Memories of
things Ashtabula were popping up daily this week. It started Thursday evening
when we went to the Springer Opera House to see Yesterday and Today: The
Interactive Beatles Experience. It was an interesting evening all around. The
Springer, built in the 1870s, is the oldest theater in Georgia and the sixth
oldest in the United States. When you look up at the private boxes near the
stage at the Springer, you expect to see Abe and Mary Lincoln in one of them.
The show featured three very enthusiastic
brothers – Billy, Matthew and Ryan McGuigan – whose father, Bill, was a huge
Beatles fan. Bill died from leukemia in 1996, and the show is a tribute to both
their father and the Beatles. During intermission I talked to one of the
ushers, Audrey, who, like me, was in awe of the McGuigans’ energy. She said she
had to be back in the morning, when Yesterday and Today would be put on for an
audience of school students. If the McGuigans were even half as energetic
Friday morning as they were Thursday evening, we decided she should find out
what they were on and how to get some.
Then Audrey talked about the restoration
projects that have been completed at the Springer, and the ones currently
underway or planned. I admitted my ignorance of the Springers’s history and
told her I had been in the area less than a year.
“Where did you move from?” she asked.
“Ashtabula, Ohio,” I said hesitantly,
expecting a puzzled look and a mumbled, “Where the hell is that?” in return.
“Oh, I’m familiar with Ashtabula,” she said.
“My former in-laws lived there for a few years.”
It’s not the reaction I expect from people
here when I say “Ashtabula.”
Friday afternoon, I found myself thinking
about Dave King, one of Nancy’s bicycling friends. Annie and I were talking in
the hallway when Polly and Margaret came by. Polly, a resident here, is blind.
Margaret is a friend of hers who visits her regularly and helps Polly do things
she wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. Friday, a wonderfully warm and sunny day,
she took Polly outside for a walk.
“Hey, Polly,” Annie said.
“Somebody is talking to you,” Margaret told
Polly.
“Who is it?” Polly asked.
“You know who I am, Ms. Polly,” Annie said.
“Annie. I know your voice. How are you?”
“She’s better with names than I am,”
Margaret said. “I was in an accident years ago, and I have a terrible time
remembering names. It got to the point where I called everybody sweetheart or
darling. I used to work in the PX at Fort Benning, and one day I gave this guy
his change and said, ‘Thank you, sweetheart.’ The woman who was with him
said, ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call my husband sweetheart.’ I said,
‘I’ll try to remember that, darling.’ It didn’t go over too well.”
Which brings me back to Dave: Nothing spoils
his dining experience as quickly and as thoroughly as a waitress calling him
hon.
Saturday morning, I gathered some dirty
clothes and a copy of Roy Blount’s Alphabetter Juice: The Joy of Text and
headed for the laundry room. As the washers ca-chunked, ca-chunked through the
rinse cycle, Mr. Blount discussed the word “adverb.” He asked the reader to
consider the adverb in “An Old Joke,” a poem by Sarah Lindsay:
They buried the husk of her
in
the front room,
tiredly crying.
“Not a common word, tiredly, and not
euphonious – wearily would have been more conventionally poetic,” Blount wrote.
“But tiredly is inspired, somehow. I wonder if Lindsay remembered it from the
short story, ‘The Best of Everything’ by Richard Yates.”
The title and author didn’t ring a bell
until Blount told the story of Grace in her negligee, offering herself to Ralph
on the night before their wedding. Ralph declined. He’d been drinking with the
boys and wanted to rejoin them, but first he had to use the “terlet.” On his
way out, Ralph reminded Grace to show up for their wedding the next day.
“She smiled tiredly and opened the door
for him. ‘Don’t worry, Ralph,’ she said, ‘I’ll be there.’”
It was a story
Suzanne had recommended to us a couple years ago, and being an occasionally
dutiful student, I read it – and enjoyed it. And for a few minutes Saturday
morning, as I sat in the laundry room, I enjoyed memories of our Thursday
morning writing class at the Conneaut Community Center for the Arts.
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