2020 Part 1: Pandemic Wars

Posted on May 26, 2022 by Mike

Life in 2020 after Covid-19. Continue reading →

The Worst Year Ever?: The virus seemed to appear in or around Wuhan, China, in late 2019. It appeared to be extremely contagious. It was given the name COVID-19¹ on February 11, 2020. In the past such scares (SARS and Ebola) had pretty much bypassed the West, but within two weeks Italy had become a global hotspot. China, South Korea, and New Zealand fought the disease relentlessly, and had very good results. If all other countries had done the same, the disease probably would have run its course in a few months. However, because in many cases the disease had mild or even undetectable symptoms, many people did not take it seriously and were scornful of those who did.

Editorial note: I have decided to capitalize Pandemic as a sign of respect. There have been other pandemics in my lifetime, but Covid-19 was the only one that had a significant effect on the U.S.

Cases began appearing in the U.S. in early February. The first death was reported in the state of Washington on the 29^th. On March 11 the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic. Two days later the Trump administration declared a national emergency and issued a travel ban from 26 non-European countries. However, the ban only applied to people who were not U.S. citizens. Need I add that this was an election year?

On Sunday March 15 Felix Springer and I played in a STaC game at the Hartford Bridge Club. The talk that day was largely about Colorado Springs, where a woman who had played in a sectional tournament may have been a super-spreader. She competed in the Bridge Center there in six events between February 27 and March 3. She died on March 13.

I later learned that Fred Gagnon had played in the same tournament, but he never was at the same table with her. Before the Pandemic struck Fred played both in Simsbury and Hartford and frequently partnered with my wife Sue. Details about the Colorado Springs incident can be found here.

New York and its suburbs were hit hard very early. While attending a large gathering at a synagogue in Rob and Laura Petrie’s hometown of New Rochelle, a man who had recently been abroad passed the disease on to many people, including the rabbi. At one time 108 of the state’s 173 cases were in Westchester County, which borders on Connecticut.

My notes about the bridge game at the HBC on March 15 record that despite some mistakes Felix and I won.² I remember that one woman who played that day wore a medical mask of some sort. We already knew that the club would be closed indefinitely after the game. Felix and I were the last two to leave the Bridge Center. He was responsible for locking up after we left. At the last minute I dashed over to the shelves that contained non-bridge books and selected Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz³ and Fatherland by Robert Harris. Both books resided in my house for much longer than I had planned, but I did eventually return them.

Sue and I had signed up for a bridge cruise on the Danube River with the famous expert, Larry Cohen. We were scheduled to leave on March 17. That cruise never happened. The details of the story are provided here.

Responding to the Pandemic: Although President Trump had declared a state of emergency, he, like most Republicans, absolutely refused to take the disease seriously. He made it clear that masks were not mandatory, and he refused to wear one. He then proceeded to make an utter ass of himself whenever he tried to talk about the Pandemic. He even predicted an “Easter miracle” that absolutely did not happen. Despite the fact that it was obviously an irresponsible if not evil idea, he actually encouraged everyone to go to church on that day.

Not only did this laissez-faire approach probably cost him the election; it also cost the country several hundred thousand lives. The Center for Disease Control also fumbled the ball. For some reason they refused to accept the test that had been developed by the World Health Organization, and their own test proved unreliable. So, for months as the virus spread geometrically throughout the country, the U.S. had no test. Soon the situation was much worse in America than anywhere else in the world.

To be fair Trump did direct more than a billion dollars to a virtually unknown company named BioNTech to develop a vaccine using mRNA technology. Others also were funded, but BioNTech received the biggest prize because its leaders claimed that with proper funding they could produce a new vaccine in a few months. Their effort was dubbed Project Lightspeed. Obviously Trump hoped that they would deliver by election day, but they missed by a few weeks. In fact, Pfizer, which did not participate, developed and tested a similar vaccine a little sooner, and the Chinese were already using a somewhat inferior vaccine by then.

Although most people who contracted the initial virus recovered after a week or so, the aged and those with comorbidities did not fare as well. The death rate in 2020 was over 3 percent. Nursing homes throughout the country often experienced horrendous situations. Hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly.

Of course, many people still had to work, but most of us hunkered down and stayed in our houses. We had to learn to order groceries—and anything else that we needed—online. I wrote a little program to allow members of the Simsbury Bridge Club to send me descriptions and/or pictures of their new lifestyle. I then posted them on a webpage that anyone could view. A few people sent responses, and I promptly posted them. You can view them here.

Reading: I also posted quite a few entries about my own life. I took advantage of the extra free time to read more. By June 28 I had read nine novels: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Magpie Murders, Fatherland, Supermarket by Bobby Hall, Moriarity by Anthony Horowitz, Two for Texas by James Lee Burke, The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, The Brothers K by David James Duncan, and Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke. Supermarket, which I bought at a rare venture to the Target store, was awful. The others were all pretty good. The Enfield Public Library was closed. I purchased several books from Powell’s in Portland, OR. It took them almost a month for them to send them, but their selection of new and used volumes was outstanding.

What I especially liked about Powell’s was the number of books by Jack Vance that were offered for sale. I found some listed there that I had never seen in a library or bookstore, including the one that won an Edgar award for him, The Man in a Cage.

One of the last books that I later ordered from Powell’s was Jack Vance’s autobiography. Because I like a challenge—especially when I had an enormous amount of time on my hands—I selected the version in Italian, Ciao Sono Jack Vance! (E Questa Storia Sono Io). Vance has always been one of my favorite authors, and his last book was certainly one of his best. What a life he led! He managed to finish the book even though he was in poor health and nearly blind. He had to dictate the entire volume.

I was so inspired by this book that I decided to undertake this set of blog entries, which I later labeled The 1948 Project. The details surrounding its genesis have been recorded here.

Most aspects of life were put on hold in the spring and summer of 2020. The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) canceled all three of its national tournaments and prohibited its units and districts from holding tournaments for the rest of the year. The National Debate Tournament was also canceled. Hollywood closed shop.

Most schools attempted to reopen in the fall, but the result was a huge spike in the number of cases of COVID-19. The election was held in November, of course, but a very large number of people voted by mail rather than in person.

I walked southwest on North St. until it ended at Hazard Ave. (190). I turned left and walked west to Park St. Then a left on Elm St. I walked past Carris Reels to School St. and then north back to North St.

Exercise: I also exercised more during the lockdown. I was walking 35-40 miles per week, outside if the weather was tolerable, and on the treadmill when it wasn’t. On May 2 and a few other occasions I walked ten miles outside.

Later in the summer, however, I could no longer walk more than a mile or two without a pain gradually developing in the top of my right foot. This condition, which caused me to limp, bothered me throughout the year. I still walked, but I had to stop and stretch my IT band for a couple of minutes. Sometimes I would need to perform this ritual two or three times in a 2.5 mile lap. I often stopped after one lap. However, when I walked on the treadmill it hurt a lot less.

Therefore, I began to walk indoors more frequently. On my convertible laptop computer, a Lenovo model called Yoga, I watched many operas from the Metropolitan Opera’s streaming service that were new to me, including Ghosts of Versailles, La Wally, Orphée et Eurydice and many operas by Massenet and Bellini. I was really impressed by performances by Natalie Dessay, Teresa Stratas, and Marilyn Horn. The most bizarre moment occurred when Renée Fleming appeared in Rossini’s Armida. In a tender moment she rubbed cheeks with tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who happened to be black. When they parted more than a square inch of his brown makeup remained on her cheek.

I also watched operas on YouTube while I was walking on the treadmill. The quality was a little spotty—both the performances and the recordings. However, this introduced me to several of the more neglected operas, some of which were delightful.

The best thing about the YouTube operas was that I was able to make MP3 files of them using a piece of free downloadable software called MP3Studio. I had already made MP3 files out of my opera CD’s and downloaded them to a small MP3 player that I had purchased at Best Buy.⁴ I added quite a few operas from YouTube. My favorite was Tchaikovsky’s Cherevichki. I liked it so much that I purchased a DVD of its performance at Covent Garden in London.

I also downloaded hundreds of great rock and roll songs of the sixties and seventies. I could scarcely believe that most of the best songs from Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones were now available for free.

When I walked around the neighborhood I listened to music on the tiny MP3 play. In the cold weather I used my Bose headphones. When it was warmer I used ear buds.

My new and improved arch supports. The one on the right is inside-out.

Toward the end of the year I misplaced one of the arch supports that I had purchased from Walmart before the Pandemic. These were springy pieces of metal (I think) that were inserted into bands that wrapped around the foot and were secured by Velcro. I bought new ones at the same store that were spongy balls in elastic bands. They cost $10.

After I had used the new ones for about a month, the pain in my foot ceased, and I could walk five miles without stopping. I understand that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a famous fallacy, but I did not even consider reverting to the original pair when I discovered the hiding place of the lost arch support.

The Montalbano crew stayed together through all thirty-seven episodes.

I don’t remember how I heard about it, but on November 2 I subscribed (for only 8$ per month!) to a streaming service called MHz Choice. It had all thirty-seven of the Commissario Montalbano movies that I had learned about in 2016 in Sicily⁵ as well as dozens of other European mysteries and other offerings. All of them were captioned in English. I started with Montalbano (and a prequel called Young Montalbano), but I soon found many other shows that I enjoyed tremendously. There were also a few mysteries on YouTube, including the entire set of Inspector Morse shows.

During one of my walks around the neighborhood a bizarre event occurred. Just after I reached my house a car pulled into the driveway. It was driven by a man carrying three large cheese pizzas from Liberty Pizza. Evidently my phone, which was securely in my pocket, had somehow activated the Slice app to order the pizzas while I was walking. I was billed for them, but the charge was eventually removed from my credit card account after I complained about it.

On August 4 there was a tornado watch. A branch fell and damaged our gutter. A very large branch fell from a tree near the house on 10 Park St. It landed on and crushed a pickup truck that had been parked nearby. A week or more was required to clean it up. I don’t know what became of the truck.

Translation: In desperate need of a project to occupy my mind during the day, I decided in June to translate one of my travel journals into Italian. My Italian teacher, Mary Trichilo (TREE key low) agreed to read my efforts and to provide suggestions. I chose our 2005 Rick Steves trip to Italy that was billed as the Village Italy Tour.⁵ It was the first one on which the Corcorans joined us, and the first one for my first digital camera.

Reliving that experience was great fun; some of the best moments in my life occurred during those sixteen days. It was also a pretty good way to build my Italian vocabulary back up. I could only hope that I would be able to use it one day. I discovered a few websites that helped me a lot—translate.google.com, of course, but also Reverso.net and LanguageTool.org.

Masks: In the last three quarters of 2020 masks were required virtually everywhere. During the summer it was discovered that the disease was spread by aerosols from exhaling, talking, and singing. Moreover, being indoors greatly increased the probability of transmission. So, it was generally considered acceptable to go outside unmasked, but people were warned to stay at least six feet away from strangers. The last practice was called “social distancing”.

My favorite mask, but the straps tended to break.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) had a problem. Although they knew that the N95 masks that had been approved for use by NIOSH for painters and others who were often exposed to aerosols were by far the most effective, their official announcements said that people did not need them. Instead they recommended that any type of face covering would work just as well. So, a lot of people made their own masks or even wore bandannas across the lower half of their faces like outlaws in westerns. Others, such as I, purchased ten cheap cotton masks made by Hanes that could easily be washed.

There was a good reason for this deliberate misinformation campaign. A shortage of N95 masks was feared, and it was considered critically important that the best protection (and tightly fitting N95 masks offered much better protection) be available to those who dealt with known COVID patients or with large numbers of people in situations that precluded “social distancing”.

For some people masks, especially the ones that worked the best, were very uncomfortable. They did not bother me much at all. I was, however, quite happy when, during the summer, it became apparent that masks were not necessary outdoors. Still, when I took walks I made certain to keep at least six feet away from other walkers whenever possible.

Health: I was never healthier than in 2020. I experienced no significant ailments at all—not even a cold or indigestion. That pain in my foot bothered me a bit, and on one occasion the nail on my left little finger got bent back and eventually fell off. On the other hand, I was exercising so much that I had to make a shopping trip to Kohl’s to buy a smaller belt to hold up my pants.

My mental state was pretty positive as well. I was able to concoct several interesting projects to occupy my mind when I was not exercising or reading. I would have appreciated a diversion now and then, but most of my life had been good preparation for an extended lockdown. I had a lot of experience at keeping myself occupied.

Sue was also pretty healthy physically, but she got winded very easily. Moreover, she has always been a much more social animal than I was. The strain of the isolation on her spirit was quite evident.

We took a couple of short trips just to get out of the house. At some point in June or July we drove down to Gillette Castle and had a little picnic. We found a spot that was shady and isolated. The walk from the parking lot to our site was uphill, and it definitely wore Sue out. After lunch I took a hike up to the castle by myself. Only a few people were there, and I kept my distance from all of them. This was a very simple outing, but it felt like a small taste of freedom. Perhaps prisoners have the same feeling the first time that they are allowed into the exercise yard.

On September 24, when it finally appeared that the Pandemic had abated a bit, we made a road trip to Roger Williams Zoo in Providence. The highlight for me was when we went to see the sloths. I got to show the attendant there that I was wearing a tee shirt with a sloth on it. Sue had bought it for me in Costa Rica.⁸

On the way back to Enfield we made a stop in Willimantic so that Sue could show me the Shaboo Stage, an outdoor venue that she had frequented to watch local musical performers, mostly blues bands. Sue was friendly with several of these people, and she was very worried for them. The lockdown had eliminated their primary source of income.

We made a third stop at Oliver’s Dairy Bar where we ordered burgers and listened—in our cars—to Bruce John singing and playing his guitar. A few people got out of their cars and danced. It was all a little weird, but it was something to do. Sue had claimed that the food would be very good, but we were both disappointed in it.

People our age were terrified to be among strangers, and reasonably so. Not everyone survived that first year. I did not hear of anyone who died directly from COVID-19, but all of the following members of the debate community died in 2020:

Max Horton, whom I knew quite well from the Simsbury Bridge Club.
David Waltz, whose wife I knew from Tuesday evenings at the Hartford Bridge Club and at tournaments. The three of us even went out to dinner one evening in Hyannis, MA.
Elaine Jaworowski, who was a regular player at the HBC morning games.
Gladys Feigenbaum, who only played occasionally at the HBC and did not seem to be in great health before the lockdown. I did not know her well.

Victor (blue shirt) with Lew Gamerman, Kate McCallum, and Sheila Gabay after a victory in 2019.

The most shocking news was the murder of Grand Life Master Victor King in his own home in Hartford on July 26. He was a very popular player and, to all appearances, had no enemies. His assailant was also his tenant. I had played against Victor a few times and I had talked with him about a few matters concerning the district’s website. At the time the incident was covered in local and national outlets as well as abroad. I was not able to find any information about the disposition of the case.

On July 23 my occasional bridge partner, boss, and good friend Bob Bertoni was operated on for the second or third time in recent years. He recovered enough to continue working as the District Director for the rest of the year, but I think that everyone knew that the handwriting was on the wall.

Sue’s friend and occasional bridge partner, Ginny Basch, also went into the hospital in July. A few days after she had been released she needed to return and have a heart valve inserted. She seemed to recover well enough after that.

On November 16 we learned that Tyesha Henry, Sue’s long-time protégée, had COVID-19. Sue had been with her in an automobile on November 6, but Sue did not develop any symptoms. She dodged a bullet.

Food:Few restaurants were open, and those that were provided only delivery and pickup orders. Most of the time Sue and I ate at home. I continued going to the grocery store, but I always wore a mask (as did nearly everyone else), and I always used the automated checkouts. I seldom was within ten feet of another human. Sue usually ordered groceries online and drove to the store to pick them up.

The hybrid Yum restaurant in E. Windsor.

We ordered pizza perhaps once a month, and we drove to KFC three times⁷, once in West Springfield and twice in East Windsor. The first drive to East Windsor, which was probably in May, was very strange. There were almost no cars on any of the roads, but there was a long line at the drive-through window at the KFC/Taco Bell restaurant. I did not get my order until twenty-five minutes after my arrival. When I arrived home we discovered that the bags contained both our $20 fill-up and someone else’s Taco Bell order.

On July 18 Sue and I drove over to the beautiful house of Ken and Lori Leopold in Avon, CT. We were originally planning to go to a restaurant for supper, but the negotiations between Lori and Sue for a suitable place with outdoor seating broke down. We enjoyed a very nice supper and then played a few rubbers of bridge. I played with Sue and then Ken. Lori had never played rubber bridge before! That was the only time in the last nine and a half months of 2020 that we dined indoors with other people.

Sue and I celebrated all of the holidays alone together in our house. That was what one did in The (first) Worst Year Ever.

The Neighborhood: The big news was that in the spring the family that lived diagonally across the street from us (“cattywampus” as my Grandmom Cernech would have said) on the southwest corner of North St. and Allen Pl. unceremoniously moved away. This was the family with several trucks and an ATV that the kids rode around on. The father often flew the “Don’t tread on me” flag and other right-wing banners on their flagpole.

The house (a small ranch house with one garage) and yard were both in bad shape when the family abandoned them. Workers spent weeks getting it back in marketable condition. It was auctioned off; no “For Sale” side ever appeared. It was purchased by a woman who has kept it in immaculate conditioned. She even resuscitated the lawn.

The flagpole has never been used since the other family left.

Three doors to the west of them the “patriotic” cause was taken up by a couple. She grew sunflowers accompanied by Bag-a-Bugs and had a statue of an owl that turned its head occasionally. I scoffed at the former and was enthralled by the latter.

He was another kettle of fish. He also had a flagpole. He flew the “Don’t tread on me” flag, but also other flags including a Trump-Pense banner ones about POW/MIAs or respecting the police. Another Trump sign was proudly displayed above the garage. He also had a “concealed carry” sticker on his car’s window. Most bizarrely, he had a fenced-in back yard with red triangular signs on both gates with the word “MINES” on them, as if the back yard contained mines. I took him seriously; he seemed to be retired from both the military and law enforcement, and he was obviously “gung-ho”.

I generally gave these people a wide berth, but my walking took me past their house quite often.

We really only have one next-door neighbor, the residents of 1 Hamilton Court. A couple with children had been living there for quite a few years. He disappeared from the neighborhood at some point before the Pandemic started. A different man moved in and immediately started making over the house and the back yard. I talked to him for a few minutes once. He seemed friendly enough. Anything would be better than his predecessor, who had said he would kill our cats if they ventured onto his property.

This photo was taken from my chair in the office. Giacomo is the one with the long bushy tail.

The Pets: Our two cats, Giacomo and Bob, really enjoyed the lockdown. Sue and I got in the habit of watching television together from 8 p.m. until I could no longer keep my eyes open, which usually occurred between 9:30 and 10. The cats loved the idea that we were both sitting still. Giacomo often sat peacefully on my lap, as he had done for many years. Now, however, the two of them would also sometimes lie together on a blanket that Sue had laid out on the floor. Giacomo seemed to enjoy having a friend. They assumed every position imaginable, including spooning.

Giacomo showing off his thumbs on the bed on November 1.

In October Giacomo surprised me by catching a moth. When he was younger he was a fearsome hunter, but in 2020 that was the only time that he showed much interest in any wildlife.

Sue and I never knew Giacomo’s real birth date, but we celebrated it annually on November 1. 11/1/20 was his seventeenth birthday. When I returned to bed for my first nap of the day I was shocked to find Giacomo had climbed up on the bed. We enjoyed a nap together for the first time in at least a year.

On Christmas Giacomo found a comfortable resting spot. He was left-pawed. Here he is using his business paw to ask for petting.

On August 4^th, the day of a tornado watch, I discovered that at least one of the cats (I suspected Giacomo) had stopped using the ramp in the basement that led to the cat door and had instead designated an area of the newer side of the basement as an open latrine. After I cleaned up the smelly mess I drove to Target and purchased a large litter box and some cheap litter.

The cats quickly adjusted to using the litter box, but they tracked litter all over everywhere. I solved the problem by switching to Clean Paws, which was much more expensive but did not stick the their feet as much.

Friends: Sue had many, but I really only had one friend, Tom Corcoran. He left the Land of Steady Habits shortly after the Pandemic struck and rented an apartment in Burlington, VT, which is where his children lived.

In 2020 we only saw him once in person. On August 1 he was back in his house in Wethersfield to take care of some business, and Sue and I drove to meet him there. Sue brought with her and antique ice box that Tom pledged to fix it up somehow.

We celebrated Tom’s birthday with a Zoom call on October 27. You should be able to calculate his age if you have read these blogs carefully.

Bridge: There was no face-to-face duplicate bridge in 2020 after the middle of March.

Many people played online. The ACBL even set up an arrangement for “virtual clubs” that held online sanctioned games of eighteen boards. I did not participate.

On November 18 District 25’s Executive Committee held a meeting on Zoom. It was depressing. The ACBL was probably going to cancel the NABC in the spring in St. Louis and the one scheduled for Providence, RI, in the July of 2021. Most of the members of the Executive Committee, including me, were also on the committee for the latter event. It was crushing news.

The North American Pairs and Grand National Teams would be contested online. I did not like this news at all, but I asked Ken Leopold, Felix Springer, and Trevor Reeves to play with me, and they all agreed. I told Ken that I would practice as much as I could online. We played online on Christmas Day, but that was the only time in 2020. I hated the experience, but this might be my last chance to play in Flight B of the GNT.

Sports: The National Basketball Association, like all other forms of indoor entertainment, suspended play when the Pandemic hit. In order to salvage part of the 2019-2020 season the league spent $190 to build a “bubble” at Disney World in Orlando, FL. Twenty-two of the league’s thirty teams were invited to the city to play the remaining eight regular season games and the playoffs behind closed doors. Of course, the games were televised.

Yes, they actually played all of the games in Disney World surrounded by pictures of imaginary fans.

This approach worked very well. Everyone involved in the games stayed in the bubble and was tested regularly. No cases at all were reported. The season ended on October 11, with the Los Angeles Lakers crowned as champions. The league generated about $1.5 billion is revenue.

Other sports did not follow the league’s example. The only one that I was interested in was college football. The Big Ten was pressured by Trump into playing the season, sort off. All non-conference games were canceled, and the beginning of play was postponed until October 24. Games were played in empty or nearly empty stadiums.

Michigan was ranked #18 in the preseason and beat #21 Minnesota 49-24 in the opening game. This was followed by three embarrassing losses. In week 5 the Wolverines used a new quarterback, Cade McNamara, to beat Rutgers in three overtimes. In week 6 they lost to Penn State at home. Since all of its remaining games were canceled due to COVID-19 outbreaks, the team ended the season 2-4, the worst record in living memory.

The whole idea of playing during a pandemic was idiotic. The NCAA ended up granting extra eligibility to all of the players.

I guess that sports addicts enjoyed watching the competitions in empty stadiums and arenas. I did not watch any sports at all during the entire year.

Miscellaneous: I filed my income taxes in February. I did not receive my refund until August 1. There were two reasons for this: Most IRS employees were working remotely, and a large number were busy distributing the $1400 stimulus checks that Donald Trump made sure had his name on them. I am not complaining.

The class that I took in Advanced Italian held only nine of its ten classes. The last one was canceled (without a refund) because of COVID-19. I signed up for the fall class, but it was canceled on September 9.

On August 8 we received a check from AIG for the trip insurance for our cruise in March that had been canceled. AIG, the largest company in the trip insurance market, must have taken a real bath in 2020.

I purchased and tried to read a couple of Montalbano novels by Andrea Camilleri. They were difficult for me. The narrative was in standard Italian, but most of the dialogue was in the Sicilian dialect, which is much different.

On August 11 Bank of America refused the automatic payment of the bill for our homeowners’ insurance policy. I had received a new credit card and had not yet changed the number on Travelers’ website. It was resolved in a few days.

Beginning on November 10 we enjoyed almost a week of really beautiful weather. Sue and I drove up to her property in Monson, MA. She wanted to walk up to the top, but she got less than a hundred yards before she was out of breath and exhausted. We rested a few minutes and then walked back to the car.

Desperate for something to do, on November 11 I began polishing up my novel Ben 9, which I have posted here. I just had to do this. It had been inside of me, and I had to let it out. I doubt that anyone will ever read it. Who is interested in reading about the clergy in the eleventh century?

What else? I feel as if I have left out something important that happened in 2020. What was it? Oh, yeah, the election. You can read about it here.

1. I don’t know why all the letters are capitalized. It is not an acronym. The five letters stand for Coronavirus Disease. “Corona” is the Latin word for crown. The -19 was added to indicate that it began in 2019.

2. The results have been posted correctly on the ACBL website in the old format at https://web2.acbl.org/tournaments/results/2020/03/2003505/2003505_20.HTM. However, the Live for Clubs results for that day (https://my.acbl.org/club-results/details/126150) do not even show us participating.

3. I tweeted that I thought that Magpie Murders was the best mystery that I had ever read. Anthony Horowitz thanked me in the comments and wished well to the HBC.

4. The Best Buy in Enfield was a casualty of the Pandemic. The building was still empty two years later.

5. The journal for the Sicily trip is posted here.

6. The English version of that trip can be read here.

7. The excursion to the sloth sanctuary is described here.

8. There once was a KFC in Enfield on Route 5, but the owner retired, and the store closed. Enfield contains almost every other kind of fast food place, but for years no one sold fried chicken until a Popeye’s opened in August of 2022.

1981-1988 Life in Rockville: Trips and Visits

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Mike

We didn’t work every day. Continue reading →

The years that we spent in Rockville were mostly happy ones, but we had neither the time nor the money to take much in the way of vacations. The two that we took were for only a week each in 1985 and 1986. They are documented here.

We also made very few exciting or life-enhancing purchases. As in the other blogs about non-business events, the timeline is shaky. I am only certain of the dates of a few events.

The most exciting news of our first year in Rockville came in a phone call in the spring of 1981 from Gerry Cox. He announced that he and a group of Wayne State debaters wanted to pay us a visit in the summer. We looked at our schedules and told him that that would be fine, as long as they could come in June, July, or August. We quickly agreed upon a set of dates. The debaters were Nancy Legge, Al Acitelli, and Mark Buczko.

They drove from Detroit to Rockville. We gave them directions to our house. I think that we advised them to get off of I-91 and take Route 83. We told them that when they could smell the cows they would be in Ellington, the town just north of Rockville. At that point they needed to watch out for the turn. We told them that they should turn uphill (left) onto Upper Butcher Road and then downhill (right) onto Park St. Both of these hills are short, but quite steep.

They found the house. They parked in back, as we directed. We helped them move in. The guys stayed in the bedroom at the top of the stairs, where we had set up bunk beds. Their room was directly above the office. Nancy slept in the waterbed in the spare bedroom, which had not yet been converted into an office for Sue.

They stayed with us for a few days. Everyone had a splendid time throughout the visit. I remember three activities.

We all spent one day at Rocky Neck State Park. I don’ recall any specifics.
We devoted one day to Dungeons and Dragons. I am pretty sure that my friend from my insurance days, Tom Corcoran, joined us for that occasion. He played a dwarf fighter. I don’t remember what the other characters were, and, even though I designed it, I don’t remember the dungeon. I also have a vague recollection of creating an adventure for Mark’s assassin character, Cnir Edrum.
We enjoyed a communal supper, presumably after the D&D game. Al insisted on making pasta from scratch for us. It was definitely good, but I don’t think that he convinced anyone that it was worth all of the effort. He did not insist on making the sauce from scratch. It came from a jar.

Nancy stayed with us for another week or two. We put her to work stuffing envelopes for one of our mailings. This is when I bestowed on her the title of Executive Vice President for International Marketing. We must have included one Canadian addressee.

Gerry came back to visit us a year or two later with a friend of his. I remember much less about that occasion. They stayed with us for a night or two. They probably made additional stops in the Northeast.

I also remember that Craig Kolbitz, a good friend from my army days in Albuquerque in 1971, evidently somehow found my telephone number and address. He called and then came over and visited us one evening. I don’t remember much about the occasion. I don’t think that he revealed much about what he had been doing in the interim. I have not heard from him again in the subsequent decades.

Sue’s sister Betty and her husband Shawn (or maybe Shaun or Sean) Arrowsmith came over for supper at least once. At the time he was a sous chef at the restaurant at Bradley International Airport. That restaurant, which has been closed for decades, was outside of the secured area in the old terminal. It had quite a good reputation.

Their visit to Rockville must have been in late fall or winter. Shawn and I went searching for firewood in the nearby woods. He was a big guy; he brought back a lot more than I did. I started a fire in the fireplace.

They invited us over to their place, too. Their house was surrounded by maple trees. I have a strong recollection of hearing the sounds of the droppings of gypsy moth caterpillars on the roof.

Shawn and Betty did not stay together very long. I don’t know what happened.

The Corcorans—Tom, Patti, Brian and Casey—also came over at least once. I fixed country-style ribs and sauerkraut for them. The meal was a big hit, especially for Brian who had understandably low expectations for such a foreign-sounding meal.

We might have had other visitors, but I don’t remember them.

We made the drive from Rockville to the Corcorans’ house many times. We usually came over for supper and then played games until well after midnight. We were especially appreciative of the suppers. Throughout this period we seldom had, in my dad’s words, “two nickles to rub together”. We almost never went to restaurants. The Corcorans almost always had a special meal for us, often steak. Of course, there was plenty of beer.

Among the games Trivial Pursuit was a definite favorite. We played many different editions. Careers was also a favorite, but we soon discovered that the original version, which had uranium prospecting, Hollywood, expedition to the moon, and at sea as possible careers, was a much better game than the more recent versions. Clue (regular and its expanded versions) were pretty good. When everyone got tired we played Yahtzee.

I also remember enjoying a murder mystery game based on Clue that required playing a scene on a VHS tape. We tried dozens of other games as well. Our basement is full of games, and the Corcorans had more than we did.

We also often celebrated New Year’s and several other holidays with the Corcorans. We watched Brian and Casey grow up. Casey was an acrobat, and Brian excelled at taking things apart and putting them back together. He loved to play with go-bots and transformers.

I also remember showing Brian how to do both types of Indian wrestling—standing up and lying down, the way that Andy Burnett did on Walt Disney.

The closest thing that we had to a vacation during the “anything for a buck” days was a Murder Mystery Weekend near Lancaster, PA. It was staged by some actors in and around a fairly nice hotel in the countryside. The theme was a set of killings in a mob family. My character was one of the family members. He was named Dominic (called “Nicky”), and he was newly married.

I picked up a white fedora somewhere and rented a realistic stage pistol with a shoulder holster from a costume shop in Hartford. I was really ready to get into it. After all, even by that time I had read at least a hundred murder mysteries.

The organizers made me stow the pistol away. Didn’t they know that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun? I should have quoted Charlton Heston to them: “I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.” I still wore the shoulder holster.

Could you stab him in the heart with a pocketknife?

The first murder occurred pretty much in full sight of everyone at the first gathering. A fairly large Italian guy wearing a three-piece suit was found dead. He had been stabbed in the heart with a pocketknife.

It is a thoroughly documented fact that all Italian mobsters wear sleeveless undershirts.So, the knife, even if it missed the broad lapels would have needed to penetrate the suit coat, the vest, the shirt, the undershirt, the skin, and the rib cage. Maybe Andre the Giant could kill someone who was wearing all this armor with one casual blow with a pocketknife, but I didn’t see anyone in our group who looked capable of such a feat. Even if sufficient thrust was employed, I would bet on the blade breaking or sliding to one side before it penetrated all of those layers of protection..

Several scenes that involved some or all of the actors were staged. One took place on the Strasburg Rail Road. I don’t remember the details.

We were allowed to submit written questions. Mine was about some flowers that a character had reportedly ordered for some reason. I was told that the answer, which I don’t remember at all, had important information, which I should share with the other guests. I dutifully disclosed it to everyone with whom I conversed.

At the end everyone was supposed to write up a solution. The best one, as judged by the organizers, won a prize. No one got the solution right. The person to whom the prize was awarded missed out on most of the clues entirely. She had spent most of her time shopping in Lancaster.

The revealed murderer was the smallest member of the cast, perhaps 5’2″ and 100 pounds. She was absolutely incapable of committing the first murder. In fact, I don’t think she could have killed him with a pocket knife if he was already unconscious and wearing nothing but his sleeveless undershirt.

In addition, she had no motive for the other crimes attributed to her. That is, the personality that we knew had no motive. She supposedly had multiple personality disorder_¹, and the diminutive body that she shared with two other personalities committed the other two murders. Give me a break.

For Halloween of 1981 or 1982 Sue and I drove to Brooklyn for a costume party thrown for her friend Eddie Lancaster from Brothers Specifications in Detroit. Sue dressed as Peter Pan. I came disguised as a college professor who never got tenure. It was a long drive, but no drive was too long for Sue if friends were at the other end. She loved to sit and talk with old friends, and she made new ones very easily.

We also drove up to Vermont to see Sue’s friend Diane Robinson at least once or twice. I met her husband Phil Graziose, one of the Air Force guys from the Alaska adventure. He seemed like a nice guy. He set up a small business in the St. Johnsbury area as a locksmith. They lived in a trailer park, a new experience for me. There were things that I could talk about with Phil, even football! I had nothing in common with Diane and her myriad relatives, almost all of whom stayed close to home. Sue absolutely adored this family. I have never quite understood this. Maybe she appreciated the way that they all got along.

In 1981 or 1982 we were invited to Dave Tine’s house. His television had a huge rear-projection screen. It was the first “home entertainment center” we had ever seen. His sister (whose name I don’t remember) owned and operated a retail store name Video Land. It sold hardware as well as videos. We watched Nine to Five together. This was something of a real treat for us. We almost never went to movies. They were too expensive.

Sue’s family in Enfield held get-togethers pretty often. I usually accompanied her. I really struggled at these affairs. I had a hard time talking with most of her Enfield relations. The big exception was her youngest sister, Betty. She hosted a large party at her parents’ house most summers. She set up areas for volleyball and croquet. Also, Betty’s mother had a swimming pool. Tom Corcoran also attended most of these affairs.

I think that it was at one of these parties that I met Jack LaPlante, the brother-in-law of Sue’s sister Karen. He worked and coached at Hartford Public High School, which over the years became a rough place. He has been inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame.

I always enjoyed talking with Jack. He was fascinated by the fact that we still played board games with other adults.

Jeffrey Campbell and our guide Jackson in Lake Manyara National Park in 2015.

Betty’s friends were much more approachable for me than the relatives on the Locke side. The lives of the latter seemed to center around trucks and cars. I liked all of Betty’s friends. Karen Shapiro, who worked with disadvantaged kids, ended up marrying Paul Locke, and so I saw her occasionally. Jeffrey Campbell, a pharmacist whom Betty has always called Pancho, was around from time to time. In 2015 he came with us on our epic trip to Tanzania, which is described in great detail here.

I also remember a friend of Betty’s named Harriet, but I don’t remember much about her.

I remember that we drove to Rhode Island once to visit Victor Barrett, with whom Sue worked at F.H. Chase, and his wife, Mary Codd². They ran a small business called Coddbarrett Associates that developed computer-generated graphics for companies.

It was interesting to talk to another couple who were struggling as pioneers in an infant industry. Their work needed a lot more processing power than ours, and so their financial commitment was greater. On the other hand, they also had better credentials. Actually, everyone had better credentials than we did.

One thing that I remember vividly is that Victor and Mary almost never cooked. They either ate frozen dinners or something from a restaurant. Sue and I never did the first and almost never did the second.

Sue had an annual tradition of visiting her land in Monson, MA, on the weekend of Columbus Day when the foliage was at its peak, and the weather was to her liking. I accompanied her a few times. She actually built an outhouse and a tree platform up there. The outhouse was trashed by someone and the tools that she left up there were stolen.

She could sometimes talk her nephew, Travis LaPlante, and/or Brian Corcoran into making the pilgrimage with her.

Sue planned a weekend outing for us in Mt. Washington, NH. We stayed at the famous hotel⁵ in Bretton Woods. We took the cog railroad up to the top of the mountain, which is one of the windiest places on earth.

Sue planned on me playing golf on the links course that is adjacent to the hotel, but I did not feel like it.

I think that Tom and Patti Corcoran joined us for one day. I seem to recall that Sue and Patti played Tennis. Well, Patti played, and they both chased Sue’s errant shots.

I remember that the hotel hosted a Trivial Pursuit game in the evening. Sue and I played as a team. We really cleaned up. One of the other guests asked us if we had memorized all the answers.

Sandy Bailey, whom we knew from our installation at Harland-Tine, invited us to her house in Manchester, CT, for an evening of games. We were, as usual, late. A group of people were playing Dark Tower, the game advertised on TV by Orson Wells. It seemed like a very interesting game, but I never got around to playing it. I later tried to purchase a copy, but I could not find one.

We met Sandy’s housemate, a guy who worked for the Digital Equipment Corporation. Of course, he tried to convince me that we should convert our ad agency software to run on DEC machines. He even gave me a handbook for DEC’s version of the BASIC language.

In the fall of 1987 Sue and I decided to drive to Washington, DC, for the weekend. We left on Friday afternoon, October 9, and got as far as New Jersey. We stopped at a motel off of the Interstate. The person at the desk seemed surprised that we wanted to stay the whole night. When Sue asked for more towels, he went across the street to a store and bought some.

We laughed about it; it was not that sleazy-looking from the outside.

When we arrived in Washington we spent the day at the National Zoo. We got to see the baby pandas. A male orangutan effortlessly hurled his poop over the fence at the tourists. Overall it was a very pleasant experience, even though I was never able to spot the kiwi in its dark cage.

We stayed overnight at Howard Johnson’s. When we went to supper, the other people in the restaurant seemed somehow different. It wasn’t until later that we realized that we had chosen to come to Washington on the same day as about 200,000 gay people who were in town for “The Great March”.

On Sunday the parking was a nightmare, but the Smithsonian’s museums were not crowded at all.

In late 1985 my sister Jamie surprisingly reentered our lives She had recently married Joe Lisella. Joe, Jamie, and her daughters moved to Simsbury, CT. For the next fourteen years I spent as much time as I could with her and her family, which grew fairly rapidly after she came to New England. Those visits and trips are documented here.

1. This phenomenon is now known as dissociative identity disorder, which is a better name because of the vague nature of the word personality. I personally suspect that the kind postulated in this story occurs more often in the movies than in real life.

2. Mary Codd’s story can be read at her website, which is marycodd.com.

3. The Whalers’ last season was 1997. The Civic Center underwent drastic remodeling in 2004 and in 2021 it is called the XL Center.

4. My recollection of the event was faulty. When I have told this story to people I have claimed that neither of the teams made the playoffs that year. I apologize for the unintentional misinformation. The Whalers lost to Montreal in the first round of the playoffs.

5. Since 2015 it has been called the Omni Mt. Washington Resort.

1972-1974 Connecticut: Sue and Mike

Posted on February 3, 2021 by Mike

Could a relationship between a preppy lad from Kansas and a country lass from Connecticut last? Continue reading →

For the few weeks that I worked in the Variable Annuity area of the Life Actuarial Department at the Hartford, my desk was behind Sue Comparetto’s, and we shared a phone. She was the head clerk in Bob Riley’s section. This meant that she was the only person there entrusted with an electronic calculator. Those silent marvels would soon replace the gigantic noisy Fridens, but they still required an AC connection and cost about $1,000.

I am pretty sure that Sue’s first impression of me was negative. Our only noteworthy interaction was when I was called upon to talk with someone on the phone. My desk had no phone; I had to use hers. I never called anyone, and most of the calls that I received were nerve-wracking; I perspired all over the receiver. I wiped it off before I gave it back, but it was still rather gross.

I did not know Sue well, but what I heard about her was somewhat disconcerting. She lived in East Hampton, CT, with Diane DeFreitas and, I think, another young woman. She did not have a car. A “Cuban plumber” sometimes gave her a ride part of the way to the Hartford. She hitchhiked the rest of the way. She had picked up a black Labrador puppy at a flea market and named him Siddhartha. At some point she must have realized that this situation was not sustainable, and she took the dog to the pound. Someone else may have catalyzed the decision.

I remember that one day both she and Diane decided to dress slutty for work. Sue did not like dress codes. She told me that she had been suspended from high school for vigorously protesting the dress code. Her parents were not amused by this behavior.

Oh, yeah. One other thing—Sue smoked. My dad smoked, but hardly anyone else with whom I had ever spent much time did. John Sigler also spoke, but he hardly ever lit up in my presence.

After I was assigned to the Individual Pensions area I only saw Sue in passing and at the Friday evening gatherings at the Shoreham Hotel’s bar, situated very conveniently between the Aetna and the Hartford. At some point one of the most important events of my life occurred, and yet I have no clear memory of the details. For some reason Tom Herget set me up with Sue for some event. I don’t remember when it was or even what we did. I have a vague recollection of the Aetna Diner (Sue liked their moussaka) on Farmington Avenue, but maybe that was on a different occasion. I am pretty sure that Sue told me on that occasion that I reminded her of her husband, and she was astonished to learn that my middle name was Dennis. She explained that her husband’s name was Dennis, and his middle name was Michael.

I don’t think that I previously knew that she had been married. This explained why she did not look even vaguely Italian. I certainly did not know that she was still legally married. I had to make a snap judgment whether being with her was a mortal sin or a venial sin. It was a tough call, but I was pretty sure that any further contact would move the needle over the line. For twelve years I had attended Catholic schools, and I had never missed going to mass on Sunday. Not once. I probably confessed more impure thoughts than I actually had. You have to confess something.

I somehow quieted my conscience and had a good time that night, and Sue and I started “seeing each other.” By this time she had moved to Rockville and rented a room in the basement of a house owned by a female employee of the Hartford named Jackie. She also had somehow persuaded a bank to finance her purchase of a 1972 Dodge Colt.

During this period Sue was also, at least in theory, studying for Part 1 of the actuarial exams. She was at a huge disadvantage compared with others taking the test in Hartford. Most of them got study time and took classes in the subject. She did not pass.

It must have been on an evening in October that Sue offered to fix a steak supper for John Sigler and me. Jackie must have let Sue use the kitchen; Sue’s apartment barely had room for a bed and a couple of chairs. We all sat around after dinner drinking Mateus, talking, and listening to Leonard Cohen records. Finally John departed. I spent the night with Sue on her small waterbed, a totally new experience for me.

Over the next few months Sue and I went to numerous places together. A bunch of us walked down to Constitution Plaza together to attend a noontime rally for George McGovern. 1972 was the first time that I was allowed to vote in a national election. In 1968 the voting age was twenty-one, and I was only twenty. Sue, who was born in 1951, was barely old enough to vote this time. I really hated Nixon. I suspected (correctly, as it was later revealed) that he had deliberately scuttled the peace talks in Paris about Vietnam. Never mind his secret war in Laos and his part in the overthrow of the democratic government in Chile. I never had to serve in Vietnam, but I blamed Nixon for stealing two years from me when I was in my prime.

Sue and I both voted for McGovern. I even put a McGovern-Shriver¹ sticker on Greenie’s bumper. I felt as if I had gotten McGovern one more vote than he would have otherwise received. Of course, it made no difference. Most Americans believed Tricky Dick really had a “secret plan” to end the war, they were afraid of the godless communist menace, and for some reason they did not like McGovern.

Sue and I attended a couple of movies in theaters. I seem to remember that there was a theater in West Hartford that showed older movies. I am pretty sure that we saw Blow-up together and at least one Marx Brothers movie.

We ate at a few restaurants in Rockville. I am certain that we shared a ham and olive pizza a small restaurant on Main St. near Route 83. It must have been part of a chain. It had a number after its name. Sue liked to go to Friendly’s. At the time their menu consisted of overpriced hamburger, overpriced cheeseburgers, overpriced “Friendly Franks”, and ice cream. Sue focused on the ice cream.

I cooked a few meals for us in my apartment. For example, I fixed a sirloin beef roast using McCormick’s Meat Marinade², a trick that I learned from my mother. Sue was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted. She said that she had never liked beef roasts. She explained that when her mother cooked them she left them in the oven until they were grey, dried out, flavorless, and chewy. I tried to fry a chicken, but it did not work out too well. I had to put it in the oven before serving because some parts were not done. Microwave ovens existed, but I did not have one. After that we stuck to extra-crispy chicken from the colonel. However, I bought at least three cookbooks, and I developed a few very tasty specialties.

I took Christmas very seriously in 1972. It was only the second holiday season that I had spent away from my family, and this time I was really on my own. The feeling was much different from any previous Christmas. I spent a lot of time shopping for little gifts and writing personalized Christmas cards for my friends. Sue and I attended the Carol Sing at the Hartford Times Building in downtown Hartford. The Times³ published a half-page photo of the huge crowd that was assembled. My off-white cowboy hat and fleece-lined suede coat made it easy to spot us in the photo. We showed the clipping to all of our friends.

My first New Years in Connecticut was also memorable. I decided to roast Cornish game hens for supper, and we invited Tom Corcoran and Patti Lewonczyk to join us. The four of us were also invited by Tom Garabedian and Gail Mertan to a party at Tom’s house in East Hartford. The meal was a big success. I think that Sue cooked some kind of vegetables, maybe her famous carrots Lyonaise. Of course, we also served wine.

We all probably ate too much. No one felt like going to a party. However, it was less than a mile to the Garabedian house. So, we all piled into one of the cars and drove there.

The only two people in the house when we arrived were Tom and Gail. Evidently Tom had persuaded his parents to make themselves scarce. Tom and Gail had laid out a cornucopia of food and beverages—enough for several dozen people. No one else ever came. It was not much of a party, but if we had submitted to the lethargy induced by the supper, it would have been a disaster.

Over the holidays I got to meet some of Sue’s family. Her parents, Art and Effy Slanetz, and siblings all lived in a farm house on North Maple St. in Enfield. Sue was the oldest child; she had two sisters, Karen and Betty. They were nothing alike. She also had a brother Don. I met Effy’s dog, Queenie, and a bevy of Sue’s uncles, aunts, and cousins, all of whom lived within a few miles of the Slanetz’s house⁴. Many of them seemed to make a living by driving trucks in one way or another. Their favorite sport was NASCAR. I did not contribute much to the banter.

Behind the house was a fairly large field that was actively farmed by the Polek family that lived in the house that was between the Slanetz’s house and a warehouse in which Art stored all kinds of old mechanical junk. Sue told me that that the field was their family’s land at one time. When she was little they raised potatoes.

The winters in the seventies were brutal. Early in 1973 (I think) I was driving Greenie, and Sue was riding shotgun after a snowfall of a couple of inches. We were headed south on I-91 through Hartford. I was driving at a very reasonable speed in the right lane, and, thank God, there were no cars nearby. All of a sudden my car’s rear wheels began moving to the left, but the front wheels did not. The car performed a spin of about 315°, and my left front bumper whipped into the guardrail on the left, which brought us to a halt.. Neither of us was injured. We were both wearing seat belts—I never let anyone ride in my car without a seat belt. It was amazing that my car suffered only a negligibly small bump, and the vehicle was positioned so that I could quickly steer back onto the highway. This scary event made me realize that I had to be very careful with this car in dicey road conditions.

Sue had a very large number of friends. My favorites were Bob and Susan Thompson. Bob worked in a small factory. He complained about the smell of the chemicals there. His job might have had something to do with linoleum. I think that Susan was a teacher. They had a house in Coventry and an extremely amorous dachshund. Once he gained purchase on a pants leg he was difficult to detach. Bob owned a Plymouth that saw its best days in the Eisenhower administration, or maybe earlier. In snowy weather he liked to take it into an empty parking lot and make it spin donuts.

When we had not seen Bob and Susan for a few months, I asked Sue why. She said that she had loaned them some money, and she was pretty sure that they were avoiding her because they could not afford to repay her.

On Valentine’s Day 2013 I bought Sue a present and a card. She had forgotten about it, and therefore she did not reciprocate. I took it a little hard.

Eventually I learned that Sue and time just did not get along. She regularly forgot holidays, birthdays, and appointments. She also could not gauge the passage of time. She might think that events occurred a week ago actually happened two months earlier. If she said that something would take fifteen minutes, it usually took an hour or more. If any food (e.g., beef or lamb) needed to be cooked for a specific amount of time, I had to do it. In retrospect I marvel that she had chosen to grill steaks for John Sigler and me. I cannot remember how they turned out. I was not paying too much attention to the food that night.

Sue was always late. I adopted the habit of carrying a book around with me for the inevitable waiting periods.

The fridge that we moved wasn't wrapped. — The fridge that we moved wasn’t wrapped.

I recall that in February of 1973 Sue and I helped one of her many friends move to a new place. The woman who was moving might have been one of Sue’s roommates in East Hampton. I remember that I was one of the people assigned to get an old refrigerator up the staircase. We succeeded, but I could not describe what technique was employed beyond brute force. At one point the woman who was moving asked what day it was. I said that it was Saturday the 24th (or whatever it actually was). She said “No. I mean, what month?”

I decided that Sue’s twenty-second birthday on March 2 should be Sue Comparetto Day. I offered to buy her anything that she wanted. She wanted to shop for a camera. We drove to a camera shop of her choosing, and she selected a thirty-five-millimeter camera with a leather case. I would have inserted a photo of it here if I knew where it was. I guarantee that it is in the house somewhere. Sue would never have thrown it out. I did find the case, which still had one of her combs in it.

We went to two concerts together in March. The first was at the Bushnell Auditorium in Hartford on Tuesday March 6. The headliners were Loggins and Messina, whose only real hit “Your Mama Don’t Dance” was very popular at the time. Sue and I must have attended in hopes of seeing the advertised opening act, Jim Croce. Neither Sue nor I can remember him appearing. Apparently he canceled for some reason. Almost everyone in the audience was at least five years younger than we were, and they enjoyed the L&M performance a lot more than we did. By the end of the show we really felt like old fogeys.

The other concert was at the Palace Theater in Waterbury. Pink Floyd had just released “Dark Side of the Moon”, which is widely considered their masterpiece. There were huge speakers blasting out sound from all four corners of the theater, and there was an abundance of strobe lights and other dramatic flashes. The crowd went crazy, but I was definitely ready to leave after fifteen minutes. You can listen to the whole two-hour concert here.

On April 1, 1973, Sue’s husband Dennis committed suicide. Sue went to the funeral. He had attempted suicide at least once in the fall. Sue had visited him in the hospital on that occasion.

When the weather got warmer Sue and I enjoyed a very pleasant trip to Gillette Castle, a bizarre structure that overlooks the Connecticut River. It was built of local fieldstone by the actor William Gillette. He is most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes more than 1,300 times on the stage, once in a silent film feature, and twice on radio programs. The estate is now a state park. I found it to be a very interesting place. The grounds were very relaxing. There was even a small train that had been used by Gillette himself. We had a very nice picnic.

We also spent some time in the interior⁵ of the castle. The extremely ornate inside was at least as fabulous as the grounds and the view. This was one of my favorite days in my first trip to Connecticut.

At some point Sue decided to quit her job at the Hartford. She found a new line of work at Travelers Equity Sales. She had to take a test to become a registered rep. She passed on the first try and worked there through the spring and most of the summer. While she worked at the Travelers she became a close friend of Diane Robinson, who originally came from Passumpsic VT, and Karen Peterson.

Around the same time that she changed jobs Sue moved to an apartment on Jefferson St. (or maybe Washington St.) in Hartford. I don’t remember much about it. My only clear recollection is of the only time in my life that I ever ran out of gas. I was about two blocks from her house and perhaps one hundred feet from a gas station. Even though it was slightly uphill I was able to push Greenie up to the pump all by myself. I was only a little stronger then; Greenie was very light and easy to push.

During her time at T.E.S. Sue and I started to grow apart. She was a whirlwind of activity, and I often felt left out. She had a gazillion friends of both genders, and sometimes I became jealous. She probably started to think of me as too clingy.

When I met Sue, she already had a boa constrictor named Puca, but he was barely six feet long and skinny. She did not feed him much, and when she did, all that he got was a dead mouse heated over a light bulb to fool his heat-detecting senses. One evening we visited her friends Stan and Pat Slatt in Marlborough. They had a ten-foot boa constrictor that Stan fed live rats and a thirteen-foot python that regularly ate a full-grown rabbit. I had no fear of Puca, but these two monsters gave me pause.

In the summer of 1973 Sue moved to an apartment complex on Wales Rd. in Andover. Her apartment was right across the street from the one that Scott and Cindy Otermat lived with their huge dog Cinders. I saw her only a few times before her big trip.

Sue, Diane, and Karen decided to quit their jobs and drive to Alaska. I am not sure that their plans were any more specific than that. I don’t know what they used for money. Maybe they knocked over a bunch of banks in those states along the Canadian border, or they might have found a big nugget of gold in the Klondike. They did not take Sue’s car. She left it at her apartment, which she “sublet” to a guy who worked on roofs for a living. I am pretty sure that they were “involved” before she left. He also was supposed to take care of Puca, but the reptile escaped from his cage either just before Sue left or just after.

This was the greatest adventure in Sue’s young life, but I was absolutely miserable. I felt sorry for myself. It was hard for me to face all my friends. I took a lot of long walks.

During the trip the three ladies all hooked up with Air Force guys stationed in Alaska. Diane ended up marrying Phil Graziose. They lived in a trailer park in northern Vermont for a number of years and then bought an old house in St. Johnsbury with a storefront in which Phil ran a locksmithing business.

On the trip Sue became seriously involved with an Air Force guy name Randy, who came from, of all places, my home town of Kansas City. I refused to listen to the stories of her adventures, but I could not help overhearing that there was one incident in which someone nearly drowned.

This matchbook cover is the only trace of Fast Eddie’s that I could find on the Internet.

Meanwhile, back in the lower forty-eight Friday, August 17, 1973, was a memorable day. Since it was my twenty-fifth birthday, I invited everyone to help me celebrate. At least eight or ten of us went to Fast Eddie’s bar on the Berlin Turnpike. I had never been drunk in my life, and I had no intention of overindulging that evening. The problem was that we were drinking beer by the pitcher, and people kept refilling my glass without asking me. I never asked for a second glass. My mother had drilled into us that if there was food on our plate or beverage in our glass, we were expected to consume it. If there was a possibility that we might not want it later, we were not to put it on the plate. Once it was there, however, …

At any rate, this was the only time in my life that I have driven a car when I definitely should not have done so. Fortunately, Greenie pretty well knew the way back to my apartment, and there were no incidents. The next day I awoke with my first hangover and played my epic tennis match with Jim Kreidler. It is described here.

Tom Corcoran and Tom Herget had been living in a large old house at 345 Hartford Avenue in Wethersfield. The third housemate had been a guy named Monty. Herget had furnished the house from items he picked up at second-hand stores on Park St. in Hartford. In August of 1973 Monty had to leave for some reason. They asked me if I wanted to take Monty’s place. It was a no-brainer. The rent was less, and life would surely be more interesting. In addition, I would be rid of a lot of scenery that connected with memories that now seemed bitter to me.

In August of 1973 I bought and read the popular book I’m OK—You’re OK by Thomas Anthony Harris. It described the research on hemispheric separation in the brain that showed that under certain circumstances people clearly have two (or more) relatively independent decision-making mechanisms. We identify with only one of them, the one that can read and talk. When something happens that this portion of the brain did not order, we are likely to say “I don’t know why I did that.” Understanding that the first “I” and the second “I” in that sentence are largely independent agents really helped me to understand people, including myself, better.

During this period I was being paid to study for Part 5 of the actuarial exams. The subject matter was indescribably boring. Can you think of anything more tedious than studying the history of mortality tables? I liked my work, and I had made some great friends in Connecticut, but there was one aspect that I really missed—debate tournaments and the thrill of competing at the highest level. I began to think about going back to college to coach debate. I wrote to Bill Colburn at the University of Michigan to inquire if that was feasible. He replied that I needed to apply to graduate school. He thought that he could arrange for financial assistance for me. I also did a little bit of research on my veterans’ benefits.

I heard that Sue had come back from Alaska, but I did not see her for quite some time. Finally she came over to the “345 Club” one evening. For some reason I was up in my bedroom. I think that the two Toms tried to talk her out of it, but she came up to see me. I don’t exactly remember what happened, but she ended up staying the night with me.

I learned that Sue had landed a new job at the “Little Aetna” section of Connecticut General. When she returned from Alaska she discovered that the roofer had not been paying the rent. My recollection is that her car was also repossessed. She eventually found Puca—alive—between two towels in a linen closet.

So, Sue and I began what I think of as the “toll bridge” section of our relationship. In those days the Charter Oak Bridge and the Bissell Bridge had toll booths in both directions. The fastest way from the 345 Club to Sue’s apartment was via the Charter Oak Bridge and I-84⁶. One could save a little money by buying a book of prepaid tickets, and that is what both Sue and I did.

The worst ice storm that I have ever seen hit central Connecticut on December 16-17. More details are provided here. The storm affected Wethersfield much worse than it did Andover. So, like my housemates, I abandoned the 345 Club, brought some clothes to Sue’s apartment, and stayed there for a while.

One morning during that winter—I don’t remember if it was before or after Christmas—I was driving from Andover to Hartford. Greenie was headed westbound on the portion of I-84 between Manchester and Bolton. It was early in the morning; the sun had just come up. The road conditions did not seem too bad, and I was going a moderate speed in the right lane. This time my rear wheels decided to go to the right. My car did a 180° spin before coming to a stop in the breakdown lane on the right side of the highway. I waited for traffic to clear and then, taking advantage of Greenie’s extremely small turning radius, executed a tight U-turn. I then continued on my journey. My mantra was the same as that of every male in his twenties: “No harm; no foul.”

I had decided to fly to Kansas City at Christmas to visit my family. Sue was somewhat shocked when I asked her whether she wanted to come with me, but she said yes⁷. We were only there for a few days, but she got to meet a lot of my family, including Fr. Joe and my grandfather, John Cernech, who by then had become very nearly deaf. She must have slept on the roller bed in Jamie’s room. My recollection is that Jamie had a date on most of the evenings while we were staying there.

Mad Murphy’s was in this building on Union St.

Another event that I remember clearly during the subsequent few months was the night that Sue and I and a group of friends grabbed a table at Mad Murphy’s, a bar near the train station in Hartford. We came there to listen to Sue’s neighbor, Carl Shillo, and his band. We stayed until the closing time, and we had a great time. The highlight was when they played “Ob-la-di Ob-la-da” just before closing. Everyone marched around in a long conga line and sang along.

Passumpsic is an unincorporated village in the town of Barnet. The community is located 3 miles south of St. Johnsbury, the last civilized outpost on I-91.

By April or May I had arranged to coach debate at U-M. I asked Sue if she would come with me. She, who was in those days always ready for an adventure, agreed.

Sue and I drove up to Passumpsic to see Diane and her many siblings at least once. I don’t remember when. Tom Herget came with us. I don’t think that Phil had arrived yet. The Robinsons held a barn dance, which I cannot say that I enjoyed much; dancing is definitely not my thing. My favorite memory of this trip was when Diane’s father claimed that he had always wondered why he and his wife had so many more offspring than the other couples until someone explained to him what caused it.

I am pretty sure that Sue made other trips without me. She considered the three-hour drive an easy one, and she was enthralled by the simple lifestyle of Diane’s family.

In 1972 the Hartford recruited three single guys named Tom. The next year two married actuarial students named Jim were hired—Jim Cochran and Jim Hawke. Their wives were Ann and Lesley respectively. The Cochrans were from Wisconsin. The Hawkes were from Texas, although Jim had a bachelor’s degree in math from UConn. I don’t know how they ended up in the Land of Steady Habits.

I remember at least one evening spent at each of their houses, although I cannot say when either event happened. The Hawkes lived in a house in Manchester and a son named Ethan⁸. Sue and I had supper with the Hawkes and spent most of the evening enjoying Jim’s renditions of rags by Scott Joplin.

A short time after that Jim and Ethan joined Sue and me on an excursion to her property on “Bunyan Mountain”⁹ in Monson, MA. We parked well below Sue’s property and climbed up. I think that we had some sandwiches and toasted marshmallows.

Sue took photos of this occasion. If she can locate any of them, I will post something here.

Jim and Ann Cochran lived in a house in Glastonbury. They invited us over to play the state card game of Wisconsin, Sheepshead. Neither Sue nor I had ever heard of it. I don’t think that anyone outside of the state of Wisconsin has ever played it more than once. Jim and Ann patiently explained all of the rules to us. Then on the first hand something—I don’t remember what—occurred. As a result both Jim and Ann triumphantly yelled out “It’s a leaster!” They then introduced a whole new set of rules as to how this particular hand would be played.

A brief glance at the Wikipedia page for this game lists some of the “variants” to the rules and hints at many others. Even though tournaments of games are allegedly held in Wisconsin, I suspect that the real purpose of this game is to lure unsuspecting non-cheeseheads into playing the game under a small subset of the rules. The Wisconsinites can then introduce new rules often enough to make the foreigners so confused and frustrated that they leave. Then the Wisconsonites can enjoy their fondue in peace.

Sue’s family played a trick-taking game called Setback or Auction Pitch, which has the benefit of far fewer rules. I played a few times, but there did not seem to be much to it. When someone in Sue’s family asked if anyone wanted to play cards, they meant Setback.

In June of 1974 I broke the patella (kneecap) on my right leg playing pickup basketball. The event itself is described here. I had to miss a few days of work, and I was unable to drive at least until the cast was removed. I decided to move in with Sue in Andover. This also seemed like the best time to tell my parents about that she would be taking care of me in her apartment. They were not thrilled by the idea, but at least they did not commandeer a plane and come to rescue me from her clutches. They weren’t too surprised when I told them that she was going to accompany me to Ann Arbor in a few months.

The rest of the summer was rather blissful for me. I could not play softball or golf, but I attended all of the Mean Reserves games and all the other get-togethers. I cannot remember any unpleasant occasions.

1. Senator Tom Eagleton was nominated for Vice President at the 1972 Democratic Convention. Shortly thereafter he resigned from the ticket when it was discovered that he received psychiatric treatment for chronic depression. The Republican Veep candidate, Spiro Agnew, was a crook, but his crimes did not come to light until after the election.

2. Sue and I returned to the castle in the summer of 2020, but because of the pandemic the interior was not open. We had another nice picnic, and I took some spectacular snapshots of the river beneath the castle.

3. For some reason McCormick’s discontinued this wonderful product in 2019 or 2020. Someone has started a “Bring Back McCormick’s Meat Marinade” Facebook page.

4. The Hartford Times was a moderately liberal paper owned by Gannett and published in the afternoon. In 1972, however, it endorsed Nixon. I wrote a letter to the editor in protest. They published one or two of the hundreds that they received about the endorsement, but not mine. The paper was sold in 1973. In 1976 it accepted the fate of most PM papers and ceased publication.

5. I did not realize at the time that I had only met the Lockes, Effy’s side of the family. The Slanetzes were not homebodies at all. They were widely dispersed. Only one Locke had moved away, Sue’s Uncle Bob, whose family lived in western Michigan.

6. Prior to 1984 the interstate highway that runs from Hartford to the Mass Pike just north of Sturbridge was called I-84 from Hartford to Manchester and I-86 east of Manchester. The never completed road that led from Manchester toward Providence was called I-84. Since 1984 the former highway has been called I-84, and the latter I-384.

7. Sue helped with the production of her high school’s musical Oklahoma. She strongly identified with the character of Ado Annie, the “girl who can’t say no”. I hereby affirm that I have hardly ever heard her turn down an invitation to do something, although she will sometimes cancel later when she realizes that it would be impossible for her to be in two places at once. This may be the biggest difference between Sue and me. I have almost never committed to anything unless I was certain that I was willing and able to do it.

8. The youngster grew up to be Ethan Hawke, the famous actor.

9. Evidently this “mountain” is actually part of Chicopee Mountain. Sue obtained this property as part of an agreement with her father-in-law, Chick Comparetto. There is a nice view of the valley from one spot that is either on or near her land.

Wavablog

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Tag Archives: Monson MA

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