I loved how the keys plunked and the typebars clattered, the ping of the bell and the thwack of the carriage return.
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Michigan seems like a dream to me now. —Simon & Garfunkel, "America"
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Then: Waiting in the railway crossing shack with the gate keeper, hoping for a Boston & Maine diesel to come along.

Now: Wishing I could feel the earth shake as a steam locomotive rolled past with a full load of freight, throttle wide open to make the grade.

 

Then: Watching my mom crank the phone to get Rozzie the operator on the line. Listening to them gossip while Rozzie sat at the switchboard plugging and unplugging callers. Watching my mom remember she had a call to make. We had a four-digit phone number.

Now: Suppressing the impulse to text while driving on the Interstate.

 

Then: Listening to the Red Sox game on the radio.

Now: Dialing in Tantric Chants by Tibetan Buddhist Monks on Spotify.

 

Then: Sitting in Harvard’s men-only Lamont Library, Cliffies excluded, circa 1966, reading the Crimson as it reported that the presence of female students might distract the young gentlemen.

Now: Whaaat???

Then: I was supposed to be rooting for Stevenson but Eisenhower had these cool ‘I Like Ike’ t-shirts.

Now: Unable to watch the election news.

#  #  #

 

 

Back in my day, bicycles had two wheels, no chain, no pedals, no brakes and, dammit, I was happy to have one….

Oh wait, that’s not true … But media coverage of pro cycling was just as primitive as that first push-bicycle, known as a “dandy horse,” back in the 19th century.

Back before the 7-Eleven cycling team (Davis Phinney, Eric Heiden et al) raced in the Tour de France in 1986 and American Greg LeMond riding on a European team burst on the scene with the first of his three victories, few Americans had even heard of bike racing. Before those first Americans, however, it was almost impossible to get news about the Tour de France except. At my local bike shop in the 1970s were posters of Bernard Hinault, the top cyclist in the world at the time, with five Tour de France wins. We’d gather at the shop and ask if anyone knew how the Tour de France was going, who was ahead. On Saturdays, you could get a short update on a week’s worth of bike racing on  ABC’s Wide World of Sports (the thrill of victory! The agony of defeat!). That was it. Even as Greg LeMond became a superstar in pro cycling, it was only through the graces of Wide World of Sports that you’d even get a glimpse of him.

Fast forward a few years when that Texan started “winning,” the U.S. media realized the potential advertising goldmine — aided by cable TV — and began airing races for hours, live, every day. We all thought that was amazing – to get to watch the race from the comfort of our own sofas. And there were real commentators, too!

Of course, today, you can download an app and get not only minute-by-minute live updates on the race in progress, but there’s usually a video feed or TV broadcast for hours that you can watch on TV or on your phone/tablet — including replays! My favorite online racing obsession is Live Update Guy, an online community of other passionate bike racing fans scattered all over the world and anchored by a lawyer/state legislator/university instructor in Wyoming and a cartoonist/journalist in New Mexico. It’s like hanging out at the old bike shop catching up on race news. But, best of all, all of this — the live video feeds and our online bike shop can be followed at home, in the car, on vacation or – best yet – AT WORK!

(I keep updating this story as I learn new information about my long-lost, but still fascinating cousin.)

The last time I saw him was in October of 1980. He’d called my office a day earlier. “You’ve got to come up over the weekend. It’s fantastic here.” Trying to get a room in Woodstock, VT over Columbus Day weekend on one day’s notice was no small feat, but seeing my cousin Alan was an opportunity not to be missed. He was pure magic, vibrant, tall, lithe, full of energy and enthusiasm and I thrilled to the sound of his voice.

I am the youngest in a large gaggle of cousins. My dad, Alan’s uncle, was the youngest of eight children, the “runt of the litter”, he described himself and I am the baby’s baby. A sunny man with a sweet disposition, Dad LOVED his family and passed that along to me. He played “bachelor uncle” until the age of 32 and lived with his oldest sister Pauline when he came home from the war.

Alan was Pauline’s boy, her second born. He was a whole generation older than me. He had already left postage stamp-sized Huntington Woods, Michigan for Dartmouth College, done a stint working on a ship on Lake Superior and who knows what other adventures before I was even born. He settled in Geneva, Switzerland and had many professions; photographer, international businessman, jet-setter, European distributor for Roots shoes. Legend goes that he’d danced with Brigitte Bardot. He was exotic, restless. He was called Action Jackson – long before the movie.

He would blow into Detroit and Pauline would host a gathering of the tribe. Yet somehow, Alan was one of those people who made each person feel special. He took an interest in me, his baby cousin. When I was very young, he developed Bell’s palsy, caused by a luge accident. Evidently luging was big with the jet-set in the 1950s. I remember sitting across a restaurant table from him, one side of his handsome face drooped. He spoke of it without self-pity and moved on. It completely cleared up. When I started to study French, he spoke French to me. He came to my house and took the time to photograph me, even though everyone wanted a piece of him when he was in town and he knew EVERYONE. He gave me a sense of worth at a critical point in my life.

 

He dated debutantes and celebrities. He was friendly with Nina Simone. The “high priestess of jazz” held my baby cousin Gregory like the Madonna while in Geneva…but I get ahead of myself. He wouldn’t find Miss Right until 1973. He finally brought THE girl home to meet us all. The beauty’s name was Elisabeth Harmer – dark hair, vivid blue eyes, fair skin, Austrian. Like the famously beautiful Hapsburg empress, she too, calls herself Sissy. She is regal, savvy, just five years my elder, and she adored him. They were the most glamorous couple I’d ever seen.

They had New England connections. She had been an exchange student at Milton Academy. He bought land near Dartmouth and had a business lawyer on Beacon Street, a few blocks from our condominium. So when he called that October morning, I answered.

Through a friend, we found the last room in Woodstock, and Alan and Sissy squeezed us into their busy schedule for lunch on Saturday. It rained over night, our ignition wires had problems when wet, so Alan had to fix that too. He drove us to their rented condo.

Sissy introduced us to their au pair. I didn’t know what an “au pair” was, but figured if Sissy had one, it must be important. And I met Gregory, their adorable two year old. It would be the only time I’d see the dear boy until he turned up in Boston at a cousin’s bar mitzvah in 1999. We are now so close that he came in from London for my son’s bar mitzvah in 2002. I was honored to do a reading at his wedding in England, Labor Day weekend, 2016. And in March, 2018, I cradled his 11 week old daughter during dinner so he and his beautiful wife Laura could enjoy a bit of food and I could cuddle my newest cousin, moved beyond words that this was Alan’s granddaughter.

 

But that long-ago October day I had my first 35 mm camera and Alan took me out into the breath-taking foliage to give me pointers. and again photograph me. I took a shot of them too. Sissy fed us a hearty soup and good bread and then we were gone.

Three months later, I sat on the arm of my blue couch in my Beacon St. condo, listening to my father’s words, but not comprehending. “Alan is dead,” “How?” “They think he had the flu. He was sick for a few days and in the hospital, but they couldn’t save him.”

He died the day before Sissi’s birthday. He was 50 years old. And he died of mesothelioma, long festering, but with no symptoms. His ashes were flown home. He’s buried with his parents, and mine and so many of my other relatives, all of whom out-lived him.

As I looked to the back of the chapel that December morning in 1999, my tears welled up. It was as though Alan had come back to me. Gregory has finer features than his father, and is even more handsome. Yet he has his father’s bearing; he is tall and lithe like his father, and when he smiles, his eyes crinkle like his father. He has a great desire to know his father’s family and I am more than happy to oblige. And through Gregory, I’ve regained Sissi, whom I had tried to stay in touch with, until she remarried and moved to Venezuela. Now she is rose fragrance and cappuccino wrapped around a spine of steel. She lives in London and that hearty soup she served has grown to a fabulously successful catering business. She and her family visited us on Martha’s Vineyard several times throughout the years. And on June 30, 2004, I was in London, helping her serve a luncheon for the Prince of Wales.

 

“Over-educated and under qualified”. That’s what the folks at SofTech said to me when I was desperate for a job in August of 1974. I had graduated the previous May from Brandeis University, magna cum lauda with a BA in Theatre Arts with honors and a Massachusetts teaching certificate in Secondary Speech and English. Married a month later, I looked for, but did not find a teaching job, so answered random help-wanted ads in the paper. My new husband was to start full-time graduate school in September while continuing part-time work at SofTech, a software company which mostly built software for the military. The people were nice enough and Dan had worked there since graduating from Brandeis a year before I did, so I knew them all (it was a company of about 60 people by this point). So at a party in August, I said, “If you want to do him a favor, hire me”. Lelah, who shared an office with Dan, called me in for an interview the next Tuesday.

The series of interviews were bizarre, but I was offered the job of Program Librarian for $7,000/year. It was something. I knew NOTHING about computers or software, but my job was primarily data input. I spent much of my day inputting data by typing cards on a KEYPUNCH machine…clattering away. I was bored out of my gourd! The noise was deafening. In the “computer room” (as the company grew, they acquired a PDP 8, another long-gone relic, a Digital Equipment Corp computer. They were once a huge Massachusetts company, but founder Ken Olsen refused to believe that anyone would ever want to do computing at home!) I pulled the door shut and sang Gilbert & Sullivan at the top of my lungs. I didn’t realize how loud I was until the president of the company poked his head in one day and commented on how nice my voice was…oops.

When my children came along I had to take them to the Computer Museum to show them what a keypunch was and that Mom had worked on one at her first job.

With some people it requires advancing years to bring a niggling sense of mortality.
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But wait, there's more detritus; calculators, voice recorders, and an electronic dictionary.
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