all this during the next few weeks.