Here it is almost the end of the month of September and my song is still unwritten. I started to reminisce about 10 days ago of the Septembers I’d known, but it didn’t get very far. September is a song, school days and the end of summer. “Oh the days dwindle down to a precious few… “.
Unfortunately, all that comes to mind is another year is ending and I have so much to do. When you read this I hope we, June and I, will be on the island of Nova Scotia…enjoying history, good weather and outstanding scenery. It’s all promised in the cruise brochure and travel agents never lie.
“School days, school days, good old golden rule days … reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic …taught to the tune of .a hickory stick”. It is all coming back in the reports and ravings of the unbiased parents concerning the newest genius in the house … or so it would seem. It also reminds me of the grind, or studious application if you prefer, of law school. Having Richard T. McSorley waiting anxiously for his results (due in November) re¬minds me of my second year at P.U. (or was it U. of P.?). I had not passed the first year. I had received a 69.7 or 69.8 general average, and according to the book, was on my way to being an ex-student and a member of the Armed Forces. But an appeal was entered and reprieve was granted.
It was based ostensibly on the turmoil in the household in those days. The fall of 1951 and the spring of 1952 were the days we watched Mother slowly die. She was at Winifred’s home and I was sometimes living there, or at the old homestead, and even now as I recall, had an apartment or room closer to the Law School. I recall Mom, even in her semi-comatose state, still being a “Mom”. She complained to others and sometimes in my presence “Poor Paul is still going from Pillar to Post”. I was still not launched. Roie was off to the Holy Child order and Ann to the matrimonial order. So only I remained drifting, or so it seemed to her.
It was an agitating and disquieting time in my life and I was relieved and pleased that the reprieve was granted. I be¬lieved that it was permitted because of those home conditions … but in the years since, I am more apt to believe that Richard T.’s close friendship with Judge Gerald Flood, a trustee of the Law School and on the faculty, may have played a singularly substantial part in the decision. However, one of the conditions of my re-entry was that I had to have an average of 70 for both years. I made it! But I never “grinded” so much in my life, then or since. It was such a honing of skills that I coasted in the last year and won two awards. One, the best pinball player in Cousin’s (the restaurant across the street from the school) and the other, the Most Improved Student Award. The latter didn’t seem quite fair since I was below the bottom of the class, so I had a head start on everyone else when it came to improvement.
But enough of that pathos! Here is a short story from the biography of HST, one I know my father would have enjoyed and which epitomizes in some respects the Truman character.A farmer on his first visit to New York was having his first experience in a fancy hotel dining room. First he was served celery, which he ate. Then a bowl of consomme, which he drank. But when the waiter placed a lobster before him, the farmer looked up indignantly and said “I ate your bouquet, I drank your dishwater, but I’ll be darned if I’ll eat your bug!”
HST enjoyed telling this story throughout his lifetime to illustrate what he considered the unpalatable, whether food or legislation.
I can’t look at a lobster now or see a picture of one without thinking of that story and smiling.
Speaking of lobsters, June and I will soon be up in their country. We are going to travel a bit in Maine after our return from Nova Scotia, so I’ll probably have plenty of laughs or smiles.
Just talked to Dell McSorley Louden in Nova Scotia … Halifax, to be precise. She is going to have her uncle and aunt (Marge) and their spouses as guests sometime on Sunday, October 3rd. She reminded me that the last time we met was in 1972 or 1973 … in Boston when I ran one of the Boston Marathons. She was a college girl then, and now she’s the mother of two girls with a husband who is an Oceanographer and Professor at Nova Scotia University. We’ll give you a full report in the future jottings.
So we say goodbye to September and hope it has been as good for you as it has been for us. I still have a thousand things to do, but they will now need to be done in October… or later … those days just keep dwindling down …so “Carpe Diem”!