Of Time and the Blizzard

Snowy day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The day before my father died last March, I moved in close to his right ear and asked him a few questions. 

“Do you remember Primrose Avenue?” I said.

That’s the name of a street near the house where we lived when my brother and I were growing up in Mt. Vernon, N. Y. 

Primroses are small colorful old-fashioned flowers. Primrose the street was pretty, too. It began in a vale (an appropriately antiquated word) near the business district, then meandered along, past a small park with lilac bushes and a few benches.  As it climbed a hill, the street widened with grand houses on either side, some with marble steps at the curb.  These had been used for carriages in the 1890s.  

Primrose Avenue postcard, around 1905

Now it is 2018 and a big storm has swirled into New York City.  Down on the street, you can hear the snow crashing into the wind.  I remember this sound from my childhood when snowstorms occurred routinely from November to March.  We trudged to school through banks, drifts and slush.  Sometimes the driving snow stung our eyes.

During the winter of 1970, a blizzard socked the New York metropolitan area. It lasted a few days.  I can still conjure that wonderful sense of being stuck inside.  Even if one had an appointment, it would be impossible to get there.  Everything was closed; only our homes were open for business. 

One night, the snow finally stopped.  Looking out the window, we saw a few flakes trickling down.  My father and I decided to take a walk.  In boots and layers of sweaters coats scarves hats gloves, we stepped outside.

We started around the block and came to Primrose Avenue.  The last foot of snow had not been plowed and we couldn’t find the sidewalk, so we walked up the middle of the street. 

I remember a pink glow, which must have been the snow reflecting the streetlight.  Also the crunch, crunch of our boots.  I also recall, dimly, our conversation.

My father reading to me (left) and my brother (right), early 1960s

My father was a talented writer and editor who worked largely with dry bureaucratic prose.  At heart, though, he had a true literary sensibility.  Because of him, there were volumes of Whitman, Dylan Thomas, Housman, and Keats in the house; also such novels as The Naked and the Dead, Of Human Bondage, and Johnny Got His Gun.  My mother recommended King’s Row and anything by John O’Hara, but he urged on me Lolita and You Can’t Go Home Again.

After his death, I found notes for the book reviews that he wrote during his years as a newspaper reporter.  It was a good way to make extra money and get free books. In 1947, for example, his reviews included All the King's Men and a thriller called The Big Clock.

Who knows why he also was reviewing Boswell’s Life of Johnson (published in 1791), but of it he noted simply: “Had to choke this one down.”

Back to Primrose Avenue. 

As we walked through the pink light and dwindling snowflakes, he imparted something magical to me.  I believe it involved the exhilarating connection between literature and experience.  The scene, the shadow, the words and characters – you could always return to them, or call them up.  And of course, what he said turned out to be true.

That’s why I’m glad that New York is finally getting a snowstorm, this snowstorm, the first one since his death.  It feels like I’ve crossed a continent to get back to Primrose Avenue and he’s there with me, talking and walking in the unplowed world.

Throughout his life, my father jotted down the titles
and authors of books he wanted to read.

Met photo by Claudia Keenan

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2018/01/of-time-and-blizzard.html

Dayton 1950

In the house where I grew up, family photo albums were packed into the deep bottom drawer of a desk in my parents’ bedroom. The drawer had to be tugged out slowly before the largest album, leather-bound with black pages, could be retrieved. It was a lot of work for a little girl.

But there is nothing like a child’s fascination with old photographs. 

One in particular intrigued me when I was young, causing considerable puzzlement. Now it is 50 years later and much of my parents’ stuff, including the album, is in my possession. So I asked them about it.

The story is that a newspaper photographer snapped the picture, which accounts for its large size. Of course, that fact would have caused even more confusion if I had known it as a child.

The scene is the District Attorney’s office in the Old Courthouse in Dayton, Ohio. The man in the middle is my father. The woman was a secretary (as we used to say) and the other man, who wears a silly hat and holds a cup of booze, was an attorney. Some sort of celebration, my father remembers, “with alcohol.”  

He and my mother had left New York in 1949 and moved to Dayton when my father landed a job as a reporter for the Dayton Daily News. He had a couple of beats, including the courts which were located two blocks from the newspaper offices.  

They lived in Dayton for two and a half years. At first, they rented a room in a boarding house where the bathroom could be reached only by walking through the kitchen.

That’s where Darlene, a gorgeous redhead whose grandmother owned the house, hung out smoking cigarettes with her boyfriend, a minor league ball player.

The old lady told my mother that when she was a little girl her father planted potatoes in March and now – in 1950 – the farmers would plant them in May.

Today, my mother is an old lady telling me that they would drive 50 minutes to Cincinnati to go to the theater, and saw Death of a Salesman with the original cast.

Back to the courthouse, I see why the picture unsettled me as a child.

At an early age, we learned to smile politely at the camera and these three people have not followed that rule.

Also, the room looks like a library, and we were taught to be quiet in libraries.

Also, the woman standing so close to my father is not my mother.

Then there’s the guy with the drink. What was he saying? Was something stuck to the ceiling?

And what on earth was SO funny?

The photo is a reminder that children will persistently try to reason through things that don’t make sense.

But in the end, it’s probably just a Christmas party in Dayton, 1950.

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2016/11/daton-1950.html

Through the Hourglass: Dayton 1950