Category Archives: Men

A Song With a Story Sings to Me

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

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the girl with the bow

The girl with the bow. By Julie Seyler.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I have always loved songs that tell a story. Many songs over the years have told simple stories. Thinking back to my childhood, “Silhouettes,” “Leader of the Pack,” and “Society’s Child” come to mind. But I’m not talking here about songs that tell simple stories. I’m talking about songs that could qualify as bona-fide short stories. Harry Chapin was the master of this genre with songs like, “Taxi” and “A Better Place to Be,” and many others.

One of my favorite story songs is one that was a hit for the Dixie Chicks in 2003. It’s a song by Bruce Robison called “Travelin’ Soldier.” Although written in the 1990s, the song is set during the Vietnam War. It’s about a boy, “two days past eighteen,” waiting in his army uniform for a bus that will take him off to war. He walks into a café, and is waited on by, “a girl with a bow in her hair,” who takes his order, and smiles at him because she can see he’s shy and all alone. This encourages him enough to ask her to sit and talk because he’s, “feeling a little low.” She tells him that she gets off in an hour, and she knows a place where they can go and talk. So they go down, and sit on the pier. There, the young soldier asks if he can write to her because, “I got no one to send a letter to.” She agrees and the young man catches his bus. Soon the letters start to come from an army camp in California, and then from Vietnam.

The young soldier pours out his heart to the young girl. He says that he may be in love with her. He also tells her of the things that scare him. He lets her know that when things get, “kinda rough over here,” he thinks of that day sitting on the pier with her. He tells her, “Don’t worry but I won’t be able to write for awhile.”

Of course, the last verse of the song is the most poignant:

One Friday night at a football game
The Lord’s Prayer said and the Anthem sang
A man said folks would you bow your heads
For a list of local Vietnam dead
Crying all alone under the stands Was a piccolo player in the marching band
And one name read but nobody really cared
But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair.

I have to admit that I get a tear in my eye every time I hear the song. “Travelin’ Soldier” was the last hit the Dixie Chicks had. While they were introducing the song at a concert in London on March 10, 2003, lead singer Natalie Maines said that they were ashamed that George Bush was from Texas. Country music stations immediately stopped playing the song, and it dropped from the charts. The Dixie Chicks never recovered from their shunning from the country music community. But their recording of “Travelin’ Soldier” remains a musical work of art.

Remembering a Summer, and the Girl Who Had My Heart

30 Friday Aug 2013

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ronnie 3

BY ANTHONY BUCCINO

It started innocently, as all these stories do. I was on an open-ended summer vacation at Lake Erie. In September, I’d return to New Jersey and my junior year of high school. I’d count the days until I got my driver’s license, and could return to this summer place.

That day, my buddy drove us in his VW Bug to a new shopping center in Mentor where the stores were connected and under one roof. It was the biggest thing to hit northeastern Ohio in 1970 since practically ever. The Ohio kids got their license at 15 – geeze, 15! – if they wanted.

While wandering aimlessly along the cavern of shops, a frantically-waving hand on the other side of the window inside a Friendly’s Restaurant caught our eye. It was my buddy’s neighbor Cyndi, and she was so excited to run into us so far from home. I knew Cyndi, and her mom sitting there, but the new girl – let’s call her Ronnie – caught my eye.

Soon I found myself spending a lot of time at Cyndi’s, and her cousin Ronnie showed up nearly all the time. Evenings, we sat on the front steps listening to the Woodstock album on the eight-track. Ronnie liked listening to the Beatles because they were banned in her house because of something John Lennon said.

As a group, we went practically everywhere. Cyndi drove, and we went here and there, to pick up pop, visit a farm stand, or hit the miniature golf links. And I tagged along with the family to the kid brother’s Little League games at Cederquist Park.

One time, we teenagers got volunteered to work at Cyndi’s church cleaning the ceiling tiles in the kitchen. As long as Ronnie was there, it didn’t matter where there was.

Ronnie and I took walks around the block where Cyndi lived. We were still too shy to hold hands, but we were hanging on every word the other said. We were looking for clues that this summer thing would be a forever thing. Walking and talking with the pretty girl lifted the veil of shyness.

A long distance relationship is fine for a shy guy. At home, you could always defer to your girlfriend hundreds of miles away, and say things like, “Gee, I have to run. I owe her a letter.” And, “I can’t wait until I get back to Ohio to see my girl again.” No one would be the wiser.

But a gal wants someone who’s there. Who can take her to the school dance. Someone she can see in the hallways at school. A guy who’s not too far away to do things with. Long distance phone calls and weekly letters in the mail won’t carry that weight.

It’s been more than forty years since we parted. I’ve had other heartbreaks, but none as permanent as the first. Perhaps our story will become a Lifetime channel movie. We met, lost contact, lived our lives and then one day we each look up at the random table at the random nursing home and see each other again. Of course, I’m wondering if she remembers me, or am I a long-forgotten minor distraction? The music over the closing film credits will be that ’60s Four Seasons song, “I’ll go on living and keep on forgiving, because …” Well, you know the rest.

Is it Ronnie I want to meet in that senior citizens home, or am I deep-down longing to meet myself? Although I’m pushing sixty, inside, much of the time I’m still that sixteen-year-old, wide-eyed, innocent – amazed that a beautiful girl would speak with me. Or leave a burning torch in my soul.

Yep, You Can Start Calling Me Grandpa

29 Thursday Aug 2013

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Frank sonogram

Too soon to spoil?

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

My son told me recently that his new bride is pregnant, and that I was going to be a grandfather for the first time early next year. My reaction was pure joy. It was surreal. And then when I saw the first sonogram picture of my grandchild, it all became real.

Bill Cosby used to say that no one is a real adult until they’ve become a parent. Well, I think no one is a real senior citizen until they’ve become a grandparent. And at age 60, I am now ready to be a grandparent.

Grandparenthood, from all reports, is one of the most marvelous things we over-50s can experience. Our friends who already have grandchildren say that it’s the best of parenthood, with none of the downside. You can leave all the unpleasant things for their parents to take care, and you can spoil them by letting them do all things they can’t get away with at home.

I know this from personal experience as a parent. When we had our children, my wife would often watch her mother’s interaction with our kids and say, “Who is this woman? This can’t be the strict parent I grew up with.” Things that were inviolate rules when they were parents, now become mere guidelines when acting as grandparents. In fact, grandparents sometimes seem to conspire with grandchildren against their parents. It’s like they have a common enemy – that mean parent who says the kids can’t have a pet.

From my standpoint, grandparenthood is really a do-over. You get another chance to be a parent, and correct all the mistakes you made. It’s like a parenting mulligan. Now that I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t, I’m ready to do it right this time. But more to the point, I won’t be phoning it in this time, which looking back, I fear I may have done the first time more that I’d like to admit.

I think most over-50 parents feel as I do that our children’s childhoods flew by too fast. I know that at the time it felt like an ordeal to get through. I used to joke about how on their 18th birthday my kids would get a birthday card from me with a notice that the lease on their bedrooms was up, and they were now financially independent. Of course, that didn’t happen. Our daughter still lives with us, and I’m glad of it. She and her boyfriend provide invaluable assistance to her aging parents.

But I do think there’s something about being a grandparent that gives those of us on the right side of 50 a feeling of a chance at redemption. Sure, I may have delivered a mediocre performance as a parent, but I’m going to blow them away in the second act as a grandparent.

Now, how old do my grandchildren have to be before I can introduce them to the joys of licorice and pretzel sticks?

It’s the Pond, Not the Fish, That Got Away

26 Monday Aug 2013

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THE POND 2

Art by Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

In our early teens, my brother Jim and I would sneak onto the grounds of a nearby private Catholic girls’ school to fish in a stream-fed pond at the back of the property. One summer morning, a nun who had caught us trespassing there punished us by forcing us to throw back our catch: two plump trout begging to be pan-fried in butter for breakfast. They were already quite dead, and releasing them was a useless gesture, but the merciful sister would have none of it.

The incident soured us on that fishing hole, so we avoided it for the next couple of months. Instead we fished in the smaller pond upstream of the school, which was legally accessible because it bordered on a public street. Or we’d fish downstream of the school in a brook that ran through a wooded strip behind a row of suburban houses, none of which laid claim to owning that piece of land.

But we knew the trout could feed and grow almost without limit in the cool, deep waters of that big pond behind the girls’ school. We were determined to sneak in there again to catch them – nuns be damned.

It was late August by the time we got up the courage to go back. We slid out of bed at 5:15 a.m., and dressed in the dark, quietly pulling on jeans and tee shirts we’d laid out the night before. Then we gathered our gear and can of nightcrawlers from the garage, carefully rolling open the overhead door, and talking in hushed whispers so we wouldn’t awaken our parents in the bedroom above.

The sky was a black dome dotted with stars; no trace of moon. And although the air was scented with grass, it carried a melancholy undertone too – the distinct chill that creeps into late summer mornings as the season steals away. We walked in silence through the quiet streets to the entrance to the woods a mile away.

It was darker along the stream than it had been on the road, but by now the sky was starting to brighten enough so that, even in the twilight below the canopy of trees, we could pick out the familiar dirt path ahead. There was a concrete spillway just below the pond that sloped steeply upwards for about forty feet. As we labored up the path alongside the spillway, we noticed there was a broad wet path on the concrete, rippling with a steady trickle of water from above, as if the pond were overflowing.

But it hadn’t rained in a week.

We reached the top and peered out of the bushes, our heads level with the dirt road that circled the pond. The sun was pretty well up by now, and we could see there were no nuns about, and that the caretaker’s empty truck was parked by his house across the lake. All clear. We clambered up onto the road, carefully poking our fragile fishing poles out of the bushes ahead of us, like insects’ antennae testing the air. We scurried across the road onto the wooden dock and looked out over the pond. Normally we would see the rose reflection of the new dawn on the glassy water; bugs darting in the mist being snatched from the air by trout breaking the surface; ripples from the morning breeze – but there was nothing. The pond was gone.

Someone had drained it by opening the sluice gates at the top of the spillway. That explained the trickle on the concrete – they must have done it days ago. By now, the pond had almost entirely bled out.

Our pristine secret fishing hole had been reduced to a slimy expanse of black mud, and a few shallow puddles. The deepest remaining spots were in the middle, where the pond had been deepest when it was full, and where we assumed the largest fish had hidden. It looked as if most of them were still there, crowded into the last refuge of water, the sluggish movements of their clustered dorsal fins barely covered by the brackish soup. Some moved more slowly than others. Others had stopped moving and had begun to merge with the mud.

We never learned why they drained that pond, but if the goal was to deter trespassers, they achieved it with us. We left that day, sick at heart, and never returned.

The Constant “Call” of the Telephone

21 Wednesday Aug 2013

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The journey of the phone from inside the house to on the body.

You can’t leave home without it.

By FRANK TERRANELLA

It’s vacation season, and I’m amazed at how reachable my vacationing clients are. The 21st century electronic leash is a long one. People can be reached no matter the time, the place or the importance of the call.

Those of us over 50 know that this is a very recent phenomenon.Back in the 1960s (when some of us still had party lines), if someone left their home, they were truly out of touch. This was OK with most of us. Of course, there were exceptions.

You may remember the scene from Woody Allen’s film, “Play It Again Sam,” in which Tony Roberts plays a frantic businessman who is on the phone constantly. As he’s leaving to go to dinner, he says into the phone, “I am leaving 555-1234 now, but I’ll be at 555-4321 in 20 minutes.”  Woody Allen’s character is put off by this constant need to be in touch and says, “Hold on, there’s a phone booth we’ll be passing along the way. Let me get the number for you just in case.”

Well in 2013, most people are like the Tony Roberts character. We have a need to be in touch at all times. Sure this need is stronger among our children, but the truth is that few people today of any age travel without a cell phone. I am not going to say that it’s wrong either. Certainly, some moderation is called for – such as not taking calls in public restrooms. But all in all, being reachable by friends and family is (as Martha Stewart might say), a good thing.

I think we over 50s can provide some wisdom on this issue to our children by describing to them a time when, not only were there no cell phones, there were no answering machines. Back then, if you missed a call, you really missed it. You had no idea that anyone had called you, much less what they were calling about. This often led to bad consequences if the caller had an urgent message.

I remember one night I was out late because of evening classes, and didn’t get home until after midnight. My boss had been calling me all night to tell me that we were starting work two hours early the next day. Since I wasn’t home, and I didn’t have an answering machine, I never got the message. It was embarrassing to walk into work the next day two hours late. Soon after that, I bought one of the first answering machines on the market.

Our children cannot imagine such a scenario. Their bosses can always reach them. Oh sure they can pretend that their battery died, but that’s about as believable as, “the dog ate my homework.” Our modern world demands that we be reachable.

I have always found this electronic leash to be obnoxious. I was one of the last people I know to buy a cell phone, and for many years I used it only to make calls, and immediately turned it off afterwards. I enjoyed going into the subway – a cell-phone-free zone. Now it seems a little dangerous to be in an area with no service. We have become so used to being able to reach out and touch our friends and family that it’s a bit uncomfortable when we can’t.

A few summers ago, my wife and I were staying at Glacier National Park in Montana. There was a beautiful hotel, but no cell phone service. The over 50s quickly adapted back to pre-1980 mode when vacations were telephone-free. But the younger people could be seen hiking to a remote hill where someone said you could get one bar of service. They couldn’t help themselves. They were just answering the call of the dial tone.

Hats Off to Me: I’m Leaving the Law for Retirement

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

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Bob chair hat

BY BOB SMITH

I began practicing law in 1984, when I was 29. I’m now 58. One week ago today I advised the management of the law firm where I’m a partner that I’m leaving the practice of law as of October 1. I chose that date because it coincides with the close of the firm’s fiscal year, which will make the settling up of my finances neat and clean. But there’s nothing neat and clean about leaving a career you’ve pursued for half your life.

Most people consider a full-time job something that requires you to be at work forty hours a week. But to a lawyer in private practice, “full-time” means all the time. And perhaps because it’s so all-consuming, the prospect of not doing it any more is daunting – how will I fill up my time, I wonder? While practicing law, my time was so full I couldn’t consider any other activities. Life, it seemed, revolved around my work. Everything I did was defined by the demands of the job – and they are many.

Here’s a non-exhaustive, but nonetheless exhausting, list of the things you have to do to succeed as a lawyer in private practice:

  • Think clearly, write well, and verbally advocate your client’s position.
  • Manage expectations, which means having pointed – often heated – discussions with your clients about proposed strategy, potential outcomes, and of course, expected costs.
  • Train, motivate, mentor and supervise younger associates, paralegals, and other support staff.
  • Bill your time, which means writing a detailed narrative of the legal work done for each client and how much time it took – down to the tenth of an hour – to perform each task. To meet your billable targets, you should account for eight or more billable hours every single working day. Like J. Alfred Prufrock, who “measured out [his] life with coffee spoons,” for half my life I’ve measured out mine in six-minute increments.
  • Constantly seek new clients or new legal work from existing clients, which requires you to do things that most people see as recreation: play in golf outings, attend charity dinners, and take clients or prospective clients out to restaurants, concerts, and sporting events. But the fun fades when those activities start to gobble up days and evenings you’d rather spend with your family and friends.
  • Keep abreast of current developments by attending continuing legal education seminars.
  • Speak at legal conferences or other public events.
  • Do pro bono legal work and donate your time and energies to worthy causes that help your community, both because it’s your duty as a citizen and an attorney, and as a way to “get your name out there,” and develop contacts who may refer work to you or the firm.

The list goes on. And the stakes are high: if you don’t do your job right, your clients can lose big money, lose their businesses completely, or be precluded from doing things they want to do. If you make a really terrible mistake, you may be found to have committed malpractice and the firm itself could pay a steep financial price for your misstep, not to mention the personal price you would pay to endure that kind of crisis. In short, you’re under incredible pressure, all the time: to perform, to serve, to produce results.

So why was I so terribly conflicted when I realized I could just get out? There’s comfort in the known, and terror in the unknown. It’s like Hamlet contemplating suicide, and acknowledging that we have no idea what awaits us after death – which ” … makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.” I was afraid to leap from the relative comfort of a demanding, but well-defined career, into the unknown called “retirement.”

bob chair faceBut I’ve done it. I’ve just taken that first leap into the cold pool. And even after only one week, before I’ve fully withdrawn from my life at the firm, I can sense it was the right thing to do. A few months from now I have no doubt I’ll be saying come on in, the water’s just fine.

For now, however, I’m still shivering a bit.

Formatting My Music Includes Keeping it “Reel”

12 Monday Aug 2013

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Music 5

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

If you are on the right side of 50, you have lived through a music migration from records to cassettes to CDs to MP3s. And if you’re someone who never throws out music in any form, you may also have 78s, 45s and 8-tracks. These days, I have to think of the vintage of the music I want to hear to know where to look for it in my house. Beatles – look for records. Bread – look for 8-tracks. Bee Gees – look for cassettes. And if you’re like me, you probably have bought CDs of your favorite albums from the ‘60s that replace records that have more skips than a five-year-old girl. Music 2

Because I have gotten tired of buying and re-buying music in different physical formats, in recent years, I have taken to buying MP3s of my music and storing them on my computer, my phone, and my iPad. I back them up on the Internet. But despite all this redundancy, I don’t trust digital formats. They’re too ephemeral. I prefer to have physical backup. That’s why I still keep all the original source material that the old music came on. I also buy CDs as a backup of my most vital music.

Music 6

Back in 1972, I purchased yet another music source – a reel-to-reel tape recorder. I used it primarily for recording, but I also purchased commercial “albums” that were available in that format back then. For example, I have the Moody Blues’ “Days of Future Past” on a reel-to-reel tape. Recently I dusted off my old reel-to-reel, and played some of those old tapes, and I was surprised at the great sound. Audio enthusiasts insist that records have better sound than CDs, but to my ears, reel-to-reel tapes have better sound than records. More than 40 years of sitting in boxes has not degraded the quality of the tapes. Of course, my children look at my reel-to-reel as if it was a contemporary of Edison’s wax cylinder. But they can’t dispute the great sound.

Frank music

In addition to music, being on the right side of 50 means maintaining machines to play video cassettes, DVDs and Blu-Rays, but that’s another story.

All this is why I have a home entertainment center that looks like NASA launch control while my son has an Ipod connected to a speaker and an Ipad to stream video. I don’t care. I’m not throwing out any of my music and video formats. Someday I may want to listen to my 8-track recording of “Winchester Cathedral.” What? It’s available for 99 cents in the iTunes store? Anybody want to buy an 8-track player?

Herman Hupfeld: A Jersey Boy From a Time Gone By

06 Tuesday Aug 2013

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Herman Hupfeld will never be forgotten.

Herman Hupfeld will never be forgotten.

By FRANK TERRANELLA

It’s one of the most famous songs ever written because it is the centerpiece of one of the most famous movies ever made. But its author is largely unknown – the answer to a trivia question. The movie is “Casablanca,” and the song is, “As Time Goes By.”  But who wrote it?

Earlier this year I attended a screening of “Casablanca” at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra providing the music. Max Steiner’s classic score never sounded better. But Max didn’t write the song that people remember most from “Casablanca” – the song that Ilsa asks Sam to play again. Max Steiner, for all his musical genius, did not write “As Time Goes By.” A man by the name of Herman Hupfeld did that.

Who, you may well ask, was Herman Hupfeld? He was the son of a church organist in Montclair, New Jersey. He began his career in 1912 singing his own songs in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic. This was the after-hours entertainment that Florenz Zeigfeld staged after the Zeigfeld Follies on the roof of the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street. Hupfeld went on to serve in World War I as a saxophonist in the United States Navy Band. In the 1920s, he wrote songs for various Broadway shows. He was the “go-to-guy” for what they called “additional material.”

In 1931, Hupfeld provided additional material for a musical called “Everybody’s Welcome.” The show had a book by Lambert Carroll, lyrics by Irving Kahal, and music by Sammy Fain. Fain and Kahal wrote, “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella,” and Fain went on to write, “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.” But “Everybody’s Welcome” did not produce a hit for the duo. The hit of that show, which ran for 139 performances, was the additional material provided by Herman Hupfeld – “As Time Goes By.” Rudy Vallee had a successful recording of it.

Fast forward to 1942, and Hal Wallis is producing a movie inspired by the 1938 Charles Boyer, hit “Algiers.”  It’s based on an unproduced play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison called, “Everyone Comes to Rick’s.” The screenplay adaptation by Julius and Philip Epstein has as a key plot-point, a song played by Sam, Rick’s pal and piano player, that used to be Rick and Ilsa’s favorite when they were in Paris together before World War II. Max Steiner tells Wallis that he would write a song for the movie. But Wallis feels that the song should be something old and familiar, a song that Sam actually would have played in the late ‘30s. The choice was Hupfeld’s, “As Time Goes By.” And the rest is history.

While the song became world-famous, Hupfeld remained in near obscurity at his home at 259 Park Street in Montclair, a short walk from the Watchung Avenue train station. Reports say that he rarely left his hometown. He wrote many other songs with titles such as “When Yuba Plays the Rhumba On the Tuba,” A Hut in Hoboken,” and “Let’s Put Out The Lights (And Go To Sleep).” He died in 1951 at the age of 57. He’s buried in the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Montclair.

While few people remember Herman Hupfeld, his creation lives on in film history. It’s safe to say that a century after his death, people will still be echoing Ilsa’s request, “Play it Sam. Play,`As Time Goes By.’”

Weiner’s Inflated Head …

05 Monday Aug 2013

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The Weiner: 2 red onions and a scallion

The Weiner: 2 red onions and a scallion.

BY BOB SMITH

Weiner’s Lead Shrinks
Weiner Sticks It Out
Weiner Won’t Withdraw
Weiner Takes A Hard Line
Weiner Comes On Strong
Weiner Whacked In Latest Poll

Enough already. The New York Post pun-headline writers are in hog heaven with this one. Even his wife’s name plays into it – oh I know, she uses Huma (“hoo-ma”) Abedin, her maiden name. Why? Probably to avoid any snickering over the potential oral sex allusion if her name were Huma (as in “hum-a”) Weiner.

There he stands wiry and intensely defiant; a cornered raging rodent, proclaiming his staunch intention to keep plugging away (sorry) in his race for mayor of New York. There’s Huma, sincere and wide-eyed; the bright trustworthy Good Wife standing by her flawed yet human man. It’s all a bit strained, isn’t it?

Let’s be real. If it had been splashed all over every newspaper and other news media outlet in the country that I had been sending flaming erotic messages to a woman half my age and engaging in lurid masturbatory phone sex with her multiple times a day, and that I had done it all under the ludicrous nom de guerre “Carlos Danger,” I would be so deeply ashamed of my transgressions against my wife, my family, and common morality that I would probably never show my face in public again.

Not so Mr. Weiner. He holds a press conference, hiding behind the usual “I’m a flawed person” mea culpas so popular among public figures these days who get caught, literally, with their shorts around their ankles. He has no shame, and for him I suppose that’s good. He can walk down the street with his head held high, apparently secure in the knowledge that at least he thinks he’s perfectly fine.

But the rest of us don’t have to live in his world. In our world, what he has done reveals a shocking, pitiful depth of self-absorption and, worse yet, an utter disregard for others: his wife, his infant son (who someday will read all about it), the woman (women) he has playfully ravaged electronically from afar and regaled with photos of his genitalia; and of course, the voters he expects to believe his hollow protestations of having changed his wayward ways. These character flaws, or obsessions, or whatever they’re called, don’t seem compatible with the energy, dedication, and focus that would be needed to effectively lead one of the biggest cities in the world.

Remember the tongue in cheek Peter Principle, from the late ’60s? The premise was that in a system where an individual’s advancement is based on achievement and/or merit, the person will eventually be promoted beyond his or her level of ability. Each person, they said, would eventually work his or her way up to their level of incompetence and then stay there. Think Dilbert and all his coworkers.

Anthony Wiener has found that plateau. There’s no need to promote him any further. He’s apparently very good at indulging his erotic/narcissistic fantasies, and at stroking (again, my apologies) his apparently boundless ego. Let’s not risk a painful and embarrassing demonstration of the Wiener Principle by allowing him to continue doing so from Gracie Mansion.

Gone Fishing. Caught by a Nun

01 Thursday Aug 2013

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Nun

Art by Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

Late summer nights in the late ’60s would find me and my brother, Jim, crawling around in our friend’s backyard, groping for nightcrawlers. It wasn’t just for the fun of it – they were destined to be trout bait. Our favorite fishing hole was a pond bursting with rainbow trout about a mile from our house, buried in the woods behind a private Catholic girls’ school in Alpine, New Jersey.

We would sneak out of bed, get to the pond by 5:30 a.m., and start fishing in the dark. Once the first slice of dawn seared the horizon, the trout began to feed and the bite was on. Mr. Durkin, the resident groundskeeper, lived in a small house on the far side of the pond. If he saw us fishing, he would yell from across the pond, or jump in his truck, and drive over to chase us away. Either way, with Durkin, we always escaped. Maybe he meant it that way.

But the nuns were a different story. The school was run by strict nuns who wore traditional black habits with headpieces and tight white wimples – like facial spats – covering their cheeks and throats. They didn’t drive or yell or make any noise at all – they walked peacefully along the road, approaching in total silence. They were easy to miss. If you didn’t look up often enough to check the road, one of those holy zombies could sneak right up on you.

“Penguin at two o’clock,” Jimmy whispered urgently, reeling in his line so fast his worm periodically launched out of the water.

Sure enough, there was a nun, waddling slowly toward us on the dirt road that ran along the right side of the pond. Her hands were clasped under her belly, where an oversized wooden cross gently swayed and bounced with each measured stride. She was at least 75 yards away – an easy exit. I nervously reeled in my line, while Jimmy jammed the knife and other gear into the tackle box, snapping it shut.

“Move yer ass, here she comes!” he yelled, laughing nervously, and stumbling as he started to run. With a hooked nightcrawler dangling madly at the end of my pole, I grabbed the bait can and followed Jimmy, our feet thudding like gunshots on the rickety wooden dock.

The nun called out in her stern schoolteacher’s voice. “Stop you boys! Stop right there!” She had turned the corner of the pond, and was now only 20 yards away.

Why didn’t they ever run? Was it the clunky shoes? Or was running sinful somehow? Whatever the reason, we easily got away, whooping as we plunged down the steep dirt path into the woods on the far side of the road, our hearts hammering and rocks and dirt skittering around our ankles.

But not always. It was a glorious summer morning twenty minutes after dawn. A fat rainbow trout exploded to the surface and grabbed Jimmy’s bait, then darted away, tugging frantically as it knifed through the water in quicksilver flashes. It dove again, taking out line, then doubled back to leap in a graceful arc above the surface, scattering jeweled droplets as it shook its head from side to side, trying to throw the hook.

Within a half hour, we had two fat fish on the dock, and had lost four more to broken lines or thrown hooks. Rainbow trout are beautiful. Black freckly spots cover their back and fins, and a pink sorbet stripe runs in a festive banner from gills to tail. After they’re dead a while, the colors start to fade, and ours were looking that way now. The bite was slowing down anyway, so we decided it was time to go.

And there, at the end of the dock, stood a stern-faced nun.

“You aren’t supposed to fish here, you know,” she said, pursing her lips in disapproval. We’d been caught by the nun Gestapo!

“What are your names?” she commanded. We answered sheephishly; automatically.

“Jim Smith.”

“Bob Smith.”

She jerked her neck, peckish, and fixed us with a solemn squint.
“Lying is a grave sin.”

We shrugged. How could you prove your identity at age 14 – show your ninth grade report card?

“Now get out of here and don’t come back.” We started to gather our things. “And throw those fish back in the water.”

They’d been lying motionless on the dock for a half hour. Jimmy picked one up by the tail and cradled its head with his other hand, bobbing it in the water to move fluid over the gills as if to coax it to life. We both knew it was a hopeless gesture, but the nun needed to understand.

“See, sister? They’re dead. There’s no point,” he pleaded.

Like a startled turtle, she withdrew a bit back into her wimple, making the doughy skin squish further out around the edges. Her pale eyes were watery, but unwavering. She shook her head. We picked up both fish – dead, and still as stones. The pond looked opaque; a crystal carpet dancing in the brilliant sun. We gently slid them below the surface and they quickly disappeared into the cool blackness. They wouldn’t float until later when they started to rot. By the time they rose to the surface they would be ghastly caricatures of rainbow trout – white-eyed, bloated and frayed, with all their colors drained to gray.

We gathered our things and glumly trudged down the path into the half-shadows of the woods, heading home. We stopped briefly to dump out our leftover nightcrawlers among the weeds by the stream. Most would get eaten by birds before they could dig in. But at least they had a chance.