Classics

Classics

My mother and I shared a hobby that helped to shape my moral character as well as entertain us. We both loved classic movies. My “growing up” years were before commercial cable television, but fortunately vintage films had been acquired by television, to be watched either daily or weekly. By the 1970s one station in Boston offered classics as regular evening fare from 8:00-10:00 p.m. Public Broadcasting assumed the role on weekends. There was a cinema near us that specialized in the “oldies,” as well, so rarely were we bereft of film opportunities.
I can divide the decades of my early life by my growing awareness of the films’ messages. Mom grew up during American films’ “Golden Age,” when she and friends or a date went to movies at least twice a week for double features, plus cartoons and news reels. Her absolute, all-time favorite was Rebecca, and I remember the first time that I watched it with her on television. Mom was as engrossed as she must have been the first, second, tenth(?) times that she saw it, and although “running commentary” on a movie in progress was severely discouraged, she broke her own rule for Rebecca. One of her favorite segments was the announcement of the couple’s pending marriage, during which Mom grinned as broadly as she could. Another was the “declaration” scene that I won’t describe because it is a pivotal point in the story, but Mom added a triumphant “AHA!” to the proceedings. Alas, since I was about eleven and it was a school night, I had to go to bed before the ending. Not to worry about missing out, however. The next morning Mom filled me in on the details with the precision and joy of the true movie maven.
Two tales of morality came from The Slender Thread, about the attempts of a volunteer at a crisis line keeps a woman who is suicidal on the phone during the lengthy tracking process (“You see, she feels that everyone’s leaving her,” she remarked to herself and me during one of the scenes in flashback), and To Kill A Mockingbird. Mom identified with the setting of the latter because she had spent some of the early years of her marriage in a rural town in the South. Her in-laws’ front porch was very similar to the Finches, including a porch swing. Mom and I shared an intolerance of injustice, but hers was tempered with first-hand knowledge of the structure of those towns, a decade or so after the time of Harper Lee’s classic story. My mother, whose married name was Betty Davis – with a “y,” not an “e,” – managed to impart a good bit of sociology to eight-year-old me, while skimming over the definitions of “rape” and “incest.”
I think that it was about eight years later when we were watching a musical starring Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth. Mom suddenly said, “It’s so nice that you like these movies.” By that time, I was a veteran of countless Saturday afternoon and weeknight viewings of everything from the light and fluffy Top Hat to the severe No Way Out. “Oh, yes,” I laughed. “I was raised on them.”
Years passed, and Mom was in a nursing home. My sister, brother and I kept her supplied with videotapes of classic movies and television programs that we hoped provided her with some diversion. Then, as before, our mother had her favorite film. One day my sister and I asked her what she had watched recently. Mary, Mom’s caretaker and friend, who usually was the soul of cheerfulness and accommodation, said with an aspect of woe,
“Yesterday we watched Rebecca – three times!”
Mom responded with the wide, gleeful grin of decades past.

Midnight in Piccadily Circus

Thirty-five years ago my mother and I took off from Boston for London, England. In the previous six years, since age nine, I had developed Anglophilia extraordinaire, and in 1975 the National Education Association, of which my mom was a member, offered a week-long tour.

That trip was an experience that exceeded even my exalted expectations. We were on a coach tour, and we traveled to select spots that were favored by teachers, historians, businesspeople, and teen-aged Anglophiles.

The first experience that I was a witness to in England involved the couple next to me on the airplane. We had the same last name. Mrs. Davis was somewhat phobic of airplanes, and had been a little nervous during the flight. As we began the descent, she became truly frightened. All the way down, her solicitous husband held her hand and rubbed her back. I was warmed by their understanding of and care for each other, and not a little envious.

Throughout London and its environs -- at the changing of the guard, at Ann Hathaway's Cottage, at Hampton Court, in restaurants, and at theaters, everyplace except the Tower of London, which was almost totally inaccessible -- the tour guides and bus drivers were tremendously friendly and accommodating of my wheelchair and me. I think that I assumed that this was the behavior of London drivers generally. Then, alone, Mom and I went to see Henry Fonda as Clarence Darrow. It was a marvelous performance, which we viewed from the Royal Box, because 1) The Royal Family wasn't attending that night and 2) It was the easiest place for the ushers to reach.

The performance ended at about 11:40. Then came the considerable challenge of flagging a cab in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. No cab driver wanted the bother of a wheelchair when so many other fares were easier and faster to dispatch. As we were wondering what to do, a large car pulled up, and we were invited in by a very well tailored and beautifully mannered gentleman. Any hesitation that either Mom or I might have had about accepting a ride vanished because it was the only one offered.

We had a lovely trip. Our "car host" was from Saudi Arabia, and he stated that he was deeply distressed by the divisions between people. We pulled up at a hotel that may have been the Dorchester, and he handed the driver a wad of money to take us anywhere we wanted to go. Mom and I were both honest and sleepy. We gave the driver the name of our hotel, full of thanks for the eccentric experience and to our gracious host.

The Poet BASICally and Verbally

Four and one-third pages. Those were all -- four and one-third. There was no use to pretend that the last page comprised two-thirds or even one-half, which might have counted as five if the professor were in a generous mood. This measly third looked exactly that atop a lot of white paper. This was 1986 and electric typewriters were the machines of choice for essays, which meant that one-third of a page certainly looked it.
The essay's topic was the BASIC computer language's use in the binary coding of archaeological sites. I was no expert, so there was no sense of, "There, everything that can be said about this topic has been said in these four and one- third pages of shining prose." My mind drifted to the Curies' naming of polonium so that everyone -- even those in the Russian army (at least those who had access to the Periodic Table of Elements) -- would be obliged to read the reference to Poland, Madame Marya Sklodowska Curie's homeland. The country was then under Tsarist (or, more accurately, the Russian army's rule), and to write or say its name was illegal. But this BASIC author had no true "authority" to wield ...or, maybe?
In a case of a deadline generating inspiration, I filled in the last page:

The archaeologist thus goaded
Who BOOTed the system and loaded,
She applied her might,
And out came the site,
All patterned and binary coded.

The result: B+ and another limerick for the world.