The Boy in Nebraska and the Ice Man of the Alps: The Uncertain Journey into Manhood

By Anthony T. Cluff

In keeping with the keen historical insights of his first book, In Search of the Great White God, where he probes origins of his childhood religion, Anthony T. Cluff once again reaches back in time to tell stories here of thirty-two boys and men and their journey to manhood. While each story is unique, Cluff says that the common theme in all is the uncertainty of the journey once it has begun. The outcome can never be foreseen.
One young boys journey ends almost before it begins, anothers at the doorstep to manhood, while another mans journey has gone on for centuries. In the telling of these stories, Cluff creates a new awareness of the long and unbroken chain that links all of us living today with the boys and men who overcame the challenges of lifes journey in the past. Then, as now, the journeys are about courage, heroism, tragedy, defeat, setbacks, and opportunity.
There is something here for everyone in these stories, Cluff says, but these stories will have special meaning for young men who are now on their own unique journeys to becoming a man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524617547

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The Boy in Nebraska

Tell the people not to be afraid of the plains, but to encounter them with any kind of conveyance they can procure.

–- Frontier Guardian, 1851

She held him in her arms as long as she could. Then it was time to let him go. She was sitting alone with the boy inside a wagon that belonged to another family in the company. They told her that she and the boy would be more comfortable there. It would keep them out of the sun during the day and away from the prairie breezes at night. Up until then, she had to walk. The boy at times rode atop the handcart she and other members of the company took turns pulling. On other occasions he was carried on his mother’s back or up on someone else’s shoulders. Sometimes, like now, he would be in the wagon of a family fortunate enough to own one and a team to pull it. For the past two days, his mother had ridden with him in the wagon while the owners walked. They had insisted, and she didn’t refuse.

As the men in the company approached the wagon, she pulled the edge of the blanket he was wrapped in more snuggly around his face. It was a blanket she had given him at birth. She made it herself, just as she had made all of his clothing. She remembered wrapping him in the blanket for the very first time. It was a little older now, more threadbare and not as soft as it had once been, but he loved it and wanted to carry it everywhere he went, calling it by a name no one could quite interpret. His mother placed it in a trunk along their other belongings for the trip, retrieving it each night so he could sleep with it. They were allowed to put the trunk in the wagon being used to haul the belongings of people who didn’t have enough room on their handcarts. Now she had retrieved it for the last time. It had first been placed around him when he came into the world. Now it was being wrapped around him as he was leaving it.

The men outside the wagon stood patiently as she kissed him on the forehead one last time and then pulled the blanket up more completely to cover his face. She knew she had to give him up. For days his condition had worsened. What medicines there were in the camp were scarce, and those he had been given were useless. The coughing became worse. His sleeping was fitful. His temperature rose. The brethren in the camp gave him numerous blessings, using a small amount of the oils that had been dedicated for such a purpose, laying their hands on his head and invoking the authority they said they had from God to do such things. But, nothing helped. She held him in her arms all that last day in the wagon, hoping and praying now more earnestly than ever that he would at last be well. But, it was not to be. And now he was gone.

She nodded to the leader of the company, who then moved forward and raised himself up so he could reach into the wagon and take the boy from her arms. Other men in the group helped her down from the wagon. They gave way to her daughter, who had been waiting patiently with the others and now rushed to her side. One of the women took her by the arm and escorted mother and daughter to the opening in the soft prairie soil the men had just finished digging moments before. Someone brought a chair for her, to which there was a collective sense of bewilderment as to how anyone managed to put it on board any of the wagons. But, all later agreed that it certainly served its purpose at that particular moment.

The leader of the company and another man placed the boy down into the opened prairie. One of the members led the group in a song about God being with them ’til’ we meet again. A member of the group who was particularly close to the mother and fond of her children spoke about the mystery of God’s ways, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the promise of eternal life. Someone said a prayer for the boy to rest in peace, the mother to be given the strength to bear her loss and a request that God shine on her and the rest of them for the remainder of their journey. With that, the men who had been holding shovels began closing the prairie dirt over the boy.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. They were supposed to complete the trip together as mother, daughter, and son. It started so hopefully, with a sense of the past behind them and the promise of a new life ahead. He was only two years old and far too young to understand all that had brought them on this trek or where they were going. His sister had a better idea because she was older. Even so, the changes in their lives had been so large and upending that even she was often uncertain what to make of it all. Now the mother and daughter were left to finish the rest of the journey without the boy. The mother would recount later that her little girl—eight years of age—was now all I had of my own. The boy made it only part way and would have to be left behind on what his mother called the dry and dusty plains.

The boy’s passing was a major change in their lives. Up until then, the most dramatic change of all occurred when the mother converted to a new religion that had its origin in America. She was introduced to it by two missionaries who spoke of new sacred Scriptures, a restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the latter days, and the establishment of God’s kingdom under the direction of a prophet as in ancient times. She was encouraged, as were other new converts, to join other members of the church who were gathering far away in the mountain west. So she left her home in Worcester, England. She sailed across the Atlantic with her daughter and her son, who she referred to as such a lovely child. She left behind her parents, her brother, his family, and numerous relatives. Left behind also was England with its lovely flowers that smelled of sweet perfume and its peaceful villages with their peaceful inhabitants.

She also left behind her husband. The decision, she said, was his. He gave her the offer to go, and she took it. She was afraid that if she didn’t accept his offer when it was made, she never would. She said he didn’t want to go with her because, as she said, he could not believe in the preaching as I did. So she took the children and went without him. She was responding to a high calling that was stronger than the bonds of marriage and powerful enough to make her believe she could make the journey without him. The new religion was all too persuasive, even if it meant breaking the family apart, uprooting herself and her children from all they knew, and leaving her husband behind.

After sailing from England, she had yet to make what she called the long and tiresome trip to the mountain west, where the new religion was sinking roots with a strong determination not to be moved again. She recalled in later accounts that she got through it all right, even though sunburned and not much better looking than the Indians. At the first gathering upon their arrival, she felt alone, not knowing anyone there. But she quickly made acquaintances, some of her own choosing but most by being thrust into a community where all had to contribute to the uplifting of the kingdom. There was little time or tolerance for feeling sorry for yourself or sitting idly by.

Her husband came a year after her arrival. Apparently his ties to family were stronger than hers. But nothing had changed in her eyes. She said he was the same there as he had been in England. He couldn’t see the truth as she did. He blamed her, she said, for bringing him there. They just could not get along, so they finally parted. Sad as it was to be married to a man you cannot get along with, she said, it was best for them to separate. The husband moved to Wyoming, married again, and had a son. She wished him to rest in peace at learning of his passing.

She too remarried, this time to a man who shared her religious beliefs. This meant she could be married in a religious ceremony that bound her and her new husband to each other for time and all eternity. For reasons best known to her, she at last had the marriage bond that suited her religious convictions. In the process, she lost, or gave up on, one husband in pursuit of her religious convictions to find another that suited them. She moved with her new husband to a northern part of the religion’s expanding settlements, where there was good soil to grow wheat but the winters were harsh and long-lasting. They had children of their own. She at last was home.

Along the way, she had given up her homeland, broken away from a recalcitrant husband, and lost a son. The boy to this day remains buried somewhere near Florence, Nebraska. He didn’t make it to the mountain west. He didn’t get to know his father or ever learn anything about him. He didn’t meet his mother’s new husband, who she called loving and who said how thankful they should be for their nice little home where all is peace and comfort. He would never see the snow-capped high mountains to the east of their peaceful valley, nor would he see the sun set each evening in a blaze of orange and red above the mountains to the west. He wouldn’t see the water run clear and fast down the numerous canyons that fed the valley. Nor would he catch fish from them. Nor would he marvel at the huge herds of elk and deer that drank from their banks.

Today, modern highways cross the same terrain where he is buried. High speed automobiles race to the spot in the North Platte River where wagons and push carts once moved westward in search of a religious refuge in the intermountain region or the lure of gold further to the west in California. There is no marker to show where the young boy was laid to rest. No one knows where that even might be today. For all anyone knows, the spot may be covered over with asphalt for a McDonald’s drive in. Wherever it is, out there somewhere on the dry and dusty prairie of Nebraska is a young boy who never completed a trip his mother thought important so very long ago.

CHAPTER 2

The First Paper Boy on the Moon

"We choose to go to the moon and do other things not because

they are easy, but because they are hard."

–- John F. Kennedy

He was on his morning paper route when he decided to be the first man on the moon. The sun that morning had yet to clear the horizon to the East and the moon stood high and bright in the blue light of dawn to the West. He had looked at the moon many times before, but it never seemed quite so near, or bright and large as it did that morning. The idea that he might stand on it one day in the future did not seem silly at all, at least not that morning.

Just think of it, he told himself. He would get on a rocket ship, blast off from earth and ride out into space. After landing the ship he would suit up, open the door and then step down on the moon’s surface. He would be standing where no one had ever stood before. After walking around, he would gather up some moon dust and rocks. He would take pictures. He would get to see what the earth looks like from out in space. He would want to see what the stars look like from someplace other than on earth. Then he would get back on his spaceship, close the door behind him, and blast off for home. He would land the ship back on earth, give the scientists the space dust and moon rocks and show everyone the pictures he had taken. He would be the first person ever to go to the moon and back.

The idea of going to the moon came to him after seeing two movies about space flight at The Main, one of the three local theaters dotting Main Street in the small town where he lived. The Main was the biggest and the best of the three. He was especially fond of the owner who once told him he had sophisticated tastes because he bought a Peppermint Patty one time at the candy counter while the other kids were buying Hershey bars or Milk Duds. And The Main always had the best movies. The ones with Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and the Durango Kid were his favorites. They were, that is, until he saw Rocket Ship X-M and Destination Moon.

Of the two, Rocket Ship X-M was the clear winner. It was filmed in black and white, making it dark, mysterious and shadowy. The overall effect was spooky and unreal. Even the music was weird, sounding as though it was coming from someone waving around a big piece of tin or making music on a flexible timber saw. The end result was a perfect movie for an eleven-year-old boy with a big imagination sitting alone with his Peppermint Patty in a darkened movie theater on a Saturday afternoon.

Rocket Ship X-M was about a crew of astronauts in a rocket ship destined for the moon. A mechanical malfunction, however, caused the spaceship to veer off course and land on Mars instead. Initially, the astronauts believe Mars to be uninhabited, but they soon found otherwise when they encountered beings who from afar resembled primitive cavemen and whose only weapons were rocks, which they use to pummel the invaders from earth. Several of the astronauts are killed, while the others beat a hasty retreat back to their spaceship and blast off for home. But, because they had gone so far off course getting to Mars they were not sure there was enough fuel to make it back to earth. It turned out in the end they were right. They didn’t have enough fuel to make it home and the remaining astronauts on board all died. The young boy felt better, however, once it was made known that another try at space exploration would be attempted in a new rocket ship.

The movie, of course, was flawed on any number of counts, and by modern standards it would be open to severe ridicule by the movie critics of today. It was never explained, for example, why the scientists back home could not manage to land the spaceship on the moon as planned. The mechanical malfunction also was never explained. It probably wasn’t necessary. It was just one of those things that happens in space. Nor was it explained why or how the astronauts remained standing on takeoffs and landings throughout the flight. And it was not explained why the astronauts wore no space suits, and why none was needed in the thin atmosphere of Mars. But none of that really mattered. More important was the excitement of rocketing through space, the unexpected landing on Mars, the tentative and frightening exploration of the bleak Martian landscape and the discovery of primitive Martians who looked like Neanderthals and used rocks as their only weapons. That was more than enough to fire the imagination of a young paper boy whose only earthly mode of propulsion at the time was a second-hand bicycle. Then, of course, there were the old, broken-down, rusty autos out in the fields behind his house that were immobile but perfectly suited as a creative means of transporting him on flights of fancy to the moon, or Mars, or wherever.

Destination Moon, on the other hand, was an entirely different type of movie. It was about scientists and engineers standing around draped in white lab coats taking notes on clipboards, pointing to complex mathematical calculations on blackboards and conferring with their colleagues around large conference tables. Their rocket ship stood spotlessly white on the launch pad awaiting final decisions and a precisely-timed countdown. Controlled clouds of exhaust escaped wistfully from time to time out of openings and various hosing attachments in anticipation of an imminent liftoff. There were difficulties in getting a rocket ship launched, but when liftoff finally came, it was a magnificent display of fire and smoke that propelled that gleaming white spaceship upward and outward in an arc that was calculated to bring about a perfect landing on the moon. Once there, astronauts in bulky space suits breathed manufactured oxygen out of tanks on their backs while taking measurements and communicating their findings with the command center back on earth. Future astronauts were shown living and working in modular buildings designed as earth’s first space colony. There were no mishaps. There were no mechanical malfunctions. The spaceship was destined for the moon, and the moon was where it landed. There were no aliens, no rocks thrown, and no questions about empty fuel tanks. The astronauts remained seated during takeoffs and landings, all of which were preceded by a large amount of preparation and elongated countdowns.

But, the story in Destination Moon wasn’t really about the astronauts. It was about the rocket ship and the guys in the white lab coats who made it fly. It was more of a documentary than a story about spacemen and landings on the moon. It was in color, but that did little to keep it from being boring. It was only mildly helpful in feeding the young boy’s fascination about moon travel. It did, however, offer to him a more realistic view of what he could expect. He now had a sense of how hard it would be. He now understood how far it was there and back. And he had a deeper appreciation of what it would take to be prepared. But he knew he could do it. He felt he should do it. That morning on his paper route he felt certain he would. If the astronauts on board Rocket Ship X-M could do it while standing in flight, so could he. And, so, with a shove of the left foot that he had firmly planted on the pavement only moments before, he rebalanced the bike once again, placed both feet squarely on the pedals and raced off to finish delivering the morning account of the mundane events of earth.

Both movies were perfect metaphors for his paper route. Each day began with one of his parents awakening him at precisely 5:00 am, just as the men in white lab coats surely roused the crew of the rocket ship in Destination Moon to begin their daily activities. And, just as those men in white lab coats moved the astronauts through their checklist of activities, his parents saw to it that he made his way through a series of pre-delivery steps in an orderly fashion. This included unbundling the papers that had been dropped at the curb in front of his house, folding each in threes and placing an elastic band around them before putting them in the canvas bags that were draped on the handlebars of his bike. They actually participated with him in each of those important, pre-launch activities, thereby assuring that he was fully prepared for the important task ahead. And, like the men in the white lab coats in Destination Moon, they then stood back and watched pensively as he mounted his bike, fought to overcome the forces of gravity and struggled to keep his trusty ship, which in this case was a second-hand bike, from wobbling off course from the weight of the heavy load now mounted over the front tire. But as with every successful blastoff, he was quickly up to speed, on the proper trajectory and soon out of sight.

Then it was clear sailing. This was one of the best parts of the trip. It was all about cruising along in the coolness of the morning. The drudgery of folding, banding and packing the papers was behind him. The actual delivery of the papers was not yet. It was just a guy and his bike out for an early morning ride with a full payload on board. It was Rocket Ship X-M, and takeoff had been flawless. Just as the guys in white lab coats in Destination Moon had done an excellent job in the pre-flight preparation and could be justifiably proud of the successful launching, his parents could do the same. They could now go back to bed or put the coffee on to start their day. He was on course, rocketing outward, heading for his first landing.

Initial touchdown occurred when he came to his first set of houses. These were the newer houses in town. They were close together. Almost all of them took the paper. They had neatly mowed lawns. And they had sidewalks out in front. He delivered a lot of papers there in quick fashion, throwing them from his bike as he went rocketing by. He didn’t even care if he missed the front porch. The people living here never complained if they had to walk out on their lawns to pick their papers up. Delivering papers there lightened the load considerably, much of what it must be like when a rocket ship burns up a huge amount of fuel as it first breaks free from the tug of earth’s gravity and the first-stage thruster rocket is jettisoned. He could now blast ahead faster than before. The payload for the remainder of the trip had been lessened.

The rest of his route, however, was more like the harsh environ of Mars than it was the tranquil moonscape through which he had just breezed. It was almost like being blown off course, and here is where you could easily run low on fuel, which in this case was human energy supplied by the muscles of youth. The houses here were scattered along a mile or more of a paved road running straight as an arrow from west to east known only as 300 North. It was country, not town. The houses were further apart. Most often they were secluded behind a chain link or some other kind of fence, and they were always set way back from the road. Papers had to be placed in special tubular receptacles out front, not thrown. Some houses had a field of corn nearby. Others had pastures with horses or cows. There were always barns, sheds and pickup trucks somewhere around.

The people here were also different. They were prone to complain if the paper was not delivered on time, or if it somehow got blown out of the metal receptacle and scattered everywhere. His mother always said the men who lived in this part of town cussed a lot because they were around animals so much. Several of the houses were guarded by dogs that always barked to announce his arrival. Some even chased out to meet him, and then chased him as he sped off. He would have to pedal fast so the dogs wouldn’t catch him. What they would have done if they had, he wasn’t sure. But, he didn’t want to find out, any more than the crew of Rocket Ship X-M didn’t want to find out what would happen if the Martians came any closer.

The paper route ended at a crossroads where the road known as 300 North intersected another paved road called 800 East. There he would turn north and, after another couple of hundred yards or so, take the last paper from the canvas pouch perched on the handlebars of his bike, deposit it in a metal tube with the word Tribune painted on the side that sat atop a metal post stuck in the ground, then turn his bike around and begin the return trip back home. This was the re-entry phase of the trip. The canvas bag was empty. His bike was lighter and could now go faster. Energy was running low, but the trip back from the intersection of 300 North and 800 East on Mars could now get underway. There was a pretty good chance he would make it all the way back on what energy in his young legs had yet to be expended. Unlike the crew of Rocket Ship X-M he was sure he could make it back. It was just a matter of pumping the pedals and pointing in the right direction.

There were dangers in all of this, of course, although no one ever much talked about them or acknowledged them. He was, after all, a young boy out by himself in the early morning hours when no one much was out. Many people were not even out of bed yet. And, even though it was small-town America, such places have their roughnecks and their troublemakers, maybe more even than big cities, though no one ever tends to think so. There were always the tough guys in school who thought nothing of threatening or roughing up a younger kid just because they could. No telling what they would do if they found him out there on his lonesome in the early morning, riding his newspaper bike with no one else around. It never happened, but it could have.

Then there were the men in this part of town who cussed because they were around animals, and who obviously felt that swearing was essential if you wanted those animals to do what they were supposed to. If they were mean to animals, they might be mean also to kids. And, finally, there was the danger of the long, straight stretches of road where the drivers of pickup trucks would speed because they didn’t think anyone else was out on the road at that time of the morning. The roads at that time of the day belonged to them, especially if they were in a hurry to get to work, had troubles at home with the wife and kids, or they were hung over. A young boy on a small bike in the early dawn might never be seen.

The danger posed by a fast-moving pickup being driven by a working man in the early morning dawn was the most real of all. The young boy found that out all too tragically when the one and only time he took his dog Lady with him to deliver his papers. They were on the long stretch of 300 North when Lady, that only moments before had run into a thicket alongside the roadway, came running back out and went right under the wheels of a pickup, the driver of which never saw her and never stopped. It was Lady’s last moments on earth, and the young boy with his eyes full of tears held her in his arms as she struggled to gain her breath and hold on to what life was left in her. She didn’t whimper. She just looked surprised. The young boy watched helplessly as the light in her eyes went out, and then she was gone. The dangers of a paper route became all too real that morning. So also did the pitfalls, prospects and promises of living in the world hit home. It was the first time the young boy saw someone he loved die. Just months earlier he had seen something he loved born when Lady had pups. Lady had taught him much about life.

Years later he looked back and marveled how trusting his parents were to watch him go off into the early morning light with a load of papers that threatened to topple his bike before he could really even get underway. He would be gone each day for a good hour or more. He traveled at least three miles, maybe four, every morning. They counted on him coming home unharmed, mission accomplished. It was just assumed he always would. And, he always did. It was almost as though they gave no thought to it. But, then, maybe they knew that they had to let him go out there, do the job he had signed up for, and find the energy to return home and the wherewithal to do it all over again the next day. It was another lesson of life.

Those lessons of life would be important if he were to be the first man on the moon. They would serve him well if he were ever to fulfill the decision he made that day when he stood straddling his bike with one foot on the blacktop of 300 North, looking up at a moon that was bigger, brighter and closer than he had ever remembered. For that matter, it was a moon that was bigger, brighter and closer than any he would ever see again during his lifetime. The moon that morning made him feel certain that he would be going there one day. He was pretty sure he would. And with that, he blasted off on his second-had bike and headed back home.

CHAPTER 3

Saturday Afternoons with Puccini

"Opera does not call so much for an imaginative ear

as for an imaginative eye."

–- George Marek

Saturday afternoon was his favorite part of the week. The work week was behind him and he wouldn’t have to think about the office again until Monday. Sunday was okay too. But Sunday put him on the downhill side of the weekend slope leading back to work. Saturdays, however, were on the uphill side of the slope, moving away from work. And there was always the tug of war he had on Sunday about whether he would go to church or not. He usually did not, which meant that he would have to deal with the guilt of not going off with the family. That made Sundays tentative and uncertain, not to mention full of tension. Sundays were not his favorite day of the week.

But Saturdays were. He knew exactly what he would do that day. He first would have breakfast with his wife and the kids. This usually consisted of bacon, fried eggs in the bacon grease, toast and black coffee. Then, with shopping list in hand, he would go to the A&P and get what he needed for preparing dinner that night. He enjoyed cooking, and in fact he cooked dinner most evenings, even after having spent a full day at work. Sometimes it was nothing more than leftovers from the night before. But he would have been the one to prepare the original meal. Other nights it would be something he prepared from scratch after coming home. His wife cooked also. She made great macaroni and cheese, a wonderful tuna and pea pie and delicious lemon cream pies. But that was about it for her. Or maybe that was just what she told everyone she could do. He, on the other hand, could cook just about anything. And depending on what he bought at the A&P that morning, dinner on Saturday evening would be either beef stew, ham and lima beans or spaghetti with meat sauce. But whichever he chose, it would take all afternoon to prepare.

That was fine with him. Because once the cooking was underway, Saturday afternoon was his. He would sit in his favorite easy chair in the living room, finish what was left of the coffee and get caught up on the latest issue of Time magazine. He would have to get up from time to time to tend to his cooking, of course. That just kept him intimately involved in the process. There would always be something needing his attention if the dish were to turn out just right. If it were summertime, he may also do some light weeding in the vegetable garden next to the house. There would always be something around the house needing to be fixed. He also might run the kids to a friend’s house, or to a movie for the afternoon. But other than that there was not much else to do and he could enjoy the one thing he loved most on Saturday afternoon, and that was to listen to the weekly radio broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera brought to him all the way from New York City compliments of the Texaco Oil Company.

All of this was high ritual in his household. Everyone in the family knew what to expect come Saturday afternoon. And they all gave him the room he needed to perform that ritual. It’s not that he wanted them to leave him alone. He would have liked it if everyone, anyone, would have joined him. But they didn’t like opera. They tried, but it bored them to tears. It grated on their nerves. It sounded to them like a bunch of squeaking and squawking. Try though they might on occasion, they could not visualize what was transpiring on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House back there in New York City based on just a bunch of high ‘falootin’ singing. It was like listening to someone tap dance on the radio and trying to imagine what that looked like in person. And, because it was all being sung in Italian, French or German, they couldn’t understand a word of it.

And, so the man who loved opera had to enjoy it by himself. It was surprising that he enjoyed it so much. He had virtually no musical training. His wife could play the piano well enough to be the organist at church services. She could play popular music also, but her kids teased her by saying that it had a rinky-tink, almost honky-tonk, sound to it. But he did manage to teach himself some pieces on the piano. Most of them were from a music book entitled Piano Pieces the Whole World Plays. It claimed to be the greatest collection ever published. It was originally printed in 1915, six years after he was born. It contained the celebrated compositions of such great classical composers as Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, Mozart and as many as seventy others.

The arrangements were intimidating. The sheer number of notes on each page was enough to discourage any musical novice. The arrangements were a complex jumble of so many black notes on each page that there was little room for the white paper on which they were printed to show through. There were notations of flats and sharps throughout each piece. One piece was written in what has to be the rarest of all keys, that being the key of G-flat, with six flats shown at the beginning of each stanza. It was incredibly complex music for the piano which even his wife, trained as she was from a very early age, wouldn’t attempt. And, yet he did, working his way slowly through each one until he had conquered all or, at least, part of it. He never got good enough for performing any of the pieces publicly, but it was a noteworthy achievement nonetheless, and one for which he could be justifiably proud.

Other than taking part in singing in quartets at talent night of the local Kiwanis Club each year, that was about the extent of his musical talents. That was what made his love of opera so amazing and even puzzling. Where it came from was hard to fathom. He was not highly educated. He graduated from high school and that was it. He did well in school and was editor of the school yearbook his senior year. He got excellent grades and wanted to be a writer. His wife bragged to the kids and others that he had been offered a scholarship or been accepted at Harvard. Whichever it was, or whether true, no one really knew. It was just part of the family lore about a man who was smart enough to have gone on to college but who never had the chance to do so.

Whatever dreams he had about going to college and becoming a writer were quashed because of financial conditions at home. Things there were tough, with little prospect they would better soon. His father had abandoned the family to live with another woman in a nearby town when he was seven. His mother, who had immigrated to America from England when she was a child, had to clean houses to make ends meet. But, that was often not enough. Because he was the oldest of the three boys in the family, he was the one who had to go up to the house where his father lived and ask him for money to help out. He never forgot the humiliation of standing at the front door of his father’s new home with hat in hand. He never forgave his father until he was far older. He would also go with his brothers and a cousin to pick up pieces of coal that had fallen off the trains passing through town so they could heat their house and cook their meals on an old coal stove. It wasn’t considered stealing because the lumps of coal were not taken from off the coal cars themselves. Nonetheless, it was degrading.

Cleaning houses, scrounging for coal, asking for money and whatever else could be done were cobbled together for income, but it was barely sufficient in meeting the needs of a woman with no husband and five children—two girls and three boys. There was a roof to keep over their heads, food to put on the table and clothes to put on their backs. There was no money for college. So the man who loved opera got a job. The oldest of the girls went on to nursing school, which he helped her to pay for even though he himself could not afford college. And, then came the unkindest cut of all—the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

If it was tough finding a job when he got out of high school in 1928, it became nearly impossible when the Great Depression hit. People were being thrown out of work left and right. Those without a job found that landing one had just become doubly difficult. Those with jobs held on to them tightly, not knowing who might be next. A job with the government became the default position for many, including the man who loved opera. At first it was with an Army Depot in a nearby town. Then it became a position with the U.S Forest Service, which was to become his employer for the rest of his working life. It was office work, but it suited him fine. He was good with numbers, which was important when it came to the budget work for which he was given responsibility. He was a hard worker, for which he was often promoted and which meant he and his family would move to new town. And, people genuinely liked him and he had many good friends. But, more importantly to him, it was a job that he was thankful to have. And, having obtained it during the depression, he kept it, never thinking of changing it and going elsewhere. It was an attitude thoroughly ingrained in a generation that lived through the worst depression in the nation’s history.

It was not, however, the job he had dreamed of in his youth. It was employment. It was a paycheck. It provided for him and his family. It allowed his children to do what he was not able to, one of the most important being to go to college. He tried his hand at writing a novel, which is something many people attempt at one time or another with varying degrees of success. Years later an early draft of his manuscript was found among his photo albums and memorabilia. Those who read it couldn’t help but feel a sense of frustration that he must have experienced in not getting any further than a few short chapters. He must have known it would go nowhere, at which point the unfinished book was put away with the good intention of getting back to it one day, perhaps in retirement.

And, so his life became one of working and providing for his family. The moments of joy in his life were never extreme. His children said of their family life that it never was one of great highs nor one of great lows. It was fairly low key. And, so, he looked for those moments that would mean something to him out of the ordinary. And, that is one of the reasons why he loved opera. It was so different from the run of the mill life all around him. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his wife. He did. He also loved his children, and he could always look back with great satisfaction that they had what they needed. Their life was not one of wealth or luxury, but their needs were met. He saw to that. But a real passion of his life was opera. He loved the grandness of it all. He didn’t understand the words being sung in a foreign language. Sometimes, he thought that was just as well. The mystique of opera might be dispelled if the libretto were in English. Somehow the lyrics carried more meaning in Italian or French, or even German for that matter, than they ever would in English.

He would sit on Saturday afternoons and listen to the Metropolitan Opera coming from an old-fashioned radio with its speakers hidden behind a cloth mesh. It had big, clunky knobs on the front that were used to tune it and adjust the sound. He would imagine the scene being played out in each act. He knew the story of almost every opera, and he would attempt to tell anyone within earshot what was going on. He also had albums of operas on large 78 rpm vinyl records that featured such well-known artists as Edith Piaf, Joan Sutherland and Richard Tucker. He would play them from time to time, explaining when he could to someone in the family why such and such an artist was so accomplished. When his son took up the trombone in Jr. High School he bought him a recording of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries just to impress him that the instrument of choosing was used by such a grand composer as Wagner to great effect. It pretty much fell on the deaf ears of the boy, who was struggling to memorize his part in a Sousa march.

It wasn’t until his son was older that he came to appreciate what his father saw in opera. It happened when his son was in his thirties and had children of his own. He happened to see in the newspaper that the opera companies of London, Paris and Moscow were coming to the Kennedy Center. In an effort to see what his father saw in opera he said that he would like to go with him to these productions. His father was so pleased that he said he would treat. He bought tickets to the Saturday matinees of each performance. The seats were five rows back in the upper balcony, which made them affordable. And although they were far removed from the stage on which they looked down, they were perfectly fine. More importantly they served their purpose, and for the first time he saw and heard what his father had seen and heard all those many years.

What he saw was the most wonderful presentation that he unexpectedly found to his liking. Everything about it was done in grand style—music, singing, dancing, acting, costuming and staging. He had never seen anything like it. And the first opera of the series they saw was a most fortunate introduction. It was Puccini’s Madam Butterfly. It had such an impact on him that he was certain that there were no operas like Puccini operas. It was many years later that he fell under the spell of other composers such as Verdi, Bizet and, best of all, Wagner. It was a great bonding experience between father and son, one that had taken too many years to solidify. And it prompted him to treat his father, accompanied by his mother, who went along to please her husband, to tickets to the high temple of the opera world, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. It was the one and only time the man who loved opera could see in person what he could only imagine all those years by listening to the radio.

His son would tune in the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoons when there was not much else to do, or when he was involved in a chore around the house, such as painting a room, and he could listen while working. And once on a business trip to New York City he got a ticket for a performance of the Metropolitan Opera Company at Lincoln Center. He went to a nice Italian restaurant nearby and had spaghetti with meat sauce and a glass of red wine. Actually, it was more like two glasses of red wine. Then he went to his seat on the aisle in the orchestra section and saw a performance of Puccini’s Turandot. He remembered his father trying to tell him about the story of that opera one Saturday afternoon as it came directly from the Metropolitan Opera House compliments of Texaco. What he saw on the stage that evening, however, was far different than what he had imagined as he sat there with his father. You really have to see opera, he thought, to appreciate opera.

The old 78 albums of entire operas are still around, on the shelf at the son’s home. He thought of seeing if anyone would be interested in buying them, but he found that no one listens anymore to opera coming from a vinyl disk. Everything is digitized these days, where the sound is fuller and there is no static or distortion to interfere with the listener’s enjoyment. And listening to an opera today would be from a radio with surround sound that makes it seem almost like being there in the opera house. But for the man who loved opera, the music came from an old radio with brown knobs. For the man who loved opera the recordings were vinyl and the radio monaural. But that was fine. He was happy to be sitting in his comfortable chair, finishing up the coffee from breakfast and reading Time magazine, all the time keeping an eye on what was cooking in the kitchen for dinner that night, only imagining what scenes were being played out far away on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City that particular Saturday afternoon.

CHAPTER 4

The Sweetest Right-hander in the League

You’ve gotta have heart, all you really need is heart.

–- Damn Yankees

He was home run king that year. He hit more home runs than anyone else in the American League. More than Mickey Mantle. More than Ted Williams. More than anyone. And he played for the lowly Washington Senators, the last-place team in the League. It was 1957, and his name was Roy Sievers.

He was that year the hero of a young man who needed a hero. The one hero he had was Shane, a fictional gunfighter of the old West who rode into town one day, took up sides with the peaceful farmers against the lawless ranchers of the valley, then eradicated all the bad men in a blazing gun battle before riding off into the sunset. Then there was an uncle who his mother wished he would emulate. His uncle would have been a good role model. He was a good man, but the young man thought it unfair that his mother would nominate his uncle over his own father for the lofty position of hero. It was only later in life that the young man came to view his father in heroic proportions when he could appreciate all that fathers must do. So, other than Shane, he had no heroes growing up.

Then he discovered Roy Sievers. It was almost by accident and totally unexpected. The young man was in his junior year in High School. He had moved to the Washington, D.C. area with his parents and sister the year before. It had been a tough move for him. It meant leaving behind his best friends. It meant starting over in a new school with kids he didn’t know. It meant moving from the mountains of the West, which he loved, to the hills of Virginia, which he didn’t. It meant getting used to humidity. It meant getting used to people with Southern drawls.

He made a few new friends at school, but he was highly selective about who would be his pals. It couldn’t be just anyone. He wasn’t going to give many a chance. They needed to come with certain credentials, which narrowed his options considerably. There was for one a young man named Bob who also was a new student. This meant that he understood the alienation that came from being uprooted from all with which he was familiar. Then there was a guy named Kurt. He also was a new student. But he had another thing going for him. He was from Colorado, and the two shared a mutual longing for the West and loathing of the East.

In the end, however, it was his father who came to the rescue. He did it by taking the young man to his first major league ball game. It was at Griffith Stadium, the home of the Washington Senators. And their opponent that day was the almighty champions of the American League, the New York Yankees. It was an unusual gesture for his father to make. The new job in Washington kept him busy, with little time left for relaxation or having fun. But, he knew his son loved baseball. His favorite team before moving to Washington had been the Yankees. He knew the names and positions of all of the players on the Yankees’ roster. He had cut out pictures of each of them from newspapers and sports magazines and plastered them on his bedroom wall. There wasn’t much not to like about the Yankees. They were the best there was.

But when he came to Washington his loyalties slowly, and a little begrudgingly, gravitated to the Senators. He had never lived in a city that had a major league ball team, which meant that up until then any major league team could be the favorite. But the Senators were now his hometown team, and for that reason he felt they should have his loyalties. He felt drawn to them also because they were the underdog in most match-ups. This made their victories, few as they might be, all the more delicious. And rooting for the Senators provided some small connection to a place and time that was not to his liking, but which he tried to make the most of.

He watched the Senators’ games on television whenever he could. It was an old black and white RCA. And because it was the only TV his family owned, he had to make sure there wasn’t something else his parents wanted to watch at the same time. If there was something else on that his sister wanted to watch he had to bribe her to let him watch the game instead. This usually entailed a promise to both wash and dry the dinner dishes so she didn’t have to do either. Most of the time she was happy to take the deal.

If the Senators were not on TV, or if he didn’t get the chance to watch them if they were, he would listen to them on the small clock radio next to his bed.