I took notes on all of my business trips, and I often took photos. I did not, however, take any notes or photos in the course of this adventure. So, I needed to rely on my memory.
My dad had retired from his job at Business Men’s Assurance (BMA) in 1982 at the age of 58. For the first few years of his retirement my parents played a lot of golf and did some traveling together. They visited New England at least a couple of times, and they also took a few other trips. Sue and I made only one trip to KC during that period (described here). We were as poor as the proverbial church mice.
Throughout the early nineties I traveled a lot for business. Whenever I could, I stopped in Kansas City on the way to or from a client or prospect in order to pay them a visit. I always notified them that I was coming. I generally took the shuttle service1 that was available at the KCI airport. By 1995 I had stopped at their house in Leawood, KS, two or three times, and it was evident to me that both of them were going downhill. My dad had somehow2 lost vision in one eye. Mom was having a lot of trouble with her memory, and she no longer drove a car. She had been to see doctors about her condition, but they had been unable to diagnose the source of the problem. They assured her that she did not have Alzheimer’s Disease. Both mom and dad walked much more slowly than I remembered. In fact they walked more slowly than everyone.
In the late summer of 1995 my dad called me at TSI’s office to tell me that their friends were throwing a party for mom’s seventieth birthday. I am pretty sure that he must have invited Jamie and the rest of the Lisella family (introduced here) as well. Jamie said that she would not be able to attend, but her oldest daughter, Cadie Mapes, would go. I bought airline tickets for Cadie, who was about 17, and me, who was three decades older. My dad had said that we could stay at their house. I would sleep in my old bedroom, and Cadie would sleep in Jamie’s. My mom knew about the party, but she did not know that Cadie and I were coming.
My mom’s birthday was October 2, which was a Monday in 1995. I suspect that Cadie and I flew in on Sunday. Cadie was still in high school, of course. So, the party may not have been on the evening of October 2. I do not remember whether Cadie had to deal with being absent from any classes. Maybe the entire trip took place on a weekend.
The drive took about 45 minutes.
When we arrived at the airport I rented a car from Avis. We decided not to drive directly to the house. Instead we stopped somewhere for a late lunch or supper. I have a vague recollection that it was a Mexican restaurant.
When we arrived at 8800 Fairway, my mom was in the front yard with one of her friends, perhaps Rose Goral. The other lady asked mom who had arrived. She immediately said, “That’s my son!” I was somewhat relieved that she recognized me.
I do not remember what we did that evening. I think that the party was on the following evening. It might have been at the Blue Hills Country Club, where they had been members for many years. In any case I remember that my dad was driving, mom was riding shotgun, and Cadie and I were in the back. I think that we were on State Line Road, a fairly busy thoroughfare on the south side of Kansas City.
At some point we came across a dog that seemed to be lost or at least confused. He was on the side of the road, and he meandered onto the pavement near us. My mom insisted that my dad stop the car. He knew better than to argue. He eased the car off to the side of the road. My mom got out of the car and made sure that the dog was all right. I remember this incident up to that point as though it were yesterday. I do not, however, remember exactly what she did to assure herself that the dog would be all right. She finally got back into the car, and we drove to the party without further incident.
The reason for my faulty memory is probably traceable to the fact that I was mentally rehearsing the speech that I planned to give at the party. The speech had seven main points; each topic began with one or the letters of my mom’s name D-O-L-O-R-E-S. I no longer remember the topics, but I definitely worked the episode of the dog into my presentation. Who else would stop a car on a busy street to deal with an animal? I also remember that I truthfully recounted that in all of the years that I had spent with my mom I had never heard her say a bad word about anyone. The only other thing that I recall is that the topic that started with L was “Libraries”. I recounted how the two of us had taken the street car to the public library in Kansas City, KS, and how she later encouraged me to read copious amounts of all kinds of literature at an early age.
The only other thing that I recall about the party is that one of their friends said that I sounded just like my dad. I did not consider that a compliment, but I suppose that it was intended as one.
Did our trip to KC make my parents happy? I suppose so, but I cannot remember any details that would prove it. No one broke into tears of joy or agony.
Cadie did not say too much on the trip. I probably should have made a greater effort to get to know her. She was definitely nervous about being the family’s representative.
We flew back to New England on the next day. I don’t remember anything else of note before I returned Cadie to her family’s house in West Springfield.
1. Two or three passengers would travel together from KCI to Shawnee Mission, which was what the southern suburbs on the Kansas side were called.
2. He blamed his detached retina on cosmetic surgery that he had undertaken to improve the appearance of his eyelids. He never took any legal action, and he did not like to discuss it.
Aunt Margaret’s funeral: In March of 2007 my dad, Jim Wavada, was living in Enfield near our house. This situation has been explained here. He learned in a telephone call from either his brother Vic or one of Vic’s children that Vic’s wife Margaret had died on Tuesday, March 27. Vic and Margaret had resided in Trenton, MO, for as long as I had known them,. The services were scheduled for Saturday at St. Joseph’s church in Trenton.
Dad could not have undertaken the journey by himself. I retained only the vaguest memory of Aunt Margaret1, but I agreed to accompany him to pay his respects. I have absolutely no recollection of staying in or near Trenton on that occasion. I therefore have deduced that we flew to KCI airport on Friday and stayed overnight at the Hampton Inn near the airport. I have a pretty vivid memory of staying with my dad at that hotel, and I cannot imagine any other occasion on which we might have done so.
Why did we not fly out earlier and spend some time with the family? I can think of two possible reasons. Either I had business commitments that I could not get out of, or my dad wanted to minimize his time there. I strongly suspect that it was the latter. My last trip for the last major installation that I did (Macy’s South, as explained here) was in January of 2007. I don’t have any notes about major trips in March or April. Furthermore, I know from several conversations with him that my dad did not have much respect for his oldest brother.
I am pretty sure that we arrived at KCI on Friday afternoon. I rented a car from Avis. After we checked in at the Hampton, we treated ourselves to fried chicken at the Strouds restaurant near the airport.1
The next morning we ate an early breakfast at the hotel and then drove to Trenton. The drive took about an hour and forty-five minutes. I remember nothing about it.
In Trenton I got to see my Uncle Vic, and my cousins Charlie, Vic Jr., Margaret Anne Deaver, and Cathy. I also got to meet their spouses and children. Some of these people were probably at my mom’s funeral eight years earlier. The others I had not seen for at least thirty-seven years. Many I had never met at all.
St. Joseph church in Trenton.
I have very few memories of this occasion. I remember that my Uncle Vic had recently purchased a car. For some reason this upset my dad, who thought that it was a waste of money. I could not understand why my dad would care about this.
I am pretty sure that we stopped at Uncle Vic’s apartment before going to the church. I can visualize it, but I am not sure that I can trust the details.
The other memory that I have was a disparaging comment that Uncle Vic made about me. It was something to the effect that I thought that I was too good for them.
Since he was eighty-eight years old and did not know me at all, I did not get angry or embarrassed. My only mental reaction was to consider this a very strange thing to say about someone who had just paid to fly halfway across the country for services for someone whom he barely knew. At any rate one of my cousins, Margaret Anne or Cathy, reprimanded him for the comment, and he attempted to make a joke out of it.
In retrospect I surmise that the comment was really directed at my dad. I had not consciously done anything (or, for that matter, failed to do anything) that would provoke enmity with Uncle Vic.
I was happy to establish a little bit of communication with my cousins even though I am almost certain that we left shortly after the funeral and drove back to the Hampton Inn. It must have been during this drive that my dad vented about Uncle Vic’s car.
I surmise that we then flew back to Connecticut on Sunday.
Uncle Vic’s funeral: My dad and I returned to Trenton in October of 2009 for Uncle Vic’s funeral. He was ninety years old, which, unless I have miscalculated, tied him with his mother Hazel for the family’s longevity record. I have much more numerous and vivid memories of the second trip, but it is definitely possible that some of the events that I associate with it actually occurred in 2007.
On the second trip my dad and I shared a room at the luxurious Knights Inn3 just outside of Trenton. We spent at least two nights at the Knights. It made quite an impression on both of us. Our room contained an old light green rag that was covered with stains. A sign near it implored the temporary residents to use this rag to clean their firearms as opposed to the towels or sheets. This admonition was unnecessary for dad and me, as we both carried our own cleaning equipment whenever we brought our rifles on trips.
All of my cousins were again present. I am pretty sure that this time we went to the rosary and wake on Sunday evening. We also ate supper with them and some friends of Uncle Vic’s at what Vic Jr. called “a pizza joint”4 in Trenton. The atmosphere was fairly lively. My cousins lived in St. Louis, KC, and Denver. I had the impression that most of them were happy that they need never come to Trenton again. There was very little reminiscing about good old days with “Pop”.
I remember talking with an optometrist who was, I guess, Uncle Vic’s friend. I told him that I had been taking the PreserVision vitamins to try to stave off macular degeneration. He validated that this was probably a good idea.
I met Charlie’s wife Mary and Vic Jr.’s wife Theresa5. Margaret Anne’s husband was probably there, too, but I do not remember his name. John maybe? I don’t remember anyone asking about my sister Jamie.
On Monday we attended the funeral and burial. Afterwards there was a lunch at the church hosted by the Ladies Club. I sat near some of my cousins. I remember Vic Jr. remarking about his mastery of texting. He said that recently he and his son Matt had texted one another while they were in the same store. Theresa worried that people would become overly dependent on them and stop planning.
I recall quite a few kids, a few of whom were a little rambunctious. I can’t say that I tried very hard to assign names to all of them.
The return trip: My dad, who at this point began referring to himself as the last of the Mohicans6 was unusually talkative. He told me about a problem that he had had with Vic Jr.’s son, Matt. I don’t remember the details.
I think that it was either in the car ride or the airplane that he talked about Vic. It may have occurred at another time; I am not certain. He said that his mother, Hazel Wavada, had negotiated a deal with the Benedictines to provide a good high school education for her three sons at Maur Hill in Atchison, KS. One of them had to become a priest. Vic, thee oldest actually took the name Brother Hildebrand, O.S.B., before he quit the order. That, my dad said, was why his other brother, Joe, became a Benedictine priest.
He also told me that Vic had been married before he met Margaret to a woman in Birmingham, AL, of all places.
1. Her very brief obituary, which was posted here, says that “Mrs. Wavada retired from the Jewitt Library in Trenton after 28 years.” This was news to me. I also did not know where my Uncle Vic had been employed. His even briefer obituary, which was posted here, was no help. I have a vague recollection that he worked for a company known as Trenton Foods, which may have been purchased by a conglomerate.
2. My recollection was that the restaurant was near the airport. The closest Strouds that was open in 2023 was located in Oak Ridge Manor, sixteen miles southwest of the Hampton Inn. That is farther than I remembered, but we would have thought nothing about driving such a distance for real fried chicken, which is unknown in New England.
3. The building that housed the Knights Inn still existed in 2023. It was renamed the Cobblestone Inn and Suites. Its website is here. The exterior does not appear changed much, but the photos of the rooms did not seem familiar.
4. I don’t think that the joint survived until 2023. The only pizza places in town in 2023 that Google knew about were Pizza Hut, Godfather’s Pizza Express, and Casey’s, a “convenience store known for fuel and pizza.”
5. Theresa died in 2017. Her obituary has been posted here.
6. He only held this title for two years before passing it on to me. As of 2023 I have now been the most senior of the KC branch of the Wavadas for twelve years, almost 1/6 of my total life.
7. The original Brother Hildebrand of the eleventh century eventually became the famous Pope Gregory VII. I have written an entire chapter about his influence and posted it here. I also included him as a character in the historical novel, Ben 9, that I posted here.
In the summer of 2023 I spent more than a day gathering information from every source that I could think of to try to determine exactly when Sue and I took the trip to San Diego. At first I thought that it was in 2002; I even wrote about one thousand words based on that assumption. I later found evidence that made me place it as late as 2009. As I was in the process of rewriting this to reflect the new date I came upon a set of Word documents labeled SD01 through SD07. They contained the notes that I had taken while on the trip, and they were dated. So, I can say with no fear of contradiction that the trip began on Thursday, March 23, 2006 and ended on Wednesday, March 29.
The notes were evidently intended to be expanded into a readable write-up of the trip and then, along with a sampling of photos, posted on Wavada.org along with my other travel journals. Evidently I must have gotten either busy or lazy; the readable journal never was written, and nothing was ever posted.
The good part is that the notes were a lot better than the septuagenarian memories that I would have needed to tap. Unfortunately, the photos have been lost. If I had integrated them into a journal, I would still have the best of them.
On the same day that I found the notes I rummaged through the bottom shelf on the bookcase in my office and found a paper bag with the imprint of the San Diego Opera on it. Inside was a receipt for the opera tickets, the program for the performance that we saw, and many other items from other places that Sue and I had visited. I would have preferred to find my photos, but this find greatly increased my enthusiasm for working on this entry.
Preparation: In March of 2006 we had two cats, the youngster Giacomo (introduced here), and my best buddy Woodrow (introduced here). The notes stated that Woodrow “purred in my ear”, which is how he often told me that it was time to get out of bed. We planned on leaving the cats alone in the house for a week, but we were not worried about them. Woodrow was well past his prime, but he was very self-reliant and quite tough. Besides, if things got bad, they could go outside through the cat door and make mischief. Sue’s father-in-law Chick Comparetto1 promised to look in on them to make sure that they had food and water. Woodrow was not afraid of strangers (or anything else). He would certainly greet Chick at the door and ask to be petted. Giacomo in those days was quite shy. Chick probably would never lay eyes on him.
I had a Frommer’s guidebook for San Diego that I purchased in 2000 for the business trip that I took with Denise Bessette in 2000 (recounted here). I did not use it much then, but I must have researched it much more thoroughly in 2006.
We planned to meet up with Marva Whitehead, whom we had met on our first trip to Italy in 2003 (documented here), for dinner on Monday. To pay for the trip we were using my frequent-flyer miles on Delta, my Hilton Honors points for the hotel stay, and my frequent-parker points at Executive Valet Parking for a spot near the airport. It was actually a pretty economical trip.
Would you expect Charlotte to be on the left on a trip from BDL to ATL?
The notes said that we brought Sue’s backpack/suitcase purchased for the 2003 trip to Italy, the duffel that IBM had given me in 2000 and the cats had baptized shortly thereafter, a suitcase held together with duct tape, and another backpack that contained my computer. Sue also probably brought an assortment of bags to use as carry-ons. I brought my camera (a small Cascio point-and-shoot digital) with some ability to zoom. Sue may have brought her camera, too.
Sue had arranged for John Bolling, a former IBM employee with whom she had worked in (or maybe even before) the early days of TSI, to meet us at the airport in Atlanta during our layover there. Our plane to San Diego did not leave until 6:18PM.
Denny’s closed for good in 2022 after 45 years.
Thursday March 23: Our first stop was at Chick’s house. Sue gave him the spare key to the house. We then ate brunch at the Denny’s on Elm St. at a little after 10AM. For some reason we made two trips to the bank (or maybe one each to two different banks). Sue sent an email to Marva just before we left.
We drove in my Saturn to Executive. The guy in front of me in the line there asked the clerk about the company’s points system. He had paid only $4 per night by using prepaid coupons. It was nice for once to be the one who was going on vacation. Usually I was the stressed-out guy on a business trip, and everyone else was giddy about their upcoming vacation. It was an even better feeling this time because I had amassed enough points to pay for the car’s entire stay.
Our itinerary called for us to leave Bradley at 1:55 p.m. and to change planes in Atlanta. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. For once there was no problem getting through security. Because of problems in Atlanta we did not actually leave until 2:41. Sue made short work of an ice cream cone while we were waiting.
The flight from Bradley to Atlanta was completely filled. Sue volunteered to take the middle seat, but she was quite uncomfortable. She learned that the guy next to her was going to Costa Rica to photograph wildlife. I had made this trip so many times that it was like riding a bus for me.
Somehow John Bolling found us in the gigantic Atlanta airport. He had a job there working for AirTran Airways2. He told us that he did not like his assignment at all. He had reportedly lost twenty-five pounds in five weeks.
I bought and consumed a gyro and some curly fries while we were waiting for our plane to depart. It did not do so until 7:15.
The plane to San Diego was also very full. No meal was served on the flight, but we did get drinks and a package of snacks. I selected trail mix, Later the flight attendants brought some Gouda cheese spread, and crackers plus some kind of buttery shortbread stick. One passenger was a guy from Italy. I was impressed that the stewardess was able to converse with him in Italian.
Sue watched a movie on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of her, “The Family Stone,” with Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, and Dermot Mulroney. I was in the middle seat. I undoubtedly brought something to read, study, or play with, but the notes did not mention anything. The guy next to me brought absolutely nothing with him for diversion, and he did not avail himself of anything offered by the airline. He just sat there.
Nothing held together with duct tape appeared on the carousel.
Although we gained three hours during the flight, it was still 9:30 by the time that the plane’s wheels touched the ground. When we arrived at the baggage claim area, I was amazed that our luggage was not there. This NEVER happened to me on business trips, and on this occasion both of our flights departed late. It was hard to imagine how Delta had screwed this up.
Sue was upset about it. It did not bother me a great deal. In the worst-case scenario we might need to wear the same clothes for a day or two. Only one person in San Diego knew us in San Diego, and we were not scheduled to see her for a few days.
We told the people at baggage claim that we were staying at the Hampton Inn in Kearney Mesa. They said that they would deliver the bags to us there.
We walked to the Avis counter and picked up our rental. Our vehicle was a blue Chevy HHR that, according to a form that I found in the bag, had been inspected by someone named Otis. I had seen one or two of these cars before, but they were still an oddity if March of 2006. I was not impressed. It had no pickup at all.
You can have the HHR.
We found our way to the Hampton Inn in Kearny Mesa. By then it was nearly 11:00, which was 2AM Enfield time. I had never had a bad experience checking in at a Hampton Inn. This clerk was unenthusiastic, but he seemed competent. We told him that Delta would be delivering our luggage, or at least we hoped so.
We quickly went to sleep, but for once we hoped to be disturbed during the night.
A 25-mile drive from Kearney Mesa.
Friday March 24: The bags were delivered at 1AM. They appeared to be in no worse shape than when we had checked them.
All Hampton Inns provided a free breakfast buffet. Sue likes to go to restaurants for breakfast, but the selection at this hotel was pretty good. This was a good deal for people who can tolerate plastic silverware and are not picky about how their eggs are cooked. I had scrambled eggs and biscuits, fruit, and cereal. The setting was very elegant by Hampton Inn standards.
Our plan for the day was to visit the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park3. The name was slightly misleading. Although the park was affiliated with the zoo, it was located in the San Pasqual Valley east of Escondido. It was thirty miles north of the zoo.
We had a very beautiful day for our visit—74 degrees and sunny. We drive north through a naval air base and then east through the back country. We drove by an ostrich farm, which was a first for me, and a few places where visitors were allowed to pick their own oranges.
The park was huge. It covered 1,700 acres! The animals at the park were not, for the most part, kept in cages. Rather they were kept in groups in areas that resembled each one’s natural setting. The easiest way to see a lot of animals fairly quickly was to take the monorail4, a two-car open-air train that made a clockwise circuit around the entire park.
The park was not too crowded. We picked up a map of the park and a list of the shows and their times. We also picked up pamphlets that described two sections of the park, Heart of Africa and Condor Ridge. The former contained the vegetarian animals that resided on the savannas. The latter contained animals from North America.
There were a few empty seats on the monorail. We took Frommer’s advice and sat on the right. The trip lasted a little less than an hour. Each train had a guide who explained over the intercom what area of the park we were passing and what animals were visible. In a few cases she needed to direct our attention where some of them were hiding.
The train ride was great fun. We saw three separate types of rhinos. At one point the guide told us about some kind of Japanese animal that was in a culvert directly beneath the train. We passed through lots of different terrains. We even saw mountain goats and bighorn sheep in the Condor Ridge section, a bonobo playing with a basketball, and a giraffe doing the splits in the Heart of Africa.
We could see a balloon ride that we did not take. There were also trucks that you could ride in. Their main purpose was to feed the animals, but visitors could pay to tag along.
My most distinctly remembered experience occurred near the end of the monorail ride. The guide told us to be very quiet as we were approaching a new exhibit. She warned us not to make noise, because it might disturb one of the park’s newest resident, a bobcat. We need not have worried; I doubt that any noise we made would have disturbed a loader manufactured by the Bobcat company.
After the monorail ride ended we stopped for some food. We purchased an apple, banana, muffin, a bag of $4 potato chips and a $4 glass of Diet Coke. I also got a refill for only $1. In 2006 these prices were outrageous.
I think that we walked up to Condor Ridge, which is in the northeast corner of the park. My notes say that we saw a bald eagle, some prairie dogs, and a porcupine.
Somewhere in the park we saw all of the following. I probably took photos of all of them.
Gorillas being fed some oranges.
A hummingbird and a bustard.
A sleeping warthog.
A meerkat colony. One was on guard; the rest were underground.
A bird show. I wrote: “Pete and girls. Forgot about the parrot act.”
An elephant show with two performing pachyderms, Mary and Cookie. The trainer’s name was Brittany.
“Poop from egret.”
I loved the Wild Animal Park even more than I had loved the San Diego Zoo six years earlier.
We ate supper.at the Pampas Bar and Grill5 in SanDiegoVille. Our waiter was named Pedro. I ordered a ribeye and mashed potatoes. Sue had a strip steak with sauce and rice. The vegetables were understandably meager. Argentinians are notoriously carnivorous. A guy played the guitar and a harp while we were dining.
The vacation was off to a great start.
Saturday March 25: The plan was to spend the entire day in San Diego. The weather cooperated. It was around 70 all day long, and it was sunny.
We ate breakfast in the hotel again. I had sausage and scrambled eggs, with biscuits, fruit, and cereal. The baseball team from Westmont College in San Diego was in the dining room at the same time as we were. Their uniforms had maroon trim. They reminded me of UMass’s colors. I had stayed at many Hampton Inns. I had never seen a breakfast area so crowded. Sue and I had to eat at little table.
The next line of my notes says: “Convoy St. Target: _______. Big dip to get in. Drove past Home Depot Expo Center.” I am not sure what to make of this. There is a Target in Kearney Mesa, but in 2023 it is on Othello St. There is a Home Depot Design Center in San Diego, but it is not near the hotel or Target.
Balboa Park was our first touristy destination of the day. The park’s website calls it, “San Diego’s ever-changing, always amazing, 1,200-acre back yard.” I distinctly remember having trouble finding a parking space along the side of the road. Several women were reserving spaces for their husbands. When I finally found one I had difficulty maneuvering the HHR into it. It was quite a bit larger than my Saturn, and the visibility was not as good.
El Prado.
The main thoroughfare, which is reserved for pedestrians, in Balboa Park is El Prado. The notes describe it as “very nice”, and the photos that I found on the Internet certainly confirmed that. On both sides of it were museums, hotels, restaurants, and other elegant places.
The notes state:
Railroad museum. Wooden trestle bridge. Imperial valley. Junkyard dog. Barrel falling off of truck. Pushing truck uphill.
I assume that the first two words referred to the Model Railroad Museum that was located in the basement of the Casa de Balboa building on El Prado. Although a flyer from the museum was in the Sand Diego Opera bag, I don’t remember anything about it.
Sue had her own N scale model train layout that she constructed on the ping pong table in our basement in Enfield. Someone bought a Lionel train set for me when I was very young. My dad and Joey Kuchel set it up in the basement when my family lived in Kansas City, KS.
Evidently we saw all of the following somewhere in Balboa Park: “Palm reader, bicycle taxi, guitar and flute.” None of these references rings a bell. I distinctly remember not getting my palm read in San Diego or anywhere else.
I did not find a flyer from the Natural History Museum, but we must have gone there. We saw a movie about Baja California and a skeleton of an allosaur.
I reported “lots of interactive stuff for the kids.” Don’t ask me what “Dave in white coat in bathroom” referred to.
I have no notes about the tram that went around the park. It was free, and I found a flyer for it, so there is a good chance that we rode on it for a while.
Try to imagine the Moreton Bay Fig Tree with seventeen less years of growth. That is what we saw.Our next stop was at Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. I probably had some very striking memories of this stunning location, but all that I wrote was, “Sucking face. Woman with cigarette”.
I found handwritten directions to Old Venice Restaurant on the back of an advertising piece from Avis that was in the bag. We ate a pizza and a very good salad for supper there. The pizza had prosciutto, chicken and basil. The notes stated that the restaurant was near Shelter Island, which is really a long peninsula.
I remarked in the notes that the people in the restaurant were too good-looking. We ate our supper on a wobbly table outside. Darren was the waiter’s name. I didn’t record the amount, but I am pretty sure that I left a tip.
When we left the restaurant I noticed a small ding on the passenger side of the HHR. Dings on rental cars can be costly. I had to hope that Otis had made a note of it when he inspected the vehicle or that whoever inspected it when we turned it in was equally negligent.
I forgot to bring the good map that I had ripped out of Frommer’s in 2000. I found myself on Rosecrans road and couldn’t figure out how to get on the freeway. I also ran a red light. The notes did not state whether the malfeasance was accidental or deliberate.
Another great day!
Sunday March 26: The plan was to drive to La Jolla, Coronado Island, and Old Town in San Diego. I wonder how much I used the Frommer’s book to select the itineraries. My choices do not closely agree with “Frommer’s favorite San Diego experiences.”
Sue might disagree, but I found the weather to be less than perfect. Clouds kept the temperature in the sixties all day. That’s light-jacket weather for me.
We had the usual breakfast at the Hampton—eggs and biscuits, fruit, and cereal. They also generally provided at least two kinds of juices and plenty of coffee.
We stopped at Target again. This time we picked up some two-liter bottles of Diet Cokes and some snacks. These items were much cheaper at chain stores than at locations attractive to tourists.
La Jolla was less than ten miles to the west of our hotel. I anticipated that we might have difficulty finding a place to park, but I was wrong.
Sue and I walked down to the beach We saw the aggregation of seals that Denise and I had enjoyed so much in 2000, but the only thing that I wrote about the experience was that the rest rooms were “crummy”. My dim recollection is that it was breezy at the cove.
We walked into town and strolled around for a bit. It seems incredible, but I reported that we could not find the Best Western in which Denise and I stayed. I did take note (and probably photos) of two dachshunds.
We did not take the 26-minute route from La Jolla to Coronado Island that is shown in the map at the left.
We were in no hurry, and so we drove through San Diego down to Chula Vista and then over to Imperial Beach at the south end of San Diego Bay. from there we took the “Silver Strand” up to Coronado.
The notes indicated “6$ at beach”. Maybe that was what I paid for parking. All beaches in California have always been open to the public.
I remember that there were protestors at the incredibly elegant Del Coronado Hotel, but I do not recall what the issue was. We had lunch al fresco. It consisted of leftover pizza from Old Vienna and food that we had purloined from breakfast at the Hampton Inn.
We walked up to the legendary hotel and even went inside. I could not believe how many bellboys they had. I kept waiting for one of them to shout, “Call for Philip Morris.”
Afterwards we stopped at a place called Moo Time Creamery for some ice cream. For some reason we ordered three types of ice cream. The notes stated that Sue really liked the double chocolate and the pear sorbet. I preferred the stracciatella.
Moo Time had a statue of Elvis and another one of a cow. I found a photo on the Internet.
I am surprised that I even tasted the ice cream. It has never been my favorite food, and, if the temperature was only in the sixties, I was probably shivering while I ate it.
From Coronado we drove to Seaport Village, which was on the eastern side of the bay, so that Sue could do some shopping in what its website calls “14 acres of fine waterfront dining, entertainment and world-class shopping in the heart of beautiful San Diego”.
I had difficulty finding a place to park. I must have let Sue off and parked in a lot rather than on the street. The notes said, “Hard to park. Meet at four. Brought Sue the ticket.” I interpret this to mean that I was given a ticket so that the HHR could exit from the lot, that I brought the ticket to Sue, that I planned to mess around somewhere while she shopped, and that we would meet up somewhere at 4PM.
The rest of my notes about Seaport Village were difficult to decipher: “Smoking outside of jewelry store. Arabs. Cat.illacs.” I was evidently impressed by the number of boats in the nearby marina. I also saw quite a few sailboats in the harbor. In 2023 I have no memories of this place, but Sue’s only clear memory of the entire trip was that she bought her favorite earrings there.
From Seaport Village we probably took I-5, which in Southern California is called “The 5”, north to the Old Town section. Old Town is a State Historic Park. The website describes it this way:
Five original adobe buildings are part of the historic park, which include museums, unique retail shops, and several restaurants. The Historic Plaza remains a special place for gatherings and historic activities. Visitors can also experience a working blacksmith shop, enjoy music, see or touch the park’s burros, and engage in activities that represent early San Diego.
I reportedly was very lucky with the parking. The word “Closing” is mentioned in the notes. Perhaps the “unique retail shops” had closed for the day.
We toured the area for a while and then decided to eat supper at Café de Reyes. We ate outside. The weather was perfect for Sue, and I got to sit by the heater. Our waiter was named Daniel, and the busboy was Jorge. The clientele seemed to be equally divided between Mexican-Americans and gringos. There were free tables when we arrived, but it got pretty crowded after we sat down.
For an appetizer we ordered quesos fundidos, which was a plate of goat’s cheese and sausage. The notes indicated that I had “combination #1 and a very large margarita.” The combinations are no longer numbered on the restaurant’s online menu, and so I cannot say what it contained, but I did call the supper “very nice”.
The notes also specified a “lady making tortillas with scrunched-up shoulders.” It didn’t specify whether she worked for the restaurant or not. I assume that, despite the word order, the shoulders belonged to the lady, not the tortillas.
When we returned to the hotel we were both dead tired. Sue contacted Marva by phone or email. We saw commercials on television for Congress to replace Duke Cunningham, who had resigned in 2005 for taking bribes from military contractors.7
We also learned that although the UConn men lost, the women won.
Monday March 27: This was the zoo day. For photos of animals (including the pandas) from the trip in 2000 look here. The weather was beautiful until about 1:30PM. It became chilly after that.
My breakfast at the Hampton was sausages with cold hard biscuits supplemented by fruit and cereal. The notes indicated that I took photos of the grounds around the Hampton. You will need to imagine the basketball goal and what the “Shriner stuff” might have been.
The zoo was located in Balboa Park. By this time I was familiar enough with the area that the drive there was a stress-free experience. We arrived at about 10:00. I parked the HHR near the sidewalk between aisle 4 and 5. From there it was an easy walk to the entrance. We did not need to stand in line because we already had tickets.
We made a beeline for the panda exhibit. There was no line at all. We got to see the six-year old that had been a baby for my first visit as well as the parents.
We then took the moving sidewalk up to the polar bear exhibit. Only one of them was out, but he put on a show for us. I remember that half of the exhibit was water, and you could easily see the bears when they went for a swim.
We got a bird’s-eye view of the park from the Skyfari ride. It had been included in the price of the combo (Zoo plus Wild Animal Park) tickets that we had bought. Denise and I did not do this. My recollection is that she was not good with heights.
When we were back on terra firma we walked down to visit the tortoises. One of them appeared to be horny. After that Sue went into the lizard and reptile mesa; I think that I stayed and took more photos of the amorous tortoises. We both then spent a little time in the reptile house.
We then went to see the orangutans in their new home. The notes indicated that I took good pictures of the baby. It was painful to write the last sentence. I have got to find those photos.
We ate lunch in the Treehouse Cafe, which was definitely aptly named. The photo at the right provided a good indication as to how hilly the zoo was. I ate a chicken Caesar salad with some chips and coke. Sue had clam chowder in a bread bowl and chocolate layer cake.
While we were eating the temperature dropped like a rock. The notes do not indicate whether I brought a jacket, but I probably did.
The gorilla enclosure allowed us to be within just a few feet of the mighty apes. The notes indicated that I was very impressed with the size of the silver-back’s thighs.
We next saw the hippo, but I was unable to snap any good pictures. The water was too dirty.
The flamingos did what flamingos do.
I think that the “express bus” that we took was similar to this one. The park now has a Kangaroo Bus that is a double-decker.
We then took the zoo’s express bus from stop 3 to stop 4 so that we could see the giraffes and the other hoofed animals. One of the giraffes was only two days old, but it was already pretty steady on its feet.
Sue was disappointed that we never saw any meerkats. We viewed their exhibit from three separate vantage point, but they all stayed in their burrow. It was a good thing that we had seen the sentinel at the Wild Animal Park. If not, she might have insisted on extending our stay in San Diego until she saw one.
We reportedly saw all of the following:
A horny wallaby.
Bactrian camels.
Some very active koalas.
Both Asian and African elephants drinking from a fountain.
Llamas.
Pigs.
Capybaras
At least one tapir..
A peacock that had flown up on a roof.
Quite a lot of topiary.
Imperial Mandarin restaurant.
We enjoyed supper with Marva at the Imperial Mandarin Chinese restaurant. I had wonton soup and spareribs. Sue also had wonton soup and moo shu pork, which was apparently a specialty of the Imperial Mandarin.
One of the rear doors on Marva’s car did not work. After noting this fact I included the phrase “Simply Marvalous”.
We drove to the Black Angus steakhouse for drinks. The bartender’s name was Ryan. I had Scotch on the rocks. The notes stated that someone had a lemon-drop martini. I have a hard time believing that it was Sue. She usually ordered a Scotch if I did.
It is telling that the notes included absolutely no mention of the conversations. Either I was not paying attention, or I figured that I would remember it without prompting.
I must have had only one Scotch. I managed to pilot the HHR back to the Hampton without any difficulty.
Tuesday March 28: The original plan was to go to Sea World. However, it rained lightly all night long. By morning it looked pretty good, but the forecast was for rain all day, or at least all afternoon. We therefore decided to skip Sea World. The new plan was to make return trips to Balboa Park and Old Town.
For breakfast we ate egg pizzas (that’s what the notes said), fruit, and cereal.
This time we had no problem parking in Balboa Park. We saw busloads of kids and also witnessed a group of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans in blue warm-up suits.
I do not know what to make of the phrase “Bridge over Park Rd.” There is a famous bridge in Balboa Park, and there is a Park Blvd., but the one does not go over the other.
We saw a cactus garden and a rose garden. I also noted a pair of sneakers in a tree.
The people in the park that day were interesting. I saw a guy with a flag, and I overheard another guy who said, “I should have shot him again. I should have shot him four times.”
We visited the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, and I picked up a daily schedule there and a flyer for an IMAX film about Greece. There was quite a bit of interactive stuff for kids in the area of the museum called Kid City. A few of the devices appeared to be broken. We watched a presentation on television entitled “Origins in Space”. It was about NASA and particularly the Hubble Space Telescope.
I don’t know why the word “Einstein” was included in the notes.
Sue and I enjoyed a cappuccino at Galileo’s Café inside the center and then watched an IMAX movie called “Greece: Secrets of the Past”. In the theater there you lean back and watch the film on a dome. I don’t think that this was a particularly useful way to learn about Greece’s past.
The statue of El Cid did not look much like Charlton Heston.
We saw a Venus flytrap, among many other species, in the Botanical Museum.
We walked past the Mingei International Museum, which promoted folk art and crafts from around the globe. We did not go inside.
We drove to Old Town again for a late lunch. We had tacos and a burrito at the Alamo Mexican Cafe. It got quite chilly. Sue wrote postcards, and I mailed them. The notes stated, “Alamo closed up.” I interpret this to mean that the patio area was closed because of the weather.
On our way to the car we found a store that was offering 50-65% off the regular price. The notes did not say what they were selling or whether we went in.
We drove back to the Hampton and took a nap so that Sue could stay awake during the opera, and I could prevent cartoon characters from appearing in the last act, as they had during the performance that Denise and I attended.
This time the San Diego Opera was presenting on a performance of Carmen by Georges Bizet. Both Sue and I had seen traditional productions of this opera several times. I owned a CD of the opera that used Bizet’s original version that included dialogue, not recitative. Every performance that I had seen had used recitative, which, in my opinion blunted the impact of Carmen’s personality.
We also had season tickets for the Hartford Stage Company when Mark Lamos, the director, was the artistic director. Both of us were quite sure that his Carmen would not be a traditional one, and we were right. The program for the opera contains 56 pages, but there is not a word about the production. The setting had been moved from Spain to an unnamed Latin American country and from the late nineteenth century to the thirties or forties. This really did not impact the arc of the story line much. Of course, gypsies were rare in Latin America, but it was not that hard to suspend disbelief. The famous Anvil Chorus did not seem anachronistic in this environment.
All performances of Carmen were sold out, but the two seats next to me were empty and at least one woman seated near us left after the first act.
I don’t remember whether I enjoyed the performance or not. The only detail that I remember was that one guy in the audience wore shorts. If it had been the dialogue version I feel certain that I would have mentioned it. The review in my notes was terse: “Liked Micaela. Good chorus. Great acoustics.”
It took a very long time to maneuver the HHR out of the parking garage. That’s often part of the price one pays for attending one of the ABC operas.
Back at the Hampton we enjoyed a late supper of leftovers consisting of moo shu pork and combination #1.
Wednesday March 29: When I traveled to the West Coast on business, I always returned on an overnight (“red-eye”) flight. The times of our return flights were not specified in the notes, but we obviously spent most of the day getting from San Diego to Enfield.
I woke up with quite a bit of energy and decided to go for a run. After a few minutes it started to sprinkle, and I returned to the hotel.
Since getting food is always somewhat dicey on airplanes and in airports we decided to treat ourselves to a full breakfast at the Spice House Café.9 It was less than a mile from the hotel. We had veggie frittatas and “gyros meat”, which I presume was lamb The portions were enormous. The very nice waitress, whose name I did not record, kept the coffee flowing. It rained quite hard during breakfast, but then it cleared up.
We returned to our room at the Hampton Inn, packed our things into the HHR, and checked out. Sue, needless to say, brought leftovers.
I stopped for gas at an Arco station. The pump wouldn’t accept my ATM card10 for some reason. I went to a nearby Chevron station that accepted the card. We then drove to the airport and returned the HHR to Avis. Either they did not notice the ding, or they didn’t care.
The notes said, “Raining in Salt Lake City.” So, we evidently changed planes there. I had been in that airport at least once before, but it is the only place in Utah that I have visited. The other states that I have missed (as of 2023) are Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, and Alaska.
We ate leftovers from breakfast on the flight from Salt Lake City to Bradley. There was plenty of time for Sue to watch a movie. She did not ordinarily like science fiction, but maybe “Aeon Flux” with Charlize Theron was the only thing that was available. I worked on sorting and editing my photos, the B4 deck11, the notes, and playing bridge on Bridge Baron.12
Both our bodies and our luggage arrived at Bradley International intact. It was probably pretty late; we lost three hours in the air. I called Executive Valet, and they sent their bus to bring us to their lot.
As always, my Saturn13 was running and parked near the door of the office. It was a little disconcerting that the “Service engine soon” light was on.
No trip was over until we verified that the cats were OK. As the Saturn entered the driveway we saw a grey tiger-striped cat in the yard. This was not a good sign; he was not one of ours. Woodrow, as expected, greeted us as soon as we went through the door. He showed me that there was no cat food left in the gravity dispenser. I poured some into the metal plate that the cats ate from.
Giacomo made an appearance the next morning. The entertaining and exciting trip to San Diego was officially completed.
1. Sue was married (but estranged) when I met her in 1972. Her father-in-law, Chick Comparetto, lived in Enfield about a mile from our house. He looked after our cats on most of our big trips. His obituary can be found here.
2. At the height of its popularity AirTran operated 700 flights per day, many of them passing through Atlanta. It was acquired in 2011 by Southwest Airlines.
3. The park was renamed San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 2010.
4. In 2010 the monorail was replaced by a set of wheeled vehicles with similar capacity.
5. The restaurant closed in 2019 after twenty years in business.
6. Give the kid a break. His parents could not find the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.
7. Are you surprised to learn that he was pardoned in the waning moments of the Trump administration?
8. You do not need to go to San Diego to be entertained by the zoo’s polar bears. You can watch them on polar-cam.
9. The Spice House Café closed its doors for good in December of 2018. It had been in business for twenty-six years.
10. Perhaps the most puzzling thing in all of the notes is the fact that I used an ATM card to buy gas rather than a credit card. By that time I paid for everything with credit cards in order to amass points. I had separate American Express Cards for Hilton and Delta. I had used them to earn enough points to cover most of the costs of this trip.
11. I can’t be certain, but this probably refers to a deck of flash cards that I created for quizzing myself on Italian vocabulary. The English words were sorted alphabetically, one card per word; the Italian word or words were on the back. The B meant that deck contained English words that started with the letter B. They were sorted alphabetically. The 4 meant that this was the fourth deck. There were at least ten thousand cards in total. I went through the entire set of decks more than ten times.
12. Bridge Baron was a terrific software product that facilitated the learning of bridge, both play and conventions. I had Bridge Baron15 on my laptop. The last version of the software that could be installed on your computer and run without the Internet was Bridge Baron29. In 2023 the app Bridge Baron Gold is still for sale.
13. The Saturn lasted until the end of the year. I traded it in for a beautiful sapphire-blue 2007 Honda Accord coupe.
Preparation: For several years I have maintained a spreadsheet that contained one line per bridge partner. I only kept track of ones with whom I had played at least one complete session at a sanctioned game. I also had bookmarked the ACBL’s web page that contained the records of club games. However, when I started working on this entry, I was disappointed to discover that the link no longer worked. So, I have needed to rely on my memory more than I hoped.
This document contains stories about partnered with whom I played several times. Part 2 (posted here) describes the ones that I met through the mentoring program or the High-Low game on Sundays and people that I only played with once or twice.
The HBC: The Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) was founded in 1931. It is the oldest continuously operating bridge club in North America. Its headquarters since October 1995 has been at 19A Andover Drive in West Hartford. I played my first game at the club and became a member on January 1, 2008. My partner that afternoon was Dick Benedict (introduced here), with whom I had been playing on Wednesday evenings at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) for several years. At the time the club was charging $30 for a membership. The table fee was $5 for members and $6 for others. At the time I had only been playing in Simsbury. I joined the HBC because I had been asked to play in the games it ran on Tuesday evenings and Saturday afternoons. So, I figured that if I kept to that schedule all year1, it would be a good dealT
Tom Gerchman.
The person who asked me to play was Tom Gerchman. In preparation for playing with him I taught myself thirteen conventions that I had found in a book by William S. Root and Richard Pavlicek. I also bought Michael Lawrence’s CD about 2/1 (pronounced “two over one”), the set of bidding principles used by most players at the HBC and at tournaments. He had played 2/1 with his previous partner, Mary Witt2, and I eventually persuaded him to play it with me as well. At this point I knew enough conventions to be comfortable playing with nearly any new partner.
Tom drove a red BMW convertible. Between 2008 and 2023 he has purchased several new cars. Each one was a red BMW convertible. The license plate was GERCH. On trips he liked to drive, but the back seat was uninhabitable. If we were playing in a team game, the BMW was not big enough to hold four people. He borrowed his mother’s car.
I soon discovered that Tom wanted to play with me because Mary had resigned from their partnership. She wasn’t angry at him; she just did not like sitting across the table from him. I learned this when Tom and I played in a knockout with Mary and Ruth Tucker3 as teammates in the regional tournament in Danbury, CT. We made it to the semifinals of our bracket. After we had been eliminated Tom kept telling Ruth, “I got you gold!”
That evening the four of us went out for supper. I learned at that meal that Ruth had been a small child in Nazi Germany during the Kristallnacht in 1938. She was surprised that I knew quite a bit about the event. I had read about it when I had researched the backgrounds of two popes4, Pius XI and Pius XII, who had both been in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. Tom had never heard of it.
For quite some time I enjoyed playing with Tom for several reasons. The first was that he liked to go to tournaments, and so did I. In addition, he was still working5, which meant that he could only play in evening games, and on weekends and holidays. That schedule conformed to mine. However, he was an avid golfer. So, in nicer weather he played less bridge. I also like the fact that he was not averse to learning new conventions. Bidding has always been my favorite aspect of the game.
At the SBC Tom occasionally played with his mother, Sue. He was sometimes pretty hard on her when she made mistakes. Wen she died in 2012 (obituary here) I was still playing regularly with Tom, and I went to her wake. I was the only bridge player who attended, but a number of Tom’s golf buddies were there.
After the evening games Tom and a small group of the other players went to the Corner Pug in West Hartford to discuss the hands and drink. Tom might have eaten a very late supper. I don’t think that he cooked, and he was not married.
It took me a while to realize it, but Tom definitely was obsessive-compulsive in some ways. For example we played together on two separate days at the NABC held in Boston in 2008. I discovered that he had memorized in terms of minutes how long it took to get to the site of the tournament from several spots on the route. Furthermore, on the day that I drove I let him off to register us while I parked the car. He insisted that I must park in precisely the same spot that he had used on the previous day. Just to be peevish I parked in the same spot, but one floor lower.
On that occasion we played in an Open Swiss with a pair from the partnership desk. We won our first round against a team from Connecticut. After that it was one humiliating defeat after another. Our teammates were upset at us. We beat a hasty retreat after the last round.
I heard from Mary Witt that Tom read the Hartford Courant every morning and always started with the obituaries. She also said that he had a huge stack of old newspapers in his house. I never went to his house, and so I cannot verify this.
Tom was much more obsessed with the scores than I was. He was pretty hard on me at club games, but he very seldom talked during rounds at tournaments. He also stayed after club games and audited the scores. He once told me that he loved to check calculations. He confided once that he should have been an auditor.
I was still playing with Tom at the time of my Life Master parties at the HBC and the SBC in early 2010. I remember that he gave a little speech at the HBC in which he talked about my habit of sending him emails about what I thought we could have done to do better in the previous game. In my acceptance speech I thanked every single partner that I had had at that point. I thanked Tom for teaching me “that in a six-team Howell, you don’t play against the pair that you follow and the pair that follows you.”
I don’t have any great memories of playing with Tom. We did not do very well at most tournaments. Eventually, I stopped playing with him. I just could not stand the fact that he said and did the same things over and over and over and over. He also talked about the hands too much in club games while we were still playing. I found myself pounding the steering wheel while driving home after playing with him. Fifteen years later I still react negatively to the sound of his voice.
Actually, I quit twice. After the first time he persuaded me to try again. It took me very little time to realize that he was never going to change. I quit again.
I still teamed up occasionally with him for team games. We had much better results when I did not have to sit across from him.
Tom invited me and Sue to the party that he threw for himself on his sixtieth birthday. It was at a restaurant on the west side of town. He was celebrating the fact that he had survived that long. Apparently both his only brother and his father had died from heart attacks when they were in their fifties.
Michael Dworetsky.
After my partnership with Tom was dissolved, on most Tuesday evenings I played with Michael Dworetsky. He had been playing for quite a while before I returned to the world of bridge, but he had only occasionally played in tournaments. I never was quite sure why he had avoided tournaments before I began playing as his partner.
I have several vivid memories of playing with Michael. We drove to a sectional in Johnston, RI, and did well enough to finish first in the C Flight in the afternoon session of the Open Pairs. As the director read the results, I said to Michael, “Let’s see how he does with our last names.” He butchered both of them.
The most catastrophic mistake of my bridge career occurred in the penultimate round of the Flight C qualifying tournament for the Grand National Teams (GNT). We were definitely in contention when Michael made a Help Suit Game try by bidding 3♣. I needed to bid 4♠ if I thought that we could take ten of the thirteen tricks or 3♠ if not. I considered all that I knew about the hand and finally decided that we probably did not have enough. Unfortunately, I did not bid 3♠, I mistakenly passed, leaving Michael in a ludicrous club contract.
I played with Michael when he made Life Master in a sectional in Westchester County. He drove us into New York City to a deli to celebrate. I had a Reuben sandwich; he had pastrami. We had a great time, but it cost him a fortune to park the car.
He almost always drove us to tournaments. On one occasion I spilled some coffee on the rug in his car. He did not yell at me, but I knew he was upset. He had a very nice car. It was the first that I had ever been in that had a both a built-in GPS and a hand-free telephone.
One of the best calls that I ever made in bridge was when Michael and I played against two ladies, one of whom needed to win the match in order to make Life Master. I opened 1♠, the lady overcalled 2♥, Michael doubled, indicating that he had a pretty good hand with clubs and diamonds. I had six spades, five hearts that included two honors, a club, and a diamond. I passed. We took the first nine tricks. She was down four for 1100 points. She did not make Life Master that afternoon.
I gave a little speech at Michael’s Life Master party. It might have been the best speech that I ever gave. It was not as effective as Urban II’s call for a crusade in 1096, but mine got more laughs. I began by claiming that Michael was a founding member of the club in 1931. I also mentioned the hole in the sole of one of his shoes.
Michael and I played together at the NABC in the summer of 2013. I posted my recollections of this adventure here. We also flew down to the Gatlinburg Regional Tournament in Tennessee in 2013. I took notes and posted them here. We won a knockout and a lot of masterpoints there.
The house in Bloomfield in which Michael lived with his wife Ellen was struck by lightning. Eventually they moved to Palm Beach Gardens, FL, but I have seen Michael at bridge tournaments in New England a few times. He usually was playing with a teaching pro named Bob Lavin.
Dan Koepf.
The nicest person whom I ever met was Dave Landsberg. When I started playing on Tuesday evenings, Dave was playing regularly with Dan Koepf. I invited them to team up with Jerry Hirsch and me in Flight C of the GNT event one year. They accepted, and we did quite well. I then wrote to both of them to ask if either one wanted to play in a tournament with me. Dave responded positively, and we were partners and good friends right up until his death (obituary here) in 2016. In fact, he was planning on playing with me in the Cape Cod Senior Regional the week that he died. I wrote up my experiences at that tournament, including my thoughts about Dave, and posted them here.
Dave was on the HBC’s Board of Trustees, and I was not. I once asked him what the BoT meetings were like. He told me that at that time there was a big controversy over toilet paper. He said that the women on the board were complaining that the toilet paper in the ladies’ room was too flimsy. Dave informed me that his position was that we should give them better paper, but it was only fair that they should agree to pay higher table fees. I laughed for several minutes.
Dave and I won a couple of events together. The most memorable one was in Cromwell, CT, when Dave played with Kay Hill, and I played with Ginny Iannini (introduced here). I posted a photo6 of us on the District 25 website, NEBridge.org, as I did the winners of all events at D25’s regionals. When Dave’s wife Jackie saw the photo of Dave and Ginny side-by-side, she told him that he could not play with her again. When Dave told me this, we both broke out laughing. However, it made me wonder why Sue never complained about me playing with Ginny.
Pat Fliakos.
I was playing with Dave and three other people when I set the world standard for captaining a five-person team in a sectional Swiss in Auburn, MA. We were playing with Pat Fliakos,7 one of Dave’s regular partners, and a pair that we picked up at the partnership desk, Charlie Curley (introduced here) and Mike Colburn. Since Mike and Charlie were regular partners, I assigned them to play all eight rounds. Pat and Dave would play six rounds, four together and two each with me. I would play the middle four rounds. This would allow me to leave early and mow the lawn, which needed it badly. When I departed, our team’s score was slightly above average, but in my absence my four teammates won both of the last two rounds, defeating the best team in attendance in the last round. We finished third overall and first in B and C.
The accident occurred between Worcester and Springfield.
The grass did not get mowed. On the trip home my 2007 Honda was rear-ended on the Mass Pike by someone driving a rental car. I did not yet have a cellphone, but he did. He did not speak English very well, but I did. So I called 911 on his phone. After about twenty minutes a state trooper appeared. After a few minutes he told me that he had given the other man a ticket for following too closely. I already had his insurance information; he had Progressive. So, I just drove home.
A few days later a Progressive adjuster examined my car and assessed the cost to fix a small dent on one bumper at $1500. I later was contacted by someone from Avis, who had rented the car to the other driver. They said that they would accept Progressive’s assessment and asked me to settle for $2,000. I spelled my name for them, and gave them my address. The check arrived a few weeks later. Four or five years later I traded in the car. I never considered getting it fixed.
Dave’s Life Master party at the HBC was shared with Sue Rudd (introduced here). I told the above story (minus the car crash and insurance). I balanced it with the tale of the first sectional in Hamden, CT, in which Dave and I competed as partners. We finished dead last in both the morning and afternoon session. I have never heard of anyone who could match that performance.
The best time that I spent with Dave was when the two of us dined at an Italian restaurant in Hyannis, MA. I recall that I ordered the Bolognese and a glass of wine. The food was good, and the conversation was better. For some reason it was very easy to talk to and to listen to Dave. By the time that we left, we had solved the most serious of the world’s problems.
I went to Dave’s wake and the ceremony for him at Wesleyan, where he had worked. When I met Jackie, I told her that Dave really loved her. I was certain of this because he never rolled his eyes when he talked about her. I really miss him.
A photo of Dave is in the Felix Springer section of this entry.
Peter Katz and I started playing together on Saturdays and Tuesday evenings after I stopped playing with Tom Gerchman. In 2023 I still played with him whenever the HBC had a game on Saturday. We had one great showing in August of 2023, which I have documented here.
Earlier in our partnership Peter and I played together in a few sectionals that were held in the Hartford area. At one of them we happened to have the last sitout in the afternoon session, which meant that we could go home early. Before we left we picked up hand records for that session. It did not take us long to realize that some of the hands that we played did not correspond to the ones on the printout. We reported this to the director, Tim Hill. He did not tear his hair out, but I am pretty sure that I saw his bow tie spinning around.
How could this have happened? Some directors like to play “web movements” when an awkward number of pairs are playing. If, for example, thirty-eight pairs are playing, the standard way to play it would be to have two sections, one with ten tables and one with nine. Both sections would be playing nine three-board matches. Each pair would only play against nine of the other thirty-seven pairs. A web movement would allow for one very large section playing fourteen two-board rounds. This requires two identical sets of boards, and they must be handled precisely correctly, but the directors who do this are very reliable about setting them up correctly.
In this case, however, the directors were not at fault. The two sets of boards were NOT identical. I don’t know how they were able to score this, but they eventually did. The directors definitely earned their salary that day.
When I first began playing with Peter he was something of a local celebrity. He and his wife (whom I never met) attended all of the home games of the Hartford University men’s and women’s basketball teams. Peter wore outrageous wigs to the games. I never met his wife, and I only saw photos of him in his super-fan getup.
At some point in the teens the couple got divorced, and Peter stopped attending the games. The marriage must have been stressful on him. He mellowed out quite a bit after the divorce.
At first Peter and I played a version of 2/1 that was not much different from what I had played with Tom Gerchman. At some point Peter began playing on Tuesdays with one of the best players at the club, Tom Joyce. They played a version of the Kaplan-Sheinwold weak 1NT system. I agreed to learn this and play it on Saturdays with Peter. That was what we employed in our big game.
Peter served as webmaster for the HBC. In 2023 I began working with him on posting the club’s monthly calendars.
Before the Pandemic I played regularly with Felix Springer. In fact we played together (and won!) in the very last game on March 15, 2020, before the HBC closed its doors for over a year. We also played together at a few tournaments, including a week at the Fall NABC in San Francisco in 2019. We also played together on a large number of very successful teams, but I usually paired with someone else.
Felix shared his Life Master party with Ken Leopold (introduced here). They asked Dave Landsberg and me to be their teammates. Before the play started, Dave turned to me and said, “Did you read their background stories? Why are they playing with us?”
I don’t know, but it was a good idea. We won our first four rounds. In the fifth round, we faced the other unbeaten team. They had at least five times as many points as we did. It was a very close match that turned on one hand. Laurie Robbins, an excellent bridge player, and I were both West holding the same cards. We each had to make a decision similar to the catastrophic one that I had made in the GNT with Michael Dworetsky. Laurie chose to try for game and went down. I settled for the partial.
Donna Feir.
Donna Feir, the longtime club manager, said that it was the only time that she could remember that the honorees won such a game, and also the only time that they were undefeated.
Felix, as president of the HBC, guided the club through the perilous times of the Pandemic. The club had almost no income, and it still had considerable expenses. He kept everyone involved with periodic newsletter, analysis of playing bridge with robots, and walks in the park. Donna confided to me that without Felix the club probably would not have survived.
In 2022 Felix did something that I never would have expected him to do, and it hurt me deeply. The story is related here.
Ann Hudson.
Ann Hudson lived across the river form Enfield in Suffield, CT, with her husband, Randy Johnson. I thoroughly enjoyed playing with both of them. The card that they played was very sophisticated. I must admit that I had a difficult time to remember the modified Manfield responses to an opponents takeout double.
For a few years Ann and I were rather regular partners for the half of the year that Ann and Randy spent in New England. The other half of the year they lived in South Carolina. In 2022 they moved from Suffield to Hadley, MA.
The only times that I got to play at the HBC with Randy were when Ann had to cancel at the last minute. It only happened a few times. He was an exceptionally good player. We played together in the open pairs in the sectional in Great Barrington, MA, one year and won the afternoon session.
Randy Johnson.
I met Ann while I was working at the partnership desk at the NABC in Providence in 2014. After that we played together pretty regularly at sectional, regional, and NABC tournaments and occasionally at the HBC if she could get away from her chores on their mini-farm.
I usually stopped at the McDonald’s on the south side of Hazard Ave. on the way to either their house in Suffield or at the Hampton Inn that was about halfway between us. On one occasion I was sitting in my blue 2007 Honda in the parking lot while I ate my sausage biscuit with egg. I had turned off the Honda’s engine while I ate. I could not get the car to start, and I did not have a cellphone yet. I had to go in to McDonald’s to use someone’s phone to call Sue, and I had to cancel my game with Ann. If was embarrassing. The best thing about Hondas is their reliability. Mine was telling me that it was time for a trade-in, and I listened.
Ann had actually been born in China. Both of her parents were university professors. They brought her to the U.S. when Ann was very young.
In 2015 my wife Sue and I decided to fly to Denver to play in the Fall NABC. Randy and Ann also planned to attend. Ann and I decided to play in two NABC events: the 0-10,000 Swiss and the 5K Blue Ribbon Pairs.
Kathy Rolfe.
Before those events started I picked up a partner for the evening side game, Kathy Rolfe. I had met her at a previous NABC when we were both playing in the lowest level of the Life Masters Event. When we came to her table she asked me if I was related to Vic Wavada in Kansas City, and—get this—she pronounced my name correctly. It turned out that Kathy knew Vic’s wife Theresa very well, and she had mentioned that I played bridge.
Kathy and I finished near the middle in the side game. We probably should have done a little better.
I had arranged to play in the 10,000 Swiss with a woman from Arkansas named Ti Davis.8 I told her that I was 6-feet tall, grey-haired, and skinny, and I would have on my red and blue Barça hat. She was playing with an Asian woman whom she met at the partnership desk. Unfortunately, we were overmatched in the event and only won one or two rounds.
Leonardo Cima.
On the next day Ann and I teamed up with Randy and one of his regular partners to play in an Open Swiss event. In the second round we played against Leonardo Cima and Valerio Giubilo, famous players from Rome. We had a little time to talk with them before the match. They told me that they were both from Roma. I told them that it was “la mia città preferita in Italia.”
Valerio Giubilo.
In the match Giubilo made an incorrect bid on an important hand causing them to miss a slam. Cima gave him a severe dressing-down. During the rest of the match they both spoke impeccable English, but during this post mortem Cima filled the air with Italian curse words.
We won the match, but we did not do well in the event. Giubilo and Cima won over 100 points in the tournament.
In the Mini-Blue Ribbon Pairs Ann and I played as well as we have ever played. I was very excited when we made it to the second day. We played pretty well then as well, but not quite well enough.
I was too intense for Ann in the Super Senior Pairs and Mini-Blue Ribbon Pairs at the NABC in Honolulu, as described here. She was not angry at me; I think that she felt sorry for me more than anything. After the tournament she drove to the airport and drove Sue and me to Enfield. Ann and I have played together in less stressful situations a few times since then.
I played with Michael Varhalamas a few times at the Saturday game at the HBC. I also played with him at least once in a Swiss in a sectional somewhere in Westchester County. I remember that he drove us there in his truck. Our teammates were two women from, I think, New Jersey. I don’t remember their names. Michael made the arrangements.
Twice during the game he bid dicey grand slams that I had to play. I made the first one without too much difficulty. The second one, however, was in the last round and required a squeeze—not my specialty. However, I pulled it off, and we ended up with a very good score.
Michael and his wife eventually moved to Saint Petersburg. Sue and I went to a bridge game there, and my partner, Chris Person, and I played against him in the first round of a pairs game at the local club. On one hand Chris opened 1[Suit x=”C”]. I passed with three or four points and only one or two clubs. Chris had only three clubs; it was a bloodbath. Michael recommended bidding in that situation, but only over 1[Suit x=”C”], not over any other opening bid.
Connie Dube
Before the Pandemic I played fairly regularly at the HBC with Connie Dube ( pronounced DOO bee). I met her when she and Myrna Butler agreed to be teammates with Ken Leopold and me at a regional tournament. They were late for the first round. Helen Pawlowski and Sally Kirtley sat in for them for one or two hands. In case you are wondering, this was definitely not legal. Since Helen told me that Myrna was always late, I did not hold it against Connie.
Connie and I played at a few sectional tournaments. Her availability was quite limited because her husband was suffering from severe chronic illnesses. As of 2023 she has not resumed playing after the Pandemic.
Joan Brault.
At the HBC I have played with Joan Brault quite a few times when one of her regular partners, Mike (really Michele) Raviele or Aldona Siuta, could not play. We have never set the world on fire, but we have played together a few times in 2023.
Paul Pearson and I teamed up with Mike and Joan at a sectional Swiss in the Hartford area. I think that we did pretty well.
She was a very talented artist. She also had a grandson who was a pitcher/outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Over the years I have played with Mary Eisenberg both at the HBC and at a few tournaments. She asked her to help her to get her Life Master designation at an upcoming regional tournament in Danbury, CT. We played together in club games at least twice so that we could accustom ourselves to each other’s styles. One of those was a STaC (Sectional Tournament at Clubs) game that we somehow won. We earned a lot of silver points for that, but Mary still needed a small fraction of a gold point.
Mary asked me to drive us to the tournament. She had apparently been in an automotive accident a few months earlier, and she was still shaky about driving, especially at night. I picked her up at a parking lot at a supermarket near her home. I never did understand why this arrangement was necessary, but I did not question it.
We played in the Golden Opportunity Pairs at the tournament. It was a two-session event limited to players with less than 750 masterpoints. At the time I was within a few points of the limit. So, I was not afraid of any of our competitors. It was safe to say that I had more tournament experience than any of them. Gold points were awarded to players who had a good combined score (known as “overalls”) for the two sessions, but a smaller amount of gold was also awarded to the pairs that finished first (both North-South and East-West) out of the ten in each section of ten tables for each session.
We did very badly in the morning. I remember interfering against a team playing Precision. The player with the strong hand doubled my bid, and it resulted in a four-digit score in the minus column. Mary did not play very well either. Our score was bad enough that we had very little chance of getting one of the overall awards. Mary was very disappointed. She asked me if I wanted to go home. Go home? I hadn’t driven all this way when there was still a chance of achieving the objective. I said that we just had to win our section in the afternoon session, and that was (at least from my perspective) a reasonable goal. If we played as well as well as we had in the STaC game, we would prevail easily.
We did much better in the afternoon. I have always had a pretty good feel for anticipating results. I reckoned that there was a pretty good chance that we might have won. You never knew for certain; someone may have received a lot of “gifts” from their opponents.
During the last round they posted the standings after the penultimate round. We checked it when we finished playing the last round. We were in first in our section, but only by one point. I thought back on the last round. On the first hand one of our opponents had made a grievous error that should have given us a good score. On the second hand we bid to the best contract, but Mary made some mistakes in the play. The third hand was mediocre, but we did avoid possible errors.
It took the directors nearly half an hour to post the final scores. Mary was beside herself with worry. They finally posted the scores. We tied for first place, and so we had to split the gold award with the other pair. Fortunately, that was just enough for Mary to become a Life Master.
On a good day the drive the hotel to Hartford took an hour.
The trip back to Hartford was in a downpour. However, my Honda had good tires, and so I was not much concerned with the water, and I still had pretty good vision for night driving. So, I was going the speed limit. I nonchalantly passed trucks that were going slower. Mary had to hide her face for most of the ride. She was terrified of another accident.
When we got to Hartford Mary could not remember how to get to the parking lot when coming from the west. We drove around for five or ten minutes before she got her bearings. Since I still had a half-hour drive to Enfield, I was annoyed by this.
Some months later the club sponsored a Life Master party for Mary. I gave a short speech that highlighted two aspects of her activities. At the time she often brought baked goods or other goodies to the club. She also cooked professionally. She even cooked for the Archbishop of Hartford for a while!
The other aspect was her fear of driving. I claimed that she had taken up racing on the Formula 1 circuit, and I held up a large picture of her alleged Ferrari. This reference went right over (or maybe under) Mary’s head, but a few people in the audience understood what I was talking about.
I may have played with Eric Vogel at the HBC more often than any other player. He started playing a few years after I did, and he amassed a terrific record. After I played with him a while I realized that he shared my interest in conventions. Together we put together a good card.
We also have played together in tournaments. We won one session of the open pairs at a sectional in Connecticut. That story has been told here. At the Presidential Regional in Southbridge, MA, in 2023 we played in Bracket 2 of the knockout. We won the qualifying Swiss very easily but only finished a very disappointing fourth. That tale of woe can be read here.
Eric is another talented artist. He also became the club’s treasurer in 2022. He has not had an easy time with accrual accounting.
Eric unobtrusively became a vegetarian at some point during our partnership. He certainly was one in 2023, but I remember that he complimented me on my chili at one of the pot-luck lunches at the HBC.
Eric’s daughter died in 2022. I went to the service at his church. His wife gave a very nice tribute.
Partab.
Prior to the Pandemic I was playing at the HBC nearly every Tuesday with Partab Makhijani. I expected to resume playing with him when the club reopened, but he did not return to play. I think that he, like many others, might have health issues.
His LinkedIn page (here) said that he was on the adjunct faculty at the University of Hartford.
Buz.
I met Buz Kohn (LinkedIn page here) when he was playing with his mother Joan occasionally on Tuesday evenings. We have played together several times at the HBC both before and after the club closed for the Pandemic.
Although Buz was as good at playing the cards as anyone he was not very tolerant of conventions. I had trouble getting him to even use a convention card.
Buz was still playing at the HBC in 2023, but I think that he also had a house in Florida.
Sonja Smith was Steve’s mother, and she also had triplet girls. When I began playing at the SBC in 2004, Sonja played there regularly with a partner who subsequently moved away.
We played together at the HBC several time before the Pandemic and once or twice afterwards—including one of the sectionals in 2022—before she and her family moved to the South.
Sonja attended the 2018 NABC in Honolulu. Afterwards she and her husband Chris spent a few days in Maui, as did my wife Sue and I. Sonja, who was staying at a resort hotel a few miles north of our base of Lahaina, invited us to join them on Monday, December 3, for an expensive sunset cruise of Maui’s west coast. I described it in detail here. It turned out to be a booze cruise with very loud music. I did not enjoy it at all.
Jeanne Striefler and her husband Fred invited Sue and me to their house in West Simsbury several times before the Pandemic. Jeanne and I also played together at the HBC several times and played at teams events at nearby sectionals and regionals. She was part of our ill-fated team at the Presidential Regional described in Eric Vogel’s section. She served as the club’s secretary for many years.
Jeanne also played regularly at the SBC both before and after the closure for the Pandemic.
Jeanne was from Omaha, Nebraska. She grew up closer to my old stomping grounds than anyone else in the HBC.
Ron Talbot.
Ron Talbot, who attended Notre Dame, was the president of the HBC for two years. Before the Pandemic I played with him fairly often at the HBC as well as at a few sectionals in Rhode Island. If his partner was male. he wore a baseball cap while he was playing. If female, he was bareheaded.
Ron told me that he walked three miles every morning. I much preferred to do my walking in the evening. He also walked fifty miles in three days on the Appalachian Trail with his children and/or grandchildren. I don’t know if I could have done that.
Ron moved to Naples, FL, before the Pandemic. He has returned to the HBC once or twice.
Trevor Reeves.
Trevor Reeves served as president and then treasurer of the HBC. He implemented the budgeting system that was instrumental in helping to get the HBC through the Pandemic.
I played with him a few times at the club and at tournaments, including an open pairs game at the Summer NABC in Toronto in 2017 in which we were first in our section in the evening session.
Trevor was involved in the GNT difficulty that I described at the end of Felix Springer’s section.
The player with whom I have played for the longest time is my wife Sue. W have played together at the SBC, the HBC, at tournaments, on cruises, and clubs while we were traveling.
Sue’s HBC photo.
Sue had never played bridge when we met in 1972, but she had played a lot of setback, a much simpler trick-taking game, with friends and family members. She had no trouble learning the rules of bridge, but she had a difficult time understanding even the basics of the strategic principles concerning bidding and play.
I vividly remember one of the first times that we played as partners. It was at the house in Wethersfield of friends of ours, Jim and Ann Cochran, who were introduced here. I may have had a gin and tonic or two. It was a friendly game of rubber bridge. Nothing was at stake.
Sue and I got the bid in a suit contract, and Sue had to play it. The hand was not very challenging; all she had to do was to lead a few rounds of trump and then take her winners. Unfortunately, she neglected to take out the trumps before taking her high cards. So, the Cochrans were able to ruff several of her winners, and the contract went down.
Ann helpfully provided Sue with a way of remembering the importance of drawing trumps before attacking side suits. She taught her the old adage, “Get the children off the street!”
A few hands later Sue played another suit contract. She once again forgot about her opponents’ children, and they once again made enough mischief to set the contract.
On the third hand that I witnessed from across the table in my role of dummy, Sue’s failure to draw trumps led to another failed contract, I lost my temper, slammed my fist down, and broke the card table. I would have offered to buy them a new one, but at the time we were, as the British say, skint.
Nearly forty years passed before Sue and I played together at a sanctioned game. She joined the ACBL in 2011, seven years after I did. By the time that she started to play, I was already a Life Master. She blamed me for not warning her that the ACBL had changed the requirements for that rank on January 1 of 2011. The organization increased the number of required points, but they also made available new opportunities for obtaining them.
Over the years Sue and I played together at a few NABC tournaments, two bridge cruises, and at a few clubs in New England and Florida. At first I tried to get her to go over the hands with me after a session of bridge, but she really hated to do so. Our games together did not improve much over the years.
Sue has a lot of trouble with time, and in competitive bridge only seven minutes are ordinarily allotted for each hand. Contributing to this difficult are the facts that she plays—and does every other thing—rather slowly, keeps a very detailed score, and insists on playing North, the position that maintains the official results.
Mary Petit
I remember one Sunday in which we played in the High-Low game at the HBC. By chance I declared more than my usual share of contracts. We finished first! I cannot remember any other occasion on which we enjoyed even a modicum of success.
Sue would like to do better, but she does not have the drive that I have always had to improve one’s game. In short, she never reads books or bridge articles. She sometimes goes over a result sheet, but never with a critical eye.
She participated in the mentoring program once. Her mentor, an experienced player named Mary Petit, offered her some tips. Later Mary asked me why Sue did not use any of them. I knew the answer, but I could not explain it in a way that anyone else could understand. So, I just said, “That’s the way that Sue is.”
Document here are more of my partnerships at North America’s oldest bridge club before it closed for the Pandemic . Partnerships after the reopening are described here.
1. I naturally thought that I had twelve months of play. In fact, however, the year started on October 1 at the HBC. So, I needed to play 25 times in nine months, which I did.
2. I never got a chance to play with Mary Witt before she moved to Cary, NC. I have occasionally communicated with her by email.
3. Several years later Ruth asked me to play with her at the HBC. I remember that I made a mistake of some kind on one hand that prevented us from getting any points. She mentioned that she knew that I was going to do that. Ruth was a good player, but she never made Life Master because she did not like tournaments. She died in 2020 at the age of 86. Here obituary can be found here. Her parents brought her to the United States in 1940.
4. An abbreviated recounting of my long obsession with papal history has been posted here. The chapter of my book about papal history that makes reference to Nazi Germany is posted here.
5. Tom was an actuary, but he never made FSA. In 2023 he was still working part-time at a pension consulting firm called PCI.
6. This photo was unfortunately lost when the server on which NEBridge.org ran had a catastrophic system failure in 2015. I also had a copy of the photo, but I cannot find it.
7. Pat still plays bridge, but she moved to Charlottesville, VA.
8. As it happened, we played against Ti’s team in the semifinals of the Summer NABC in Washington in 2016. Her team won the match and the event. I did not play against her. She and her partner played the same direction as Felix and me.
Saks Inc. division based in Des Moines merged into Carson’s. Continue reading →
I am pretty sure that Younkers contacted TSI about AdDept before the company was absorbed into Proffitt’s Inc. I have a rather vivid memory—not to mention a photograph—of a presentation that I did for them at the IBM office in Des Moines. Since Proffitt’s purchased the company in December of 1996, the starting date in the title is probably accurate. It might have been in late 1995.
The downtown Younkers store was connected by skyways to other downtown buildings in two directions.
Doug Pease accompanied me on the first trip to Des Moines for the demo. We stayed at a Holiday Inn that was just north of the downtown area near Mercy Hospital.
I remember that we went to a basketball game at the Knapp Center on the evening of January 27, 1996. The Drake Bulldogs came into the game with a 6-2 record in the Missouri Valley Conference. However, they were defeated by the Tulsa Golden Hurricane1 79-73. Drake seemed to be a little better overall, but they had only one guy who could dribble through a press, and in the second half when the starter had to be benched because of foul trouble. The freshman (Cory Petzenhauser) whom they inserted at point guard was just humiliated. It was painful to watch.
That defeat started a tailspin for Drake, which ended up with a 12-15 record. The coach resigned in March
The only photo that I have of the people from Younkers was taken at the IBM office. The only person whom I recognize is Roger. He is the guy in glasses in the back row near one of the enormous members of his staff.
Des Moines is legendary as a sleepy town, but I remember that Doug and I actually discovered a bit of night life in an assortment of restaurants and bars that were in a redeveloped area between the river and Younkers’ downtown store at 713 Walnut Street.
The system was not actually installed at Younkers until April of 1998.
The primary players in the AdDept installation at Younkers were the Advertising Director, whose name I think was Joe, and Roger Wolf, who was in charge of the advertising business office.
The Tea Room at Younkers.
My recollections of the details of the installation are few. The headquarters was on an upper floor of the flagship store. The Senior VP of Advertising treated us to lunch in the store’s famous tea room. It was quite elegant.
I think that Younkers bought the AS/400 directly from IBM. I don’t remember where it was kept, and I don’t think that I was required to install it. TSI wasn’t involved in connecting the various devices either.
Roger and Joe came to Enfield for training. I remember that practically everyone in the department except for Roger’s group used Macs. We had to research the availability of terminal emulation software for them. Joe had some very specific ideas about tracking the progress of production jobs. TSI was asked to do quite a bit of customizing of the trafficking programs to realize them.
Long after I posted this entry I discovered this photo of a meeting at PMG in Birmingham. Roger is the second from the left in the shirt with vertical stripes. Steve VeZain of PMG is waving on the right. Beside him is someone named Chris from Younkers. He must have been in charge of the Mac network.
I was not there for the flooding of the Raccoon River in 2003, but some of its effects were still visible years later.
Roger’s group of four or five accounting people was tucked away in a small area that was like a mezzanine up some stairs from the rest of the department. The ceiling was low. Everyone sat in a single row facing the wall. It was very cramped and felt rickety.
Roger was as almost as skinny as I was, but two enormous women also worked up there. I could not help wondering if the support beams for their floor were up to the task. For me it was a hellish place to work. Two people had radios on all day long. One played heavy metal rock; the other was tuned to the rantings of Rush Limbaugh.
My notes from 1999 indicated a peculiarity in the way that Younkers did its accounting:
They have implemented a great many things that have the result of increasing the budget for storewide ads. Some of this is at the expense of merchants, some at the expense of vendors. Roger understands this, but he is not good at articulating it.
Some of these “great many things” were quite difficult to program. Several years after the beginning of the installation Roger’s group was still not using the system to the satisfaction of the corporate people at Saks Inc.2
The rest of Saks Inc. thinks that Roger is a fuddy-duddy and an obstructionist. The PMG3 approach to solving problems is to put pressure on people to solve their own problems. I think this is why Joe quit. They have put a lot of pressure on Roger to give up his overly intricate accounting procedures and get with the program.
At first I too thought Roger was an obstructionist. The last two trips he has made a strong effort to use AdDept. However, he won’t give up his calendar until he is confident that every single number in AdDept’s calendar can be defended. They now have the worst of both worlds. Roger does the calendar in AdDept. He checks every number by hand. Then he gets frustrated and goes back to his manual calendar.
Steve’s4 idea was to send Ivy5 to show Roger how McRae’s does thing. Roger, who is at least as intelligent as Ivy, understands how McRae’s does things. Ivy has no clue how Younkers does things. Another problem is that Ivy is even less articulate than Roger.
I don’t know what the solution is, but it has to come from someone above Roger. Most people think that they are going to fire him. This won’t solve the problem.
They did not fire Roger, but they did try to make him quit. Liz Ewing6 replaced him as manager of the business office, and Roger was demoted to accounting clerk.
On most of my visits I stayed at a hotel that was within walking distance of the Younkers building. My recollection is that it was a Radisson.7 It was very nice, and Younkers had a discount rate. The thing that I liked best about it was that it had a Jacuzzi that was seldom used by the other guests. I found a good park in which to run, and afterwards twenty minutes in the Jacuzzi felt fantastic.
I had several adventures traveling to and from Des Moines. On one afternoon I was flying from Chicago to Des Moines on United. A tornado that was passing through the area forced us to land in Cedar Rapids. The entire story is recounted here.
I made it to the scheduled meetings on time and worked with the users according to the original schedule. Just another day at the office.
The other adventure involved a stop in Kansas City to play golf with my dad. The details have been posted here.
I have two startling memories from Des Moines. The first came when I was working up in the advertising business office. One of the overweight ladies was regaling the rest of us with a tale of an acquaintance of hers who had a foot fetish. He offered to pay her to allow him to suck her toes.
The other one came from Joe, the original Advertising Director who resigned and then was replaced in 2000 by Kristen Gray8. A group of us was having lunch at a restaurant. The topic of conversation was the difficulty of handling teen-aged offspring. I, of course, offered nothing. Joe mentioned that he had once received a telephone call from the police when his daughter had driven a car into a mall. Evidently no one was hurt.
In 2003 Saks Inc. made Younkers part of its Northern division. The offices in Des Moines were closed, and all administrative functions were transferred to Milwaukee. The stores continued to operate with the Younkers name. In March of 2006 the entire division was sold to the Bon Ton.
The downtown Des Moines store was closed in 2005. In 2014 a huge fire consumed the empty building that I knew as the downtown Younkers store.
Any remaining Younkers stores were closed as part of the Bon Ton’s liquidation in 2018.
1. Evidently the coach in 1922 wanted to name the team the Golden Tornadoes, but he discovered that it was already taken by Georgia Tech. So, he changed it to Hurricanes. At lest that’s what it says here. Of course, hurricanes seldom, if ever, bother Tulsa. I don’t know why or when it was made singular.
2. As is explained here, after Proffitt’s Inc. purchased Saks Fifth Avenue, it changed its name to Saks Inc.
3. PMG stands for Proffitt’s Marketing Group, the people at the corporate headquarters in Birmingham who oversaw the advertising departments.
4. Steve VeZain was the person at PMG charged with monitoring the progress of the installations in the various advertising departments.
5. Ivy Klaras worked at McRae’s in the business office. The AdDept installation at McRae’s is described here.
6. Liz Ewing’s puzzling LinkedIn page can be viewed here.
7. There are no Radissons in downtown Des Moines in 2023, The hotel that I stayed in was either sold or destroyed.
