Happy Holidays from western Middlesex County!
Several weeks ago I got a call from Nate, who was very excited about a couple of things. One was that he had witnessed the 'Cats defeat the Gophers (in the company of no less a personage than Adam Wolsky, plus that Smith guy). The other was that he had recently seen the movie "Quiz Show". "It all makes sense now!" he exclaimed. "The whole Monty/Jeopardy thing was a hoax!" Think about it: after answering all those questions correctly, could he really have been sincere when he answered the Final Jeopardy question with "Pete Marevich"?
As the years pass, we are forced to re-evaluate many things in light of more experience and new information. Just this past weekend, we had Eric Larsen in our home. As it turns out, this wasn't the Eric Larsen, but merely an Eric Larsen, but I felt I couldn't discriminate against people with that name (would that make me a Larsenist?), plus I had to be sure that this wasn't Monty reincarnated or in the FBI witness relocation program or something. Could they still all be parts of one omniscient hellspawned demon, and we just happened to encounter the part from Lubbock first? Is there out there somewhere a Bill Stonehill who can dance, a Jeff Frankenstein who only requires four hours of sleep a night, a Steve Creighton who keeps in touch?
Weighty questions indeed for this holiday season. As you may have noticed, this year's letter is a little on the late side, but that's okay. I used to send them out early to give people time to respond, but it turns out that those who would send me letters would send them regardless of when they received mine, so why get stressed out? As of yesterday, I've heard from Jennifer, Jim, the E-Man and the Stonefamily. Everyone else, presumably, has fallen behind in their Nobel prize-winning research projects or are stuck in traffic at the mall or something. Now that just about everyone is thirty, I assume you all stopped, paused to reflect on the portentous weight of three decades worth of existence, and have then gone back to watching television or whatever you were doing beforehand. So where's my card?
Beth took a moment to re-evaluate in 1994 and did something she's been talking about doing ever since I met her: she quit her job. After 14 years of what she called "a life of drudgery and gruel" at Purity Supermarkets, she walked in one day in June and quoted Johnny Paycheck (i.e. "Take this job and shove it", but not quite so bluntly). Since then she's stayed away from soaps and talk shows and the Home Shopping Network and has been doing things of a more artistic nature (although just about anything is more artistic than bagging rolls), painting on furniture and mailboxes, marble-izing walls, and, best of all, getting paid for it. Don't get me wrong, it's about an 80 percent pay cut, but we had some cash left over from my settlement last year, and I decided that after eight years of hearing Beth complain about her job I'd rather hear her complain about something else, and not having any money seemed as good a subject as any. She read about an old shoe mill a few towns down in Holliston that was renting out studio space, space only an artist would love, and for a mere pittance now has her own work studio away from the house and its twin demons of the television and the laundry. If you've always wanted to spend $100 or so on a mailbox, give her a call.
I'm trying something different this time instead of going through the year month by month and giving a blow by blow account of the minutiae of my existence. Shortly before the last paragraph, Beth and I whisked ourselves to Illinois to witness my not-so-little brother Scott graduate from Illinois State University. It took him five years because he was on the flunk-out-the-first-year-then-get-your-ass-in-gear plan, but he did it. In fact, he took his Bachelor's Degree and enrolled at Ohio State this fall to get a real Bachelor's Degree, which will take a year or so, and then the idea is to continue there and get his Masters, thereby equalling his siblings' alliance with Big Ten schools and then doing them one better because neither Jill nor I ever went to graduate school (although I did take a few classes at Tufts for graduate credit, but the "only" thing that came of that was that I met Beth).
Anyway, that was the first day of the trip. After a few more at home we jumped in our rented Grand Am and headed for Graceland, Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee. In fact, we were heading for the Stonefamily residence in Bartlett, Tenn., (which, since we ended our trip at my sister's house in Bartlett, Illinois, made this the "Bartlett's Bartlett-to-Bartlett Vacation") where we enjoyed two days of Indiana hospitality and two nights on a truly frightening sofa bed. Bill and Karen have been in the South long enough to pick up a few Southern traits (no open windows no matter what the temperature is outside, etc.), but they'd been saving some of Memphis's main attractions for us. We did in fact go to Graceland, which was not as spectacularly tacky as I hoped but was kind of fun. We also went to the Civil Rights Museum, on the site of the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated, which was well worth the trip. Bill was working, so Karen carted the kids (the adorable Elizabeth, who's 4, and the equally-adorable-when-she-sits-still Hannah, who's about 1), and we even stopped downtown for ribs at a restaurant that claimed to be closed at lunch but still had a bunch of people in it eating. Being from the North, we didn't ask too many questions. As it turned out, we hardly saw Bill at all that day, as someone's inflamed scrotum kept Bill from joining us for dinner. There's no mealtime conversation topic quite like urology, believe me. Bill is already looking for gainful employment somewhere in a narrow radius from Indianapolis when his residency is done soon. He informed us that a town has to have at least 30,000 people in it to support a urologist. Less than that and they just laugh and point.
After saying goodbye to the Stonebrood, it was off to Nashville, where, even though we're not fans of country music, we went to the Grand Ole Opry (we weren't fans of Elvis either, after all). We spent a couple of days there, then went to Chattanooga, doubled back through Tennessee to Kentucky and Mammoth Cave National Park, then closed our eyes and drove as fast as we could through Indiana to get to Chicago. By then it was Memorial Day weekend, and we met up with Jennifer in the city and had Greek food. Jennifer was off to Indianapolis for the Indy 500 (not to race, just to watch), but by driving her back to Oak Park we saw husband Doug and their apartment. Since we only spent a couple of days in Chicago, we didn't look up anybody else, but did make it to Carmens and the new Comiskey to watch the White Sox lose, all in the same day. Three days after we returned to Boston, I had my scheduled surgery to remove all the hardware I'd been carrying around since my little tumble in '92. This time the recovery was much faster and it definitely feels better than it did, so I'm glad I didn't put it off. So no more jokes about airport metal detectors if you don't mind.
Still sitting on copious amounts of vacation time, Beth and I commemorated our five-year anniversary in September with a trip to Quebec. We figured if we couldn't go to Europe, we'd at least go somewhere that treated us like foreigners. Although all the signs and text for anything are exclusively in French, just about everyone speaks English, so it was like being in a foreign country and not even having to try to make yourself understood. No wonder they don't like Americans. We spent two days in Montreal and two in Quebec City, just before the local elections that would determine whether to hold a referendum on seceding from Canada. We managed to get out just before they closed the border.
In September my parents came out here to visit, and who should also be happening to visit the same week but the aforementioned Jennifer. She was staying with that other Bill and Karen, who recently relocated to Boston, but we did get together with them in Harvard Square and then she came with us to Plimoth Plantation. In anticipation of the elder Bartletts' arrival, Beth repainted the dining room, we got a new bed and had a patio door put in, just so the house wouldn't look like it did in the pictures we took right after we moved in. Since their visit we've also acquired a second cat, Foxy, a Persian who doesn't claw the furniture like Aurora but has managed to barf on the bed twice already. We thought Aurora could use some companionship. Aurora didn't think so, however, and hissed at and chased Foxy around the house for the first couple of weeks. Now they take turns, but it's an uneasy arrangement at best.
By the time you read this Beth and I will be on the road to Illinois again for Christmas, our first Christmas at the homestead, and thereby Beth's first view of the Midwest in the dead of winter. Now that she's unemployed we can take our vacations any time we like, plus Dad has had surgery three times this year to remove various cancerous parts of his digestive system, the most recent of which was two days ago, so it seemed like a better idea than ever to have the whole family together for the holidays. Since this trip was largely unscheduled, I was low on vacation days, so I've been spending some extra time at work to make up enough comp time. Work has been busy enough this year that it was virtually impossible to set aside the time required to knock out one of these epistles, but on a weekend with no one else around I can finally concentrate, and you can reap the benefits (such as they are).
Yes, the Bank of Boston and I enter our ninth year together next year, but this past year heralded a new manager and some new projects that deal with document imaging, something approaching the cutting edge at least. After last winter and its 16 snowstorms the commute from Marlborough was seeming longer than ever, but according to all those AT&T commercials pretty soon we can all work out of our houses or on the beach in Cancun and thumb our collective noses at the snow, so I figure I'll sit tight.
I'm way overdue on re-evaluating. Maybe next year.
Do people really read these letters to the end? I got a nice note from Nina last Christmas that said she enjoyed the letter and could I please send her my phone number, and I thought that was kind of ironic because the phone number WAS IN THE LETTER!!! Maybe if I put it at the top I'd hear from more people? Oh, well, it's too late now, but if you are moved to write, call, or surf the Internet, you can find me.
Might I recommend email for those of you plugged into the Infobahn as much cheaper than calling and more immediate than correspondence? I've communicated more with the illustrious Doug Dirks in the last year than in the 12 1/2 years previous. The quality of communication may not increase, but at least it lets me know you're still alive. With some of you I'm beginning to have my doubts. Combine that with rising postage rates, and at the very least I'll be re-evaluating my mailing list next year. But regardless of whether I hear from you or not, happy holidays and have a Big-Ass 1995!