St. Andrew's Day

It is a particularly dark St. Andrew's Day today in Scotland. The feast day that marks the life of St. Andrew, the Apostle and patron saint of the nation, occurred the day after a tragic accident that killed eight persons, both those in a tavern and passengers of a police helicopter that struck the pub in Glasgow. Disasters both natural and man made are nothing new to Scotland; her proud history includes countless trials and tribulations, but the land's indomitable spirit is a beacon of Western civilization's many points of light and inspiration for any nation aspiring to secure liberty and autonomy. ….To Be Continued

Cirencester and Other Places

It was early September and summer in England does not linger like it does back home. My travel companion was nearing his thirtieth birthday and I was twenty eight. Neither of us had ever been outside of North America, so we were really not unlike babes in the wood, albeit a very civilized one in which all inhabitants spoke English, even if with a "funny" accent. We rented a Ford Cortina, spiffy looking and red with its unfamiliar, outsized yellow license plate, another  one of the small reminders that we were not dreaming and that a huge silver bird had indeed transported us to this new and exotic realm. Before we could drive the diminutive sedan from the agency, the "underground" ride from Heathrow to our basement lodgings in Bloomsbury had been the first order of business. The rail link felt more like our suburban trains in metropolitan New York than the seedy N.Y.C. transit system of the economically stressed "Big Apple" of the late '70s. But we knew rather speedily that we were not paralleling the Hudson or zipping along the flatness of Long Island. Visually, mile after mile revealed that we were in a foreign land. Neat brick houses were the chief housing stock that mutely greeted us, with their endless chimneys and dainty window boxes of flowers festooned religiously with beautiful bouquets of all kinds of poesies, some recognizable, some strange, but all novel treats for the eyes as the train rumbled eastward. This was Brittania in the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Elizabeth II and during the exceedingly brief papacy of John Paul I, and we were happily drinking it in as we soon descended to glide along, literally underground now, as we approached St. Pancras station, hard by the British Museum. Yes, we were green in many ways, especially as travelers. Ponderous suitcases were unnecessary challenges that youth and determination gamely met while arthritis and hernias were maladies three decades into the future. More curious sights, sounds and smells: a store proclaiming its produce and services with a sign that read "Fishmonger", a public phone that instructed us to wait for the "rapid pips", the competing aromas that wrinkled our brows as well as our noses: the exhaust of burned diesel fuel from double decker buses and large boxy black vehicles we came to know as the equivalent of our yellow taxicabs and the airborne greasy molecules from the meat pies sold by many a street vendor corresponding to Manhattan's hot dog carts. The jet lag typically took its toll and we rested on our beds in our modest quarters for several hours, intrigued by the lower legs and feet that trod (as the natives would say) past the partly recessed windows of the room of our hotel in Cartwright Gardens. It was years later that I learned that a parachute mine landed very near this site during The Blitz and that other more conventional ordnance from the Luftwaffe had peppered the immediate area resulting in the once circular street's present configuration of a semi-circle.

Well, our repose was brief and our excitement overcame any inertia. The afore mentioned Cortina, its steering wheel on the "wrong"side, was our magic carpet ride to explore this "sceptered isle" and we eagerly scooted into London's controlled chaos of traffic, a milieu both familiar and strange at the same time. We intellectually knew that the United Kingdom was a land small in size, like most on the European continent. But we also learned, like most Americans, that the emotional or "gut" knowledge of the compactness of the country only comes when one has driven from point A to point B. In the particular, while softly singing "The White Cliffs of Dover" (taught to me as a child by my parents) we motored towards them with still much of the afternoon remaining when we arrived. There they were, unmistakably chalky.  We saw no bluebirds, but what did circle overhead gave one a quiet thrill and a chance to remember again what our English cousins, along with our fathers and forefathers, fought and died for in two world wars.

We motored on. Folkstone, Worthing,
To Be Continued

Beloved Spectres

The photographs that my family possess may as well be daguerreotypes. Aside from their non-digital nature, the images in our family collection are of people who are dead or are radically changed from their juvenile or younger images.  To view a snapshot unseen for decades can jolt a person. A deceased relative or friend may live again for at least an instant as that portion of one's brain dealing with memory is dramatically stimulated by the likeness, and in turn, the remembrance of its owner's personality and many a forgotten idiosyncracy. The faithful re-creations of one gone, often results in an experience the effects of which are not, at first, so terribly potent. But contemplation of the picture, "seeing" a ghost or otherwise focusing while intently ruminating on someone from the past, may move one from a state of inurement to one of discombobulation with tears of regret, longing or even rapture.

Several months ago I happened to chance upon a black and white photo of a high school friend, taken  over forty years ago. It was one of those "good" photos, the antithesis of the variety that are regretted with the usual phrase "it doesn't do him justice." No, this was the youthful lad we all knew, his exuberant visage, familiar Slavic features and assertively friendly ways all brought back in a nano second by the immutably on-target phenomenon of what a camera accomplishes. The pleasure derived from restarting a memory, as it were, is further injected with an indescribably powerful charge when (as in this case) it's discovered via cyberspace's relentlessly efficient sources that the subject of the photo is long dead. Assuming the invulnerability of those frozen in time in our emotional and mathematical calculations is the chief culprit of this shock.  

These records of what the eye and the heart both see, can bog us down.  Sometimes they may aid us too well in our search for intimacy with our dearest shades. This may especially be so with the clinging to a memory of an erstwhile or impossible relationship of the living as well as the dead. A young Judy Garland comes readily to mind as her character pines for Clark Gable while cradling his framed photo and singing "You Made Me Love You".  In Henry Clay Work's (1832-1884) song "The Picture On The Wall" (1864) the traumatic, psychic rape of our divided nation is expressed with skill somehow beyond merely that of creating a haunting beauty, through the singer's grieving reveries while drinking in the daguerreotype of a slain son.  The practice, more common than in less recent years, of displaying photos and mementos of the deceased at a wake, is an obvious choice for enhancing the effect of anecdotes and personal stories. Still, one may become stuck, i.e. an almost masochistic mono mania is a real danger as growth, change and the descendants of the dead are somehow less valued and healthily celebrated as the new torch bearers of our Family of Man.                                                      

Several years ago I attended an outdoors show for classic automobiles. This particular event is perhaps the hugest of its kind on the East coast. One's special favorites, however obscure or old the make or model, are fairly likely to appear and delight the aficionado seeking to satisfy his particular taste for automotive nostalgia thanks to the tremendous volume of vehicles. But with the wondrous variety of specimens of America's automotive history, come a variety of persons (owners) from many walks of life and not all with a predictable psychology relative to the past. One gent had his 1955 Ford Crown Victoria with its original two-toned colors (bright yellow and black) vividly restored and a head-turner of the first order judging by the crowd gathered. Yet, the group seemed less delighted than awed or even disquieted by a closer inspection of the vehicle. A faded letter had been affixed to the inside of the rear driver's side window. It told of young love, embarrassing expressions of the same and still more extravagant outpourings of emotion only a callow fellow would dare to immortalize with ink on paper. The missive was dated "Purgatory, 32nd of Never 1956."  On each of the old classic's four tires were (the pair of fender skirts were removed and proudly displayed on low pedestals to the side of each rear wheel), instead of the factory hubcap, a very beautiful lucite-like clear convex disc encapsulating the black and white portrait photograph of a pretty young woman in the short bob and choker often seen worn by a co-ed of well over half a century ago. There was something awry in her expression despite a winsome smile. There was clearly something wrong with her image in quadruplicate and where it appeared.  No one in the crowd said a word, not unlike those who scrupulously respected the photographs of missing persons that abundantly adorned countless billboards and lamp posts for many weeks hard by the ruins of the World Trade Center after September 11, 2001.