Why I Love Winter

 

 

My friends know about the summer activities I loathe: I’m a lousy swimmer. Camping requires too much planning. Sunning myself at the beach is boring. And of boats, “What is a boat but a prison with a chance of being drowned?” asked writer Samuel Johnson.

 

So what do I prefer? Winter! It’s time to ski! Almost 82, I managed five runs on a small hill in West Virginia last weekend, but I am certainly slowing down. I hit the slopes maybe 200 to 300 times all over the country for 50 years.

 

I was never really an expert. When you start at age 29, you worry with every turn about how you will get home if you break your leg. I never did get injured—except inn cross-country skiing when I damaged some ribs. A guide at Aspen took us down an icy road and we were stopped in our tracks when we hit bare pavement.

 

Why do people ski in the first place? Because it is so much fun when you stop. You retire to an indoor fireplace, have a drink and snacks and chat about all of the horrors you faced: Freezing air, bone-chilling wind and the thrill of risking your life on every mogul.

 

Some unforgettable moments for me:

 

—On Jan. 20, 1985, President Reagan’s inaugural parade was cancelled because of the extreme cold. But that didn’t stop me from taking 13-year-old stepson Chris and his friend Joe to Ski Liberty in Pennsylvania.  “Well, you promised,” one of them said. It was not crowded at all. It was miserable. One of Chris’ feet was numb for a week.

 

—One weekend I skied at Mammoth Mountain in California, one of the largest resorts in the country. On a slow weekday, there were only two of us on one wide ski run. Of course, the other skier, a middle-aged beginner, crashed into me and knocked me down. No apology at all.

 

—I skied in 5-below-zero weather at Stowe resort in Vermont. The instructor made us check for frostbite after every run. They put blankets on top of everyone on the ski lift.

 

—At one resort I somehow took a lift to the highest peak. The only way down was over a cornice that seemed as vertical as a brick wall. Somehow I managed it.

 

—One time at Aspen, Colo.,  I got terribly sick with the flu. Enormous amounts of powder snow fell on the same day. An article in Ski magazine the next year wrote about “The greatest day in the history of skiing.” I missed it!

 

—You might spend 20 minutes freezing in a lift line to spend only 3 minutes gliding in snow.

 

—The worst part of skiing is putting on your boots. Or maybe it is driving ridiculous distances to get there. Or maybe spending more than you can afford.

 

After all this adversity, why did I keep up with this ridiculous sport? I liked:

 

—Skiing  along the top ridge at Heavenly Valley in California, gazing at the deep blue Lake Tahoe below on one side and the arid Carson Valley in Nevada on the other.

 

—The wonderful feeling of gliding through virgin powder snow as if you were sailing through the air.

 

—Imagining yourself as Jean-Claude Killy, Picabo Street or Bode Miller as you race through a tough mogul patch in triumph.

 

—Getting a good workout at a time of year when most people want to vegetate in front of the TV.

 

I always thought I would have to give up skiing when I got married and had a family. My wife is not a skier. But then I got an idea: Take small children with you and put them in a ski class. Then it becomes a family event. Pickett would come along and spend the weekend in the hot tub.

 

Then these kids continued skiing as adults and taught it to their kids. I came along too. I have often gone to Sun Valley, Idaho, with Chris, Nina and their four boys. I went with Sara, Lance and their two children to Winterplace, near Blacksburg, last week.

 

 What have I started?

 

 

 

 

The "California Experience"

As many of you know, I grew up in California. Here is my story of what I call “the Great Hill Slide of 1958.”

 

We moved happily from a flat area to the hills in El Cerrito in1955, loving the fabulous view of the SanFrancisco Bay. The neighborhood, just below King Drive, was wonderful, and the house (7858 Burns Ct.) was just right for us. The grassy PG&E right of way behind us was a great playground before Moeser Lane was extended.

 

But then…heavy rains came in the winter of 1958. Our sidewalk and our patio were cracking. Our house was apparently built on top of a filled-in creek that apparently wasn’t dead!

 

We were lucky! Our house was in the middle of that creek, and we slid with it.  But the two houses below ours were at the edge of that creek and split through the middle, one with a foot-wide crack. I think they became uninhabitable. The city manager’s home below theirs was spared, I believe.

 

Things were even worse on Earl Court below us, where several homes were destroyed.

 

There were lawsuits against the city, the builder and the soil analysts. I think there was a settlement, but I don’t remember details.

 

Amazingly, we were able to find a buyer for our house. We moved to El Sobrante, near an earthquake fault below San Pablo Dam. I tell people here in the East that this was our “California experience.”

Not All Chistmases Are Merry

Holidays can be tough if you are single. Since I didn’t marry until age 43, I know.

Sure, I can get saturated now with Christmas celebrations, but there was the time:

—I was sick in Pittsburgh and had Christmas dinner at a Stouffer’s restaurant by myself, consoled by a sympathetic waiting staff.

—A visiting colleague became ill in Las Vegas and we had Thanksgiving dinner at a cheap diner. He was so sick that he didn’t even remember it later.

—In Washington, I had nowhere to go until I practically invited myself to someone’s Christmas dinner at a Christmas Eve service.

—In the 24-hour-a-day news business, I was assigned to work some Christmases by bosses who figured single people didn’t have a family anyway.

—I enjoyed Christmas with some friends in Delaware until one of the kids climbed into a car on a hilly driveway. Somehow, he released the emergency brake and crashed the car into another across the street. That can ruin a party!

—But then there was another time in Dover, Del., when I

 went to Christmas dinners on three consecutive nights. People were friendly and charitable to a 21-year-old near-stranger.

   At least I have been guaranteed company of some kind in the 38 years I have been married. While over-exuberant celebrations may irritate me on a holiday, some people may be having Christmas dinner alone in a restaurant like Stouffer’s.

Raving about my adopted state

 

Virginia, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1.   The weather is moderate. It may be less volatile in my home state of California, but Virginia’s winters aren’t as bad as North Dakota’s, and its summers aren’t as bad as Mississippi’s.

2.   It is friendly to business. It is no coincidence that Amazon picked Arlington for its second headquarters (unfortunately only four blocks from where I used to live.) The Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards plan to move to nearby Alexandria.

3.   Virginia has been the birthplace of eight U.S. presidents. William Henry Harrison, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Zachary Taylor, John Tyler, George Washington and Woodrow Wilson. That’s a lot more than its share out of 50 states.

4.   It’s full of history. There are many historic homes such as Monticello and Montpelier, and numerous battlefields and Civil War landmarks. My favorite is Appomattox.

5.   There is varied terrain for vacations. You’ll find good beaches and lots of mountains (well, they would call them hills in California.) And the Shenandoah Valley in between.

6.   Universities are excellent. Especially the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary and Virginia Tech.

7.   It is full of scenic wonders. My favorites are the Blue Ridge Mountains, Luray Caverns and the Great Falls on the Potomac River.

8.   There are so many elegant places to stay. I’ve slept in most of them: the Jefferson in Richmond, the Homestead in Hot Springs, the Williamsburg Inn, the Boar’s Head Inn in Charlottesville, and The Inn at Little Washington (where I only dined.)

9.   Colonial Williamsburg is wonderful. You can go back in time to an exciting era of the state’s history. Jamestown and Yorktown are nearby.

10.                 It is a purple state. Republicans and Democrats are fairly evenly balanced. It is a state in which you can make a difference.

 

Good old days? Well, maybe not

“Music from the 1950s” was the theme from a circus we attended in Salem, VA., a few weeks ago.

“Why did they pick the ‘50s?” I wondered. “They must have thought times were better then,” my wife, Pickett, said

Really? Well, yes, there were some great things about the 1950s:

— World War II was over, and we were now the most powerful country in the world. Jobs were plentiful and we had a president, Dwight Eisenhower, whom my sister said would make a good grandfather.

—Kids could run loose all day and didn’t need sports leagues and adults driving them everywhere. (There were probably predators then, too, but we just didn’t know about them.)

—We had the calming “Ozzie and Harriet” and “Leave it to Beaver” with no profanity, and stories that were easy to follow. The live shows on “Playhouse 90.” and others were wonderful.

—Air travel was fun. And there were Disney, jazz and plentiful cars.

But were these times really better than today? Let’s look at the other side of the ‘50s.

—Polio. Some kids in my town were afflicted with it. There were people living in iron lungs.

—The Red Scare and McCarthyism. I remember my parents burning an innocuous book that they thought could get them into trouble.

— Racial discrimination. Blacks were barred from many schools.

—Lesser roles for women.  They were stereotyped as housewives.

—Smoke-filled rooms. This was before the dangers of second-hand smoke were discovered.

—Wars seemingly everywhere (just like now.) Algeria, Malaysia, Indo-China, Korea.

—Cold War. We feared that we would never grow up because we would be annihilated by atomic bombs.

—Party lines. You couldn’t make a call if someone else was using a phone. When you could, others could listen in. And it was so inefficient to need switchboard operators!

—No dishwashers. You cleaned dishes by hand. “Oh, the humanity!”

—Boring pop music. Mitch Miller converted Columbia Records into a factory for bland, inoffensive songs. Doris Day, Frankie Laine, Guy Mitchell, Ray Conniff.  This was before rock ‘n’ roll.

—Lower life expectancy. Children born then could expect to live to 68, Now it’s 77.

—Limited communications. How did we live without smart phones and wi-fi? There were three TV channels, and they went on the air at 5 p.m. in 1950. You could watch a test pattern the rest of the day. (Well, maybe not so bad. You could also read a book!)

 

 

 

Fun for the holidays-- by yourself.

 

Yay, everybody’s here! What fun we’ll have. I love holidays.

Well, that’s the first day. You know how it is. By Day 4, you want to say: “I’m sick of your story about your hemorrhoids!” Or “If you are so mad at him, why don’t you get a divorce? Or “Will you kids stop spilling Legos all over the floor?” “The dog peed on the rug again?” “Why did you eat the rest of the turkey and leave the stuffing for me?”

 

For everyone’s sake, I take a break during Thanksgiving or Christmas here. A mental health break. They understand.

 

I used to go to Danville on the Friday after Thanksgiving every year to get our car serviced at the Honda dealer. It was wonderful. In the waiting room they had coffee, snacks and popcorn. Magazines, TV and wi-fi. You can browse for new cars. What more could you want?

The service rep would come to me after a couple of hours and say, “Sir, your car is ready for pickup.” I wanted to say: “Already? Please. I am in the middle of my Candy Crush game.”

When we got a Tesla, which did not require servicing, I stayed overnight at the Bee Hotel in Danville last year. I went to a movie, ate dinner at Outback Steak House and breakfast at Link’s Coffee House Café.

 

Then I returned home happily. “Tell me about your hemorrhoids. How are they?” And I might have said: “I’m sorry about your marital troubles. Thinking about you.” “Kids let me see what you can build with your Legos.”

 

Nobody complained that I skipped out on them. They knew me well.

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An aside: Did you know that you are not allowed to stay at most Danville hotels if you’re ID says you are from South Boston? 

 

Several times I wanted to stay overnight after a ball game or movie so I wouldn’t have to drive home in the dark. When I was turned down at one place, the people behind me in line were as stunned as I was. “We don’t like your kind here” was how I took it. Maybe they’re jealous of The Prizery. Did our football team whip theirs? Maybe if I got a fake ID?

 

The management wouldn’t tell me why—“just policy.” I kind of thought they were worried about drug deals or prostitution. No, according to Google, many hotels ban guests who live within 50 miles because they are worried about local people holding a wild party and trashing the place.

Do I look like I am going to trash your hotel room? Well, rules are rules, I guess. Motel 6 and the Bee don’t worry about that, though.

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Note: After I published this column on an introverts’ Facebook page, someone wrote a comment. She wishes she had a noisy family to get away from. She has to spend holidays alone. Gave me some perspective.

Asl dumb questions, get smart answers

I think of my ninth-grade substitute teacher in algebra when I have to write about something I don’t understand.

She admitted she couldn’t fathom the depths of this incomprehensible subject when she came to us in an emergency. She spent that night poring over algebra textbooks trying to come up with a lesson that wouldn’t make her look like a fool.

The next day, she shared with us what she had learned, and it was crystal clear. She had started at our level of understanding and learned along with us. I wasn’t very good at algebra, but I sure got this lesson.

I have prided myself with doing my best work on things I know absolutely nothing about. Biotechnology, supercomputers, high finance — you name it. I dig in and am forced to ask stupid questions.

I remember asking a governor of the Federal Reserve Board: “So why does the Fed need to control interest rates at all?” Nobody had ever asked him that before, apparently. I got a solid, quotable answer (but I don’t remember what he said.)

When Sen. Barry Goldwater made a snide remark about Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, I asked ignorantly, “What do you have against McNamara?” He responded. “McNamara is an (expletive).” Great quote.

I remember trying to find out how consumers could use some exotic new Silicon Valley invention. An executive there didn’t like my question. “You don’t know what you are talking about,” he said and then hung up. Bet they went out of business in a hurry.

But sometimes I knew too much. I wrote a kind story about my great aunt’s 105th birthday and dutifully sent it in to the Oakland Tribune. The paper treated it as a press release and sent someone to write their own story. The reporter focused on her love of wrestling on TV. “But not women wrestlers,” she said. “It’s not lady-like.” I guess I knew she watched wrestling, but I never would have thought to write about it.

Speaking of substitute teachers, I have admired people who can step in at the last minute to explain a variety of subjects. Students do feel like they have the day off, and I can remember everybody in class going up to the pencil sharpener at the same time as kind of a prank.

But there are gems. I never liked my fifth grade teacher, who had back trouble and was grumpy all the time. We were always delighted when she was home sick because her substitute would read wonderful stories to us. The regular teacher was so ill that the substitute got all the way through Paul Bunyan in one year. I don’t remember the class work, but I remember Paul Bunyan.

 

My history of bvank robberies

I have been in two bank holdups in my life. In San Francisco, the guy in front of me in line was acting strangely. I remembered his face because he looked just like a co-worker, though it wasn’t him. Just after he got to the teller window, he put a wad of bills in his back pocket and the teller became hysterical.

 

Apparently, he gave her a threatening note. She couldn’t tell the police what happened. I was the only person who could identify him. A week or so later, an FBI agent came to my house and asked me to look at some pictures. When I selected the guy, the agent gave me a knowing look. “He has held up about 10 banks,” he said.

 

Is bank robbery really that easy?

 

In the other, I was cashing a paycheck at a bank in Arlington, when several masked men with guns came into the bank, one jumped over the door for the tellers and demanded money.

 

The teller in front of me again was hysterical. I wasn’t. Why? Because she could see the man behind me pointing a gun and I couldn’t. Also, there were no choices to be made.

 

What could I do? Run away? Confront the gunman? No. All I could do was stand and wait. And so I was not afraid. (Maybe it just hadn’t sunk in.) In fact, I even insisted on cashing my check before I talked to the police. I get more stressed over selecting an entrée at a restaurant or a route to take in the car.  I know: It doesn’t make sense.

 

 

 

Not quite a veteran

 

The Richmond organist asked those who had been in the military to stand when their service’s theme song was called. As a former Army reservist, I never stand when this happens. A veteran is considered anyone who served 180 days or more on active duty, which I did not.

 

But this time, at the reenactment of Patrick Henry’s famous speech, reservists were asked to stand as well. I got up reluctantly and found that only about five men, all of them old, stood in an audience of 150 to 200. Then there was one Marine, two from the Navy and no one from the Air Force or Coast Guard.

 

So was the organist scraping the bottom of the barreL? Maybe things have changed. With the draft dormant, the military doesn’t reach as deeply into society as it used to.

 

 I was never called up for active duty after my six months in 1964, but many reservists today are. In fact, it was amazing that I wasn’t pulled into the Army full time. In the next six years. The Vietnam war was raging, but I don’t believe most of my fellow reservists and I were in any shape for battle. I think we were mostly a paper force to deter the Communists.

 

Many two and three-year soldiers served abroad or in useful duties in this country. I never did. I had two months of basic training at Fort Gordon in Georgia and four months of advance training as a supply clerk at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. Then I was sent home for weekly meetings and yearly summer camps for 5 ½ years. (I got pretty impatient as a thriving journalist when I had to clean out stoves and wash pots on weekends.)

 

I was certainly not eligible for veterans’ benefits. I never saw the Army move so fast as when I got up to about 177 days on active duty. They rushed to get me out before the 180-day trigger for the Gi Bill and VA hospital eligibility took hold.

 

At the final physical exam, the doctor asked me, “With your asthma, how did you get into the Army anyway?”  Well, I probably could have gotten out of it, but I did not want to skirt my patriotic duty in that way. I might have felt differently a few years later. For one thing, the Vietnam jungle probably would have finished me off before any bullets did. The Florida Everglades were bad enough!

 

So maybe I was right in standing up at that ceremony, though I probably won’t do that again. I entered the military voluntarily, and I appreciate the recognition given me. But I still admire the people who risked their lives and whose routines were disrupted even more than mine

 

Happy Veterans Day!

 

 

Kennedy's Derth 60 Yeaes Ago

 

When I covered President Kennedy’s dedication of the Delaware Turnpike on Nov. 14, 1963, I had no idea he would give one of his last speeches.

 

Eight days later I was returning to the Delaware State News office from a lunch with the staff in Dover, when a shock went through the newsroom.

 

“President Kennedy has been shot,” shouted a lady who had been typing copy on a teletype machine. “I just heard it on the radio.!”

 

The Associated Press was slightly behind on the story, and our AP machine for small newspapers was a little slow. But we kept reading more, and news editor Joe Smyth, the publisher’s son, decided to put out a special edition, even though the daily run had already been delivered.

 

 He made the decisions, but I put the front page together (with help from linotype and other backroom operators).  I remember that the headline typesetter, who did everything by hand, came in and shouted: “We don’t have enough s’s for assassinated.” Smyth said to make a mirror image.  The newspaper carriers, working by car, took the new edition and made their second delivery of the day.

 

The next day I drove to Washington, just to be immersed in the whole scene. A gloomier day you will never find. Besides the rain, there were mourners in front of the White House, and deep grief across the city.

`

It was on TV that I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, on Sunday. And at Smyth’s house I watched the sad Kennedy funeral procession the following Monday.

 

If a tragic assassination were to happen, I was convinced it would have happened at UC Berkeley, when Kennedy spoke on March 23, 1962. “Some crazy will try to take a shot at him,” the city editor of the Daily Californian student newspaper told me. She left me to run the office and coordinate coverage while the rest of the staff went to the stadium to cover the speech. When all was quiet, she told me to come and watch the speech too, and I did.

 

The assassination led to the discovery of an incredible gaffe by the Delaware State News publisher, Jack Smyth, uncovered by the Wilmington New Journal. The paper quoted an editorial Smyth had written critical of Kennedy’s spending just a few weeks before Kennedy’s death. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and his name is Jack Kennedy, and he should be shot literally before Christmas,” he wrote. In defense, he said he meant “figuratively,” but the damage was done.

 

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The weekend that shocked Washington

 Fifty yers ago, all of Washington was obsessed with the Watergate scandal and President Nixon’s efforts to wiggle out of it. The Associated Press assembled a team just to cover this history-making event.

 

Though I was not part of that team, I was at the helm of the main Washington news desk on Oct. 20, 1973, when I plunged into this story. Margaret Gentry, the Justice Department reporter, told me: “The Attorney General just left the building. I have a hunch he is going to quit.”

 

Mike Sniffen and I called in staffers on overtime, preparing for a big story. And sure enough, Elliot Richardson and his assistant, William Ruckelshaus resigned, refusing Nixon’s order to fire the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who was finally given the heave-ho by Solicitor General Robert Bork. The White House correspondenrt dictated the story to us.

 

This “Saturday Night Massacre” could not have happened at a worse time for Nixon. The popular show “All in the Family,” was interrupted by reporters running out of breath on the White House lawn to report this shocker on camera. The firing of Cox was a turning point in Nixon’s downfall.

 

The next day there was going to be so much reaction that the assistant bureau chief, Walter Mears, made me manage the desk again on Sunday, the day my beloved Oakland A’s were playing in the seventh game of the World Series on TV.

 

 To make up for it, Mears sold me his tickets to a Washington Redskins game (a real privilege when tickets were hard to come by). It was a great game, won by Washington, with injured quarterbacks Billy Kilmer and Sonny Jurgensen taking turns hobbling off and on the field to fill in for each other. (The A’s and the Redskins both won!)

 

The Washington news media, even the New York Times, felt blindsided by the Washington Post, which came up with scoop after scoop on the scandal. Almost in retaliation, the media piled on Nixon every chance it could get, even though it may have been merited. 

 

Somehow Watergate seems tame today compared to controversies erupting more recently. There was a complete consensus to get rid of Nixon, even in his own party. That wouldn’t happen now.

 

I still think he could have survived the mess if he had somehow destroyed the White House tapes, which were so incriminating.

 

Footnote: I just looked it up. Nearly three-quarters of the people in this country were not born yet when all of this happened. To them, it is just like me hearing about World War I or the Spanish-American War when I was growing up.

 

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Another October, 29 years later, is still stuck in my mind. That’s when two men, called the “D.C. Sniper,” killed most of their 17 victims in the Washington-Richmond corridor in 2002. Sara’s soccer games were called off, and people were frantic.

 

On a trip from South Boston, we stopped at a Wendy’s in Ashland for dinner one night. When I took the dog to relieve herself in the woods behind the restaurant, I thought it would be a great place for a sniper to hang out. I looked carefully before stepping in.

 

In the restaurant, a server warned, “There has been a sniper attack in Richmond. Be careful out there!” Actually, the snipers fired from a car and killed a patron at the Home Depot far away in Arlington, where we were headed.

 

Several weeks later, the sniper killed someone outside the Ponderosa Steak House in Ashland, next door to the Wendy’s where we got the warning. The snipers had hung out in the same woods where I had taken the dog on our previous visit.

 

So scary! The snipers were finally caught at a rest stop in Maryland. One was executed and the other is  still in prison.

 

 

 

 

Chairman of the board? No thanks!

I have a lot of trouble managing people or serving on boards f directors. Am I the only one?

 

Maybe it started when the guys in my college fraternity elected me president because I was the oldest.

 

One of them threw a beer bottle onto the driveway of the Mormon church next door, just missing one of the worshipers. They called the police, who came to our door. Nobody would confess.

 

“If no one will admit it, we will just have to arrest your president,” the cop said. Nobody came forward. No law student was there to say, “That’s impossible.” But the officer left and I breathed a sigh of relief.

 

Or in the Army, when I began basic training as a squad leader. When the sergeant told me at lights-out that I had to find someone to clean stoves all night, I selected the closest guy, my bunk mate, lying above me, and then went to sleep.

 

When he came back the next morning, he was furious. Fortunately, I was relieved of the job in a week after getting a hairline fracture in my leg from marching. He got the job. I’ll give him credit: He never retaliated against a cripple.

 

I enjoy serving on some committees where we exchange ideas. But I made the mistake of joining boards of directors of four Washington area choruses at different times. The longest I could last was two years. A new person would always come and say “Hey, let’s try this!” And I didn’t want to say, “What a stupid idea! Been there, done that.”

 

When I complained about one board’s website, the executive director told me, “Websites don’t matter!” Really? I never heard that before.

 

On one board, I was the only person to question the new budget. Why doesn’t it compare the new figures to last year’s? “What? Oh, we never include that!”

 

Then there was the time I was an administrator for the Facebook pages of two choruses. One was raising money and I accidentally put the other chorus’s email address on it to make contributions. I eventually fixed it, but a manager of the contributing chorus was furious with me. Hmm, maybe she had a point.

 

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Sports: A few times I was in the Oakland Raiders’ press box to help the Associated Press sports reporter cover the game. I was sent to the visiting team’s locker room to get comments from the players.

 

Since the Raiders played so well in the late 1960s, I usually ended up talking to really big linemen who were miserable and angry after a terrible defeat. A common quote would be “They just scored more points than we did.” I was too afraid of these violent brutes to ask them anything more substantial.

 

Of course we never published such a quote, but I’ll bet it would get printed today. TheWashington Post is now focusing on locker room chatter to go beyond facts of the game, which presumably everyone saw on TV.

 

Typical was last Sunday after college games. “I’m just so happy that we won,” said a quote from one incisive article. “This is a huge moment for this team,” said another. Still more: “It’s a great feeling, like nothing I have ever felt before.”

 

Ah, I now have more knowledge and wisdom about this vital sport!

 

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Don’t miss “The Wizard of Oz” by the Halifax County Little Theatre Thursday through Sunday.  At the show last Sunday, I loved the good acting, music and scenery of this musical, based on the famous movie.

 

I could hear the actors clearly. The filmed graphics made you feel like you were in a real tornado. I can see why they scheduled the show at the high school. The Prizery stage couldn’t have held all of those munchkins!

 

Best actor award (drum roll) goes to: Toto, the dog. How can they get a real dog to behave like that? The credits after Toto’s name say Matilda LaMonica. Best supporting actor: The real live pony!

 

When to keep your mouth shut

 How do you handle touchy situations with a boss who is doing something unethical?

 

There is the right way and the wrong way.

 

First the right way: When I was the Associated Press correspondent in Las Vegas, one of AP’s very top executives came to town for a convention.  He met me at the casino where it was held.

 

We got near a craps table. “Show me how it is played,” he said.  I explained it as we watched some gamblers toss the dice and shell out cash or rake it in.

 

 The next day, he told me he had lost all his money at the craps table and asked if there was a bureau fund. I said no, but I could lend him $100. I eagerly went to the bank, deciding that this was a really good investment. If Mr. Big owes you money, it it gives you a lot of leverage. 

 

When I brought the cash to him, he told me he had second thoughts and got his wife to wire him some money. 

 

When I told the Reno correspondent about it, he said, “This story really made my day. But I think we should keep this to ourselves.” Our little secret! No problem, nothing happened.

 

Then here is the wrong way!

 

After our Saturday shift in Washington, D.C., a colleague and I visited a bar nearby. My friend and I were chatting with the attractive barmaid, when we told her we both worked for Associated Press. “Oh?” she said. “I have an interview here to work for AP an hour from now.” 

 

My friend and I looked at each other in disbelief. Saturday night at a bar? She must be putting us on, we thought. We couldn’t resist hanging around for another hour to see what happened. Big mistake. 

 

At the appointed hour, one of my bosses walked in with a high-ranking executive from New York, who was staying in the hotel across the street. They recognized us and my boss had the look of a deer in the headlights. Still, we all greeted each other with meaningless chatter. Sensing their mood, we decided to beat a retreat.

 

 My friend said to keep quiet about it, but I just couldn’t resist telling one of my friends at AP. I swore him to secrecy, but of course he spread it all over the office. 

 

The Washington boss confronted me days later and said, “Everyone thinks I am having an affair. I’m not!” I refused to believe this incident was the reason for my demotion several months later. 

 

It turns out the barmaid was hired, and I ran across her months later at the AP bureau in New York, where she launched a very successful career.

 

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Some more thoughts:

 

Wasn’t the Sixth and Main band great at the Harvest Festival? It’s amazing that they could play a four-hour set.

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Why don’t they just abolish the kickoff return in pro football now that the rules have changed? Oh, I know: they can have more commercials!

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The coldest place in South Boston is the produce section at the supermarket.

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My dentist used to tell me after filling a tooth: “Yes, you may have dinner, but it must be an elegant dinner.”

 

Southside jazz isn’t dead after all

Trevor Percario’s music is an oasis in the desert that is  Southside Virginia jazz.

 

Only a few months are left to catch the 22-year-old pianist’s music before he heads for the big time in New Orleans.

 

On Sundays from 11:30 to 1:30 p.m., Percario plays at Crema & Vine in Danville, spinning out standards such as “Take the A Train,” “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Tea for Two” on his electric keyboard. Besides the familiar melodies, listeners can hear some cool jazz improvisation. You won’t hear anything avant-garde. “I am trying not to stray too much from the atmosphere of the venue,” he says, entertaining a mix of listeners and people who want to socialize.

 

“For my last time in the Danville area, I just wanted to play music that I would enjoy doing,” he says.

 

Why would he leave his Chatham home and Southside for the big city? “I have to be surrounded by musicians who are better than me in that genre,” he says. “Music is all I care about right now.” He also can play bass guitar and can sing as well.

 

Percario, whose father is a noted guitarist, has had a one-track mind for music since he was 5 years old. When his father taught his brother to play a song on the piano, Trevor picked up the tune right away by ear and then took piano lessons.

 

He played for the University of Lynchburg jazz ensemble, then the Liberty University jazz combo and the combo Flat Five in Lynchburg before moving on to the University of Augusta in Georgia. It was there that he played in a jazz ensemble led by the fabled trombonist Wycliffe Gordon. Other groups include the Danville Jazz Sextet, Define Jazz and his current group, On the Margins, appearing at Crema & Vine on Oct. 14.

 

At Crema and Vine, on Main Street near the Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History, he has been arranging music bookings and doing promotional work as well.

 

As a jazz fan and part-time pianist myself, I was thrilled to see this music form alive and well in someone so young.

 

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At the other end of the age spectrum, I recently met an astonishingly accomplished jazz musician, Bill Joor, who has lived in Alton for the past eight years.

 

Bill, now 88, has played trumpet and harmonica and sung in a 48-year career in Las Vegas, Nashville and elsewhere with an amazing list of performers. Just a few: Judy Garland, Ella Fitzgerald, Tom Jones, Carlos Santana and Jimmy Durante. He has recorded with Kenny Rogers, Roy Orbison and Frank Sinatra.

 

Oh, I left out South Boston, where he played in “Chicago” with the Halifax County Little Theatre in 2017.

 

Besides musicals, his favorite music is jazz. I have never been a fan of harmonicas, but when I listened to a recording of his, I told him, “I didn’t know a harmonica could do that!”

 

Maybe Southside isn’t a jazz desert after all!

 

 

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Maybe not a classical desert either. Svetlana’s Smolina’s concert at The Prizery last Friday was a brilliant triumph. When her left hand switched to play the melody, and the right hand the accompaniment, it sounded like two different instruments. 

 

As a pianist with sore hands, I marveled at how she could hit the keys so hard and make such magnificent runs for almost two hours.  

 

Her choices of Tchaikovsky, Liszt and Chopin pieces were familiar enough to capture a non-classical audience yet varied enough to thrill aficionados.

 

After intermission, she said, “This is the best piano I have ever played.” Wow! Congrats to the volunteers who tirelessly raised money for the Steinway years ago.