August 3, 2024
Bomb Shelters; Days I Remember; Swan Song; Postman's Decision; Recursions; Sunflowers; Shaq; Milestones
Readers Reply: Bomb Shelters
My last letter included a photo of the laundry room in the basement of our Park La Brea apartment building. Reader Lisa sent in this comment:
“Your apartment buildings had bomb shelters in them back then. When I was a teen at Fairfax H.S. (late 1970’s), we wandered into the building basement (which now appears to be laundry facilities) and took the metal-powder-coated bomb shelter signs off the walls. We were idiots, and up until about 10 years ago I still had mine. It had a logo on it that was for radiation or ???”
Lisa, who wasn’t an idiot in high school? I was in high school in the early 1950’s. That was before the A-bomb drill (“duck and cover”) days.
Days I Remember
There are days in a person’s life when a public event occurs that they will remember forever: where you were, who you were with, what time it was. Here’s my list:
Pearl Harbor Day: Sunday, December 7, 1941. My father had just turned 32, and I was almost 6. It was a late mid-afternoon in Philadelphia. We were racking up the last of the autumn leaves that had fallen in our front yard. A neighbor came out of her house and yelled: “The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor”. America was about to enter WWII. Life as we knew it was about to change for all Americans.
V-J Day. Friday, August 10, 1945. We dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima four days earlier. Victory over Japan; Japan declares its intention to surrender. I was nine years old. We were at the Jersey Shore for the month of August. My cousin Ada and I were still in that beach house, had not yet gone to the beach. (My dad was at sea somewhere with the USNavy.) Horns were beeping outside, and we ran out of the house. The streets were filled with joyous people. The war was over.
JFK Assassination. Friday, November 22, 1963. I was getting on an elevator with Ed Burns after lunch in lower Manhattan, and another person said: “Did you hear that the president was shot”. At first we did not believe it. The Dartmouth/Princeton game for the next day, which we had planned to attend, was postponed. Two days later, on live TV, we saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas County jail.
9/11. Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Nadine and I getting dressed to go to work and hearing morning TV news in one ear. One Twin Tower is hit; must be a pilot error. Then the other Twin Tower is hit. Persons jumping out of burning buildings. Lower Manhattan blanketed in a cloud of smoke and ash.
Election Night, 2016. Tuesday, November 8, 2016. We invited two other couples for pizza and beer to watch the returns come in, and Hilary win. Not to be. We were all in shock and silent as the unbelievable unfolded before our eyes. Thanks again, Electoral College.
Biden Withdraws. Saturday, July 19, 2024. Saturday morning. Nadine and I noshing at Farmer’s Market. Matt texts her to let us know that Biden has withdrawn from the race, after weeks of pressure and speculation. Relief to me, but now what lies ahead?
Biden’s Swan Song
Days later, Biden gave a televised speech to the nation from the Oval Office. Some described it as his “swan song”. But what is a swan song. Definitions from the Webster’s website:
a song of great sweetness said to be sung by a dying swan
a farewell appearance or final act or pronouncement
Swans don't sing. They whistle or trumpet, or in the case of the swan most common in ponds, the mute swan, they only hiss and snort. But according to ancient legend, the swan does sing one beautiful song in its life….just before it dies. References in English to the dying swan's lovely singing go back as far as Chaucer.
The Postman Never Rings….Even Once
Our mail delivery person is Deborah. She is a diligent worker, and has a great memory. In some ways Deborah knows more about the residents in our building and the adjacent buildings than anyone else. She knows who is newly moved in, who has moved out, who is on vacation, and so forth. When we moved from Tower 49 to Tower 47, if mail showed up at our old place, she would spot and it and make sure it got to us.
Gail Collins is a regular opinion writer in the NYTimes. Her husband Dan died recently and she wrote a loving remembrance about him and them. Here is a paragraph that I found interesting; this event occurred in the late 1960’s:
The sexual revolution began in the 1960’s, thanks in great part to “the pill”. Readers and the postman will be glad to know that Gail and Dan finally did the right thing, got married in 1970, and stayed together for all their remaining years. But America is still struggling over the pill!!
Life’s Little Annoyances
Often, when I try to de-activate my Home Screen on my iPhone, by pressing the button on the right-side (so that I won’t butt-dial Nadine or one of the kids), I end up instead taking a screen shot, because I was also inadvertently pressing one of the buttons on the left side at the same time. Here is the result:
If I repeat this process several times, a screenshot of a screenshot, this is the result; click on the right-arrow to play:
I think this exercise is an example of a “recursive process”; that is, repeatedly applying a process to its own previous results.
Sunflowers
Like most years, my summer garden plot this year features zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes. The zucchini and cucumbers this year are a great success; the tomatoes not so much. Nadine picked out some sunflower plants also, and they have been a spectacular triumph, growing over six feet tall, and blooming their hearts out. Here they are side-by-side with some other, more famous, sunflowers:
Shaq Again
In an earlier letter, I described my astonished brief ride in an elevator car with Shaquille O'Neal: “The largest person I will ever encounter; much larger in real life than on a TV screen.” Here is a photo sent to me recently by my brother Stan, which appears to have been taken at Super Bowl LI (=51). I wonder how Simone Biles felt; but at 4’8”, she may be more used to looking up to almost all of the adults she encounters in life. Nadine notes that Biles is wearing heels:
(Super Bowl LI; February 6, 2017: Tom Brady led one of the greatest comebacks in sports, let alone Super Bowl history, lifting New England from a 25-point hole to the Patriots' fifth title in the Super Bowl's first overtime .)
Milestones: Birthdays and Anniversaries
( Every five years….plus 18 and 21 for birthdays…and double-digits, like 33 or 77…and end of a decade, like 49 or 89 )
I'm not old enough to have experienced the first two dates but all the others are in my memory so vividly and deeply that they are like distinct chambers in my brain. I know our usual postman by name which is one of the advantages of living in a small place but yours is really special. And when Jo and lived in our apartment in LA the laundry room was downstairs and required lots of quarters. When we moved to Maine and had our own machines I asked Jo if we should install coin slots so we'd use up the quarters we had leftover.