CHAPTER NINETY ONE: FALLING DOWN MEMORY LANE

CHAPTER NINETY ONE: FALLING DOWN MEMORY LANE

It’s about to rain any minute at Utsch’s Marina in Cape May. I already took my two mile walk this morning, heading to West Marine at 7:30 a.m. to get the right paint for our sundeck roof. This walk entails crossing four to six lanes of traffic, as it rushes over a bridge to and from Cape May. Not exactly a walk in the park, but exercise nonetheless. It was a good break from bike riding. I got to use different muscles and give my cramped calf muscles a rest. And I’m learning that the pedestrian does not have the right of way in New Jersey. It is only safe to walk in a cross walk, when the “walk” sign is on. Even then, it’s best to look in all directions, because those red lights appear to be discretionary in southern New Jersey. If there is no crosswalk, and there wasn’t where I had to get to the other side of the bridge where the footpath is, good luck! Look both ways and run as fast as you can without tripping or falling. I’m happy to report that this morning’s run across the multi-laned highway, both going and coming, was uneventful. Not even a little trip. And the traffic was uncharacteristically light, so I only had to wait a few minutes before it was clear in both directions. Still, this walk is not for the faint of heart. It gets the adrenalin flowing. The Admiral did it yesterday, so today was my turn to hoof it to West Marine. We both finished the round trip unscathed – Whew!

Over the past week I’ve been biking all over Cape May and I fell two days in a row. No broken bones, just bruises – to body and pride. The second fall was bizarre. I was crossing a street and suddenly my bike seat had fallen out of its shaft and was taking the rear bike rack with it. I thought it was taking the rear wheel too and I had visions of riding a unicycle. But luckily it was “only” the seat and the bike rack that fell to the road, taking me with them. It was one of those “slo mo” falls, so I had a few milliseconds to cushion the blow. I bounced right back up and inserted the bike seat back into its shaft. But I thought better about hopping right back on. That’s only with horses. Instead, I walked the bike, while checking the stability of the seat. Then I stopped and took it off to examine it. A couple walked by, and the woman said “Can we help?” I jumped on that offer, and the man went to work tightening the seat. I thanked the woman, and she said “I meant, ‘can he help?’ I’m useless.” No matter the gender of the fixer, the seat was firmly attached to the bike, and I was able to get back to the boat before the clouds burst completely open. My bike is a Huffy. I took it the next day to the Cape May bike shop to make sure the seat was tight. There’s a young dude with a ‘tude who works there. He informed me that the seat was way too high and put it down an inch. I asked about a clicking sound I was hearing around the gears. He looked at the gears, said they were fine, then gratuitously remarked: “It’s a department store bike. What do you expect?” I don’t know if that’s true. I bought my Huffy from Jake on the floating dock at Calvert Marina. It’s very spiffy, and someday soon I’ll learn to ride it without falling. I keep remembering that scene on the TV series “Friends” where Phoebe runs/jogs like a total klutz with her arms flailing and her legs flying out to the sides. That’s the way I feel when I’m biking. I love it: Total freedom. At the same time I’m very careful with any cars around, moving and parked. And just a leetle bit loosy-goosy when I’m all alone on a street or highway. Honest.

It’s Tuesday, August 13, a week since I wrote the two paragraphs above. So much has happened. And as each new exciting event has unfolded, the blogworthy adventures right before it began to fade quickly. Let’s start with last Tuesday – Surprise! Our inflatable RIB by Achilles arrived early. The Admiral raced down to Slow Motion yelling for help to put together the “boat in the box”. It was a three person job, and the folks at the marina who had offered to help before the boat arrived just melted on to the floor. So it was me and the Admiral. But wait – I spied a young feller on his cell phone in the fast boat next to us. So I knocked on his isinglass and got his attention. John said he’d be glad to help. It was another day of threatening rain, and he was looking for something to do. We went up to the boxed boat, which was resting on some pallets. The Admiral had torn away the cardboard to expose the inflatable, and he and John set about to “pump it up”. Jawohl. Our new Achilles took shape in minutes right before my eyes. This was very cool. Once we had made it seaworthy, we trucked it down to the water and put it right in. The Admiral and I eased ourselves in, with a little leaning side to side on my part. We had our oars and we paddled down the channel to Slip 14, where Slow Motion awaited our arrival. John turned out to be great pal, as he trotted along the dock and met us on Slow Motion. He helped us lift Achilles out of the drecky channel water and on to the cockpit of Slow Motion. Then the Admiral hooked her up to the davit and hoisted her up to the sundeck roof. She looks perfect up there. She’s not more than 150 pounds, and you can still see out the back window of the flying bridge, because she’s so much smaller than the Boston behemoth that had blocked our rear view for the past year. We don’t have a name for Achilles yet -- Achilles Heel is too obvious. Helen is too mythological. But we have a lifeboat, at last we have a lifeboat. And thanks in part to our new best friend John of Edgewater Maryland, we can continue to head north to Alaska, I mean, the Erie Canal.

Not so fast, Buster. Cool your jets! There was this little thing called my 50^th high school reunion which occurred last Friday, August 9, for the Liberty High School Class of 1963. Not having been to a high school reunion since our 20^th,  I realized that I was only 3 hours away by car and it would be a shame not to accept Carol V’s offer to stay with her while attending the reunion. So once we had our new dinghy/lifeboat, I decided to go back 50 years in time to join some old friends who knew me when I was a 5 foot eight inch telephone pole who was voted the girl “Most Likely to Succeed” by my classmates. The boy with that honor, Chuck Iobst, went on to Princeton, where he apparently became quite skilled at golf and gambling, not necessarily in that order. And he may or may not be a golf coach and/or golf course pro somewhere in Arizona. Alas, he has not ever shown any interest in returning to a reunion to share his successes with us. His younger brother had built a working guillotine in sixth grade, when my mother was his teacher. Children of psychiatrists are always so predictably unpredictable.

Let’s get to the people who WERE there. How about our valedictorian, Eugene Schnitzler, a pediatric neurologist or neurosurgeon, all the way from Chicago (and the suburb of Northbrook), Illinois. Oh yes, the bitter sweetness of Gene having given our farewell speech at graduation five months before JFK was assassinated. I believe I may have had a tad better GPA – who cares – and was considered “Number One” in the class, but one faculty member told me that Gene was selected over me as valedictorian because a male voice is more pleasing. Oh My God. That was a crushing statement, which impelled me to a life of fighting sexism, whether the faculty member’s report was true or not. When I had my own radio show while in law school, some 5 years after high school, I ran into sexist microphones, of all things, which indeed were designed to enhance the sound of male voices and were actually engineered to pick up the tenor, baritone and bass in richer tones. My God, that was an eye opener, and it still is. It was, in fact, the case that my former husband, a deejay at the same radio station, WYBC-FM, had a much more mellifluous radio voice than I did, THANKS TO THE CHAUVINIST MIKES! But I just figured that if people heard more and more voices in the female registers, our voices would start “growing” on them, despite the engineering bias. And I think it’s true today. While the mikes may still favor the male registers, I enjoy women’s voices on all kinds of radio and television stations. Take Rachel Maddow, for example, on MSNBC, I could listen to her for hours. Whereas, Bill O’Reilly, not so much. Of course, the content of their speech has become more important to me than the timbre of their voices.

But I digress. Gene was a great valedictorian, despite his “doom and gloom” message. I think he predicted every catastrophe that was going to befall our generation, political, economic, ecological and spiritual. Still, who wants John or Mary Sunshine to send you off into the world, when it really will turn out to do some pretty cruel things? And Gene, the faculty choice, was balanced by the student’s choice, Robin Miller, who had the quintessential FM voice (and actually did FM radio while in high school), but gave a much lighter, happier send-off speech. And our third speaker, Greg Suess, who lived across the playground from me, extolled our accomplishments, as our class president was supposed to do. Yes, dear friends, no girl broke the lineup that graduation year. Damn those microphones! And damn the faculty members who were slaves to them! I think at our 60^th reunion I just might give a valedictory speech. At least I’ll have one ready, if anyone asks. Gene spoke at our 50^th – the honor clings to his shoulders – and he was amusing and, best of all, brief. It was the moment silence for our fallen classmates that was most moving. Hard to lose kids you remember from high school, when you never got to see them grow up, before they died. On an equally somber note, I was told that two of our classmates or their spouses have a form of dementia – wake up, researchers, we need a cure now!

One high point of the reunion was having Eloise Laufer run up to me to exclaim: “Ann Hill, I recognized you across the room by your smile!” Yesss! All those years of brushing paid off. I really like my smile, and I’m so glad that Eloise liked/likes it too. Another high point was Jerry Neuman turning to me during the class photo shoot and saying: “You look prettier now than in high school, more relaxed.” All righty then. The binge buying of L’Oreal eye products the afternoon of the reunion paid off in a big way. That, plus the dusky, shadowy lighting at the Meadows Banquet Hall in Hellertown. And thank you very much, Jerry. I know you were sober when you said that, although the Admiral insists you must have been drunk. I can always count on the Admiral for compliments on my appearance – not! The other day he suggested we have cosmetic surgery to get rid of our turkey skin. Hey, I earned that! Sure, I’ve thought about eliminating some wrinkles around the eyes, but all my smiling created them, so they were worth it too. My eye doctor said I could get my eyelids lifted for medical reasons – see, this is the stuff that crosses your mind every fifty years after high school graduation. And it’s fluff! I was looking for inner beauty in my old chums. And I found a lot of inner beauty in Dianne DeFrancisco, who also just happens to exude beauty outwardly too. What a dish! She danced the night away, barefoot, until the bottoms of her feet were very, very black. So much for a clean dance floor. I always thought Dianne walked like a Lipizzaner stallion in the 7^th and 8^th grades – great posture and presence – still there after all these years.

I didn’t see many of my Edgeboro/Northeast buddies, so thank you, Ruth Wren, for seeking me out and filling me in on your life since 1963. Allan Goodman was there, all six feet 6 inches of him. He was my height in high school. Growth hormones did not start with A Rod. Just kidding, Allan. There wouldn’t have been a toga long enough for you in Latin 2, so good thing you waited until college to reach for the skies. Phyllis Bimby recalled a much meaner Miss Boyd, our 7^th grade English teacher, than I had remembered. Phyllis has gone on to great achievements in real estate law; maybe Miss Boyd wasn’t all that bad, especially when it came to correct grammar and easy to read contract language. I spent a passing moment with Bonita Miller, who warned us about Hellertown police officers on the prowl for drinking drivers. I was hoping for something pithier, or at least more nostalgic. But that was what was clearly on her mind, so thanks for sharing, Bonita. P. S. I don’t drink. What can you say about Richard Edwards, who was Richard Szulborsky in high school? When asked why he changed his name, he said: “When I moved to the Mainline and got a job there, Polish people were not welcomed with open arms, so I changed my name. Then 12 years later this Polish guy gets elected Pope, and it’s acceptable to be Polish, even on the Mainline! But it was too late to change back.” The “Mainline” is a ritzy area outside Philadelphia, and he was probably right about their snootiness ((read: intolerance) in the 60’s and 70’s. In our high school days in eastern Pennsylvania in the steel town of Bethlehem, the divides caused by religion and ethnicity were as great as the racial divides. I still remember my mother’s mother, who was visiting us when I was a senior in high school, asking my mother: “Kathryn, those boys that visit Ann at the house – Schnitzler, Neuman, Bauer – are they Jewish?” “Yes, Grammy Shipman, they are, and you probably are too, but just don’t know it.” This was my silent retort.

After the Friday public reunion party in Hellertown, Carol V hosted an intimate private reunion party at her place in Allentown. I was privileged to join the gang that grew up together on the West Side of Bethlehem and hear some of their elementary school stories. But we all had Liberty High in common, and at some point in the evening, most members of the group broke out in song with our alma mater, word for word from the Cauldron, our yearbook edited by none other than Carol V. And we pored over the Cauldron looking for the people we had seen the night before, trying to discern a resemblance after 50 years. There was a lot of “Whatever happened to?” going on as well. Whatever happened to Leslie Hunt, Gloria Judd, Joan Lease, Chuck Iobst, Brenda Nauman? We knew what had happened to Les Amison, but still could not believe it. He killed his mother with a shotgun in 1990 and pled guilty to third degree murder for a sentence of 12 and ½ years to 25 years. That was in 1991. I thought there was an outside chance he would be out and maybe make an appearance at the reunion. But if he did, he was incognito. He had been a great football player in high school. I saw him at our 20^th reunion in 1983. We were in an elevator and he was slipping down the back of the elevator, drunk, asking me “How the hell are you?” At that time I was told he had been to Vietnam. The newspaper articles about his matricide said he had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and he would be housed in a state hospital for his prison sentence. I don’t have a rosy view of treatment at state hospitals, but I hope Les gets better treatment there than a prison would have given him.

From the tragic to the absurd. Robin reminded us that Bob Ladner, alias Heinrich Fritzibeisst, had been suspended in high school for writing a parody of the school newspaper, Liberty Life, which he called Liberty Laugh and issued one April 1^st. Robin described the contents as pornographic, but the examples he gave were just teenager hijinks stuff – trying for sexual innuendoes and getting vulgar epithets. One article featured a guy named Mike Hunt. Really! Another article described the new material of the girls’ swim team swimsuits – Nigriv – it never gives out! That’s kind of cute – “virgin” spelled backwards. No one knows if any copies still exist. Too bad. It sounds like a wiener to me. And then Robin went on to give us imitations of some of our high school teachers – spot on mimicry. It sounds like I missed out big time, when I didn’t take physics with Nate Auerbach. He was a brilliant, funny, engaging guy who knew how to make physics interesting. We brushed up on our German with a couple of anecdotes about dear Miss Wilson: “Gehen Sie ans Fenster! Fritzi kommt und beisst!” And we broke out into a verse of “Stille Nacht” in her honor. During all of Robin’s showmanship, Jeff stood on the sidelines tossing out witty bon mots. Jeff is a very funny guy, and we tend to overlook that, because he’s so good at putting on his serious face and doing good things for the poor and underprivileged. But it was Carol V’s night to shine. She really knows how to make a party pop with excitement and energy. The energizer bunny could plug into her to keep on going and going and going.

Before I leave reunion weekend, I want to acknowledge Arnie and Susie Heller, Patty Horvath, Connie Urschitz, Gil Ackroyd, Jeannie Marcon, Bill and Tracy Schellhaas, and Dianne DeFranciso for enriching my life by sharing some parts of your lives with me. From becoming artists to hands on grandparenting to helping Hospice patients to sustaining public television to strengthening family ties to running marathons and clearing acres of land – you all have my admiration and my kudos for making so many positive contributions to our communities. Thank you.

And now back at the boat: I returned to Slow Motion with my bags of memories. The Admiral was waiting with a list of things to do. So we hopped into our rented chariot and went about getting Achilles registered in Delaware. Funny story, that. The Admiral and I had dragged all of the cardboard box pieces from Achilles’ traveling home to a big dumpster at Utsch’s and thrown them in. Then the Admiral found out the next morning that the bill of sale had been attached, somewhere, to the box. So he did what had to be done – he Dumpster dived until he found the bill of sale near the bottom of the trash. A LOT of garbage had been thrown on top of the cardboard we had put in the Dumpster the day before. Needless to say, the Admiral showered that day – I think. We didn’t smell up Eastern Marine, as we registered Achilles in Newark, Delaware, but that was a few days later. Then we visited Tim the owner of Delaware City Marina to get ideas for a motor for Achilles. He suggested that “camouflage” motors were all the rage – tongue in cheek, the Admiral said. And when we got back to Cape May, we went to the Lobster House and got two dozen clams for dinner. Clams and corn on the cob – a meal fit for traveling royalty and proles alike. Just plain tasty. In his spare time, the Admiral started painting the sundeck roof and put up fasteners for all our long-stemmed tools, like mops and mooring ball sticks. Today we went on a quixotic quest for storage containers – no stars in this category for Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, Staples, or Office Depot – where are the containers with lids strong enough you can stand on? You would make a ton of money if you stocked these little numbers. Get smart! Drop the flimsy-lidded containers and go for the ones that withstand the weight of admirals and captains and navigators in training.

I feel like I’ve been runnin’ and gunnin’ for a long time. At least with blogging, I get to sit in one place for a few hours, but oh, my sore neck and back. That’s all for now, as the Admiral beckons me to go on another errand.