Hi, and Thanks for Your Latest Letter

By Bennett Lear Fairorth

The first letter received by the author, dated September 9, 1988, is from a former student from 1977 who sends happy-birthday wishes, and condolences for a double tragedy.

The last 2 letters are both written Easter Sunday 2010: one, by the author to his friend Rudy. They met in first grade in September 1932; their friendship has lasted 78 years.

The other letter is from the youngest of the authors 4 children, his son Matt, who was born in 1959 after 3 daughters.

Matt also has 3 daughters, and in his letter conveys unexpected but good news from Austin, Texas.

Before the author retires in June 1991from teaching advanced placement English for 40 years at 2 high schools, he corresponds with several former students, friends, and family, including 4 younger brothers who live in Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Seattle.

After he retires, the author travels extensively on escorted tours to continental Europe and England, as well as to Turkey, and several times visits a friend in London.

During his retirement years, the author battles prostate cancer and heart surgery, tutors for an adult literacy program at Abington townships public library, makes several trips to New York for Broadway shows and Metropolitan Opera productions.

After Matt gives his father a laptop, the author spends most of his time writing about his travels. After his oldest grand-child marries, she gives birth to a son. The author becomes a great-grandfather.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469700489

Book preview

9-9-88

Hi, and thanks for your latest letter, Shane. It arrived last week. The canceled postmark read 9-3-88. I was pleased to hear from you.

Thanks for your condolences – and your best wishes for my latest birthday, number 62. (3 more years to go till I retire.) September 1 is obviously an easy date to remember.

My students always asked me my birthday. I had nothing to hide, and I told them. Thank you again for remembering, thanks for your thoughtfulness.

It’s been 7 months since my double tragedy. It’s hard enough to recover from the loss of one loved one, two is overwhelming, but life moves on. Time doesn’t stop for the most powerful ruler or lowliest serf.

I try not to mull my loss and distract myself from the tasks and obligations of every day. At the same time I don’t want to overlook the part of my life made possible by my mother, the care and love she lavished on me, and by my wife, the care and love she lavished on me, the four children we raised.

Your children give you a lot of pleasure and fulfillment as they grow up and learn and change. Some of the most exquisite fun is provided by your children – for a short time. Before you turn around – I exaggerate just a little – they leave your home and go make a new one somewhere else, with someone else.

I appreciate the fact that you found my address, but in 1977, when you were a senior and you were in my AP English class, you visited my home with several of your buddies who were also in one of my 5 AP English classes.

If you didn’t remember my address from back then, it was easy to find in the Montgomery County phone book or to get from the operator. She would give you my phone number, and tell you 1645 Crescent Road, Abington.

Today information is available from so many sources that there is no excuse not to know something.

You said in your letter that you found out my sad, heartbreaking news from someone who saw the two Fairorth obituaries in the paper a week apart and who knew you had a senior English teacher in high school named Fairorth.

How many Fairorths can there be? There aren’t any others. We are the only family with that name. Over the years I checked in other phone books, never found another Fairorth.

My wife Amy died February 7 of this year, killed in an automobile crash. My mother Alma died from a fatal head injury after a bad fall February 14, a week after Amy. My father died in 1967, at age 67, 21 years ago.

It was the most terrible week of my life, from February 7 to February 14 of this year, and it didn’t get any better for weeks afterwards. The principal suggested I take off the rest of the school year ending June 8.

But 1) keeping busy with a rewarding job helps you recover from a deep personal blow and 2) a substitute teacher, or several of them, would have been lost for the remaining few months of the ’87-’88 school year.

My students might love it; perhaps they wouldn’t have to turn in term papers due May 10, but when I did go back to school March 1, most of my students said they were glad to see me back, even if it meant they had to submit their term papers.

They said the several substitutes they had for 2 weeks wrought total chaos, the worst possible way to end their final year of English before heading to college.

I remember telling my students that when I graded essays, I always played music. It wasn’t a distraction, but helped the time pass more quickly. Music is medicine to me.

Right now I’ve been listening to three great symphonies by Felix Mendelssohn, a composer who also died young, like Mozart and Schubert but is probably not as well known as the other two.

I played his Italian Symphony, Scotch Symphony, and Reformation Symphony. He wrote a lot of other wonderful music, including pieces for A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream that perfectly capture the atmosphere and mood of the play.

I have to end this now. A neighbor couple up the street is picking me up for dinner at a restaurant in Willow Grove. I will put this in an envelope already written and drop it in the slot at the post office that we’ll pass on our way north.

Thanks again for your best wishes and condolences. I am deeply grateful for your consideration.

BLF

9-26-88

Hi, Mr. F, and thanks from Shane West for your latest letter-

I enjoyed hearing from you and was pretty sure you would answer ASAP. A few friends I know who have written to you in the past 11 years told me that when they wrote you a letter, you always answered in a week to 10 days, no exceptions.

When you get a chance, in a few weeks or so, write and tell me how the new school year 88-89 is going. I suspect that once again you have 5 advanced placement sections like the one I was in. It was a blast.

I work for the state’s public education system and juvenile justice system, at the Youth Services of Bucks County in Doylestown. The program is a bit complicated, an attempt to integrate some troubled teenage young men and women in a regular school program.

I teach physical education to adjudicated and alternative youths at risk. In addition to gymnasium activities, I also lead outdoor boating and hiking activities.

My 10 students also do some limited math and English studies. These academic classes are held in a barn dating from the 1700s, restored for its current use as a gym and teaching rooms.

I enjoy my work. Some colleagues that I work with I wish I didn’t have to, but I know that wherever I work, some people will rub me the wrong way. You reminded me about playing music when you work at home. I occasionally play music for my students.

I must tell you that over the past few years I re-read a few novels we read in your class, 2 great ones, Catch-22and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I loved them when I read them for you in AP English, and I loved them even more on re-reading them.

I still remember some discussions we had in your class about war and insanity, and I guess just about every subject there was.

We had some great free-for-all discussions of the ideas and people in the literature you assigned us to read, but you always kept the class in control. You had done it for so many years. Class control can be difficult.

After I graduated from college, I thought I’d try teaching school. I often used to think during my senior year that you made it look easy, but I knew it wasn’t easy, not in the classroom and not with all the work you did behind the scenes, grading papers, lesson plans, handling 5 classes a day with studies and discipline.

But it wasn’t till I was in front of a traditional class, not even my current special kind of class, that I realized how tough it was.

I taught in several schools but didn’t stay long. I guess I was too easily frustrated and discouraged in those early days. I knew that the average student does not remotely resemble the caliber of seniors in your class, but still I was unprepared for the kind of average student I did get in my classes.

In both previous jobs I tried to apply some of the techniques you used with your senior classes, with vocabulary lessons and discussions of literature you had assigned us to read for the next class.

I soon realized however that average or lower-than-average middle-school kids are a far cry from the advanced placement seniors that you taught.

I started to write this letter at my desk while my students were working on some basic math problems. John Rowe, he’s 16, came up to me and asked what I was doing.

I told him I was writing a letter to a teacher I had 11 years ago. He said to me, nobody writes letters to a teacher they had 11 years ago.

I said, I do. He said, nobody writes letters anymore. I said, I do. John shrugged and walked back to his desk. That’s how my little corner of the world of education goes.

I’m going to school for my master’s. I receive financial aid (long story) and that’s a big help. Connie and I are still together after 8 years. Some of our friends are already divorced.

Our 2 kids, Nick 6 and Darlene 3, are doing fine. Connie has a good job in family therapy, another state-sponsored service. If my mother-in-law didn’t live with us to take care of the kids, we’d be in financial straits.

Once in a while I remember a class discussion we had about certain families in literature, sometimes their problems seemed unreal, sometimes their problems reflected difficulties we knew about in our own families or in friends’ families.

I knew back then that the five hours a week I spent in your class was a unique experience in an educational environment. I didn’t know till I was in college and then teaching myself how special your class was then and would influence me for a long time to come.

It would be nice if we could get together for lunch on a day and time that is good for you, maybe a Saturday or Sunday.

I have fond memories of that last year of English in your class. Connie is sorry she didn’t have you as a teacher.

Shane West

11-25-88

Hi, Dad, from Gale, here in Austin, Texas with Matt.

I’m sure you’ll recognize my handwriting. I’ll probably get home before this card, but Matt and I agreed that we had to send it to you.

This morning we were in one of the nicest malls in Austin. Matt showed me a few nice ones during my visit since Monday. Yesterday morning Matt was going to pick up a catered Thanksgiving dinner for two.

Before he could phone in the order, a neighbor, newlyweds he’s friendly with, invited us to their dinner, along with two other young couples, one married, one not, and us, brother and sister.

Matt brought several bottles of wine. The other two couples brought desserts. The hostess made a yummy turkey/stuffing/trimmings dinner, sweet potatoes and my favorite, mashed white potatoes, several pies. I overdid it, but hell, it’s only once a year.

Anyhow, here we are the next day. Matt and I were in a kind of general store buying a special blend of coffee that he says he can’t get anywhere else. They also have a section of funny greeting cards.

Matt and I saw this holiday card, a woman, quite plump, is sitting at a table with knife and fork, ready to carve a turkey. Her weight isn’t really apparent as she sits.

What drew our attention to this card is the picture of a pedestal in the dining room holding a bust, and the bust is clearly Beethoven. Is that weird or what?

The front of the card says, Enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner to moderation. Inside it says, Go easy on the desserts or the fat lady will never sing.

Inside the card, the fat lady, really fat as she stands with knife and fork in hand, is trying to sing, her mouth full of dessert, but no acceptable notes come out.

What is hysterical is that inside the card, the bust – it looks like Beethoven to me – is holding his hands over his ears and making a terrible face. Matt and I said, we have to send this to Dad.

Fortunately I had some extra blank sheets of paper in my bag. The card didn’t have enough room for all these words. I’m sure you’ll appreciate my resourcefulness. (I love that long word.)

By the way, I should tell you that you finally had an influence on Matt, music-wise, Beethoven-wise. He loves the sound of the Seventh Symphony. He plays it occasionally.

The many times you played it actually worked its magic even if you weren’t aware of how much you were influencing my own adorable brother. Matt also loves the final movement with the Ode to Joy chorus of B’s Ninth Symphony. You adore that.

Your girls weren’t as easily influenced. I don’t play classical at home, and I don’t think Nora and Lily do either. One kid out of four ain’t bad.

Oh yes, we were never allowed to say ain’t at home. Sorry about that. Ha. Ha.

As you know, Matt will not be home for the December holidays. I fly back home Sunday. I’m glad I shared Thanksgiving with Matt. At the dinner last night Matt introduced me as his youngest sister. One couple who hadn’t met us before thought that meant I was younger than Matt.

He had to tell them that Nora, Lily, and I are his older sisters, in that order, and I’m the youngest of 3 (correct English), and he is the last of your children. We got that all straight now?

Matt has a new dog, Kelly. The dog he had for a few years, Cobb, died of some disease. Kelly is a pup, brown and white. Cute.

I’m pretty sure I’ll see you before it’s 1989. So till I do, be good till some fat lady sings.

Gale

12-10-88

Hello, Bennett, and thank you for your latest letter of 12-3-88-

It was delightful hearing from you. I am obliged to you for having taken the trouble to write. I was sorry to have missed the 45th Central High School reunion over the Thanksgiving holiday. I appreciate your providing me with some details of that evening.

I have been plagued for many years with serious hypertension problems. The evening before the reunion, I had an alarming reaction to the many drugs I am required to take.

I was frightened at all the symptoms and had to stop all activity in order to overcome my concerns.

I am glad you had a pleasant time and encountered fellow high school graduates from that long-ago period of time that we shared together from 1939 to 1943.

I attended the 40th reunion 5 years ago, but you weren’t there. You and Amy were spending Thanksgiving with your son in Texas, if I remember correctly. I honestly didn’t enjoy myself too much at that reunion.

The boys whom I didn’t care for especially had not markedly improved as men. Perhaps the fault lies with me. As archivist of Central High School I had agreed to speak at this ’88 reunion of my experiences in the present decade.

I had paid for the dinner for Ramona and me, but I could not overcome the strong palpitations and loss of breath that I suffered before it was time to leave.

On second thought, perhaps it was better for the alums and their wives who came together a few weeks ago for nostalgic reasons to chat with each other that they were not forced to listen to my meanderings, an old faded classmate like me.

I must tell you, though, that my job for the Associated Alumni of Central High School is fascinating in many ways. I meet all kinds of unusual people and keep busy. I go to my office at Central High School two mornings a week.

As you know, I was able to retire at age 60 without losing benefits because I had my PhD for so many years. Back in the early ‘40s, I was rejected by the draft board several times. While you served in WW II for 2 1/2 years, I finished my studies and taught high school English. I have basked in the luxury of retirement for several years. It is a joy.

I am able to read endlessly and have all kinds of lunches, engagements, trips with Ramona, who retired when I did. I do not miss the administrative responsibilities of my former position as chairman of the English department.

I do miss my contact with the one class of advanced seniors I taught for many years. I miss them a little.

Before I continue, please accept my deepest condolences for your double loss earlier this year. Your wife was a lovely woman, attractive, intelligent, outgoing, and had many other attributes.

The four of us did not socialize as much as I would have liked because Ramona and I lived in another state for awhile and we stayed by ourselves after we lost one son and our only daughter. Our grief was intense.

I too can bear witness to a double tragedy, in my case two years apart, and know the excruciating pain of family loss, be it children, a wife, a parent. It’s all unbearably hurtful and sorrowful.

Your mother was a dear that I fondly remember starting with our being classmates from first grade and right up to our graduation from Central High. No matter how old, sick, feeble, or any other feelings that beset old people, one cannot help feeling sorrow and grief when a parent is taken away.

One can only remember the happy affection of the good years together. It must be a source of satisfaction to you that you were faithful and attentive to your mother during all those years she was confined to a nursing home.

My memory of your mother is extremely agreeable. She was always welcoming and open-hearted to me when you lived on Dallas Street.

A few times during all those years, I walked home with you and Pablo even though I lived directly across the street from school.

I enjoyed being in the company of you and Pablo for that half hour of walking to your house, and then your mother had beverages and home-made cake for us to enjoy.

Your mother was always glad to see me, but when you also brought Pablo home, she was ecstatic. After the refreshments we had to work out the logistics of us two returning to Pablo’s, then me walking alone to my home.

It was such a big deal a million years ago, and now it seems as though it never happened. What absolutely did happen is that the girls in school, the older women teachers and aides adored Pablo Goodman, his height, his blond handsomeness, his agreeable personality.

Truth is, you and I seemed to have added stature when we were with Pablo Goodman. How sad it was when he passed at a relatively young age. He was a good friend and a joy to be with all through elementary school.

After we started Central High School, we didn’t see as much of Pablo. He traveled in a different circle, with wealthy boys who had cars and money. But through those four years, he was pleasant and friendly to us when we were in his company.

Once in a while he visited your mother at your new home near the high school because she phoned his house and asked him to stop by.

Sometimes I stopped at your new home before boarding the bus to go home. I have fond memories of your mother’s hospitality and generosity. I loved her very much.

I hope you are still deriving satisfaction from your teaching. We’ve had some bad weather the past few weeks. It is difficult to leave for work when the roads are covered with ice and snow, or rain is pouring down on those early dark mornings.

In a few years you will cross over into a different kind of life style with no lessons to prepare, no compositions to grade, no departmental crap to put up with. Retirement heaven will await you then.

Our remaining child, Joshua, continues his career in the Foreign Service. He just came home from a tour of 3 years as vice-consul in our embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay.

He had been in dangerous Bogota, Colombia for several years before that and will now work from State Department headquarters in D.C. for the next few years. It is wonderful having him home now and then for a weekend.

You mentioned in your letter several opera CDs and DVDs you recently acquired. Both you and I have nurtured our love of opera and classical music.

A few weeks ago R and I saw the new Gotterdammerung at the Met, a tour-de-force, especially the collapse of Valhalla and the Hall of the Gibichungs.

Hildegarde Behrens was a great Brunnhilde. I can’t imagine how she can remember all the roles she plays. I’ve seen her as the Walkure and Isolde. Her singing is always extraordinary.

The opera began at 6 in the evening and finished after midnight. I loved it all. Ramona is not the Wagner fan that I am. I know you aren’t either.

We saw the Degas exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum during the few days we were in New York for the opera. The paintings were splendid to behold. The total effect was glorious.

We are going to D.C. next week and plan to see the Japanese exhibit, which my son raved about. R and I have scheduled two Elderhostels over the next few months. Several we have done in the past were excellent, one or two were so-so.

I sincerely wish you good health because that is the prime determinant of happy and rewarding retirement years. Take care of yourself in all respects. Thanks again for letting me know about the reunion and other matters.

Rudy Scott

12-15-88

Hi, Rudy,

Thanks for your latest letter. It was informative and fun to read, not in the sense that I was laughing as I read it but in the sense that I was caught up in your words and ideas, as we have been involved with each other since that first day in first grade in 1932, you and I and Pablo Goodman.

You lived directly across the street from school. I lived 8 blocks away. Mid-way to school I stopped at Pablo’s house, and the two of us walked the rest of the way together. I was happy to enter the schoolyard with him.

Pablo was one of the most popular kids during all of those 8 years. He wasn’t a great student, but he was an amazing kid.

I still remember that first day in school. Our first grade teacher was Mrs. Benjamin. She had recently been married and asked us tots to call her Mrs. But I think we still called her Miss, or even Teacher.

A few kids called her Mom. The words Miss or Mrs. made no difference to us tiny tykes, a million years ago.

Because you mentioned Wagner in your last letter, I decided to play a CD of his orchestral music while I write this, no vocals. I’ve been listening to Overture and Venusburg Music from Tannhauser and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Funeral Music.

I have always enjoyed these excerpts more than a complete opera by Wagner, perhaps because his characters sing on and on, not as interestingly to me as the Italian arias of Verdi and Puccini, Donizetti and Bellini and Rossini.

I suspect another factor is that Wagner was a terrible person. What I have read about his treatment of many people and his offensive views have affected my view of his musical genius.

I’m going to end this in a minute, but I did want to wish you and Ramona and your son a happy holiday 1988, and a happy, happy 1989, good health and good fortune. I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying retirement. What’s not to enjoy?

If you feel so moved after the new year settles in, write to tell me about some of your travels in Europe in the past few years so that I can decide where to visit.

Better still, let’s meet for lunch and talk it over, over a salad or a hamburger. Your choice.

I look forward to retiring, finished with all the work involved in teaching English. You survived the ordeal for enough years. Amy and I planned to travel throughout Europe after I retired.

I still hope to do that if all is well with me. Probably alone, unless I meet someone of great appeal, of agreeable personality. Not likely, but it’s possible.

I have to leave for a doctor’s appointment, so accept this abbreviated response and my best wishes. Be well.

Bennett

12-18-88

Hi, Mr. F-

I am Lori Jensen, Council Rock High School Class of 1981.

Remember me? I’ll bet you do. I was in 5th period.

As you can see, I’m typing this letter, easier for you to read. My handwriting was chicken scratches. Now you remember, I’ll bet.

When it’s done, I will enclose it in a package with a CD, my holiday present to you and warmest best wishes for good days in what’s left of 1988, and the best days ever in 1989.

I hope you and your wife and family enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving.

I’ve been wanting to write to you for several years, kept putting it off, and about a week ago decided no more. In a minute, a few words on the enclosed CD, but I suspect if you played it without my explanation, you’d still get what I’m doing.

The 1st week of May 1981, you began to hand out your farewell gifts to all your students, graduating from high school, almost all going off to college, all leaving the familiar security of public school and your English class.

You gave one present a day to one student in each of your five classes, for five weeks. That was for 125 students. If you had more students, and you usually didn’t, you told us, you worked that number out.

With each gift each day, you gave a kind of Fairorth English fortune cookie with a brief reason for the gift. You gave me a rag doll. I still have it in my bedroom.

The accompanying piece of paper (which I also saved and had laminated) said, Never a distraction, never a digression, never distant, never dull, in every class and in every way, you were always a doll.

I think I shed a tear when I read it and looked over the doll on my desk in your class..

My boyfriend at the time, Chris Nolan, was in your 2nd period. He got a stethoscope. He always talked about going to med school to be a doctor.

His piece of paper said, If you work as hard to be a doctor as you did in my class, this stethoscope will get years of use and commitment to health and well-being.

Not to inject a discouraging word, Chris and I broke up in 1983, and he became an investment broker instead of a doctor.

We all wondered, where did Fairorth get all this stuff? Some of it was new, some was not. Did he scavenge the neighborhood on trash day?

Maybe that was unkind, but now and then someone did wonder aloud. What mattered at the time, however, was the uniqueness and thoughtfulness of your gesture. We talked about it for years after we graduated and were adjusting well in college.

On the last day of high school, around June 10 you handed out several sheets of paper that told what all 125 of your students received as farewell gifts. I always considered it a kind of Christmas present, which is why I am reciprocating now with my Christmas gift.

Not to be gooey, but my real present from your class was the 9 college credits I received from taking the English advanced placement exam, and not having to take freshman comp as a college freshman.

Your class was better than freshman comp. I know, several friends in my dorm had to take it, and they said it was a drag during that first year of college.

With credit from the AP test in history as well as English, I graduated in three years. That was the real present. Thanks to you and to Mr. Granger. Let me tell you that I received my PhD last June from UCLA, in physics.

I switched to sciences in 1982 and worked it out so that I could go for the PhD without having to take a master’s.

It’s all been top-notch for me. I have a great job with an aerospace company, and I’m going to be married next June. Bob Jones works in the same company, loves almost the same interests I do. Not as much into music as I am, but I’ll work on it.

I want to tell you that over the years I met a few people who had you for an evening class at Penn State Ogontz, both in the early ‘80s.

When you taught our class I remember hearing that you taught evening courses for Penn State but didn’t think much about it until I met these people you taught.

Neither college class you taught was AP English. One was business English, writing letters and resumes and stuff. I’ll bet you enjoyed that.

The other was humanities. The guy I met who was in that class showed me a list of the readings, Ovid and Marcus Aurelius, some Chaucer and some Shakespeare, Portrait of the Artist that we read in your class, and a half dozen other books that you did talk about in our classes. I’ll bet you had a good time with those college classes.

Finally to the CD I made for you, songs by Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Ella Fitzgerald. Several times in class you said Elvis Presley was the greatest popular male singer of the second half of the 20th century, and Frank Sinatra was second.

You said Judy Garland was the greatest popular female singer from 1950 to today, and Ella Fitzgerald was second. You occasionally mentioned other outstanding popular vocalists but I decided to limit my CD to songs by just your 4 top artists.

You mentioned your favorite opera singers too. Back then they didn’t register since I didn’t like opera, but you handed out sheets with this information, and I didn’t discard anything from your class.

My freshman year’s roommate was a voice major and was studying opera. I began to listen, to love it, and understand what you meant. The names you mentioned, printed on your handout sheets, became familiar to me.

Your 5 favorite male opera singers, whom you had heard in person at the Met or seen on TV in a live performance, were Franco Corelli and Jussi Bjoerling and Fritz Wunderlich, all 3 tripled for first.

You didn’t include Enrico Caruso because you said you had never heard him in person or seen him live on TV. (These names are on those sheets you gave out.)

Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti tied for second, Richard Tucker and Jan Peerce tied for third, Mario Lanza and Carlo Bergonzi tied for fourth, and Robert Merrill and Sherrill Milnes tied for fifth. I had no idea what you were talking about then (the other kids didn’t either), but I do now.

I remember you said that Maria Callas stood alone as the best female opera singer, but to be consistent you would triple her with Renata Tebaldi and Joan Sutherland. The other names on the sheet became known to me.

My roommate played selections by them, Montserrat Caballe, Kiri te Kanawa, Leontyne Price, Beverly Sills, Anna Moffo, Birgit Nillson, Mirella Freni, Rise Stevens, and a few others.

I would say that once every week or twice, during that senior year, from September till graduation in June, you played some classical music, orchestral and operatic. I won’t forget when you played the songs Lady Macbeth sings in the Verdi opera.

We had finished reading the play in class (the highlights, not every word), and you asked us how the music reflected her character. I loved that discussion.

Another time, after we discussed Kafka’s Metamorphosis in class, you played something by Mahler, I don’t remember what. But we discussed European Jews in the decade or so before Hitler, and the Holocaust.

For a long time after that, and up to this minute, I still remember that fabulous short novel and the lively discussion by the class about an office worker turning into a cockroach.

We were overwhelmed by that short novel. Next day we asked to continue the discussion.

Several years later, in both my junior and senior years of college, that Kafka short novel came up again, not in an English class but in a sociology class and a psychology class when we were discussing how a job, a work ethic affects adults in their lives, in their standing in the community.

I remember well a psychology course where the prof kept referring to Gregor Samsa, and said that how he viewed his job (as so many workers do, as routine and insignificant in the scheme of things), made Gregor Samsa feel like a lowly insect, not even human.

In later years, that literary work came up often, and I always remembered that I first encountered it in your class.

When I was a senior in college, several campus groups held a Halloween party. It was one of the best parties I ever went to. The decorations were scary, capturing the spirit of the occasion, and the food was wonderful.

I think the dishes were supposed to capture the ghost and goblin spirit, but I can’t remember what was served.

But I remember I dressed up like a cockroach, like Gregor Samsa, and won first prize.

Hi, Mr. F. Sorry for the interruption. I just spoke to Kelly Stroupe, who was in my class, and she told me about your terrible loss earlier this year. I am so sorry.

I hope you’re well, your three daughters and son, and grandkids. Kelly said she heard about your wife and your mother from several former students in our class.

They read it in the paper and heard about it the way news always travels.

Sorry about your loss. I recall some anecdotes you told us about your family back then, and you mentioned your wife and your mother, and brothers and your kids and a grandkid or was it more than one?

I wish you a happiness-filled 1989. Thanks again for the gift you gave me a few years ago, a gift that keeps on giving.

Lori Jensen

12-20-88

Hi, Lori-

Thanks for your latest communication, a magnificent letter that I was thrilled to read after I removed it from its envelope, and several times thereafter.

I appreciate your taking the time to bring me so much good news and your memories of those years ago.

Incidentally, since you spoke about the opera in your letter, the Opera Company of Philadelphia is presenting 6 performances of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, and I went to one the other evening, a holiday present to myself. It’s always a crowd-pleaser, the subject, the music, all of it.

After my overwhelming loss earlier this year, I decided not to teach college classes any more, but I’ll stay with my high school classes till I retire in ’91 and start living on my pension and social security.

It’s possible that I’m the most fortunate career teacher who ever set foot in a professional classroom of public education and college. I never had to deal with recalcitrant (great word, eh?) students who might have made me so miserable that I wouldn’t have wanted to go to work every morning. I did want to go to work, for almost 40 years.

My students wanted to learn, wanted to be informed every day, about English and human affairs in general.

They wanted to be entertained every day, and every day they wanted to feel that they had achieved something in their English learning curve.

I had to work hard to feel that I had achieved something, if not every day, at least often, in my teaching curve, in the lives of my high school and college students.

When I first started teaching college evening classes in the late 1960s, it was for the money, to pay for college for four children. Nora, the oldest, was starting college. Two younger daughters were some years later, but time flies.

I continued with these evening classes because I also enjoyed them, no syllabus to follow, no lesson plans (they were never a problem, only a pain), no one to report to.

College teaching was a piece of cake. Ironically I was offered a full-time teaching job with Penn State Ogontz. I would have had to give up my day job where I was making about twice the money.

I would have earned the prestige of teaching college, and had a lighter teaching load. A no-brainer, almost twice the income teaching high school was the obvious choice.

After the 3 girls graduated from college, and it was Matthew’s turn in 1977, he won a full scholarship, so no funds had to be allotted to that goal. As I said, college teaching two evenings a week was great fun, so I stayed till this year.

I will retire in 1991. I’ll be 65, and I’d like to travel all through Europe. My first choice is England because I feel a kinship with the language and the United Kingdom totally, the homeland of the poets, dramatists, and authors whom I have been teaching for years.

My second choice is Italy because I’ve enjoyed the food so much and the art of the Renaissance, and above all, the opera music. After that, it’s a toss-up between all the other European countries associated with Western culture.

Thanks again, for your glorious letter. Fewer and fewer letters are being written, especially one so detailed, so thank you, much.

Bennett Fairorth

12-22-88

Hi, Dad-

Thanks for your latest letter with holiday wishes – and with a $100 check for a holiday gift. You are most generous. I guess I knew it was coming, but that doesn’t diminish my gratitude.

My three older sisters already let me know about your generosity to them. Since they all live close to you, they already received their checks. It takes a few days longer for a letter, and a check, to reach Austin, Texas.

I trust you’re well. The next two weeks of holiday parties and gift-giving won’t be the same without Mom. Our grief will take a while to diminish. It will never leave altogether. I remember your mother and father just a bit. I was a little kid when your dad died, and for most of the years before I left for college, I didn’t see your mother much, if at all.

Your mother went into that home after your dad died. You visited her every week or 2 weeks, but we didn’t as a family. The girls and I always seemed to be too busy.

I am writing this from my desk at the Veterans Administration in downtown Austin. Today starts my 4th month on the job. The office is closed down till January 3. As you know my free-lance contract is supposed to last 6 months, but I’ve already been told that it will be renewed, but I wasn’t told for how long. My work is challenging and interesting. The people I work with are very nice. I have never worked in a government job before, and there is a lot of difference between public and private sectors.

There is not the same sense of urgency in a government office as there is in every private sector firm I’ve worked with in the past. No real profit/loss concerns here, no talk of competition.

No deadlines and other stressful concerns. You know what I’m talking about. You worked for a non-profit but you did set deadlines for the kids to turn in assignments and deadlines for yourself to return their work.

Over many years when I met a kid who had been in your class, everyone said that no other teacher returned their tests and compositions faster than you did, almost as if you had no family outside school. I assured them that we four kids did a lot with our parents.

The group I work with is relaxed. They are not a high-powered group of programmers and engineers. Almost everyone here is ex-military, very few young people and even fewer ambitious types.

People arrive early, many by 7 a.m., some I am told by 6 a.m. Everyone clears out by 4. There is no overtime for these civil servants, and no we work until the job is done here. The guy in the cubicle next to me leaves every day at 3 p.m. on the button. You can set your watch by it. I’ve seen him in the middle of a sentence just stop and leave his desk.

Everyone plays by the same rules here, so they’re all prepared when quitting time comes around. That’s fine with me. Who am I to rock the boat?

I’m well-liked. I get along with everyone and don’t work hard enough to make anyone look bad.

As I said, I was hired as a temporary contractor, and that allows me to work with several clients on my own and devise computer programs for them on my own.

The VA pays me $50 an hour, which is a little less than I’m used to. IBM paid me $65 an hour. I was told I’d be doing certain tasks for the VA, but it didn’t turn out that way.

I’m being used more as a Visual Basic programming guru. As part of my job, I am setting up a helpdesk service for their programmers here. It’s not a large part of the job. If all this is too technical for you, be sure that I am thriving in my job.

As I said, I still work on my private accounts and hope to build my own business in the months ahead. As you know, Dad, I hired my friend from school, Stan Phelps, to work for me. He hated his job selling recreational vehicles back in Philly, and I thought he could work for me.

He stayed in my home for a few weeks, but that did not work out (too long a story), so he found his own place. Then we had job disagreements. The upshot is he’s leaving Austin the first of the year and going back north.

Stan told me he is disappointed the way things worked out, and bitter. He blames me for everything, even for the fact that the business is not expanding as fast as I hoped it would. I don’t feel the slightest bit of wrong-doing. When I told you on the phone a few months ago about my plans for Stan, you urged me to stick with local men and not bring him on board.

You saw something in him that was suitable for friendship but not for business. You were right. I should have listened to you.

I haven’t forgotten about the $10K you loaned me. You will be repaid in full. I hope you’re not concerned about that. I’ve spent $15K of the $20K I borrowed.

Just to show you that I’m organized, I’ve enclosed a copy of the company expense sheet. The largest single expense was the computer which cost $3300. I thought we’d use it for sales presentations, but so far there hasn’t been a lot of that.

By the way, I came into possession of a laptop (another long story), and if after you retire, you think you might want to write, it would be perfect for you. I will charge you a minimal amount for it.

It’s lightweight, has a nice keyboard and screen. If you visit me here, I’ll show you how to use it, and you can easily carry it home on the plane. Of course, if I get an offer before you retire, I’ll sell it. I can always get another one at a good deal.

I sold my 2 motorcycles. I enjoyed them but it’s too dangerous for me. A police officer, a 27-year veteran, and a motorcycle safety instructor were involved in an accident off Jester Blvd. and that made me think twice.

I got a good price for the bikes, so except for the accessories, I made money on this transaction. The large white Honda cost me $5000. I sold it for $5800. The smaller black bike was sold for $350 more than I paid for it.

A woman I’m dating, Charlene, is into rollerblading, also called inline skates. They have only one row of wheels on each foot. They are popular around here. Charlene has her own pair and rented a pair for me.

We went skating last Saturday in a park designed with an asphalt track for skating. We both wore knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, and helmets.

Despite all these precautions, Charlene managed to fall right on her ass, for which they don’t manufacture a pad. She was sore all weekend, but it was fun trying to ease her pain by kissing her ass. I assure you it worked out much better than it sounds.

Speaking of sex, my relationship with Charlene is good, and has improved since Stan moved out, but I don’t think I want to marry her.

I’m not sure. She would probably be a devoted wife, but our interests in music and literature, and a few other areas, are not the same.

There are aspects of her personality I hope will change, a few I flat out dislike (perhaps we can discuss it during our next phone conversation), but for the most part we are compatible. She is very fond of my dog Kelly and dogs in general. I like that.

I’d like to have a son, maybe two or three. I’m 30 next year. Time isn’t really running out, but I wouldn’t want to be a new father in my 40s. I do have 10 years till then, and of course, many men live to be in their mid-80s and older and are grandfathers, maybe great-grandfathers.

It’s hard to set arbitrary guidelines for family planning and outcomes. There’s no guarantee I could father any kids at all, but I never heard of any problems with my sisters or anyone else in our family. It does seem like time for me to start a family.

I finished this letter at home. I’ve never written such a long letter before. I remember thinking when I was a senior in high school that my English teacher didn’t make us write that many essays. That was OK with me.

I used to watch you grading essays your students wrote, it seemed all the time, and at the time thinking, those poor seniors in your classes. When I was in college, I wasn’t so sure.

Charlene and I watched a few movies recently on a cable channel that shows old classics, with no interruptions or commercials, the only way to watch them. One was Ben-Hur.

It was terrific, the scene of the naval battle and especially the chariot race. Surely one of the most exciting episodes on film. I wonder how they captured that era so well.

They didn’t have computer digital mastering back in 1959, the year I was born as it turns out. Some of the effects in movies today are astounding, and in some cases way too unbelievable to pass as everyday events.

We also watched a silent movie, just for the nostalgia of it. I don’t like to watch all that hand waving and face-distorting, but Charlie Chaplin did capture a certain quality from about 1926, when you were born.

I love you deeply. I trust you are adapting to the single life with a stiff upper lip. I think I’ll say no more, or I might say something I don’t want to say.

Matthew

12-27-88

Hi, Nora-

I’m not sure you’re going to believe this. I almost don’t believe it myself. It happened so fast. I will surely return from across the ocean before this letter.

I’m writing one letter, to you only, and asking you to phone Lily and Gale and Matt to tell them I’m in – London, my favorite city in the whole world.

You remember the Grimes, Jim and Ellie? They still live at 1633 Crescent. I think they lived there when you left home for college.

Anyhow they were set to go to London for a week, December 26 to January 4. School resumes January 4.

On Christmas Day Ellie’s mother ended up in Abington Hospital, and Ellie would not leave her mother, who’s in her mid-80s. No point to Jim’s staying by his mother-in-law’s side. The mother fell; the injury was painful but not life-threatening.

Did I want to buy Ellie’s plane tickets? Half price. Also two tickets to the English National Opera sung in English. Good seats. Half price.

Jim was honest. He told me he tried to sell Ellie’s plane and opera tickets. No takers for this end-of-year time, no takers for half-price. I was his last chance not to lose money.

I had a few parties scheduled but the thought of seeing Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square again was too enticing to turn down. I am supposed to return to class January 4, but I called a fellow English teacher who will call that morning for a sub. As long as I take care of that, I’m good.

We are staying with Jim’s friend Edgar Rogers, at no cost, in a spare bedroom. He became a widower in ’87. We will pay for any shopping, any meals eaten out. Any meals at Edgar’s will be at no cost to us.

I guess I could have said no, but you know how much I enjoyed my two previous visits to London, one with your mother and one to a conference of English teachers.

The total cost for this outing will be minimal. My holiday present to myself.

Edgar’s home is comfortable, not Buckingham Palace, where we will stop to wave to Her Majesty. I’m not wild about the royals tradition, but you heard all through your growing up years how much I love everything about the city of Shakespeare’s writing.

The Bard’s plays were written for several theaters just outside London’s city limits where unrefined activities were held, bear-baiting and prostitution, but the center of British creativity was London, just as New York City surely still is for the U.S.A. today.

My seniors were always engrossed in the stories I told about how the theater operated, how it differed from the modern theater.

Edgar’s wife died of breast cancer. Such a terrible scourge. He has no kids, works for a publisher but so far he hasn’t talked about his work. We have some interests in common, and I tend to like all things British, except their spelling.

I’m not going to ask. Jim says that during the 10 years he has known Edgar, he rarely discussed his work.

I’m going to add a few more words and then take this to the post office a block away. Once again I can breathe in the urban vapors from the Thames and all the other landmarks in so many books and short stories I grew up with. When I see you again, I’ll tell you all about it.

Again a happy new year 1989.

Dad

1-6-89

Hi, Grandpop F.-

I want to thank you very much for the check you sent me with best wishes for a happy new year 1989. You are very generous. I have my eye on a sweater and a pair of shoes. Your check will cover the cost of both items.

As your oldest grandchild, I am grateful for how kind you’ve been to me. Just a few weeks ago, you helped me with a composition assignment, telling me what you thought made the best examples to prove my point that smoking should not be allowed in any public places. I appreciate your speaking to me over the phone about this.

I wish you could visit us more often, but I realize that driving from your home all the way through Philadelphia to our home is not a joyride. Even parking at Fern Rock station and coming in on the subway is not a romp in the hay.

But all that effort is worth it to see Mom and me and Aidan, right? Don’t answer that.

We also want to thank you for the movies you lent us, a few classic movies about classic novels. I heard of but had never seen Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights.

The movies are in black and white and not color, but they are so well acted and the scenery is authentic. I’m looking forward to reading those two novels by British women.

I read a few other classics, movie adaptations of several Dickens novels, David Copperfield and Great Expectations, for example, as well as screen versions of some Shakespeare plays. More about that later.

I don’t think I told you. A few weeks ago I went to a party, and the girl’s cousin goes to Council Rock High School. I forget how she found out that Mom‘s maiden name was Fairorth, but she said her older brother had a Fairorth for senior AP English.

This girl said, my brother said he was the hardest teacher in the school, but if you’re going to college, you’ve got to take his class. Sounds like a pretty good testimonial to me.

At first I acted coy, and asked the cousin if she could dish some real dirt about this teacher, and she said he was into all different kinds of music, was funny, and you didn’t mess with him.

They were shocked when I told them you were my grandfather. After that, they dropped the subject, and we talked about other stuff unrelated to school.

Thanks again for the check. I know that you also sent checks to my aunts and uncle Matt, and all of us. We all love you very much.

Your granddaughter Jill Cameron

1-10-89

Hi, Matt-

Thanks for your thank-you letter of before the end of last year, and for your phone call yesterday. You said you haven’t spent my gift yet, but you will before the month is over.

I’m glad you had a wonderful holiday. I was glad to hear about your going to San Antonio with Charlene, and glad I got to tell you about my week in London. I know you loved the city during your one visit.

I know too that London doesn’t have the tie that binds for you that it does for me. Teaching English for almost 40 years did that to me.

Edgar Rogers was a generous host. Jim Grimes and I ate all breakfasts at his home and two dinners (the rest we ate out) and slept in a guest bedroom. I told you during the call about the two operas, in English, and two West End (their Broadway) shows.

I think I like the New York theater a tad more than London’s but both are wonderful.

I know you haven’t graduated to opera yet, I won’t yet regard a conversion as hopeless. There was a time when you weren’t eager to listen to symphonies, but now you like to listen to a few that I recommended in the past.

I do want to tell you about the NEO, National English Opera. We saw Trovatore by Verdi and Don Pasquale by Donizetti," both sung in English. The problem is that even though they sing in English, it’s not easy to know what they are saying.

The English is shown at the top of the stage. A bit awkward, but that’s how it’s done. What really counts is the music, and both operas are tuneful and easy to listen to.

The Verdi is a drama, about two brothers who don’t know they’re brothers, and serious stuff like that. The Donizetti is a full-fledged comedy. The audience laughed throughout.

Maybe you’ll come home for the holidays the end of this year, or Thanksgiving. Traveling between Austin and Philly is not fun. I realize that, having to stop first at Dallas or Chicago on the way to Texas and on the way home.

However, at the end of that first leg of the trip, I’ve gotten to spend time with you in past years, and that’s always a pleasure.

Thank you for the CDs you sent me for the holiday, 2 complete operas, Verdi’s final works, Otello and Falstaff, both based on Shakespeare. Since you were in diapers I’ve told you that the combination is my favorite operatic output.

When you asked me some time ago which recordings I had, I didn’t realize it was to select recordings I didn’t have and give them to me as presents. Thanks again.

Classes have resumed, and in two weeks, the first semester will be over. Classes will be off for a week, and then the second semester starts. That arrangement always struck me as awkward, but I’m not sure what else would work out.

I know that in some parts of the country school starts in the middle of August, so that by the end of the calendar year the kids have put in four-and-half months, and they end the first semester.

Under that plan the next and new semester starts the beginning of January, goes another five months till the end of May. That makes the most sense to me.

For some reason all the schools I’ve known make the day after Labor Day the first day of a new school year, a new semester.

I’m not suggesting that we emulate the South in too many practices, but this one seems valid to me.

The house feels strange with just me in it, your mother no longer around to ask me to do this or that, to ask me what I wanted for dinner, although as you know, all through the years when you were growing up, I got home first, so I made most dinners.

Life is an endless series of adaptations and adjustments, and one must make them swiftly and smoothly or suffer the consequences.

I saw your sisters over the past month, separately mostly but together for one dinner. Having all three daughters in this area, and not far away like you in Texas, makes it easier to see them once in a while.

Be sure, I won’t see them much in the months ahead. Nora and Lily and Gale were all well when last I saw them, and my grandchildren that I saw, Jill and Aidan at Nora’s home, Mike and Emily at Lily’s. Gale’s Bill and Babs were with their father.

By the way, when Gale wrote to me when she was visiting you for Thanksgiving, she said you enjoyed listening to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, so as I push a pen across this paper, I’m playing that symphony, one of my favorites. I’m glad one of yours too.

I am OK, aches here and pains there, keeping as busy as I can with my classes. I told you that after your mother passed, I stopped teaching my evening-school college classes. Enough already with leaving home after dinner to teach some more. After about 30 years, I’ve had it. Be well. I hope to see you before this year is over.

Dad

1-12-89

Hi, Mr. F.-

The other day I