IN THE SHADOW OF BLUE MOUNTAIN: LIVES AND LETTERS OF A REMARKABLE FAMILY - Volume III, 1962-2022

By Ronald J Brickman

IN THE SHADOW OF BLUE MOUNTAIN: LIVES AND LETTERS OF A REMARKABLE FAMILY - Volume III, 1962-2022 chronicles the personal histories of three members of the Hollingshead family: the father, Charles Anton, the daughter, Elma Kathleen (known throughout her adult life by her nickname Bim), and the youngest son, Roger Howerth. The aut

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writer Cosmos
• Release date: Dec 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869071781

Book preview

IN THE SHADOW OF BLUE MOUNTAIN

LIVES AND LETTERS OF A

REMARKABLE FAMILY

Volume III, 1962-2022

Written by

Ronald J. Brickman

Copyright 2023

Ronald J. Brickman

No part of this book should be republished or used without prior approval from the author.

DEDICATION

To Bim, with enduring gratitude and affection…

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks Dagmar Kaiser Logie who made invaluable comments and corrections on multiple versions of the manuscript and provided much useful advice on artwork and other matters of presentation. Dennis Brickman and Kathleen Dysert read and offered suggestions on the manuscript. Delenda Brickman, Sharon Keen, and Dennis Logie read parts of the manuscript. The author thanks editing consultant Beth Kalman Werner for her very gracious advice and encouragement during the early phases of the project. Debbie Dare and Dagmar Logie provided invaluable financial assistance for the final editing of the book and its preparation for publication.

Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME III

CHAPTER XV: THE STANFORD YEARS, 1962-1966

Ronnie at Stanford, 1962-1964

1963

1964

Ronnie in Italy

Ronnie Back on Campus

1965

Ronnie’s Senior Year

1966

CHAPTER XVI: PARIS AND MIT, PART I, 1966-1970

Ronnie in Paris

1967

MIT: The First Years

1968

1969

1970

CHAPTER XVII: THE THESIS YEARS, 1970-1972

1971

Return to MIT

1972

CHAPTER XVIII: THE STRASBOURG YEARS, 1972-1976

1973

1974

Trip to Prague

Strasbourg, Year II

1975

1976

CHAPTER XIX: THE CORNELL YEARS, 1976-1981

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

CHAPTER XX: BIM’S LAST YEARS, 1981-1983

1982

CHAPTER XXI: THE AFTERMATH, 1983-1991

CHAPTER XXII: THE LEGACY UNFOLDS, 1991-2022

Trouble with Renters and Early Improvements, 1991-1994

Family Affairs

Chamber Music and a Romantic Attachment

The Trip to Europe, 1993

Early Jobs: School and Piano Teaching

The Renovation and Remodeling of the Brockman House

The Founding of the Mother Lode Friends of Music

Early Piano Recitals

Later Friends of Music Concerts, 1998-2017

Later Piano Solo Recitals, 1998-2019

Later Piano Student Concerts and Achievements

Other Activities, 1998-2017

Later Activities on the Farm

Jams, Marmalades, Butters

Visitors to West Point

Family Affairs

The Dissolution of a Friendship

Foreign and Domestic Travel

Domestic Travel

Singapore and Bangkok

Southern India

Argentina

Palermo

The Philippines

Mexico

Bordeaux

A SHORT EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ronald Brickman grew up in the remote mountain town of West Point in central California. At the age of seven, he started taking lessons from a local piano teacher, an event that changed his life. He later graduated with the highest honors from Stanford University and earned a doctorate in political science from MIT. Like his piano teacher before him, he spent many of his adult years abroad, particularly working in an international affairs institute in Paris under one of his teacher’s former colleagues and as a member of the faculty of the University of Strasbourg, France. He also had appointments at Cornell, Vanderbilt, and Stanford. He is the senior author of Controlling Chemicals: The Politics of Regulation inEurope and the US (Cornell University Press, 1985) and numerous academic articles. In his mid-40s, he returned to his hometown to reside on the property inherited from his teacher and became a piano teacher himself, as well as a concert pianist, concert manager, and apple grower on the historic Hollingshead property. This is his first non-academic book.

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME III

This last volume in our trilogy resumes the life stories of three of the principals whose earlier histories were summarized, often in their own words through letters and memoirs, in the two earlier volumes. The patriarch Charles, whose childhood years in the 1870s begin the chronicle, died in 1954. But at the end of Volume II, both Bim and Roger lived on, Bim for another 21 years and Roger for another 31. This volume relates these twilight years. But as is true in almost everyone’s life, these final years are relatively stable and uneventful. Career milestones and creative outputs are mostly in the past. Still, some dramatic and highly readable events do occur. These include the tracheotomy of Doc, Bim’s colorful trips to Europe, Colorado, and the East Coast, Roger and Inge’s move out of their home in Arlington, Virginia, to the sylvan and secure world of the Rossmoor retirement community in Maryland, and Roger’s marriage to his high school sweetheart Mabel after the death of Inge. By the end of the volume, however, all of these principals have succumbed, the inevitable conclusion to their distinguished lives. Up to their deaths, neither Bim nor Roger lost their extraordinary capacity to describe the turning points and accompanying anecdotes of their lives, and there is much readable material to enjoy.

In contrast to the relatively stable circumstances of the later years of both Bim and Roger, our fourth principal, your author Ronnie, in 1962 enters into an intensely active period in his own life as he works through his higher education at Stanford and MIT and embarks upon a career. In an uncanny but totally unplanned parallel, Ronnie, like his mentor Bim, spends many years of his early and mid-adulthood living in Europe. But circumstances dictated that the site was in France and not Italy. He, also like his mentor and her brother, spent several years in Washington, DC. And finally, also following in his teacher’s footsteps, he moved on from these experiences to retire at about the same age to the farm in West Point, where he embarked upon a pastoral life based on piano and apples.

Originally, it was not intended to include Ronnie’s complete life in the manuscript. He thought that his experiences could not equal in interest those of his teacher, her father, and her brother, experiences the telling of which so captivated him throughout his childhood. Nor did he presume to share their literary talents. But it quickly became apparent that Ronnie’s life from 1962 onward had to be included, simply because he was the primary interlocutor of his teacher during this period, and his activities and accomplishments became the true motor of the narrative. It is for the reader to decide if his life story, as conveyed in his letters, equals in interest that of his predecessors.

By the time of Bim’s death, Ronnie’s history will have become so familiar to the reader that it seems perfectly natural to continue it up to the present. It is in this ultimate period that so many of Bim’s own aspirations finally reached their full flowering, thanks to the committed efforts of her pupil. It is only in reading this final accounting, therefore, that one can appreciate the true and complete arc of their remarkable relationship.  

CHAPTER XV: THE STANFORD YEARS, 1962-1966

The summer of 1962 represented a turning point in the history of the Hollingshead farm and the Brockman studio. The death of Jen and the departure of Ronnie for Stanford were only the most visible signs. There were also underlying forces that confirmed that the glory years of the 1950s were over.

First, the lumber economy of the 1940s and 1950s that brought so many young families to West Point was quickly fading. Many of the older families, like the Brickmans, the Townsends, and the Olsens hung on, but the replenishing of the younger generations—and the pool of potential new piano students—was on the decline. The area was being taken over by retirees, who had little interest in learning how to play the piano. While Bim was at the point where she no longer wanted to teach in the dozens as she had before, the meager roster took its toll on the availability of talent to put on recitals and musical plays. As a result, their frequency and number greatly decreased. And the decline had a negative impact on the household finances.

More broadly, one cannot overlook that the middle-class values that sustained an interest in learning to play the piano were also on the decline. The parents of Bim’s students during the 1950s had been raised during the Depression era; the prosperity of the postwar period gave them the wherewithal to pursue bourgeois interests inherited from an older generation. In the 1960s, however, a new mentality was being formed, both by young people and their younger parents. Young people no longer yearned to play the piano; in the era of Elvis Presley and the Beatles, the guitar became the preferred instrument. Classical music, in general, declined in popularity in the middle classes and survived primarily among the educated elite and, later, the Asian American community. Neither of these groups was well represented in West Point or the Mother Lode in general.

Another factor was Doc’s declining health and inability or disinclination to generate much income. Any help Jen gave to finance the household expenses was no longer forthcoming. As a result, improvement projects and upkeep around the place declined, and the orchard began a long and slow deterioration. The idea that someone would be brought in to maintain the orchard for half the crop does not appear to have borne fruit. By the time Ronnie inherited the property in 1983, most of the old trees were still standing but badly neglected, and the native flora had largely repossessed the terrain. Pine trees growing four stories high were thriving amidst the old apple trees. This situation greatly aggrieved Bim as she looked out over the orchard from her kitchen window, but there was little she could do about it. Finally, about this time, Doc became overly fond of Coors beer. A running joke for the next ten years was the number of empty beer cans accumulating around the yard.

There is not much on record immediately after Jen’s death, but Ronnie well remembers this transitional summer. He worked full-time in his father’s store and certainly continued his piano lessons. Kathy was home for the summer, so there was plenty of two-piano activity. Ronnie remembers going on a holiday with Kathy, Bill O’Hanlon (nephew of the O’Hanlon neighbors), and a girlfriend of Ronnie’s from high school. The group spent the day visiting Ronnie’s aunt and uncle, who were renting a cabin at Silver Lake in the high Sierras. Otherwise, it was another lazy summer spent down at the swimming hole.

With Kathy present, there emerged a kind of a teenage clique that got together on Saturday nights at the Brockman studio as a starting point. Here is the way Bim described it in a letter to Roger:

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The swimming hole of the North Fork of the Mokelumne River, below West Point

This here gang (Kathy, Cindy [Kathy’s cousin], Ronnie, Bill, and Jeanie [Olsen]) started out the evening at the piano but ended up somewhere else I haven’t found out—yep, just did: like to Hamm’s [on the highway to the high country] and cross-country roads to Volcano and stuff, having a whale of a good time in Rich O’Hanlon’s fancy car and letting Kathy drive a while, too…The funny thing is old man Brickman has become young after all these 17 years and actually behaves like a boy in his teens at a party now. He just suddenly realized he had missed something in high school and he’s trying to make up for it in one summer. [Ronnie always felt most comfortable in group settings that did not push toward pairing-off.]

Bim was busy throughout the summer dealing with the aftermath of Jen’s death. With Aunt Mary’s help, she designated beneficiaries for many of Jen’s heirlooms, extending all the way to the maid Hedwig in Innsbruck. On June 23, she reported to Roger that Jen left him $800 in war bonds, $100 to Inge, $1000 to Roy, $650 to Bim, and $450 to Ray and Mildred. Brother Ray received less because he was given full possession of the family’s cabin in the Rockies. Bim reiterated that Jen had offered $1000 to Ronnie on the premise that he would attend Johns Hopkins; when that fell through, the funds were added to an education fund set up for Kathy. The rest of Jen’s money was used to pay the last expenses and for a new pump on the premises.

In a letter to Aunt Mary on July 16, Kathy got a very good report: I am more than ever delighted with Kathy this summer. She is growing into the kind of person we wanted her to, and her intelligence and human understanding are truly remarkable. However, in other letters over the summer, Bim expressed concern over Kathy’s lingering health issues.

Among her summer correspondents was Sam Welles, who continued to send her boxes of books. She reported that she had three new students, all boys, aged 6, 7, and 12, all eager to learn, with the six-year-old anxious to perform. These three boys will perhaps be able to take Ronnie’s place now. She also reported on Roger’s contribution to Kathy’s education. The reason he does it was first because I wanted it and second because he sees so much of me in Kathy that I guess he feels he is educating Bim into what she might have been instead of is.

Bim’s favorite during this period was 12-year-old Jackie Carson, the son of the town constable and his wife, the owner/manager of the town’s first lumber yard/hardware store. In a memo several months later, Bim described him as the Professor’s [i.e., Ronnie’s] attempted replacement in my life and love. A good pianist and a lover of the arid conversations of stuffy studio adults, besides being an ardent admirer of Doc’s cooking. He would live here if we’d let him.

Bim wrote to Roger and Inge in August, discussing the possibility of visiting them toward the end of the year but wondered if she could afford it. She had to have some dental work done, and Doc was committed to a hunting trip to Colorado. In the end, she did not make the trip. She told Roger that Mildred Biddick and Dorothy Richardson spent a week in West Point at the end of July. Kathy, with some friends, launched in to clear and clean Jen’s apartment thoroughly and convert it into suitable guest quarters. Bim organized a musical evening with Kathy and Ronnie performing and showcasing new pupil Jackie Carson. Sharon Jones, now Keen, visited with her new baby, full of tantrums. Bim and Ronnie spent an evening trying to respond to Stanford’s request to indicate a probable major. Bim made slips with all possible majors of interest and put them on the floor. Then the slips were categorized by yen to study (resulting in some twelve), then another pile was made of the most useful. After great discussion, the pair put them in order of priority. Anthropology came out on top, then psychology. By that time Ronnie was screaming ‘Oh, let’s throw them all out and go to bed!’ (RJB retains a vivid memory of this evening.)

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Kathy and Haxhi chasing squirrels, with Mildred Biddick and Dorothy Richardson in the background, summer 1962

Bim went on:

I did find out something, though. Ronnie is interested not in science, engineering, political science, or the humanities. He is interested in humanity. The only final deviation from that interest was chemistry, and after all people are largely chemical.

In the end, Ronnie chose sociology as his undergraduate major as something of a last resort. His first two years were spent dabbling in many subjects: psychology, Russian literature, logic, chemistry, foreign languages, history of painting, and the required courses as a freshman and at Stanford-in-Italy. At the beginning of his junior year, he half-heartedly started taking pre-medical courses. He quickly concluded that both the scientific subject matter and the competitive pressures were not for him. He took one term of anthropology and concluded that it fell far short in the useful category. But by then, he knew that he would definitely go into the social sciences (so the exercise on the floor with Bim was not far off) and chose sociology because it was the easiest field to accumulate the necessary credits to graduate. (In graduate school, he switched to political science, partly because while at Stanford, he had become politicized as so many of his generation had and because some of his best courses were in the field.) In his junior and senior years, he also took courses in abnormal psychology, history of music, comparative politics, and economics. By the time he graduated, he had taken a year each of German, Italian, and French, which did wonders for his grade-point average.

In another letter to Roger, also in August, Bim related that Sharon Jones Keen took Bim and Kathy to see the Devas/Kaisers on a three-day visit to Palo Alto (Sharon was on her way to the Far East to join her Navy pilot husband). Bim had a wonderful time. They heard the pianist Ray Bogas on the first evening, and Bim praised him highly. She went shopping with Burgl and relied on Burgl’s good taste to make a few purchases, including a Guatemalan skirt and blouse. She was enchanted with little Hansie: What a wonderful baby he is. I have never heard him cry except for food, which is the one thing in life he considers worthy of tear or temper… (He is) just big and healthy and interesting, the complete conqueror of Djafer and all lesser personalities. At the end of this letter, Bim reported that Ronnie was feeling a lot better about going to Stanford following the reception of a personal letter asking him to join the band.

In early September, Bim put on another recital, featuring the last appearances of Kathy and Ronnie of the season and performances by her new youngsters, all of whom played well. A young Norwegian girl, a foreign exchange student at the high school, also played a Grieg selection. A man in attendance wrote to Bim afterwards, praising the evening highly and offering to write an article about the studio for the press. Bim replied to thank him, offering to cooperate. She also detailed Ronnie’s last lesson before leaving for Stanford.

Ronnie played me three Beethoven sonatas, 18, 21, and 23, none of which he has ever heard performed and none of which are easy to interpret. He proved superbly that at eighteen he can comprehend the feeling and intentions of a major master. There is no better way in which he could have said goodbye—and he knew it.

The fact that Ronnie mastered in short order three late Beethoven sonatas without Bim’s help confirms that he had already acquired his most noteworthy talent as a pianist: an amazing ability to read music upon sight. Of course, once the music can be played, it must also be understood and interpreted, and it is this latter quality that Bim praised most of all. Ronnie does not remember anything about how Bim taught him to read music, and the most likely conclusion is that he figured it out on his own, thanks to his analytical mind and general musical foundation—Bim knew you had to have the basic concepts like scales and harmony well in hand to be a good sight reader—and overall visual orientation. From birth, Ronnie had a visual defect called amblyopia, a condition in which one eye does not convey information to the brain. So, all of Ronnie’s sight-reading ability came solely from the right eye, perhaps in a case of over-compensation.

An intra-family issue arose within the Hollingshead clan around this time. Doc, always full of ideas on how to manage the property and recognizing that the household income did not look promising, proposed to Roger that he sell his 11 acres on top of the hill. Brother Roy got wind of it and wrote Roger a letter of violent protest. A sale would surround his own property, the Old Schoolhouse, with neighbors, and he didn’t want to deal with it. Roger agreed, saying he didn’t really need the money at this time and preferred holding onto it. This issue was amicably resolved. Instead of selling Roger’s acreage, Bim and Doc hoped to sell some property down by the river, co-owned with Mike O’Hanlon, the income from which would tide them over for a while.

A secondary summer turmoil involved the Olsen twins, each of whom, for the first time, now in their mid-high school years, had serious, older boyfriends. One of them was Bim’s former piano pupil Dean Sloan. This development made their mother frantic, and the entire summer was an epic pitched battle between mother and daughters that captivated all. By the opening of school, however, the boyfriends were discarded, and the twins resumed their stellar academic career, and mother Jo was again at peace.

Ronnie at Stanford, 1962-1964

On October 10, Bim wrote Roger a letter which, among other items, offered a succinct review of Ronnie’s first months at Stanford, doing so better than Ronnie could have done himself:

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Stanford University, the visitor’s first view

Old Brickman was up unexpectedly last Sunday, the Eggers having induced him to come [at this point, old friends the Eggers were living in Redwood City, near Stanford]. He looks just fine. He’s not in love with his school but he is enjoying life. He isn’t studying nearly all he should—only five or six hours a day—because the man next door, sophomore kinda beatnik type, keeps hauling him off to the piano or to his room to listen to his vast record collection which, for example, includes the Mozart D minor concerto interpreted by three different pianists. Also, because a prof in the house has one of these amazing Japanese grands, which he tends like a baby—hot water bottles, felt, blankets, canvas, etc.—and lets Ronnie play in the afternoons when the weather is favorable. He is taking History of Western Civilization, Chemistry, German, English, and of course band. He is having trouble with the history, mainly I think because he lacks background in it. Chemistry so far is easy, he says, German is just fine with a young Fräulein who is a heck of a good teacher, and English so-so but gets better since the prof complimented him on his essay. Band he enjoys very much—twice weekly, two hours each time—and he played at the game last Saturday. There are eighteen foreign students in his dorm house, which he finds of added interest…Poor Old Nicky [Egger, who was present at the reunion of Ronnie and Bim], growing taller and taller but being more and more Nicky, looked so nonchalantly frustrated while Ronnie talked. There wasn’t really anything he could say to prove the importance of being Nicky.

Western Civ, a required course, was the only course in four years at Stanford in which Ronnie received less than a B as a grade. He improved only slightly during the year. He was totally unprepared for a course of this type. In high school, all of his social study courses simply required brainless memorization. In Western Civ, one had to read tons of primary sources and sophisticated analyses thereof and develop an original thesis (he will always remember the question on his first midterm: Man created God in his own image. Comment.) He simply could not get the hang of it. Needless to say, the teacher, a history grad student, taught the course as a graduate seminar and gave absolutely no instruction on how you get on top of a course like it. Eventually, Ronnie figured it out on his own and got mostly As in all the history and social science courses from then on. He now wishes that he had asked Bim to prepare him more for this kind of course, for example, by assigning a high-level history text and then discussing it. It was the most grievous shortcoming of his high school education.

Ronnie’s first letter on file was to Kathy, dated October 14. The news was the same as that conveyed by Bim after their West Point reunion. But an extended description of his roommate and next-door dormmate warrants quotation:

My roommate is from Tennessee—sort of the athletic type—but he isn’t going out for sports. He’s all right, but I don’t like him too well. I think he’s the only one on campus who doesn’t like classical music. He plays rock and roll music on the radio constantly (he even leaves it on when he goes to bed so I have to get up about 3:00 every morning to turn it off.) We get along OK but we don’t speak to each other very much.

This guy next door is really the prize, though. Fahrnkopf is a sophomore—very crude, vulgar, blunt, etc. but has this fantastic record collection and player. He has never taken a music lesson but can play the whole first movement of the Pathétique by ear! (He can hardly read music.) He has about three recordings of everything I’ve ever tried to play, and, as you can imagine, I’m listening to them all the time. He can’t get over how I’ve never heard recordings but can play all this stuff. We have big arguments over interpretation—he bases his opinion on Gould, Serkin, etc. and I base mine on me, Bim and you. Sometimes he likes mine better though. The guy himself is a real nut—very intelligent but somewhat eccentric—deliberately, I think. He would do anything at any time. He told me that last year he went to this ritzy concert dressed in a white shirt, bow tie, and dirty Levi’s! Plus tennis shoes. He’s kind of a bad influence on me because he never studies (doesn’t have to) and always takes me away from my homework to do some stupid thing, like a bike ride at 1:00 at night.

On October 22, there is another classic Hollingshead letter emanating from a pet. This one was from dog Haxhi to Doc, now in Colorado on his hunting trip. To quote:

Dear Papa,

This is to remind you that I am your dog and my name is Haxhi, And I want you to come home. It’s true that Mama lets me sleep by her bed and that she feeds me steak at the table and that she combs me and stuff, but I’d rather be with you…

Now, we are going up town to mail this. Mama says she’ll take me in the jeep if I’m good. I haven’t yacked in the car, but I don’t know whether I can stand riding in the jeep and not saying a word. That’s another thing about women. They expect a guy to shut up. What for?

You going to come home? You going to bring me some venison? You ever going to leave me again? If not,

Love, Haxhi

Ronnie’s letter to Bim in October yields this nice tidbit worth quoting:

In English, my essays have become worse and worse (even the teacher says so). This last one was on Diction, so having nothing else to write on, I defended the use of the word ain’t I still didn’t do very well.

Ronnie reported that in Western Civ, he had progressed to the point where he could think of things to say in class but still had not the courage to speak up and say them. He reported that his dorm neighbor had just acquired a $300 phonograph, and Ronnie worked up enthusiasm for Beethoven’s fourth and Brahms’ D minor piano concertos. As for the roommate:

He is becoming rather annoying and I think the feeling is mutual. We tolerate each other but that is about it. One good example: he smokes like an incinerator and (being from the South, I guess) never opens the windows to let the good Palo Alto air in. Consequently, every time I come into the room I have to practically cut my way through. When he’s not there, I open the windows. When I’m not there, he closes them. (When we’re both there, we leave them at their present state until the first person leaves. All this, of course, is done without a word.)

In December, Bim wrote a letter of Christmas greetings to all and sundry. If Christmas can’t be so merry, she writes, GRIN AND BEAR IT. She says it is the first Christmas she would like to skip.

I miss my mother working so hard on her potholders and her cards and letters and waiting for her little tree to come in for decoration. I miss my dog thumping his tail eagerly in anticipation of turkey dinner [the beloved Finnegan died on October 19]. They both loved these holiday celebrations, so it’s like not having the kids around anymore.

Bim related that all her piano students, led by adult pupil Pearl Henry, gave her a surprise party in December. They presented her with a wool rug for the studio and a tray with the image of a grand piano and all the pupils’ names etched around it. The letter reported that Doc went to San Francisco for a checkup and came back with a very good report. The exam included a recording of his speech. The doctors were amazed at his facility. It seems that since Doc, they haven’t produced a talker, and the current crop shows no talent whatso. They can’t understand it. What they fail to realize is that there are not many men who can’t live a little while anyway without talking, whereas Doc refuses to be silent merely because he has no larynx.

The holiday spirit was darkened irretrievably by the tragic death of two of Bim’s pupils and their mother, Joey, Peter, and Barbara Teale. Barbara and Steve Teale were the town’s resident doctors and were known by everybody. The three were returning from Sacramento on an evening under heavy fog; a truck ran a red light at the intersection, killing both children instantly, with Barbara dying a few days later. Everyone was devastated. (Steve Teale went on to remarry happily and became one of the region’s most distinguished politicians, rising to be Majority Leader of the California State Senate.)

1963

Bim was cheered at the beginning of the year by the extended visit of cousins Ted and Leah Coulter. Leah was the youngest daughter of Aunt Mary, and Bim knew them from her early years in Fruita, Colorado. The Coulters left on February 15 for Colorado with their Cadillac filled with such sundry items as soapstone, red rocks from Amador County, quartz, sugar pinecones, and two birdcages filled with a brilliant pheasant rooster and a demure pheasant hen.

Around this time, Bim and Doc became quite friendly with the town druggist Perry Harrington and his red-headed, rather excitable wife Hazel. Perry accompanied Doc on his Colorado hunting trip in the fall, and Hazel took voice lessons from Verne Hofeditz. In other news, Andy Dunlap, Kathy’s little half-brother, had to have several abscessed teeth pulled. Jo Olsen ran her car over the bank in the North Fork canyon and had to pull herself out through a thicket of poison oak. Doc, with Ted’s help, installed an elevator next to the original outside staircase leading up to the studio’s west door. Bim says, It really hauls up wood and it really adds to the typical Brockman style of architecture and landscaping. [Indeed, the elevator was something of a tourist attraction for visitors to the property. It was necessary because in order to keep a fire going throughout the night, massive, slow-burning, chunks of wood were needed that could not be easily carried up.] Bim had to have a non-malignant growth removed from her parotid gland. This required a small cut in the facial nerve on the right side, but there were no lasting effects. Bim mentioned she was reading The Agony and the Ecstasy, the historical novel of the life of Michelangelo by Irving Stone. It reminded Bim of all the times she stopped by to view the sculptor’s statue of Moses in a church near one of her Rome apartments.

In an addendum to this letter sent to Kathy, Bim revealed her fantasies about the great wealth coming from the potential sale of the river property to Ted and the brother of druggist Perry. Ted would put in a fishpond and resell the property for a fantastic amount. Doc and Leah would go deep sea fishing on their yacht, but Ted, who gets seasick, would stay on the pier. Bim would stay home, working on my five or six grand pianos, in a sweeping red velvet gown with beautiful rubies in my ears. She added that Sharon Jones Keen brought back with her jade earrings from Hong Kong to replace the lost ones given to her by Sam Welles.

Speaking of Sam Welles, Bim wrote him about the same time, mentioning the replaced earrings. She also mentioned the idea that had been circulating since Jen’s death: using the financial gifts donated in her memory to sponsor a special shelf of books in the library of the West Point school. She asked Sam for suggestions. She mentioned the therapeutic value of having the Coulters stay with her from Christmas on: It is odd how exhausted a person can get without knowing it until the cause of anxiety is removed. She now thought she could really get going again. She compared Sharon’s little girl to Sam and Marge’s little Grace, about the same age. Daughter Ronda’s entrancing if dramatic ways have been supplemented by a little Japanese bow picked up during her four months in the Orient. As for Sharon, (she) herself was such a terribly shy, sensitive, obstinate, escapist little girl I used to worry lest she never be able to adjust to life. So, it is really a joy to see her so charming, happy, self-possessed, and outgoing, without losing her own peculiar, odd-ball flavor. Doc moved into Jen’s old apartment and liked to go to sleep hearing Bim play upstairs. Bim slept in the upstairs bedroom, and the old house was used only for cooking and eating meals.

Another voice from the past around this time was Harry Fultz. He sent Bim some Nigerian poems, presumably written by an acquaintance, that Bim found of a high order. She gave him an update on Calaveras County: You would hardly know it these days. There are so many houses and good highways that it will soon be citified everywhere. The old hamlet of West Point itself is still one of the shabbiest in the entire west, but even it displays three little real estate offices. Bim also forwarded the news about Djafer: He is not politicking. His wife told me that he was corresponding only with a couple of old friends. He is pretty much a realist. I’m so glad for them that they have at least found an environment they can enjoy…

In a letter to Mildred Biddick, Bim revealed that some Italian experts had made hard apple cider from the orchard apples. It’s the only thing I have been able to drink for years without suffering and I drink some every night. It tastes just like apples should taste when they have lived a long, happy, complete life. Bim said that her supply should be replenished because she intended to let the Italians have the whole orchard production each year. Bim sent a note from the hospital in Stockton a few days later saying that her operation went well. The doctors called it most interesting. I was too sick yesterday to find out why it was interesting…I supposes everything I produce, including tumors, is screwball. (Later it is revealed that the tumor was most interesting because it had a tail)

Ronnie wrote Kathy an undated letter sometime around the first of the year. (One knows that it is about this time because Ronnie is in the midst of taking a typing class.) Once again, Ronnie’s roommate provided comic relief.

I’d better not get started on my roommate ‘cause I’d have to write a book. What a character—and I thought I was bad! I guess I never told you about the aquarium. Well, about Thanksgiving he went and bought this aquarium and tropical fish (he has hardly any money but evidently was driven by a desire to beautify our abode and also treat himself after three months of constant study). At the time, it apparently had never occurred to him what to do with the fish over Christmas vacation. So, after an unsuccessful attempt to try to sell me the whole works for 5 bucks, he had to return the fish to the shop, en route to which the plastic bag he had them in broke, losing two guppies. After Christmas, he kissed the whole thing off [Ronnie explains that this is a consecrated Stanford expression] and let the pet shop have the fish for the board bill. Meanwhile, we have this aquarium in our room, the water turning a horrid dark green color, and the plants rotting. Really quite a mess (it never occurs to him to clean it out). When he next suggested that we put up curtains, you can imagine how I approved of that!

The latest development, however, is the roommate getting fired from his cafeteria job, which provided his meals (he overslept too many times last quarter). He didn’t tell his mother, so he’s making it on one meal a day (usually two 5-cent orders of French fries, plus two packs of cigarettes). He has requested that I bring him food when I go to meals and I hate that. After eating a big meal, you feel like an idiot taking 10 slices of bread to your room. Yesterday I gave him a candy bar and he ate it like it was his Last Supper. I don’t know, the whole thing gripes me somehow.

A letter to Kathy in February was written at a time when Ronnie was overwhelmed with homework but felt heartened after a down spell. He had a new English teacher for the term, and the teacher read one of his essays to the class, something that he had done only once before. Ronnie enjoyed an organ recital at Memorial Church and hoped to study organ someday (he scarcely did—too difficult to find one to practice on). He attended a lecture, Music and the Individual, by the composer Roger Sessions. He chastised Kathy for the downturn in her grades: It seems that school to you is just a mere inconvenience between horseback riding and basketball games. In the roommate chronicles, he reported that he kindheartedly continued to bring up food for his roommate from the cafeteria; meanwhile, Fahrnkopf, the next-door guru, sneaked out food from the Student Union, where he had a late-night clean-up job.

Reviewing Ronnie’s letters to Kathy and Bim during this period recall to him that he had another correspondent during this period. The previous summer, he had been a counselor at the local West Point church’s summer camp, which he had attended as a youth. There, he befriended a young lady who was the daughter of a pastor and the camp’s guest speaker. They worked up a typical summer romance, and Ronnie remembers having long discussions with her well into the wee hours on religion and other matters. In the fall, Ronnie went to Stanford, and she went to a Christian college. For a time, they continued to write to each other. But their differences on religion, glossed over during the summer, became gradually more apparent and unbridgeable, and the relationship ended.

Bim wrote Ronnie a long letter on March 2, the first found in the files for the year. She thanked him for calling her attention to Mozart’s C minor concerto, and she started working on the orchestra part. The remainder of the letter mostly told news reported elsewhere. Bim said that fellow piano teacher Mr. King finally persuaded the school PTA to sponsor him in a recital, and with his splendid advertising of himself, Bim felt obliged to schedule some student recitals, not to be shown up.

A letter to Roger in mid-March gave more information about Mr. King. Bim stated that her main advantage over him was all her little kids who played so lovingly and loved to perform. She intended to take her best pupils to King’s concert, so they can see what a real pianist must do, and simultaneously hear what a real musician must not do. Bim felt guilty that she had not sought out Mr. King since he moved to West Point. But he is such a silly old bore and, somewhere beyond 80, so gallant a lady’s man and so concentrated a contemplator of his own image that I selfishly refuse to waste my precious time on him.

Bim wrote to Ted and Leah in mid-April and told them that King’s concert was a complete flop. He played stinking ‘modern’ music, and they all sounded the same. Little Mark Moriarty had to leave after the third selection. The Olsen twins and Ronnie (home for spring break) refused to go. Subtracting two of King’s pupils and their parents and Bim’s pupils with some of their parents, only 12 of the general public showed up in an auditorium seating 200, to King’s astonishment. Because of King’s finagling the PTA to sponsor his concert, some of the mothers of Bim’s pupils promoted the idea that the PTA should do the same for Bim. So Bim made plans to put on a recital featuring works by Clementi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Gershwin; each pupil would introduce his or her pieces with an explanatory text written by Bim. Verne Hofeditz would sing, along with pupil Hazel Harrington: That is, if Hazel doesn’t collapse first. So far, she seems to be at least gathering all her nervous bits into one spot instead of scattering them all over the house. If she can just do it once, maybe she’ll be all right with that most pleasing voice of hers.

Bim related that Ronnie came down all but two nights during his spring break. She said that he was gloomy about his grades due partly to his poor history and English teachers. Surprisingly at this late stage, Bim said that Ronnie still hoped to go to Johns Hopkins someday. (Ronnie’s desire to go to Baltimore was probably due mostly to an unsatisfied wanderlust, no doubt stimulated years before by Kathy going to Rome and by all of Bim’s tales of living abroad. This was cured the following spring when he attended Stanford-in-Florence for six months and traveled extensively in Italy and several other countries.)

Ronnie wrote Kathy in mid-April. He summed up the completed winter quarter. Second quarter is over with, finished, completed, and forgotten about. He was proud of his English term paper (the first long paper he wrote since he copied verbatim a report on Australia from Compton’s Encyclopedia in the seventh grade.) The paper had to be on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Ronnie chose the topic, The Significance of Kurtz’s Last Statement in the Heart of Darkness. He remembers being in total despair about it until he spent an all-nighter, with Fahrnkopf cheering him on from the sidelines, in a dorm basement room to avoid disturbing his roommate. He told Kathy that he finished it (his first typed paper) just 45 minutes before the deadline and was expecting a C at best. So he was thrilled to get a straight A. (A few years ago, Ronnie found that essay in his files and reread it. He couldn’t believe how good it was. He had already learned the invaluable lesson that the key to a good grade on a paper was to find the right topic; after that, the paper wrote itself.)

Ronnie was also thrilled to get an A in typing (yea, team! as he tells Kathy.) In an earlier letter, he told Kathy what a witch the typing teacher was. She tried so hard to give her little typing and shorthand classes the importance of graduate courses in Virology or something—and it just didn’t come off. He told Kathy about his acceptance to Stanford-in-Italy. Actually I applied originally for the campus in Germany since I’m taking that language, with Italy as my second choice, But after I applied I wished I would have just applied to Italy, because I think I would like it better. And by some miracle, my second choice was accepted. (In its own inimitable way, this happy news was reported in the local Calaveras County press with the title, Ronald Brickman to Study Piano in Italy.)

In a letter to Leah on April 24, Bim explained that she had to cancel the recital due to a late snowstorm and rescheduled it for the 27th. In a letter to Mildred Biddick on May 14, she reported that the rescheduled recital came off excellently and was most entertaining.

Bim gave more details about the recital in a letter to Ted and Leah on May 17. There was much amusing yacking and short and sweet playing that everybody loved. And, my deahs, when Hazel and Verne sang I sat at the back of the room and prayed. Verne was off pitch but that bothered only the ear. Hazel was on pitch but sounding a little tight in the breath. But when the climax came and her voice soared up to the top of Blue Mountain on a series of high notes, strong, flawless, I almost rose cheering from my chair. She’s all set.

Bim started