November and Thanksgiving in Florida is not the way it used to be. I recall eating our first Thanksgiving dinner on the back porch (or was it a lanai?) of Rich and Shirley’s home. We sat there in shorts and short sleeve shirts and couldn’t wait to get off a few notes to our friends up north as to how we ate our Thanksgiving Day Turkey. Now after a few seasons and changes in the weather (and in our ideas of what is “cold”) we don’t find ourselves sitting outside to eat the Turkey. Thanksgiving Day in Philly was also a big day for football in high school and college. Later we got into running on the morning of the big day so our gorging ourselves later would seem less sinful. I recall on some of these Thanksgivings there was a Turkey Trot, or race in which I and running friends competed. I got reports recently from some of my sons that such a run is still being conducted in some areas. But whether Florida or Philly, it is a still good to have a day to be thankful for all our blessings.
We spent the third week of October on Anna Marie Island. We rented a beach cottage on Anna Marie Beach at the suggestion of friends, who happened, as it turned out, rented the same cottage two weeks prior to our stay. Dan and Marge were along to make it even a pleasanter week. Dan and Marge have two sons who live south of the island in Sarasota, The Island is probably some 8 miles long and maybe one to two miles wide at its widest points. It sits in the Gulf of Mexico just off the city of Bradenton. It is a trip of about 40 miles from our home in St.Pete’s. It is a quiet resort. No large hotel complexes like St.Pete’s Beach. Only two main north and south roads and one of them very winding. It was a place for a quiet week of reading, walking, and occasional swims in the Gulf or pool. June was able to renew her tan. Marge and Dan got to hop down and visit their grandchildren and sons. We all enjoyed a restaurant on the water, called “Rod and Reel” which served fresh seafood. It had a great variety. From this small pier restaurant you could look across the water and see the ‘Sunshine Skyway’. It is the highest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere. It cross where the Bay enters into and the Gulf. It connects St. Petersburg with the main lands south of it.
Once in a while as you read an idea or certain phrases you remembered from former readings crop up. Sometimes places and/or people do the same thing, i.e. appear in fiction or non-fiction where you least expect it. These things make the reading more a part of you since it brings forth things from your memory. Historical figures often appear in fiction as characters, like in Larry McMurtry’s recent series on the Berrybender Family. In the first two stories, the only ones issued so far in the series, are a number of historical figures from the Lewis & Clark Expedition. There is Sacagawea’s son, called “Pome”, and his father, Charboneau, the French fur trader who brought Sacagawea, then pregnant, on the expedition. In the same series the three Indian Chiefs who went back with Captain Clark to visit the American President are also along. The French fur trader (Charboneau) is returning them to their people, even though this all supposedly takes place in 1832. The Lewis & Clark expedition ended in 1806. In the Greshim’s novel “The Brethren” a Federal Prison here in west Florida seemed to me to be the site of the story and though I don’t remember it being named. It description made me think it might be Coleman Federal Prison not far from here. In the Philadelphia Story, the movie and/or TV show I recall seeing the 100 year-old courtrooms where I once practiced law.
I recently had the experience of the same place being mentioned in different forms of literature. That place is Cooper Union. It is located off Cooper Square in New York City in the area referred to as the Bowery. The Union was a school created by Peter Cooper. Its original title, as I learned in a ‘Forward’ to a book of essays by Joseph Campbell, was ‘Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art’. Now I first came across the Cooper Union in a book of stories written by Joseph Mitchell, called ” McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon”. It is located, and has been so locate since 1854, “just off Cooper Square at 15 Seventh Street”. I read the McSorley stories years ago. It was written in 1943 but recently having lost my copy I found it had been republished and I purchased a new one. Its first story, all written by a newspaper journalist from the New York Post Joseph Mitchell, is about the saloon. The rest are of some of the characters who hung out in McSorley’s and than he just drifts on to tell about other characters who lived in the Bowery and other parts of New York City. Some of the frequenters at the saloon were students from the Cooper Union. I visited McSorley’s in the late 70’s or early 80’s. It may have been when Suzanne was a student at Columbia Law School sometime after 1976. I saw the Cooper Union at that time but as I recall it was then a part of the State of New York University. But I learned even more about the place when I read in the “Forward” of Campbell’s book that was essays which were originally some 25 talks delivered in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union from 1958 till 1971. Mr. Campbell mentioned in his Preface his awe in speaking in such a place, “derived in part, of course, from the old fashioned simple grandeur of the Great Hall itself and the knowledge that Abraham Lincoln once spoke from the very same stage.” As if to confirm this thought, I found myself a few weeks later reading a highly recommended intellectual history of Abraham Lincoln entitled, “Abraham Lincoln: The Redeemer President” by Allen Guelzo. In it I read about the incident referred to by Mr.Campbell. I learned further that the talk he gave was a catalyst to his becoming the Republican nominee for President. It happened in February 1860. The Union was a late choice since originally the talk was scheduled for a Church in another part of the City. After the talk the Tribune announce that “…no man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New-York audience” The talk was given just six years after McSorley’s had opened down the street. It was a coincidence that I should encounter the Union in such a manner but as always in such cases an interesting one. It is pleasant to think that a McSorley was physically that close to Abe Lincoln. I wondered if any of them had actually been in attendance, but my father would have assured me they couldn’t have been. He would have advised me that all such relatives had to be and were Democrats. My father was born a mere twenty-one years after Lincoln’s death and he may well have been right.
But the interesting effects of having places you’ve been to, people you’ve read about, and the like in your reading puts them in a special category in your mind. At least it does so for me.
As I write on November 2nd the newspaper notes that today is the running of the N.Y. Marathon. This is the 34th running and has some 31,000 participants. I remember running it in 1972 but it was in March and was three loops around Central Park starting and ending by Tavern on the Green. I think we might have had 2,000 participants. It later moved to starting on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and then through the five boroughs of Manhattan. My father died on Tuesday, March 14th 1972. I drove him home from church that morning and was still in running clothes since I had worked out earlier. I mentioned that come that Sunday I was running in the N.Y. Marathon. He wished me well but could never understand all the energy being spent in a lonesome pursuit of covering miles on foot. We had his funeral on Friday as I recall. My brothers Fathers Jim and Pat were there with Dick to celebrate the mass and they thought they would like to come along with me to New York and Central Park. For them the unknown blessing was the “Tavern-on-the Green”. They spent their time waiting there being sure to come out onto the road on which we ran each hour after the start. I can remember Pat remarking that it was a great way to watch a race. He was an advocate of the theory regarding physical exercise, that whenever you have the urge to do so, you should lie down immediately until it passes away. It is interesting how memory works. I am often chided by June that I seem to recall races of 30 years ago with little or no effort but fail to remember the upcoming appointments, etc for just this coming week. C’est la vie! She says of have a ‘selective memory’. I tell her, “Memory is the first thing to go with age, I think?”
Writing of my father’s funeral reminded me of his tie. He was laid out on St. Patrick’s Day eve, Thursday, March 16, 1972. His casket was in the aisle in front of the sanctuary in St. Francis de Sales Church, which looks like a small cathedral. He wore a green tie. Winnie had managed to find one somewhere. My father always wore a tie and most of the time a suit coat. But for nearly twenty years before his death, from November 15, 1952, he wore a black tie only. He wore it in memory of my mother’s death. So to see him lying there with a green tie was a surprise and a joy. He was now with her so fittingly enough the black tie was gone. November is also the month in which Sister Therese, Fr. Frank, and Winnie went to heaven. Winnie, my second mother, died on the same day as Mom, November 15th in 1998. Requiescat in Pace! As we use to often say in this month of All Saint’s and All Soul’s days.
Until next time, Pax Tecum!