AN IMAGINED CONVERSATION WITH ARNIE EPPO

 
Dear George, 

It seems like every ten years or so I run into Arnie Eppo, one of my high school friends who lives in lower Michigan. Arnie’s always curious about my goings on and asks me lots of questions. Here’s a sample of how our conversation goes. (This, of course, is recreated from memory and imagination, so some parts may reflect a real-life conversation more than others.) 

Love, 

Dave 

 Arnie (A): So you’ve been retired for quite a while now. 

D (Dave): It’s actually been thirteen and a half years. Whew! That’s gone by so quickly. I’m trying to figure out some way of slowing time down. 

 A: I know the feeling. How has it gone so far? 

D: At first I would usually say that I liked working better, mostly because I missed contact with colleagues. But now I find retirement much more relaxing and less stressful. No bosses, no demands, I enjoy lots of freedom and spend my time doing things that give me pleasure. 

 A: Do you miss teaching? 

D (laughs): Actually I never wish that I were back in a classroom. I always found teaching stressful, even though I think I did o.k. at it. Every now and then I walk past my old classroom and feel a momentary pang of nostalgia. But it’s very momentary.

 A: I know you’ve also been married over sixty years. That’s pretty amazing. 

D: It is amazing. Katja’s really the first girl I ever dated seriously. I knew from the minute I saw her that she was the person I wanted to marry. It was a rocky process though. I was such a shy, introverted kid. Katja’s parents were certain that we would get divorced, and her father told my father that on the night before our wedding. My dad told us in no uncertain terms that nobody in our family had ever been divorced (and that no one ever would). It made a big impression. It probably helps account for why we’ve made it through sixty-two years. 

 A: You and Katja must share a lot of similarities to have stayed together so long. 

 D: If anything, it’s probably that old truism that “opposites attract”. Katja’s from Philadelphia; I’m from Menominee. She went to a prestigious big-city college prep school; I went to a small-town public high school. Her parents were staunch Roosevelt Democrats; mine, Eisenhower Republicans. She grew up with classical music; my family listened to big bands and jazz. Katja is very free with money; I’m very stingy.  She's very outgoing; I'm very introverted.  We did, of course, both go to Antioch College, we agree on most political and social issues, and we were both attracted to academic careers. But basically we’re more different than we are similar. 

 A: It’s sort of strange that you wound up going to Antioch, such a hotbed left-wing politics. 

D: It is strange. My conservative parents picked out Antioch for me based on conversations with an Antioch alumnus who worked at Ansul Chemical Co. in Marinette. But I don’t think they had any idea of the college’s political orientation. The alumnus reassured my mother that that there was a strong Greek system at Antioch (totally untrue) with ballroom dances practically every weekend (equally untrue). Needless to say, my first year at Antioch involved a total culture shock. I think I was probably the only student from the U.P. to ever attend Antioch. 

 A: Are you glad you went there? 

D: Definitely yes. It was an eye-opening experience, and my fellow students were exceptional – intelligent, value-oriented, creative. In many ways the most exceptional people that I’ve met during my life. Antioch, without a doubt, changed my life in important ways and shaped all that was to come, including my marriage, my career, and even our long-time residence in Cincinnati (which I picked in part because of its proximity to Yellow Springs). 

 A: So you met Katja at Antioch? 

D: Yes, I first saw her across the lawn at a freshman mixer, and she was so pretty and gregarious that I decided on the spot that she was the girl I would like to marry. I was much too shy to say hello, but I watched her from a distance for the next year and a half. By chance, I was on my first coop job in Madison, while two of my freshman hallmates and Katja were working at mental hospitals in Milwaukee. I came down for a weekend with my friends, met Katja, and things just developed from there. 

 A: How did you win her over? 

D: I can’t imagine. It’s amazing. Katja was very popular, and she told me at one point that 18 of our college classmates had proposed to her during her freshmen year. Not all of these proposals were serious, but some of them were. On our first date I told her that I’d thought that she was the person I’d like to marry the first time I saw her. Katja got really angry and said that that was the worst line she’d ever heard. I, of course, was completely serious. 

 A: Then what happened? 

D: At the end of our three-months stays in Madison and Milwaukee, I invited Katja to come home to Menominee with me over quarter break, and she accepted. I think she didn’t want to go home to Philadelphia. In any case, she was very taken with my parents and their friends, and they with her. My mother told her that she was the first girl that I had ever brought home. Katja wondered what she’d gotten herself into. 

 A: How about your son J? 

D: He probably thinks we’re sort of a weird couple. Like his mom, J is more gregarious and has better social skills than I do. He likes to travel like Katja does. Temperamentally, he’s may be a little more like me. As a teenager J would sometimes say that he’s a sort of balance between the two of us and that it wasn’t easy for him to integrate these opposite influences. 

 A: So, unlike your parents, you wound up having just one child. 

D: Yes, I think that was mainly Katja’s preference, though I went along with it. J often wishes that he had siblings, although when we asked him as a kid, he wasn’t interested. There were some advantages to having a solo child. In contrast to my own family which was sharply divided into separate parent and child sub-groups, Katja, J, and I operated pretty much as a cohesive threesome, and I think J wound up a lot more mature as a result from all that adult interaction. When J went off to college, he went sort of wild in immersing himself in his peer culture, something he’d never done in the process of growing up in Cincinnati. 

 A: Now, of course, you’re grandparents. 

D: Yes, that’s the biggest life change for us in our older years. Our grandchildren, A and L, are very bright and interesting. They’ll turn fourteen in September, are a lot more mature than we ever were at that age, and are doing very well in school. I’m sorry that they’re so far away in New Orleans, and the pandemic has put a crimp in our traveling. I hope we’ll do more trips during the coming year.

FAST TIMES IN NOLA

Dear George, 

 It felt like ages since we’d been to New Orleans to visit our family (i.e., before the pandemic), so our recent trip was very special. Here are some photos that capture the highlights. 

Love, 

Dave

J and K recently bought a spacious new house in Uptown, close to Tulane University, Audubon Park, the kids’ school, and an excellent restaurant strip on Freret St. All our family members are overjoyed with their new home.

Katja and I enjoyed eating at Dat Dog on Freret St. which has the best frankfurters, bratwursts, and alligator sausages we’ve ever tasted. We went once, and then Katja treated the whole family there for a second visit.

We went to see the Queen Nefertari’s Egypt exhibit at the New Orleans Art Museum in City Park. A trip to ancient times. In front: L, A, J, Katja. In back: Ted, K’s dad.

Then we went next door and visited the Bischoff Sculpture Garden, our favorite outdoor place in New Orleans. The Sculpture Garden has recently doubled in size.

Getting beignets at Cafe du Monde in City Park is a lot easier than in the tourist-crowded French Quarter location.

We missed Iko a lot, but his little brother Lil Paws was just as much fun.

Here is our group enjoying dinner at the chic Israeli restaurant, Saba. I had Harissa roasted chicken, and Katja had lamb kofta. From the left: Katja, A, K, L, J.

On Sunday we picnicked at Audubon Park, famed for its live oaks. J and L practiced distance running, in preparation for the upcoming Crescent City race.

Monday J took us on a trip to Biloxi and to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where we visited the wonderful Walter Anderson Museum and the Shearwater Pottery.

Dickie Brennan’s Bourbon House on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter is one of our favorite oyster places.

Katja and I went to the Historic Orleans Collection in the French Quarter where they were featuring a “Streetcar Named Desire” exhibition.

We lunched at Pesch in the Arts District, A stranger asked Katja if she could take her picture because she looked so pretty in her outfit.

We loved the paintings of Luis Cruz Azaceta at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

J and K took us to the concert by Louisiana Philharmonic cellists and dancers at the Marigny Opera House.  Eight cellists, no less.

On Thursday St. Andrews Episcopal School had Grandparents Day. These are the seventh graders, including A and L, performing a song with the bells. We were very impressed with the school and our grandkids’ accomplishments.

Katja and I enjoyed our annual oyster lunch at Desire in the Royal Sonesta on Bourbon Street.

On our last day we had a family brunch at the Ruby Slipper in the Marigny. That’s J, L, and Jayme, K’s sister who arrived from California. J’s artwork is on the rear wall at the right.

Our last big outing was to the Audubon Aquarium. A very attractive facility with many interesting fishies.

It looks like we needed a nap by the end of the trip.

Father's Day Musings

DEAR GEORGE, My dad always asked us not to bother with Father’s Day, claiming that holidays and presents were only for children. The four of us bought gifts for him anyway, spending 10 or 15 cents apiece at the Five and Dime. Parental roles and parent-child relations were vastly different back then. When I was a toddler behaviorist John B. Watson wrote in the most popular child-rearing book of the day, “Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning…If you expected a dog to grow up and be useful as a watch dog, a bird dog, a fox hound, useful for anything except a lap dog, you wouldn’t dare treat it the way you treat your child.”

Most families we knew in our hometown had 3 or 4 kids, and mothers almost never worked outside the home. Father was the breadwinner, mother the homemaker. We learned from many sources that men were ideally strong, hard-working, and nonemotional, while women were warm, nurturing, and instinctively suited to be mothers. These stereotypes played out in my family. My father, while an exceptional and admirable person in many respects, could be emotionally distant and authoritarian. Having served as an officer in the Navy in World War II, he brought his military experience home with him. Children were of the “lower orders”, and we were instructed to obey orders to the letter and not question parental decisions. My father encouraged achievement in many domains, holding his kids to high standards and demanding perfection, so much so that my younger sister defensively prefaced any performance by saying, “This is not my best.” I should admit, though, that we all turned out well.

By 1969, when Katja and I had a son of our own, (J), it was a new and different era for fathers and mothers. Traditional gender roles were on the way out, it was commonplace for women to work outside the home, and fathers were expected to play an active role in childcare. In addition, there were major differences in our situation simply as a function of family size. In my four-child family of origin daily life was more complex and more chaotic. Parents and children constituted two distinct subgroups. The children spent most of their time playing with one another, often engaging in dysfunctional behavior which called for parental intervention and sometimes a spanking. In J’s case, virtually all of his household transactions were with adults (i.e., Katja and myself), more grown-up, more reasonable, and he became a mature kid as a consequence. With no brothers or sisters in sight, I was J’s primary playmate at home. I found that role completely enjoyable, a chance to live out childhood over again. As J grew older, we went to thrift stores together, visited the art museum and the zoo, took the dog for walks in the forest, played tennis, watched TV, went to the movies, and ate out as a family at Skyline Chili. Instead of a big group with a rigid parent-child hierarchy, we operated pretty much as a close, egalitarian threesome.

We were thrilled last week when J, about to celebrate his 52nd birthday, visited us from New Orleans for a long weekend. J and I went to three thrift shops and found amazing treasures. Despite a relatively high income, J remains a thrift store addict. He reveled in the used 99-cent Sohio T-shirt he found at St. Vincent de Paul and worried that he’d paid too much for his brand-new Calvin Klein pants ($12.79). He and I took the dog for long outings in Burnet Woods and our Clifton neighborhood, and we did an art museum tour. Our best stop was the 21C Museum Hotel on Walnut Street downtown which was displaying wonderful contemporary art. The Contemporary Art Center, on the other hand, was a complete bust. We felt sad for the little children whose parents had to lead them through four floors of dull and meaningless displays (and also for the young couple who appeared to be struggling through a failed first date). Katja joined us for an outing at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and we lingered over a garden lunch at the Museum Cafe. This was French Open week and we were thrilled to watch the semi-final clash between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Then J went out to play tennis with a local nationally ranked junior player. Since we’d been a tennis family throughout J’s teenage years, his mom and I were happy for his renewed interest in the sport. We ate at Skyline Chili twice, had our fanciest meal at the Dusmesh Indian restaurant near Cincinnati State, and indulged ourselves at Dewey’s Pizza. Most of all, we shared lots of laughs and happy memories. Then it was over, and we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect visit. It’s when J comes home that our little family seems whole again. Thinking about our time together, it dawned on me that our family routines have been much the same as they were forty years ago.

What also strikes me is that there are many ways to be a good father. What worked for my parents fit who they were and the world they lived in, as did Katja’s and my parenting approach. Now J and K are parents to two preteens of their own, and their family patterns are once again different. The children are immersed in the digital world, the family is more attentive to social justice issues, and they take full advantage of New Orleans music and culture. In some ways child-rearing nowadays is more challenging than ours was, and J is a terrific father. There’s a lot to be thankful for this Father’s Day. LOVE, DAVE

Warm Fuzzy Christmas Feelings

Steve and Dave, Christmas 1943

Dear George,

Happy Christmas greetings to all of our loved ones. The pandemic puts a bit of a crimp on the occasion since there are fewer get-togethers than normal, but we still find ourselves in a festive frame of mind. I started making a list of Christmas memories. Here are some of the things that came back to me.

In my childhood we had an extended family gathering each Christmas: my grandfather V.A. Sr.; uncle Ralph and aunt Martha with their kids Ann and John; uncle Kent and aunt Millie with Thor, Stewart, and Kurt; and my bachelor uncle Karl (Kent’s twin) who drove up from Neenah-Menasha. With no spouse or kids of his own, Karl always brought extravagant gifts, e.g., fur stoles or jewelry for for sister-in-laws, a nuclear chemistry set for me one year. Between family gifts and Santa, we kids were all running over with excitement. In the upper photo I’m Santa along with my cousins and siblings: (from the left) Thor, Johnny, Peter, Ann (in my lap), Steve, Vicki, and one of our Irish setters. The middle photo pictures Karl, Millie, Thor, and Kent. The bottom photo is my grandpa V.A. and myself.

We must have been pretty good children since Santa always brought plenty of treasures. We liked games the best since we could play them together. The carom board was one of our favorites, although it ended in disaster when Steven made a particularly boisterous shot, and his cue struck my sister Vicki’s front tooth, knocking it out. We admired the gold tooth she acquired as a consequence, but as a self-conscious pre-teen, Vicki was mortified.

Skipping ahead about twenty years, Christmas was always an exciting time in our Cincinnati home, though less gala an event than my own childhood. After he turned 4, we took our son J to Johnny’s Toy Store the week before Christmas each year to try to determine what toys he was attracted to. It always started out exciting but then proved too overwhelming — after half an hour J would break down in uncontrolled tears. However, J was in a calmer and more upbeat mood when Santa came to visit at his friend Jessica’s house.

We got a tree each year, and I usually decorated it with cookie dough faces painted with acrylics. One year I brought home a bare-branched sumac tree and decorated it with paper-mache heads molded over balloons. It was such a success that we left it up in our dining room for two or three years.

Whenever we had a white Christmas, J and I went outside a made a snowman in the side yard. As he grew bigger, we started making snow rabbits, and eventually they were taller than both of us. One year we were saddened when neighbors started putting their Christmas trees out at the curbside after the holiday, and we started dragging them back to our house. Soon we had seventeen trees on our back patio — a small forest which we kept there until Valentine’s Day.

When J was just a little kid we started going to Katja’s sister Ami’s and brother-in-law Bruce’s Upper West Side condo for the holidays. Manhattan at Christmas time was a winter paradise. J and I hopped on the subway shortly after we’d arrive and headed down to Times Square, joining the holiday crowds. Ami always made a delicious Christmas meal, joined by Bruce’s mom Vera, sister Sandra, and brother-in-law Clarence. Then Ami and Bruce treated us to dinner out at an elegant Manhattan restaurant. Katja and Ami would always have a lunch date at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, followed by shopping at Bloomingdale’s. The Met, MOMA, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s, so many holiday treats. J became enthralled with New York, eventually deciding that that was the only place he wanted to go to college, a decision that helped shape his life course.

We stopped doing Christmas trees after J grew up and left home, but about a decade ago Katja bought a potted evergreen to celebrate the holiday. Come spring she planted it in our side yard, and now it’s some twenty feet high, a year-round reminder of Christmas at our house.

Christmas is a bundle of good feelings. There’s Santa, presents, and holiday meals, but the essence of it is family togetherness. The pandemic, of course, has complicated that, but we just finished a FaceTime visit with J, K, and our grandkids in New Orleans — a cheery and fun get-together. Next year we hope we’ll do it in person.

Love, Dave

Iko and Li'l Paws

Dear George,

Iko and Li'l Paws are very good sleepers.  Back home in New Orleans they normally get up about 7 a.m., but we retirees have a much more relaxed schedule.  When the dogs first arrived I set the alarm for 9, but soon I discovered that they are content to sleep in till 10 a.m. or later.  Li'l Paws, though the smaller of the two, gets into our bed at night by first jumping up on the cedar chest.  Iko doesn’t try that, and he initially decided to sleep in my closet next to my smelly gym bag.  Then I started lifting him into our bed, and he’s slept there ever since.  He is fascinated with the odor of human breath, and some mornings he climb onto my chest, stretches out so his nose is near my mouth, and naps for another thirty minutes or so.  

Our daughter-in-law K’s sister lives in Northern California, and K and J decided to ride out the coronavirus pandemic there, a wise decision since New Orleans has become one of the nation’s hotspots.  K and the kids flew out in mid-March, and J drove up to Cincinnati to leave the dogs in our care.  This has worked out well.  Though it’s been several years since our sheepdogs died, we still miss them a lot, and Iko and Li'l Paws make “sheltering in place” much more tolerable.  Lots of walks, rough-housing for me, loyal companions, and more laughter around the house.  Among other benefits, my blood pressure dropped from 140/90 to 120/70 shortly after the dogs arrived.  

Iko is a miniature Schnauzer with a sweet personality.  If I remember correctly, I think he was a street dog before he joined J and K’s family.  Compared to our sheepdogs, he’s a little guy.  Twenty inches from nose to butt, 17 inches high at the shoulder, 20 pounds.  I would describe Iko as friendly and mellow.  He bonded with us immediately, likes to growl and play fight, rolling on his back and kicking his legs in the air, and stands with his front paws on my desk chair arm to let me know that I’m spending too much time on the computer.  

Li'l Paws is more feisty even though he’s a pipsqueak compared to Iko — 17 inches long, 12 inches high, 13 pounds.  He’s a Yorkie/Chin mix.  Despite being a tiny little dog, he’s very boisterous, and seems to have a Napoleon complex.  Whenever Iko comes over for some affection, Li'l Paws jumps in front of him and hogs the limelight.  Li'l Paws is also pretty noisy on the street, barking ferociously at all the big dogs and letting them know he is a force to be reckoned with.  He’s always in the lead as we walk, tugging at the leash and pulling me along.  For a thirteen-pounder, Li'l Paws is remarkably powerful.  I think if he were my size he would probably be capable of pulling a freight train.  He also has a thing for ladies underwear, depleting Katja’s wardrobe day by day.  One evening he raced past me in the bedroom and seemed to disappear.  I finally found him underneath our king-sized bed.  He’d absconded with a pair of undies.   I reached in to get them, and Li'l Paws let out a vicious growl and bit my hand, drawing blood.  Remembering that dogs have a wild side, I let him keep his ill-begotten  treasure.

The dogs are very attached to humans.  Katja sleeps in most mornings, and I go down the street to get a loaf of salt rye bread and a cinnamon twist at Graeters.  Iko and Lil Paws station themselves at the kitchen door when I leave, and they are still standing there in the exact same position fifteen minutes later when I return.  When we watch TV, Lil Paws jumps up on the couch between us, and Iko stretches out on the floor at our feet.  If anybody leaves the room, the dogs follow faithfully right behind them.       

Last week when I picked up Graeters pastries Katja was still asleep so I arranged them on paper  plates on our solarium table.  When she woke up, I told her that her cinnamon twist was waiting downstairs.  She went to get it but it wasn’t there.  I discovered that I’d left a chair too close to the table.   A little scoundrel (or maybe two) had gotten up and enjoyed a feast of sweets.  I’m sure that those pastries were bigger than either dog’s stomach, but there wasn’t even a crumb left.

The dogs’ eating habits are strange, to say the least.  With our sheepdogs, we were accustomed to one meal at breakfast time and a second at supper, with the dogs gobbling up their bowls in a minute or two.  Iko and Li'l Paws, though, are on a different regimen.  They share one bowl which is kept full 24 hours a day, and they just take turns eating whenever they feel like it.  Katja refills the bowl every two or three days when it gets low, and, when she puts it down, the dogs give a quick sniff but otherwise show little interest.  Later Li'l Paws might pick up a couple of pellets with his teeth and take them to the next room to chew them up.  Iko eats a bit from the bowl, but rarely more than a mouthful or two.  Despite a never-ending supply of food, the dogs are very casual about eating, and the bowl stays pretty full all day long.  Very mysterious.     

I take the dogs out 4 times a day: 10 a.m., 2 p.m., 6-ish, and 10 p.m.  When I pick up the leashes to get ready to go Iko jumps up and down and barks, and Li'l Paws runs around in tiny   circles.  Li'l Paws always leads the way on the walk, while Iko is more leisurely, stopping to sniff every spot that another dog has been at.  I kept count on a recent walk, and Li'l Paws peed 3 times on our 8-block trip while Iko left his mark 22 times.  Li'l Paws would like to go out more if he could.  Our friend Jennifer stopped by last week, and I let the dogs out on the patio to greet her.  Li'l Paws promptly managed to nudge the patio door open with his nose and took off like a flash.  Jennifer went running after him, and I followed behind, but Li'l Paws was a lot faster than either of us.  He ran behind our garage, up our neighbor’s driveway, down the sidewalk next to busy Ludlow Avenue, then back up the east side of our house.  Lucky for us, he  stopped momentarily in our driveway, and Jennifer yelled, “STAY!!!”  Startled by her authoritative voice, Li'l Paws froze in place and started trembling.  Jennifer scooped him up, and we avoided catastrophe.

J had originally planned to return and pick up the dogs in a week or two, but now it’s hard to tell what the future will bring.  We are happy that our family is in a safer place, and we are having a fine time with our canine visitors.  No one really knows what the next step will be.  We’ll just go with the flow.  So far Iko and Li'l Paws are disinterested in the pandemic.    

Love,

Dave