I got a love of band music from my father and a love of football from my mother. This explains why I spent eight seasons playing a piccolo, marching across many five-yard-line stripes, and cheering my teams on to victory. These efforts did not always help them to win. Out of all of the high school and college contests that I witnessed and participated in, only one turned out to be The Big Game. For me, this one was even more important than it may have been for the guys wearing the cleats and pads. It was a personal defining moment. Here’s the story.

Both of my parents were college graduates. So I was silently expected to go to college, too. In my junior year at Hempfield High School, I spent time in the guidance office, paging through catalogs. I learned the names of all of the colleges in Pennsylvania that offered degrees in library science. Clarion State College was one of them. When a Clarion admissions representative came to our school, I eagerly went to his session. His eyes lit up when I told him that I wanted to be a librarian. He said that Clarion’s graduate program was close to becoming certified by the American Library Association. This would be a big deal, even for students in the undergraduate program. Soon three colleges in the state would have ALA-accredited programs: Pitt, Drexel, and Clarion. I was impressed. And I repeated this statistic to my parents at the dinner table that night. I guess they were impressed, too; even though, up until then, we had never heard of the place. We made arrangements to drive out to Clarion, five hours away and in the northwestern part of the state, to see the campus and the town. We all liked it. I applied to the school immediately.

A few months later, during the last week of our junior year, our guidance counselor tracked me down as I waited in the lobby for the driver’s ed car. He had come to congratulate me. I had just been accepted to Clarion. I was the first person in our class to get a college acceptance letter. And we weren’t even seniors yet. Wow.

Now, the prevailing wisdom was to apply to several schools, in case you didn’t get into the one that was your first choice. Even though I’d already been accepted by Clarion, I still got a copy of the application to Millersville State College, our local school. The campus was only six miles from our house. A number of my classmates would surely be going there. But why would I want to do what everybody else was doing? (I had already started reading Thoreau and was beginning to exercise my own nonconformity.) I knew that Millersville offered a degree in library science, too. But now I already knew that its program wasn’t as good as the one at Clarion, since it wasn’t ALA-accredited. I already knew that I wanted to “go away to college.” Isn’t this what people did? Millersville wasn’t “away.” It was right down the road. Literally. I did not want to do this. But I started filling out the application anyway.

I stopped when I got to the question asking to list family members who were Millersville grads. No one in my family had gone there. Mom went to Penn, and Daddy went to Lehigh. I would have to leave this part of the form blank. Would doing this affect the odds of my acceptance? Even as a teenager, I had already heard the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I thought this approach applied only to politics and to big business. But somehow, it seemed to apply here. (Yes, I was naïve, not knowing that the field of college admissions is big business.) Clarion hadn’t asked me how many of my relatives had gone there. Why did Millersville? I thought the process was supposed to focus on my qualifications, and not on my genealogy. The more I thought about this question, the angrier I got. I put the paperwork aside for a few days to let it settle. In the end, I tossed the half-completed application into the trash. Clarion had already accepted me. That’s where I would go. So be it.

People who live in the eastern part of Pennsylvania rarely pay attention to anything that happens west of the Susquehanna River. Although my parents and I had done some traveling together along the east coast, we had never gone west before. It was an adventure. I kind of considered my home state as a mini-version of the whole country.  Where I lived in Lancaster was sort of like Philadelphia, which was only a 90-minute ride to the east, anyway. Almost all of our television channels came from there. Pittsburgh was a stand-in for San Francisco. Erie was Seattle. Scranton was New York City, more or less. And Clarion, in the mountains, was like Denver. (Although much smaller.) Since I was listening to the music of John Denver at the time, I often imagined what the Rocky Mountains looked like in Colorado. Here I would instead be going to the mountains of Pennsylvania, to our own version of the Rockies. This was certainly another reason why I picked Clarion. Another advantage was that I could get some needed distance from my domineering mother. She seemed pleased with my choice to “go away.” But whenever her friends asked about me, and she told them I was going to Clarion, they all looked at her blankly and asked, “Where?” In August 1975, that’s exactly where I went. 

I liked the campus. I liked my classes. I liked a lot of the new people I met. Almost all of them were Steelers fans. And theirs wasn’t a bad bandwagon to jump onto, in the late 1970s, so I soon liked the black-and-gold myself. I liked being in the Clarion marching band and going to all of the football games. I loved playing and singing our fight song. 

Carry on for Clarion,
Come on and shout it, one and all. (Rah! Rah! Rah!)
It’s so grand to hear the Eagle band
Sound the clarion call, ta-ta-ta-TA!
Watch the Eagles, Golden Eagles,
Soaring on and on,
So there will be another victory
For mighty Clarion

The Clarion team was better than my high school team had been. In 1975, their record was 6-2-1. In 1976, they went 7-3. My parents came to our homecomings and to the games we played in Shippensburg, since they were closest ones to Lancaster. They got to see me perform at halftime and in the homecoming parades. It was all a lot of fun.

In my sophomore year, I had another decision to make. We library science majors were encouraged to declare a double major with another subject. This way, we could be certified to teach in that field, too. It sounded like a good idea. I decided to double major with German. But if I wanted to graduate “on time” – meaning, in exactly four years – I would have to take extra courses during my last two summers. Alas! The easiest and cheapest way to do this was to stay at home and to go to Millersville. I would not have to formally pledge allegiance to the place. I would merely transfer any credits I would earn there to Clarion. I don’t remember if I had to fill out the same application that I was faced with before. If I did, by this time, I didn’t care. Millersville was only going to act as substitute site for me, for two summers. Clarion would still be my school. In the summer of 1977, I took earth science, a survey of literature, and tennis at Millersville. Easy enough credits to transfer.

By late August, I was back at Clarion to start a new year, both with my majors and with the marching band. This season was different, though. This football team was different. We started winning every game. Every. Single. Game. We in the band liked to think that we helped in the effort. We played the theme from Rocky in the stands at critical moments in the games. Just the sound of the opening line alone seemed to fire up the players, as well as the fans. And before you knew it, Clarion was 8-0-1. And we were all headed off to the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championship game.

Pennsylvania divided its 14 state colleges into two regions, east and west. At the end of the season, the two regional champions played each other for the state title. The school that would host the championship game for home-field advantage was determined by the location of the previous year’s winner. In 1976, the final game had ended in a tie. But in 1975, a team from the east had won the state championship. So the host of the 1977 title game had to be the eastern division winner. And it was Millersville. MILLERSVILLE! And the game was scheduled for Saturday, November 19th. Which also happened to be my mother’s 51st birthday.

By now, after two seasons, I was used to traveling with my fellow bandmates. The band was funded so that we could go to every game, both home and away. Once a season, we had at least one overnighter. But this trip was surreal. On Friday, November 18th, we boarded the usual Grove City Bus line buses. But we now traveled along a very familiar route to me. Familiar but strange, under the circumstances. When we got to Lancaster, we pulled into the hotel that sat less than a mile from my house. It was odd, being back home, but being with the band at the same time. Especially when most of the members were from the western part of the state. From “away.”

My parents and I had planned a strategy. After the game, my friend and fellow flute player Gerri Walker and I would leave the band bus behind and would stay at our house instead. Then on Sunday, we would borrow my mother’s car, and Gerri and I would drive back to Clarion ourselves. This way, I would have a car to drive home for Thanksgiving vacation on Wednesday. We got permission from Dr. Stanley “Doc” Michalski, our band director, to do this.

Arriving by bus to the Millersville campus was another surreal experience. During the pre-game mingling that always happens between the bands, I looked around for faces I recognized. Surely someone from my high school would be here. I finally spotted two people: Sherlene Yantz and Beth Eisenberger. Both were a year younger than me. We had been in the high school band together. We hadn’t been friends, but we at least knew each other by sight. Today they didn’t seem too interested to see me. Then again, we were now wearing different uniforms.

Our Golden Eagles scored the first touchdown pretty early in the game. And for some odd reason, and even without the pressure of a close score, coach Al Jacks decided to go for a two-point conversion instead of kicking for the extra point. We were surprised. I couldn’t remember them ever going for two in any other game that year. The move must have surprised the Millersville Marauders, too, because we got the ball across the goal line. What a bonus! We scored first and were up by eight points in the state final. Millersville’s scoreboard read 0-8. Can you believe it?

But of course, ours wasn’t the only team on the field. And soon the back-and-forth exchanges kind of slogged, then went downhill. Millersville scored twice to lead 10-8 at halftime. By the end of the third quarter, they led 17-8. Had we come this far and done this much, only to have the season end this way?

As the minutes ticked down into the fourth quarter, it became obvious that whoever had the ball last was going to have the best chance of winning. And Clarion started coming back. A touchdown made the score 17-15. Then Millersville followed suit, to lead 24-15. Then we got another one: 24-22. We regained possession in the last minute of the game and were heading downfield when Millersville got an unfortunate penalty. Unfortunate, for them. The ref gave us the ball on their 12-yard line with only three seconds left on the clock. Both teams took time-outs. As you may expect, our kicker trotted out onto the field: freshman Billy May, known as “Secret Squirrel.” And this is what it came down to. The 1977 Pennsylvania state college football title would depend on this one last play. From Billy May’s foot.

This singular moment in time wasn’t just about the win or about the title, though. For me, it was about much more. For me, it was Home versus Away. (What is “home,” anyway? And what is “away?”) For me, the outcome could mean validation. Vindication. Confirmation that my choice to leave for Clarion (and to throw away the Millersville application) was the right one. Here was the chance for the Universe to show me that I was on the right path. To give me a sign that it supported and even championed my independent spirit and my decision. It could give me a little nod. Or even a little kick, as it were.

We were all on our feet, with our hearts in our throats. We were holding hands, holding each other. I heard strange sounds coming from behind me. I turned around and saw that flute player Gail Schneck was already sobbing. “I’m going to cry whether he makes it or not,” she moaned. I turned back to look at the field. It was an oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god moment. It was a cross-your-fingers-and-hope-to-die moment. It was a Hoosiers moment, the kind of heart-thumping, at-the-buzzer ending that you see only in sports movies. Except that on some occasions, these moments really do happen in real life. Really. And this time, it was happening to us.

Doc Michalski turned to us with a merry expression on his face and a mischievous glint in his eye. “Play ‘Carry On,’ when he makes it,” he said. “’Carry On,’ when he makes it.” And he laughed, in the midst of the tension. Doc could be a scamp at times. When he makes it, he said. Not if. Yes, of course, we would all be ready to play the fight song. But something else had to happen first. Our eyes were glued to the field. The teams lined up. The ball snapped back. And Billy took aim. When the ball left his foot, it soared perfectly through the goal posts. The clock ran out. 24-25, read the scoreboard. Clarion had won the PSAC championship by one point, over Millersville. Our world exploded, and we screamed.

Drum major Steve Thompson gave us a quick downbeat. “Carry on, for Clarion….” Have you ever played the piccolo in breathless euphoria? I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know how any of us did it. And I don’t know what it sounded like, but it was all music to our ears. We played the first verse, sang the second, and played the third, as the team celebrated on the field. We went crazy, jumping up and down. Millersville’s stadium was emptying out pretty quickly and quietly. We marched onto the field for the post-game ceremony. As the Golden Eagles were awarded the state trophy, we played and then sang the alma mater. “Oh Clarion, dear Clarion, Oh college on the hill, To all the joys of student life, our hearts will ever thrill. Your silent flowing river, it haunts me still.” And we cheered and cheered. We had won, we had won. We had all won. And just like that, The Big Game was over. Reluctantly, it was time to leave the field behind.

The rest of the band made its way to the busses for that five-hour ride back to Clarion. Gerri and I grabbed our stuff and now had to somehow find my parents in the departing crowd. I wondered and worried about doing this. Then I suddenly saw my mother and father, standing alone in the opposite end zone, waiting. I walked toward them, almost in a trance. I had somehow held myself together, even with all of the tension and the excitement of the past fifteen minutes. But as soon as I saw my mother, I felt tears coming. I walked into her and the dam broke. I sobbed on her shirt. She put her arms around me. I can’t remember if I was even able to say anything. It was all too much. I may have said just one thing. “Happy birthday, Mom.”

After I finished my junior year at Clarion, I went back to Millersville in the summer of 1978, to take classes in their German immersion program. My parents had bought me my first car, a black hatchback Mustang. Every day, I parked it in the student lot next to the stadium. Every day, I smiled whenever I walked past that field. I still couldn’t believe what had happened here in November, even though I had witnessed it in person. It was as if the field and I shared a secret that no one else around us knew or acknowledged. A pretty happy one, for me.

Then it was back to Clarion again for the fall of 1978, and for my senior year. Our football team went 8-2: well enough to lead us to the state championship game again. This time, we hosted it, since a western team -- Clarion! -- had won the previous year. This time, our opponent was East Stroudsburg. On the morning of the title game, we band members were at the field as early as the teams were. I had a chance to see the East Stroudsburg players up close. They looked like giants. I wondered if the coaches had thrown them raw meat for breakfast and then ran out of the way of the feeding frenzy. They turned out to be monsters on the field, too. When the dust cleared, we had lost the game, 4-49. But Clarion had set a record anyway. No team had ever scored two safeties in a PSAC championship game. It was a dubious honor. And a letdown of sorts.

But in a way, this game hardly mattered. At least, not to me. I knew that I had already won.

November 19, 2020

As a famous man once said, “Breakin’ up is hard to do.”  And yet we all have to face changes in our lives from time to time.  Today I said good-bye to my most recent constant companion, my green 1999 Plymouth Breeze.

Together we shared more than 214,600 miles, with only a smattering of problems along the way.  Oh, many times we had to turn around once or twice to get where we intended to go, but we were never really lost.  We visited all sorts of wonderful places, from the Nature Conservancy’s Tensleep Ranch in north central Wyoming, to Folly Beach just south of Charleston, South Carolina.  We climbed mountains, and we trolled a number of beaches.  We saw good friends in many states.  We went to the 2001 Thanksgiving Day game at the Pontiac Silverdome, and we went to Orchard Park to see the Buffalo Bills a few times.  We made multiple runs from the Midwest to the East Coast, and then made a permanent move from Illinois to Massachusetts in January 2003.  As for rock concerts:  well, who’s counting?  We had many adventures, among them a few anxious moments:  like driving through a white-out in a prairie blizzard, or being stuck in a snowbank in a deserted cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island, late on a winter afternoon.  But we never panicked, and we emerged triumphant together.

And though we traveled through dozens of states, the Breeze still flaunts its roots.  It still carries the metal marker on its trunk that shows it hails from Benoy Motors in Woodstock, Illinois.  (The odometer read “14” when I was handed the keys.)  Below that marker are the remnants of my old bumper sticker that once read in full: “Well-behaved women rarely make history.”  I remember the day a man pulled up next to us at a traffic light, swirled his finger so that I would roll down the window, then gleefully shouted “Eleanor Roosevelt!” before the signal changed.  I also remember stopping in Nebraska to see Scott’s Bluff, and returning to the parking lot only to see a German tourist taking a photograph of my bumper sticker.  I hope they got a kick out of it, back in the old country.

Without complaint, the Breeze accompanied me on my many personal research excursions, whether it was tracing the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, or cataloging the histories of the Carnegie libraries of New England and the Northeast.  Neither did it complain when it had to carry bags of recyclables in the trunk for months, before we could make a run to the recycling dumpsters in the Poconos.  Perhaps one day I’ll again live in a town that believes in and participates in the recycling process.  Until then, I have cause for several road trips each year.

I hope the Breeze has forgiven me for accidentally letting an automatic garage door close on the top of its trunk, early on in our relationship.  I erased the resulting scrape with official green Chrysler paint.  It’s been years since I’ve even noticed the mark that remains from my stupidity.   And you can’t even see where an idiot made a ridge in the passenger door last summer, after opening his truck door as we were pulling into the empty parking space beside him.  His insurance paid for his mistake, and our mechanic fixed the dent beautifully.  Only a few people saw the Breeze in that imperfect condition.

I certainly asked a lot of the Breeze, and it has met my demands.  Who can blame it now for being so tired?  It’s time to give this devoted companion the rest it needs.   Another famous man put it perfectly when he said:

We've been through some things together
With trunks of memories still to come.
We found things to do in stormy weather.
Long may you run.

Long may you run, long may you run,
Although these changes have come.
With your chrome heart shining in the sun,
Long may you run.

The Breeze now joins other car memories of my past:  a white 1992 Dodge Shadow, a red 1986 Dodge Caravan, a silver 1982 Mercury LN7, a black 1975 Mustang hatchback.   And of course, the family car I learned to drive in – miraculously, looking back on it now – a black 1963 Ford Galaxy XL.  Each one was special in its own way.

Today I met my new-to-me friend, a red 2006 Dodge Stratus.  It has already been places and done things, enough to have crossed the country two and a half times.  I’ll bet it didn’t do that.  But its background will remain a mystery to me.  As for the future – well, it’s got some big tread marks to fill.  I have many more research trips to make and at least one long road trip already planned: to Minneapolis for a Thoreau conference this October.  Will the Stratus be up to the challenge?  I guess there’s only one way to find out.  I’ve got a new copy of that bumper sticker ready.  Let’s go!

February 20, 2007

When I heard the sound of a truck idling, followed by male voices and shovels scraping, I looked out to discover that a local road crew was outside my home, casually filling a small pothole.  As I watched them from an open upstairs window, the aroma of hot tar rose up and overpowered me.

Suddenly I was a kid again, vacationing with my parents in Atlantic City, before gambling.  We relaxed on large beach towels, placed far enough from the water that the tide couldn’t reach us.  After grabbing a dollar away from my parents, I hot-footed it across the thick sand to the wooden steps leading to the boardwalk.  My progress was unfortunately delayed as I sank several inches with each sizzling step.  I kept my eyes on the boardwalk, my goal, and leaned forward in the hopes that I could build some kind of momentum that would propel me faster toward the walkway.   From that angle, I could see a black substance coating portions of the support beams and the planks of the boardwalk.  It glistened in the warm summer sun, and its fragrance mixed with an air already thick with heat, humidity, suntan lotion, washed-up seaweed, and fried food. 

The lowest steps were still sandy, no doubt catching grains from dozens of soles and shoes pounding up them.  By the time I reached the boardwalk a dozen steps later, even my own feet were relatively clean.  But if I thought the sand had been hot and troublesome to walk in, I was unprepared for the searing heat the dark boardwalk had to offer.  After taking one firm but burning footstep, I sprinted the rest of the way across the diagonal strips of wood, to the small snack bar just on the other side. 

In spite of my discomfort, I was happy.  Already I could hear the radio blaring from the refreshment stand.  It was in mid-song, and I recognized the perky instrumental from one of my favorite tunes of the day.  Quickly I ordered a medium vanilla and chocolate twist cone.  When the lyric returned, I sang
loudly with the vocalists, eager to show everyone around me that I wasn’t just a kid, I knew things, important things, especially songs that were on the current pop charts:  “And Windy has stormy eyes that flash with sound of lies and Windy has wings to fly, up above clouds, up above clouds, up above clouds, up above clouds.”  I was handed my ice cream cone, and I had to stop singing to slurp up the melting drips with my tongue. I took brief refuge in the narrow two-foot shade the awning provided and listened to the rest of my song.  I swirled my tongue around the ice cream to prevent more drips from
forming.  Here out of direct sunlight, the boardwalk under my bare feet was merely warm, not broiling. When other customers walked up to place late lunch orders, the space got crowded fast.  I had to return to the beach and my parents.

I was down to the cone by the time I darted back across the boardwalk, skipping over the black and pungent streams of tar.  I flew down the steps, trudged hurriedly through the deep sand, and at last made it to the cool and solid flatness created by the waves. I stood there nibbling the rest of my ice cream cone while the ocean water lapped repeatedly at my ankles. I wriggled my grateful toes into the sturdy sand underfoot. I was indeed refreshed, all over, inside and out. 

Two doors slammed, and the maintenance truck drove away.  Inhaling as deeply I could, I knew that the road crew had taken the majority of the tar smell with them.  But for just a few minutes on that fall New England day, I was a girl again, hopping across the hot sand and boardwalk and singing with the
Association in Atlantic City, before gambling.

Fall 2006

In a recent effort to escape the 21st century and to retreat to my own personal safety net of the 1970s, I borrowed the complete set of The Bob Newhart Show from my local library system. And boy, does watching this show take me back in time, in more ways than one. I still love the characters. They’re still funny, and I still laugh out loud at their escapades. But seeing the show also brings back one of the old stories in my life: the legend of Patchett and Tarses. I hadn’t thought of these guys in a while. I had temporarily forgotten what an influence they were on me. And really, they were just names on a TV screen. I never met these men or ever saw them in person.

You see, I wanted to be a writer. Well, first of all, I wanted to be a librarian. I made this decision in fourth grade because I loved being around all of the books in our elementary school library. But once I hit fifth grade and starting creating mouse stories out of our weekly lists of spelling words, I got the idea to become a writer instead. The trouble was that I didn’t know any writers. No one in our family or in our neighborhood knew any writers. We lived in a suburban township on the western side of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the 1960s and 1970s. As far as we knew, no writers lived around here. And no writers made appearances here, either. Eventually we got a Walden Books at the big new shopping mall. And the only public library we had, the one in the city of Lancaster, was sizable. But writers didn’t come to these places. If any authors were traveling out and about, they must have just hit bigger cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore. They ignored the in-between landscape. So did rock groups. (Which is a rant for another day.)

Really, the only writers I ever saw were on television. The first one may have been Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple, as played by Jack Klugman. I liked the fact that he was a sports writer who worked from home. I liked the fact that he had a solid desk and a nice writing space in the apartment, with book shelves nearby. He typed with confidence and deliberation. (With just two fingers, but still.) And I could take heart that even though I was naturally a mess-maker too, my bedroom didn’t look half as bad as Oscar’s did. For one thing, I never brought food into mine. I probably wasn’t allowed to.

Then there were the writers on The Tonight Show. I’m not talking about the staff who helped to write the jokes for Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon. I’m talking about the guests. Whenever I somehow got the chance to stay up late enough to watch The Tonight Show, I focused on the opening list of guests. I was ecstatic if the author of a new book was one of them. The trouble was that the writers were always put off until the tail end of the show. And often enough, Johnny spent so much time chatting with the other guests that the author had to be held over until the next night. Or he or she was cancelled all together. Nevertheless, whether or not they made it onto the show, I knew that this was what I wanted to be, most of all. I had no idea what it was that I wanted to write about. But I wanted to be the last guest of the night to be interviewed by Johnny Carson. I wanted to be one of those kinds of writers.

As I remember it, I told my father of my dream to appear at the end of The Tonight Show. To joke around with Johnny and Ed. To promote my new book. And Daddy shook his head and said that the life of a writer was a pretty tough one. As if he knew! As I mentioned earlier, we didn’t know any writers firsthand. My father was a research chemist and my mother was a nurse. They both wrote letters to the local newspaper editor whenever they felt passionate about certain issues. They typed them up on my father’s steel-gray Royal typewriter (which I would use for my research papers for school, too). And some of their letters made the paper. But other than this, and other than being avid readers of books and magazines, we had no writing examples to follow in our house. And I knew that I was not a tough person. If a writer’s life was tough, then it probably wasn’t the right work for me. I was crestfallen. But I still had the idea of being a librarian to fall back on. I could still surround myself with books.

Then one day in the early 1970s, when I was in high school, my father came home from work with a miraculous tale. He was normally an introvert, like me, and he rarely engaged in gossip. But this story was too juicy and too unbelievable for even him to ignore. Two guys who used to work for the same company that my father did – Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster – were somehow starting to “make it big” in Hollywood. They had once done advertising work for Armstrong, just a few miles away from our house. But now they were writing sitcoms for television. Sitcoms! Like the ones we watched in our very own living room! Their names were Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses. Or, just Patchett and Tarses, for short. This match-up had a certain magical and writer-ly ring to my ears. Or maybe I envisioned a duo of do-gooders riding off together into the western sunset. Patchett and Tarses. Yeah. Like another pair from our region who would surface a few years later: Hall and Oates.

My father was shocked, and not necessarily in a good way. That two men would have the audacity to leave a secure working environment like the one provided by Armstrong for the up-and-down and vastly uncertain world of Hollywood – well, this was just unthinkable behavior. (My father would spend more than 30 years with the company.) My mother agreed. And for these reasons alone, the rebel in me was hooked. And I interpreted the news in a vastly different way than my parents did. Patchett and Tarses had left Corporate America and Suburbia for the “tough life” of being writers. Good for them! They could be the role models I could follow someday. At the very least, their example proved to me that Escape was Possible.

 Around this same time in school, I was starting to read the writings of American author Henry David Thoreau. And I believed him when he said that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Ah-hah, but not Patchett and Tarses! They marched to the beat of the iconic different drummer. They advanced confidently in the direction of their dreams and met with a success unexpected in common hours. Unexpected, at least, in my parents’ eyes. These two writers, who I knew only by name and reputation, became my personal writing heroes.

From that moment on, whenever we spotted their names on the screen encased by our sizable wood-paneled entertainment center, we would point to the credits. “Patchett and Tarses,” we would recite out loud, knowingly. The guys who left Armstrong and Lancaster to become Hollywood writers, was the silent follow-up line. I don’t know what my parents thought whenever we chanted those names. But to me, every instance was a confirmation. Here were two people who left our area to became successful and famous as writers. Maybe there was a lesson here. Maybe someone else could do the same. Maybe that someone else could even be … me.

What I didn’t know then was that neither man was really from Lancaster. They weren’t Pennsylvania natives at all. Both Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses spent only a short period of time here. But they had met here, and their collaboration had started here.

And their friendship eventually led them to appear in the credits of The Bob Newhart Show, The Tony Randall Show, The Carol Burnett Show, and in many other small- and large-screen projects, both together and individually. And every time I saw their names, my spirit soared. Just as it did when Mary Tyler Moore tossed her hat into the air on that busy street in downtown Minneapolis. Independence! Magic! Go for it!

And then, Life happened. I got caught up in college and working in libraries. Marriage and divorce followed. Writing was unfortunately pushed aside for a good long while. And the only writers I saw on a regular basis were still the ones on television, although there were different examples in the 1980s and 1990s. I loved watching Jessica Fletcher type her pages and figure out mystery plots in the opener of each Murder, She Wrote. And I was impressed when Stephen J. Cannell typed furiously and tossed his page up into the air at the end of each one of his television productions. But Jessica Fletcher, like Oscar Madison, was a fictional character. And Stephen J. Cannell was a prolific big shot in California, writing and producing his own action-packed TV series and writing action-packed novels, too. They were both too unreal to be mentors to me. They weren’t like people who used to work for the same company that my father did. They weren’t people who had spent time in my hometown.

Eventually my chances to write increased, and eventually I took on in part the “tough life” that my father had once warned me about. I now have several books and a fair amount of other work to show for it. Ironically enough, in my father’s last memory-faltering year, whenever he talked to someone about my modest writing success, he quipped, “It’s all she ever wanted to do.” Well, if you knew this to be true, I wanted to retort, why the hell did you tell me that it would be tough? Why didn’t you encourage me back then? Tell me that I could do anything I put my mind to? But no. I merely smiled at his final realization that at last I was doing something I should have been doing all along. I was glad that this was one of his final impressions of me. I do have one regret, though. I wish I could have gotten into my writing rhythm sooner. I wish I could have sat down to talk for even a few minutes with Johnny and Ed.

Now, over the course of more than a month (thanks to the ability to renew the library loan), I am still in the midst of watching all 142 episodes of The Bob Newhart Show. I have caught up with and become re-addicted to the lives of Bob and Emily Hartley, along with Howard, Ellen, Jerry, Carol, and the rest of the crew, all over again. I watch each credit sequence, and I point and cheer whenever Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses are listed as writers, story consultants, or producers. In fact, on one of their earliest connections to the show, both men appeared as bit actors. If I saw this episode when it first aired, I had forgotten it. But now I have visions of these two young do-gooders who served as my early mentors.

I’ve looked up Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses online. Most of their public bios don’t mention their time at Armstrong in Lancaster. And this is okay. Their story takes on even more of a legend status with me. If posted sources are to be believed, then I know that both men are still turning out new work, into their late 70s. Tom has turned to playwriting and had a major play premier on stage in Europe a few years ago. And Jay is the subject and sole actor in an online comedy series called Free Advice from an Old Guy. They are still creating. They can still influence me. Or anyone, really.

We have all now moved past the days of The Bob Newhart Show, and all of us – including me -- have had our own versions of writing success. But it still gives me a thrill and a chill to know that some “local” guys – these two writers, yet! -- did good, once upon a time. So here is a big and very belated THANK YOU, Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses. (More than forty years late, but still.) Thank you for inspiring the writer in me so long ago. Thank you for giving me hope that there was indeed Life after Lancaster. I did leave the place (twice!). I did leave Suburbia. My name does appear in the credits of a variety of print and online productions, of a certain sort. Your influence is something I can still feel today. And I surely hope that I’m not the only one who cheers when your names show up in the credits.

Thanks, guys!

My sophomore English teacher started it.

During our first week as tenth graders, Mr. Sachwald told us we each needed a thesaurus to help us with our writing assignments.  What was a thesaurus?  I had yet to see one and certainly had never used one.

 That weekend my mother drove me to the bookstore at the brand-new suburban mall. While she looked for mysteries and romances, I stood in front of the reference shelves andsurveyed the possibilities.  Sachwald had given us two criteria:  the name “Roget” -- a funny word that didn’t sound at all like it was written -- and a preference for an edition that listed key words in alphabetical order.  Armed with those guidelines, I scanned the shelves.  I took so much time that I’m sure my mother interceded, impatient and ready to pay for her own purchases.  A hardback copy is too expensive, she would have said, especially if you need the book only this year.  I settled on a small, cheap, yellow and turquoise paperback, The New Pocket Roget’s Thesaurus in Dictionary Form, printed that year (1972). It met both my teacher’s and mother’s requirements.

Wouldn’t you know it, Sachwald was right.  That thesaurus helped me find more powerful words to put in the many American literature papers I cranked out on the family typewriter that year.  I continued to consult it whenever I had reports to write for my junior and senior teachers. 

Why use interesting when engrossing went a step farther?  If explain was too common, then elucidate could take its place.  And if a character had to laugh, he might even guffaw. The book also came in handy to spruce up the unrequited-love poems that I churned out ad nauseum during my teenager-hood. Some of that verse even made its way into the school literary magazine, Whispering Minds.  The worst of the bunch were submitted under an alias to protect the guilty author.

When I went off to college, I was armed with my old thesaurus and two graduation gifts: a typewriter of my own, and a hardback, letter-tabbed Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language. Armed thusly, I felt as though I was indeed embarking upon a noble educational experience.

I learned much during the next four years, including the technique of typing with carbon paper or on dittos so that my masterpieces could be distributed to classmates.  Those were the days of hand-held correction tape and typewriter eraser sticks with wild hairdos of plastic bristles.  Choosing the best words to type was the easiest part of the process.

Sometime during its second decade of coming to my rescue, my thesaurus needed some help of its own.  First the back cover fell off, and then the front. I repaired the damage badly, using masking tape because it was all I had at the time.  When I finally had thick clear tape to reinforce the spine, even the masking tape was crumbling with age.  I taped over it, rather than run the risk of further ruining the cover. Appearance didn’t matter; it just had to hold together. The pages were fine and none were missing.

 On a drive through central New York in the 1990s, I stopped at a used bookstore. The musty backyard shed was crammed to the rafters with all kinds of books.  Since I was the only customer and had walked down a long driveway to reach the place, I felt an obligation to buy at least one item.  Quite frankly, I didn’t see anything I’d want to touch, let alone buy.  Just when I thought I’d have to aim an idle thanks at the proprietor and walk away empty-handed, I caught a glimpse of a familiar yellow and turquoise cover. It was a copy of my thesaurus that was in much better shape than the one I had.  I had never considered that other copies might exist. My mind debated against itself.  I already had one, why would I need another? Mine was worn out, that’s why.  But I’d never have the heart to throw out or recycle the book I bought in high school.  It had sentimental value.  Maybe it would be nice to have two thesauruses.  Thesauri?  Whatever. I gave the man a dollar and felt good doing it.

 I saw a copy of my thesaurus again a few years later at a library book sale, and I bought it.  By now it had become a habit.  To date I own four copies of that Roget’s New Pocket Thesaurus.  The original sits with my dictionary next to my computer.  Another copy is on a shelf in my unplugged writer’s garret.  One is in the car, and the last one is in my desk at work.  I have the luxury of knowing that wherever I am, my thesaurus is probably nearby.   Whenever I have times of sudden inspiration to write, I don’t have to worry about reaching a point where the right word doesn’t come to mind.  My trusty thesaurus will give me appropriate alternatives.

 Truth be told, I don’t use the book much anymore. It’s no longer the crutch it was in high school and college.  When I do get the urge to leaf through it, my thesaurus is a tool that feels comfortable in my hands. I even consulted my tattered paperback several times while writing this article.  Which words originated in my brain, and which ones needed a little prompting to reach the printed page?  I’ll never tell.  But I noticed that the cover needs additional taping.

 As I keyed this text into my computer and checked my word count in the word processing program, I noticed that the software had a built-in thesaurus. I opened it, entered a simple word, and eight similar words popped up on the screen. I was given the option to Lookup, Cancel, or Replace.  Replace? 

No thanks. I’d rather flip through the worn pages of my favorite old Roget’s.  Some things just shouldn’t change.

Fall 2005