What old man?

     My father often told stories to make a point. Rather than ask me to behave in a certain way, for example, he would tell me how he or someone he knew acted in a similar circumstance, setting down an oral example for me to follow. Sometimes I would wonder if there were any truth to his stories, or were they parables created for the present need.

     But, when we were all younger, I was able to verify many of Dad’s stories through relatives who knew him when. So I have doubts about my doubts. Besides, Dad behaved  in ways that reflected the morals he was wrapping up in his stories. He lived his strongly held values out in his daily life. So I pass on this story with every confidence it happened as he related it. If not, it still is a good tale with a telling example of respect  we would be well served to emulate today. And  I’ll ask what you think – a parable, a pointed lesson, a subtle instruction on how I should behave? Or just a story about the kind of boy he was, if implicitly suggesting I do the same?

     The scene: The small dairy farm where Dad was raised. The time: Around 1920, when Dad would have been 12 years old. The action: Dad walking across the farmyard on a warm summer’s day.

     I was walking to the house (Dad told me) when a salesman came driving down the lane. He got out of his car and looked around the yard, at the barn and the house. There was no one around but me.

     “Hey, kid,” the salesman said. “Is your old man at home?”

     “Nope,” I told him.

     “Will your old man be back pretty soon?” he asked.

     “Nope,” I said.

     “Can you tell your old man I was around?” He said.

     “Nope,” I said.

     The salesman stood and looked at me (Dad told me). He shook his head and was getting into his car when my father came out of the barn and walked toward the house.

     “Hey. I thought you said your old man wasn’t home!” the salesman said.

     “That isn’t my old man,” (Dad explained.)

     “That’s my father.”

 

Yes, I remember too

     It's a cliche of journalism -- the "man-in-the-street" interview, a compilation of popular reactions to some news event of note. But as trite as it may seem, this journalistic convention has an underlying validity: What do people think about what affects them? Upon such considerations are decisions made ... and history recorded.

     Newspapers and the airwaves are full today of the recollections of those who remember the day President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated.

      Where were you, what were you doing, what did you think when you heard the news? You all have a story. Please share it.

     Here's mine.

     I was in my junior year at Providence College in Providence, R.I. A half-dozen of us were taking a creative writing class just after lunch, in a small classroom where the second-floor hall and a stairway to the upper residence floor for priests met. An isolated nook, appropriate to the moment. We were standing outside the locked door, waiting for our teacher to arrive, exchanging the usual student banter.

     The teacher was an often-surly, middle-aged priest named Father "Dixie" Walker. A conservative man, he disliked the Kennedys and the president in particular. He was a southern sympathizer -- hence  the nickname Dixie --- and disliked what the president had been saying about southern racial ways.
     Near class time, he came brusquely along the hall, nodded curtly, opened the door and led us inside. He walked to his desk at the font of the room, faced the crucifix on the front wall and started to make the sign of the cross to say the prayer that always began our classes.

     But he paused, and turned to face us.

     "You ought to know," he said, almost as an afterthought, "The president has been shot. They don't know if he will survive. Please think of him in your prayer."

     Then he turned back to the crucifix, recited the Lord's Prayer, and turned back to sit at the desk facing us, opened his book, and said something about the day's lesson ... what, I don't know. Later, when telling this story, none of us could remember what he said.

     Fr. Walker probably had asked a question, for when he looked up from his book, he seemed to expect some reply. What he saw was a group of students sitting in stunned silence, unable to say a word, let alone answer a question to start the day's discussion.

     He scowled, bringing those dark eyebrows together into a forbidding hedge of irritation.      He shut the lesson book and slammed it on the desk. "Oh for ..." he sputtered. After a pause, "I don't suppose there's any use trying to hold class like this. Go ahead; go. Class dismissed!"

     And he stalked out of the classroom and ... well, I don't know where.

     I know where we went. As did many of the students, we went to the cafeteria-student union, where we sat or stood, many sipping coffee but hardly tasting it, and listened to the radio news broadcast over the speaker system. Walter Cronkite finally, after a pause in the news chatter, told us what we most feared: the President is dead.

     The rest of that day is a blur. I had to work that night -- I clerked in the camera department of a discount store -- and couldn't stay on campus long. We talked, we mourned, we got angry, furious, at the shooter and bewailed what had been taken from us. Even those who least liked Kennedy were shocked and dismayed at this brutal act. And for many of us, those feelings, though dimmed by time, are with us yet.

     As for "Dixie" Walker, so called for his southern sympathies, he never mentioned the assassination in the subsequent classes we had with him, or, for all I know, anywhere or anytime else.

     I have but one good thing to say about Dixie. Toward the end of my senior year, he called me aside and advised me, if I wanted to write, to take a job at a newspaper. "That way," he said, perceptively, "you'll be certain to write. Otherwise, I don't know ..."

     So, thank you, Dixie. You gave me good advice, and a good story to tell.