For years I was sandwiched between two old ladies. On one side, there was Ruthie with her butcher string necklace. On the other side, there was the Pink Lady with her toilet paper Christmas trees. I lived between them. And I loved both of those women as dear, dear friends.
Down the street, a few doors away, in that big brick house, the minister’s widow lived among his collected sermons and her potted plants. A block away, through the alley, a retired schoolteacher named Jessie lived alone in that big house behind the manse.
What united these four women was a pile of magazines, brought to their door from time to time, wrapped in twine and given to them to recycle. Each of them lived through the Great Depression, and none of them would throw a magazine away, if given half a chance. Instead, they took these magazines and scratched out their names on the address labels and sent the magazines around the neighborhood until the pages were as curled as red oak leaves in late October.
Ruthie had often heard me clinking and clunking on my car with wrenches and bars. In the summer, when the weather was warm, I left the garage doors open, and she could hear Götterdämmerung mixed in with muted expletives and sudden bursts of rage, as a fat Brünnhilde wailed endlessly in the background.
Of course, I was that “Opera Guy” in my neighborhood, and it had often surprised me that so many people in this small town knew of this strange and lurid proclivity of mine. And by just the smallest of margins - exactly one mile to be precise - I lived on the northern edge of Appalachia, where “Grand Old” could safely precede the word Opera, but some would look with hesitant alarm if the word “Old” were missing from that appellation. You could safely love Grand Old Opry here. But you were immediately suspect if you loved Grand Opera. You might even have to register with the police as if you were given to perverted and odious tendencies.
Then, one day Ruthie appeared at my door with a bundle of magazines in her hands. Her house key dangled from her butcher string necklace, and she explained to me that she no longer lost her key now that it was tied around her neck. And not only that, but she no longer had to walk through the alley to Jessie’s house to get the spare key when she misplaced her own key. She handed the bundle of magazines to me, and she said, “There are some here that you might like.”
I untied the knot in the twine and looked through the magazines. There were the usual cooking and craft magazines and even magazines that showed a person how to take a good house and keep it. And mixed in with that curious assortment, there was a copy or two of a magazine called, Opera News. “Jessie sent these over because she thought you might like them,” Ruthie said, pointing to the Opera News.
I didn’t know quite what to say. It was true that I listened to opera. But it certainly wouldn’t be accurate to say that I’ve read about opera or studied opera. In fact, I’m probably one of maybe two or three people in the entire universe, who regularly listens to opera without any idea whatsoever what might be happening in the libretto for that opera. I am a blissfully ignorant person. Moreover, I am willfully ignorant about those libretti because I care only about the sound and music of opera, and I couldn’t care less about the story. So, you can probably imagine my immense surprise, when I watched a television production of Götterdämmerung one time, and saw those English subtitles crawling along the bottom of the screen. “Ha! So that’s what this opera is all about,” I said. My wife looked at me like I was crazy. I had listened to that opera perhaps 200 times and I knew every single note of that opera by heart. And I had no idea what the story was all about. Surely, Richard Wagner would disown me.
Then at Christmas time Jessie sent a card, along with Ruthie and her bundle of magazines, to my doorstep. Jessie explained that I probably didn’t like to read the Opera News with all those annoying peanut butter stains on the pages, and those coffee cup rings on the cover. So, she was giving me a subscription to the magazine that I might have a nice clean copy to read every month. I didn’t know what to say. I was stunned by her generosity and kindness.
What I did not know at the time was the fact that the subscription to the magazine brought me tightly into the circle of the Friends of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. And then about April, when the Metropolitan Opera boxed up its production sets and took them to Cleveland, Ohio to begin its road shows, a man called from the Opera Guild and asked me if he could put me down for $500 for “The Metropolitan.” I smiled at his naïveté. I told him he could put me down for $6.8 billion if he felt like it. He said I was a subscriber to their magazine, and I was a friend of opera, and that it was my duty to support the opera if I expected to see it continue as a cultural enterprise in the United States.
Well. Of course, I was flattered that a cultural enterprise depended almost exclusively on my efforts. But I was really helpless to do anything about it at the time. You see, I have been doing what my Appalachian friends down here call, “running my mouth.”
I had worked as a plant engineer in a large manufacturing concern. And I had seven different bosses in ten years. That may not seem to be something that’s entirely remarkable to you, even though the numbers may strike some as fairly high. Seven different bosses is actually about six more than you really should have in ten-year period. You can only play that Russian roulette game a few times before a live bullet goes through your brain. If you work for a large number of supervisors, you will eventually find one who has a distinct and utter dislike for someone like you. And Number Seven proved to be fatal to me when I “ran my mouth on the man” and he fired me.
You see, I have not been gifted with humility, common sense, or the obsequious ability to suffer fools gladly. I struggled to make myself clear. I present what I think are qualified and logical arguments to my supervisor that he might understand what I’m saying, and that he might see the point I’m trying to make. But when he digs his heels in and spouts endless nonsense, I run my mouth on him. And then I work on my resume, after he watches me waddle out the door. That’s happened enough to me in my working lifetime that I’m actually pretty good at it.
So, there I was, stretched out in the La-Z-Boy at home, resplendent with a three-day growth of beard, and in my underwear, when my friend from the Metropolitan Opera Guild gave me a call. He wanted to put me down for $500. I told him I couldn’t do that. He asked if it would be okay if he put me down for $250. “Hey pal, whatever trips your trigger. $500, or $250, or $6.8 billion. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m flat broke and you aren’t getting a dime from me. You can put down whatever you want.”
We dickered. In very short time he went from $250 to $200 to $150 to $100. And once he broke through that $100 barrier, I began to detect the gossamer twinge of sarcasm in his voice. “Fifty bucks, for crying out loud,” he said. “Fifty lousy bucks.” The staccato sound of those words went through me like well-spaced .50 caliber machine gun bullets.
Yeah. I’ll take it out of my unemployment check, Mister. And you can hold your breath waiting for it to arrive. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going out to the garage now to work on my car.
I think I’ll listen to a little Massenet today because I’m getting pretty tired of that Götterdämmerung stuff. Maybe a little Thérèsa. Huguette Turangeau in the title role. Le soir du bel été, des songes...des mensonges...
Down the street, a few doors away, in that big brick house, the minister’s widow lived among his collected sermons and her potted plants. A block away, through the alley, a retired schoolteacher named Jessie lived alone in that big house behind the manse.
What united these four women was a pile of magazines, brought to their door from time to time, wrapped in twine and given to them to recycle. Each of them lived through the Great Depression, and none of them would throw a magazine away, if given half a chance. Instead, they took these magazines and scratched out their names on the address labels and sent the magazines around the neighborhood until the pages were as curled as red oak leaves in late October.
Ruthie had often heard me clinking and clunking on my car with wrenches and bars. In the summer, when the weather was warm, I left the garage doors open, and she could hear Götterdämmerung mixed in with muted expletives and sudden bursts of rage, as a fat Brünnhilde wailed endlessly in the background.
Of course, I was that “Opera Guy” in my neighborhood, and it had often surprised me that so many people in this small town knew of this strange and lurid proclivity of mine. And by just the smallest of margins - exactly one mile to be precise - I lived on the northern edge of Appalachia, where “Grand Old” could safely precede the word Opera, but some would look with hesitant alarm if the word “Old” were missing from that appellation. You could safely love Grand Old Opry here. But you were immediately suspect if you loved Grand Opera. You might even have to register with the police as if you were given to perverted and odious tendencies.
Then, one day Ruthie appeared at my door with a bundle of magazines in her hands. Her house key dangled from her butcher string necklace, and she explained to me that she no longer lost her key now that it was tied around her neck. And not only that, but she no longer had to walk through the alley to Jessie’s house to get the spare key when she misplaced her own key. She handed the bundle of magazines to me, and she said, “There are some here that you might like.”
I untied the knot in the twine and looked through the magazines. There were the usual cooking and craft magazines and even magazines that showed a person how to take a good house and keep it. And mixed in with that curious assortment, there was a copy or two of a magazine called, Opera News. “Jessie sent these over because she thought you might like them,” Ruthie said, pointing to the Opera News.
I didn’t know quite what to say. It was true that I listened to opera. But it certainly wouldn’t be accurate to say that I’ve read about opera or studied opera. In fact, I’m probably one of maybe two or three people in the entire universe, who regularly listens to opera without any idea whatsoever what might be happening in the libretto for that opera. I am a blissfully ignorant person. Moreover, I am willfully ignorant about those libretti because I care only about the sound and music of opera, and I couldn’t care less about the story. So, you can probably imagine my immense surprise, when I watched a television production of Götterdämmerung one time, and saw those English subtitles crawling along the bottom of the screen. “Ha! So that’s what this opera is all about,” I said. My wife looked at me like I was crazy. I had listened to that opera perhaps 200 times and I knew every single note of that opera by heart. And I had no idea what the story was all about. Surely, Richard Wagner would disown me.
Then at Christmas time Jessie sent a card, along with Ruthie and her bundle of magazines, to my doorstep. Jessie explained that I probably didn’t like to read the Opera News with all those annoying peanut butter stains on the pages, and those coffee cup rings on the cover. So, she was giving me a subscription to the magazine that I might have a nice clean copy to read every month. I didn’t know what to say. I was stunned by her generosity and kindness.
What I did not know at the time was the fact that the subscription to the magazine brought me tightly into the circle of the Friends of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. And then about April, when the Metropolitan Opera boxed up its production sets and took them to Cleveland, Ohio to begin its road shows, a man called from the Opera Guild and asked me if he could put me down for $500 for “The Metropolitan.” I smiled at his naïveté. I told him he could put me down for $6.8 billion if he felt like it. He said I was a subscriber to their magazine, and I was a friend of opera, and that it was my duty to support the opera if I expected to see it continue as a cultural enterprise in the United States.
Well. Of course, I was flattered that a cultural enterprise depended almost exclusively on my efforts. But I was really helpless to do anything about it at the time. You see, I have been doing what my Appalachian friends down here call, “running my mouth.”
I had worked as a plant engineer in a large manufacturing concern. And I had seven different bosses in ten years. That may not seem to be something that’s entirely remarkable to you, even though the numbers may strike some as fairly high. Seven different bosses is actually about six more than you really should have in ten-year period. You can only play that Russian roulette game a few times before a live bullet goes through your brain. If you work for a large number of supervisors, you will eventually find one who has a distinct and utter dislike for someone like you. And Number Seven proved to be fatal to me when I “ran my mouth on the man” and he fired me.
You see, I have not been gifted with humility, common sense, or the obsequious ability to suffer fools gladly. I struggled to make myself clear. I present what I think are qualified and logical arguments to my supervisor that he might understand what I’m saying, and that he might see the point I’m trying to make. But when he digs his heels in and spouts endless nonsense, I run my mouth on him. And then I work on my resume, after he watches me waddle out the door. That’s happened enough to me in my working lifetime that I’m actually pretty good at it.
So, there I was, stretched out in the La-Z-Boy at home, resplendent with a three-day growth of beard, and in my underwear, when my friend from the Metropolitan Opera Guild gave me a call. He wanted to put me down for $500. I told him I couldn’t do that. He asked if it would be okay if he put me down for $250. “Hey pal, whatever trips your trigger. $500, or $250, or $6.8 billion. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m flat broke and you aren’t getting a dime from me. You can put down whatever you want.”
We dickered. In very short time he went from $250 to $200 to $150 to $100. And once he broke through that $100 barrier, I began to detect the gossamer twinge of sarcasm in his voice. “Fifty bucks, for crying out loud,” he said. “Fifty lousy bucks.” The staccato sound of those words went through me like well-spaced .50 caliber machine gun bullets.
Yeah. I’ll take it out of my unemployment check, Mister. And you can hold your breath waiting for it to arrive. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going out to the garage now to work on my car.
I think I’ll listen to a little Massenet today because I’m getting pretty tired of that Götterdämmerung stuff. Maybe a little Thérèsa. Huguette Turangeau in the title role. Le soir du bel été, des songes...des mensonges...
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