Notes - comments / who is in a name / sleep

         After noon. You have completed your forty-minute exercises and Carol has completed hers as well. Lunch is being directed towards Marx’s Bagels on Kenwood in Blue Ash. Fritz wrote you a note about Bill’s funeral being next Saturday at Moreland’s in Westerville. Fritz reluctantly will miss it as he and Carol will be in Wyoming visiting their son and his family. He and Mary M. commented on your note to Jean and the rest of the Class of 1960 about Bill’s passing. – Amorella

         1255 hours. I am happy for the comments because while the writing style is one I am quite comfortable with I don’t feel it is everyone’s cup of tea. Once we are back from lunch I’ll be ready to work on Brothers 10. I hope I don’t tire out in the meantime.

         Your note is more personable than what you wrote yesterday. Why don’t you drop it in just of the sake of friendship. – Amorella

         1259 hours. Some might find comments offensive.

         That didn’t prevent you from saying them originally. – Amorella

** **

Evening,

This is another sad day for our Class of 1960. We have our favorite memories. I also have one or two to share. During one of suppers since the Fiftieth Reunion Bill reminded me that he quit going to Kindergarten. He just stopped coming. I thought it was funny because I do remember some in our K class I don’t remember him not being there, probably because I took some school time off in those days also.

         He shared with me his joy of stopping by my Uncle D (Gene Schick) and Aunt Fran’s when he went to some physics conference in Palo Alto area of California. His dad (Don) and mother (Rachel) had been life long friends with my aunt and uncle. My Great Uncle Frank Bookman had helped found Cellar’s way back. A lot of old timer Westerville people had known each other for generations. The Miller’s Freeman’s, Schick’s and Orndorff’s were like that and a lot of us are known to many members of the local Dead. We passed many of those people on our way to and from school. I will be buried in the Otterbein Cemetery where I used to dig graves in the summers during my long seven-year tenure at Otterbein.

         Bill and I also attended first and second grade at Longfellow before I moved to Minerva Park and attended the school on Cleveland Avenue. My Grandparents Orndorff lived at the corner of Knox and Walnut and I continued to see Bill from time to time when visiting. I think we were in upper elementary at Whittier when he invited move over to see his short wave set (we both had one or two of them and we kept records of who we listened to, the times and locations. (Bill kept much better records than I did.) I remember us sitting in his bedroom and he was practicing code for his amateur radio license. I never could pass that code but Bill did and when I would go up after than he had many displays of people and places around the world. He loved science and radio technology. I did too. We got along well.

         Long ago old technology. Some of us can remember tearing old radios apart and rebuilding them, buying tubes and replacing them in radios and televisions of the fifties. Neat stuff. I remember Bill for his early love of science and technology. Bill and the rest of us were a part of each other’s growing up. I remember Bill and you too because you were a part of my life, and fortunately still are. I spent many childhood days playing in Otterbein Cemetery. I still like to go and visit.

         I buried Mr. O’Connell and wrote a poem about it because in junior high when I had him for math I had religion and every night I would say a secret prayer: “Dear God, let me or Mr. O’Connell be dead by morning so I won’t have to attend any more math classes.” I remembered that the second I asked the grounds keeper, Squirrelly McClary, who was to be buried in the grave I was standing in and cleaning up the sides. He said, “Mr. O’Connell” and looked up with the hairs on my forearms straight out. I learned a lesson in life I have never forgotten. (If G---D exists, irony has got to be a part of HeranHis humor, that’s what I think. We have to take our humor with us when we go. It would be inhumane to leave it here.)

 Today, I still go to Otterbein Cemetery walking about or driving slowly through and see the names of many of the people I knew growing up. Some of them in our class like Mary Ann. I think of those many people as old friends and some are relatives one way or another. Lots of relatives and lots of friends of relatives. I’ve got a plot there myself in the old section just a little southwest of Phillip Crane’s stone.

         These things come up as I am thinking of Bill. Hope we can all meet again in a better place. I’m not sad about it. It is the significant part of the nature of being born. We have our personal memories and I’d like to hope our spirits would keep tabs of them of the best of them. They are of no use to anybody else, that’s the way I see it.

         So, a tip of my old black beret to Bill and all the rest of the class who have left already. Shoot, it’ll be a revolution and we’ll all be in the underground. Rest in peace, every one, while we are still alive, and then otherwise.

         Cheers to one and all, the Living and the Dead!

         Dick O

** **

         Post. – Amorella

         1304 hours. I found a few grammatical mistakes.

         Leave them in. - Amorella

        You had a nap, played with Jadah and relaxed while waiting for Carol to finish the October issue of Consumer Reports that arrived today. You watched ABC News and worked on Brothers Ten. - Amorella

         2046 hours. I have 398 words of some 600 refreshed. Once this is done I’ll have to add another 150 or so. It is interesting so far. Not what I remembered at all. One big change is this section talks of how the girls are also twins, which they are not this time around. I originally got the concept of double twins marrying from a Time or Newsweek article back in the 1970’s. Maybe it was in the 1980’s. Kay and Ann, identical twin girls in our high school class of 1960 are the only twins I knew for any length of time so I thought they would be a good base to work from. The characters in the story, twins or not, are not Kay and Ann. I did a lot of research on twins in those days because I was really interesting in clones and twins are as close to clones as we can get. Clones would never be exactly alike anyway; their environments would not be the same. Subtle differences plus individual interpretations of real events. Anyway, I used to try to imagine twins marrying and how that would be. Marriage is complicated enough at times anyway. I conjured up lots of humorous situations early on but in a marriage of twins that lasts fifty years that would certainly mellow. 

         Personally, after a while I could see myself forgetting whether I was Richard or Robert at least for short periods of time. One thing nice about not being a twin is that you can most always figure out who you are if you momentarily forget your name, that kind of thing. I used to have this happen in real life once every two or three years, always when at a party or gathering and I was having trouble remembering peoples’ names – people that I worked with regularly for years. My fear came when a spouse would step up and say politely, “And, who are you? Are you that English teacher? Dave has been talking about?”

         The easy response in this case would be, “And, who is that?” with a smile on my face of course. 

         Now, if she would respond, “I don’t know. Who are you?” I would be in big trouble. So, I always had my driver’s license in my shirt pocket so I could glance down if need be. I almost always disliked big parties or even little ones because of that. I would know who I was but what my name was I had not a clue. 

         What does this have to do with the books? – Amorella

         2111 hours. I don’t know. Nothing I guess. Sorry. 

         Post. - Amorella

         2133 hours. I shut the computer down and sat. I have a response. Not knowing my name is a lot like what happened when I was out taking a walk in the evening in the early 1980’s – I tried to walk most every night to lose weight and to feel better physically. Anyway, I was on a walk when a soft voice moved into my head – it sounded to me like an Angel’s voice, and it said, “And, who are you?” I thought it might even be the Voice of God, not knowing any better but strongly suspecting it was not. I didn’t really know the answer, not an honest one anyway. In some ways that got this whole writing business going. One would think that if someone said, “And, who are you?” that sheorhe could respond. And, if it were an Angel, surely one could respond, and if it were God, one would have to respond, but what does one say when one doesn’t know? So, I thought, “I’ll tell a story to an Angel instead of telling the Angel who I am, that maybe that would suffice. Reason and imagination took over. I suppose that was you also, Amorella? This was way back in 1981 or 82.

         That was not me, boy. Post. – Amorella

         2144 hours. That’s a surprise.

         Have a good sleep, boy. - Amorella