Slides 7 and 48

The Top Slide: My sister Sally and me at a wedding.

The Date: August 22, 1959

The Photographer: My father

I am seven years old and I am sharp! “Sharp” is a word I’ve just learned in this context and never before used to describe myself. A couple hours ago, before the wedding, my mother pinned a flower on my jacket. Then licking her fingers and flattening down my eyebrows she said, “Young man you are dapper dandy.” 

I understand why she said it. After all, she’d never seen me in a tuxedo before—what my new uncle Ted calls a “Penguin Suit”. She was surprised and quite impressed with my appearance so she called me dapper dandy. It means that I am very handsome and indeed I am—particularly today as I am wearing white dress shoes… Unscuffed!

Though I appreciate my mother’s comment, my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that she also made a terrible fuss over how beautiful my sister Sally looks in her flower girl dress. Please don’t misunderstand me. I too am impressed with the dress. It’s pretty big—much like Cinderella’s gown at the ball, and the outfit includes a stylish little crown with a table doily. It is an impressive ensemble though I must say I think Sally herself looks much like she always does. But hey… if Mom thinks that she is beautiful… well… fine.

I am not beautiful though and I’m not dapper dandy either. I am sharp. I know this because before the wedding my new uncle Ted (whose outfit is just like mine only much bigger) looked at me and said, “Whoa Bobby.” He grabbed me by the shoulders and squared me off for a good look. “I gotta say it. You my man are sharp.”

What was I suppose to say? “Oh no, I’m not sharp. I’m dapper dandy.” No… I’m happy to be sharp and proud to be a ring bearer.

I remember well when our Aunt Audrey and her boyfriend Ted asked Sally and me if we would be in their wedding party. By the way, don’t be fooled by the term wedding party. It might sound fun but that’s just so the two people getting married can get someone to come. It’s no party at all. For one thing it doesn’t just take a night. It takes practically a whole weekend. When you join a wedding party you are committing yourself to an evening without friends, sitting in a church and rehearsing for the actual party that happens the next day. And even that one is more like going to church than a party. The whole deal is pretty serious—not a lot of fun. Anyway, Audrey and Ted came to dinner and afterwards they hung out with our family in the front room.

Audrey is our favorite aunt. She is quite beautiful. She has eyeglasses with real gems glued in the corners. I really liked her boy friend Ted a lot too. He has curly hair and is what is called a giant. I knew he’d make a great uncle.

Audrey asked if Sally would be her flower girl and then went on to explain what the job entailed. Sally went crazy with excitement, probably because all she had to do is walk in with a bunch of flowers, stand there for three or four hours and then walk back out again. As long as she didn’t have to pee or pass out she could hardly fail.

Then Ted asked me if I would be his ring bearer. My job description was a bit more ominous. I would be given the actual wedding ring in the ‘best of view” at the back of the church. The “best of view” is a small entry area that my grandpa called the “vestibule”. I think that’s the Swedish. I would need to carry the ring clear to the pulpit in the front of the church—a distance of nearly four hundred yards. To make matters worse, I would not be permitted to touch the ring with my hands but would balance it upon a tiny satin pillow. I am only seven. My knowledge of fabrics is limited but even I know that satin is slippery. I asked for a rationale concerning the pillow but was given none. I sat upon the couch in our living room. Ted sat in a chair on the other side of the coffee table and waited for my answer. 

“I’m wondering about the material on that pillow,” I said. “Why does it have to be satin?”

“I’m not really sure,” he said. “It’s just always satin.”

“Yeah, I understand that,” I said, “but I was wondering if we could maybe use a scratchy wool or burlap.”

“Nope,” he said laughing, “I’m pretty sure Audrey wants the pillow to be satin.”

“Rubber might be nice,” I countered.

“No,” he said, “I think we’ll stick with Satin. It’s already been ordered.”

“How big is the ring?” I asked.

From the other side of the room Audrey held up her hand flashing a band with a diamond setting. “Just a little bigger than this one,” she said.

I didn’t want to say it but I was concerned about the heating registers in the floor just inside the “best of view”. If I tripped, that ring could slide on that slippery satin and fall down in the register. If that happened it would be lost forever like one of my mother’s ear rings and several of my peppermint candies.

“How much did the ring cost?” I asked nervously.

The adults laughed and my mother said, “Bobby, it’s not polite to ask how much things cost.”

“How much do you think it cost?” Ted said.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe a million dollars?” I said. More laughter from the adults.

My father spoke up, “I’ll tell you something. That ring is worth far more than a million. That ring is gonna cost Ted every bit of freedom he ever had.”

More laughter. I never did find out for sure how much it cost but I’m guessing it was about a million and one hundred dollars.Ted waited for an answer.

“Yes,” I said finally. “I will do it. I will bear your ring.”

Now I’m standing next to Sally on the steps of the church following the wedding. She is still holding her flowers. She did fine considering the little that was required. I on the other hand performed excellently.

Before we walked out the door a lady said to me, “You did a great job young man.” Then reaching for a basket on the back pew she said, “Oh wait… I have something just for you.“ I was excited as I’d not been expecting payment for my services. The lady turned toward me and emptied a napkin full of rice into my hands. I have no idea why.

“Gee thanks,” I said. “You shouldn’t have.”

Sally looks a bit miffed. We walk out the door. Our dad is standing on the sidewalk with his camera. “Wait you two. Hold it right there,” he shouts. So we do and a bunch of other people start snapping pictures too. I’m feeling a bit awkward, trying hard not to spill any rice. It’s okay though. I can handle it because I am sharp.

Fourteen years later I stood at the front of another church and, as always, I was sharp—this time in a polyester brown tuxedo with a yellow ruffled shirt. One could hardly look sharper in 1974. I stood beside the love of my life—a beautiful girl, only eighteen years old. She wore a wedding dress. A pastor asked me a series of questions each one requiring a response. At the end I answered, "Yes. I will." What I meant was, "Yes. I will bear the ring."

It was a far riskier pledge this time around. This ring I would bear whether sick or healthy, rich or poor, whether things were good or bad. I know some who are unable to make such a commitment— afraid to even try. I know others who tried, some for a long while, and then gave up. I don't judge them. It is serious business bearing this ring.

I have done so for nearly four decades and will until the day I die. Years ago I worried that it would slip off my finger. There is no chance of that now. Whenever I remove it (which is seldom) I’m surprised to see how it has left a permanent mark in my skin—how my finger has changed its very shape to hold the ring safely.


And here is the mysterious thing. Every year the ring takes on more weight but every year it is lighter and more joyous to bear.

Slides 89 and 92

The Slide:  Me wearing my basketball uniform in our living room

The Date:  November, 1967

The Photographer:  My mother

            It’s a November afternoon. I’m two weeks into the basketball preseason.  I’m a pretty good small town athlete and a starting forward on my Junior Varsity team.  Following practice we received our new uniforms though to call them new would not be entirely accurate.  The uniforms had been passed from the Varsity to the JV several years before and they were old even then.  I got #44 and I’m happy about it.  I know every player who ever wore that very jersey. Now the jersey is mine.

            I’m sporting white canvas Chuck Taylor basketball shoes.  Though they offer little support, “Chucks” have been the shoe of choice for at least a dozen years.  I remember looking in old yearbooks where my father stood with his team wearing dark shoes—what he called “leather uppers”.  They looked ugly to me and I wondered, “Who would wear leather shoes on a basketball court?”  Answering my own question I thought, “No one. That’s who.”  A couple years later some guys at adidas and Nike asked themselves the same question but came up with a different answer.

            My socks are high and my shorts are…well… very much so. Both are the style of the day.

            The previous year I’d been the high scorer on my team and was proud that the statistic was recorded in the yearbook next to a picture of me. 

 The caption read, “Bob Stromberg, high scorer on the Jr. High team tries for two in a game with Bradford.” I scored one hundred twelve points for the season.  The yearbook failed to note that my teammate, Tom Huffman, scored one hundred and eleven.  The omission didn’t surprise me. Why would it be mentioned? He was, after all, only second highest scorer.  I’d clearly beat him and won the title for myself.  That’s why the yearbook called me, “Bob Stromberg, high scorer…” 

Following our last game (a game in which I’d scored two points and Huffman scored fourteen), he said to me, “I almost beat you Strom!  I measly point!  One little foul shot!”

            To which I said, “No you didn’t Huff.  You almost tied me.  You would have needed two points to beat me.“  I felt bad for him but hey… the bragging rights were mine.  It’s now nine months later and I’m hoping to once again excel. 

            I came home after practice and shouted, “Hey Mom.  We got our new uniforms.”

            “Oh good,” she said.  “What’s your number?”

            “Forty-four,” I said.

            “Well put it on and we’ll get a picture.” Minutes later I stood in the corner in front of the TV.  “Stand up straight,” she said. I did and the flashbulb lit up the room.

            At first glance what appears odd is the picture’s context.  One cannot imagine why I would be standing in the living room in a basketball uniform.  If it were a little league baseball uniform, having just put it on, I might be ready to hop on my bike and peddle to the game.  But there is no natural scenario in which I would wear a basketball uniform in the corner of the living room.  The reason, of course, is because my mother said, “Well put it on. Let’s get a picture.”  I didn’t argue with her because I’d been waiting eight or nine years to put it on.

            Through my elementary years, my father taught at the high school and later became the principal.  Very often, as a little boy, I tagged along with him to ball games.  Even as a kindergartener I knew every player’s name, number and position.  Sitting in the bleachers I watched pretty cheer leaders line up near the locker room doors.  I rose with the crowd as the players burst out, dribbling single file past center court in their satin warm up suits.  I dreamt of being one of them.

            During football season on cold autumn nights, outside under the lights at “away” games, I huddled next to my father.  The smell of hot dogs and cigars mingled in the cold air as the cheerleaders in stretch pants and varsity jackets lined up by the goalpost.  I rose with the crowd as our players in orange and black roared on to the field.  I wanted to be like one of them.  Oddly, even then, I imagined how it would feel if others wanted to be like me.

            Through elementary school and jr. high my greatest goal was to play football and basketball.  It’s all I thought of.  In the autumn we played back yard football every day rain or shine—particularly rain. All summer long we shot baskets on any hoop we could find.

            I began to suspect, early on, that I would never be a great athlete. I didn’t allow myself to think about it much but the truth is, I wasn’t fast, quick, or strong.  Nor did I possess a competitive drive.  These were prized athletic qualities and three out of the four could not be faked.  What I did possess was adequate size for a small town athlete and I had what coaches called “good hands”.   “Good hands” meant I could catch a football if it was close enough to hit me in the head and I could make a basket if I was wide open.  These attributes were good enough to gain a little notoriety.  Following a successful freshman football season I was one of a handful picked to play varsity the next year.  Of course I didn’t play much, but playing on varsity was not as important to me as being on varsity. 

           In basketball, following a good year on JVs, I was the only junior with important varsity minutes.  It was during this junior season that I experienced for the first and last time what if felt like to a star.  In the din of an important game, I sat on the bench with fourteen seconds remaining and heard my coach shout, “Strommy!”  My knees went weak.  We were down by four points with no time-outs and no three-point line. In the final seconds, thanks to my teammates defense and my opponent’s ineptitude, I scored six points.  In slow motion from some inner world, deep in the corner with 0:01 left on the clock, I launched the last shot from my hip… nothing but net!  The following year as a diminishing senior, I experienced what it felt like to know that others wanted to be like me.  

           I was picky about my shoes.  I didn’t like high top sneakers.  They felt clunky.  Unfortunately, due to the threat of ankle injuries, our coaches would not allow us to wear low cuts.  Improvising, I wore two pairs of socks and folded the outer pair down around the ankles giving the shoes the appearance of low cuts.  I took a little razzing from my teammates but I liked the way they looked and felt.  Halfway through the season I went to a freshman game. All our young players sported my sock styling.  I was a basketball fashion trendsetter.

I competed in athletics from as young an age as possible.  Early on I was one of the best in my grade but kids mature at different rates.  Some of the big kids, who were dominant in jr. high, stopped growing and were left behind.  One of my classmates barely made the teams year after year.  Following our junior year, he finally grew into his awkward body and won the coveted “Athlete of the Year” award at graduation.  Another basketball teammate—a year older than I—competed with me for a starting position his entire senior year.  He went on to a big university, made the team as a “walk on” and had an outstanding college career.

I just got a little better each year and held my own.  I wanted to be the star but the thing about athletics is… you can’t fake it.  You either are or you’re not.  And no one needs to wonder.  You just look at the stats.   Mine were just good enough to be lauded by the younger kids.  I was, however, fortunate to play on a football team that won twenty-three games in a row.  A number of my teammates and I received letters from interested college recruiters. The truth is I didn't have the desire or the talent to play college football. However several colleges couldn't tell that from my game films. I should have gotten out when I had the opportunity but I didn't even know how to quit when I had the chance.

I’d invested such a large part of my identity in athletics that I didn’t know who I would be without a ball in my hand.  To make matters more difficult, in my family you just didn't quit.  You didn’t quit anything! You didn't start a game of monopoly unless you planned to finish it. You didn't quit just because the game went six hours. Quitting wasn't fair to the other players. No, you toughed it out. In the first eighteen years of my life (all the years I lived at home), the only thing I remember quitting was Cub Scouts. Even then I'd stuck it out for a whole year.

 I somehow grew up believing that quitters were bad, unambitious people who never amounted to anything, vagrants not worth the cardboard they slept beneath. Take Old Dicky, for example.  Old Dicky our town drunk (who wasn’t all that old), slouched against the town square World War II monument, snoozing away hot summer afternoons.  He was the quintessential quitter.

My grandpa said he remembered Dicky when he was younger.  “Well, I’ll tell you, Bobby, he wasn’t the brightest kid I’d ever met, but he was a nice little boy till he started quittin’.  Quit Little League.  Quit Junior Firemen.  Quit high school.  He even quit work at the bottle plant.  And for what?  Just look at ‘im now.  If that’s not the saddest excuse for a man I’ve ever seen.  Just makes your heart ache.”

And of course I knew you didn’t have to look too far to find other examples.  There was Al Capone and Oswald and that crazy guy who killed the nurses in Chicago.  They probably all quit junior high choir or something.  Quitting revealed a basic flaw in one's character. Quitters didn't have the stuff to stick it out when the going got tough.

I'd wanted to quit a bunch of things, as a kid, but I didn't.  Now I think I should have. In high school I took geometry, trigonometry and calculus. I started to get lost about three weeks into my first freshman term and never found my way out of the confusion. This caused tremendous stress and made me feel intellectually inept. I've never completely recovered. In college I took Math 101 pass-fail, passed by a hair (I have no idea what that is in metrics), and have not opened a math book since. 

And Spanish! Mi Gloria! Why did I have to take four years of Spanish? Why couldn't I have taken two years like some of the other kids? No one spoke Spanish within three hundred miles of my town except maybe my Spanish teacher, and I don't think he spoke it very well. I know I couldn't understand a word he said—which was, for him, a continual irritant.

“So Senor Stromberg.  Apparently you do not think that the Spanish language is worthy of your time. Is this not so?”

I could have said, “No”.  This would have been proper usage in either Spanish or English but I thought it best to remain silent and look straight ahead. 

“Well Rrrrrrrroberto,” he said with a long rolling R—a sound I was unable to even approximate,  “I want you to know that I do not care.  Do you hear me? Look at me Roberto.” 

I thought it best to follow his instruction.

“Mi amigo,” he said, his eyes red, anger seething just beneath the service of his otherwise calm demeanor,  “if you would like to quit this class it is fine with me.  And do you know why Roberto?  Do you know why it is fine with me?”  

I felt uncertain.

“Because,” he said.“ I… really… could… care… less.” 

At this point I wanted very much to ask what the whole class was thinking. I wanted to ask, “Senor Mullins, do you mean that you could care less?  Or do you mean that you couldn’t care less?  You said that you really could care less. I’m concerned that you are perhaps not saying what you mean to say.  If you mean that you really could care less then you still must really care.  If that is the case I would like to ask… por  que?”   If I’d had any fighting, competitive spirit I’d have said it but intimidated and embarrassed I remained silent.

Looking back I realize I probably should have quit Spanish.  I’m embarrassed to say that I sat in that class for four years and still can’t speak a complete sentence.  It’s inexcusable.  After graduation, I should have quit football too.  And I would have, had my coach not said, “Hey we could send some game films out to your college.  You never know.” I would have quit had my hometown paper not written a story about several of us who were seeking scholarships.  I should have quit. But I didn’t know how to let go and move on with my life.  It was too scary at the time. There were too many unanswered questions like; if I quit will I end up sleeping over a heating vent or killing a cop? Will I snooze away summer afternoons against the WWII monument?  Will I have to marry someone in the eighth grade?  Well, yes, probably. Those are the kinds of things that happen to quitters.

My college football experience turned out to be worse than I could have imagined. My first-year-coach, Coach Vader (no relation), was a maniac. You remember Woody Hayes when he went nuts on national TV and beat up one of his young players? Remember Bobby Knight and his folding chairs? Remember Jack Nicholson in The Shining? Remember Anthony Hopkins with his mask and fava beans?  Then you get the idea.  Coach Vader berated us in practice, screaming at us nonstop even during meals, his face only inches from the side of our heads. We awakened in the dark each morning to his voice taunting us over the dormitory intercom. Actually many of us were so nervous we’d never gotten to sleep.

It was so bad that two tri-captains, with distinguished college careers, quit on Friday, five days into the preseason. I only made it to Thursday. I didn't even have the guts to talk to the coach. At 5:30 in the morning, on the way to the field house for ankle taping, I turned around, hopped a Chicago cab, and rode off in the sunrise. The cabby said, "A donde vas?" Of course I didn't understand.

"Take me to my aunts in Brookfield," I said extra loudly presuming that the louder I spoke the better he might comprendo.

We drove for an hour and I began to wonder if my cabby was taking me to my aunt's or taking me for a ride. It seemed as though we passed the same Laundromat quite a few times, though perhaps there was a chain called Ronnie's One and Only Cleaners. Several hours later, he collected a good portion of my summer saving with a big smile and a "Muchas gracias, senor!"

I said the only Spanish that came to mind, "Que sera, sera." At least it was true.  I stayed with my aunt for a couple of weeks until school began. I was a quitter.

In retrospect, I think I did the right thing.  My mistake was to begin in the first place. One plays college football for the love of the game, or at least for the love of the scholarship money, but I played for neither.  I played—if only for four days—because I didn't know how to stop. I didn’t know how to move on with my life.  I didn't know that I could be me without a helmet in the autumn.

Surprisingly, when I quit what I was doing I discovered who I was.  I saw that I could do lots of things and still be me.  I joined the college choir.  I played intramural ball. I studied hard—a new experience.  I even began to understand what I might ultimately do with my life.  Most importantly I figured out that what I am is less important than who.

I do not advocate frequent quitting.  There are things we should stick with—hold on to and never let go.  But sometimes the best thing is to quit what we’re doing, take who we are and move on.

I was a pretty good small town athlete.  One day I put on my basketball uniform and stood in the corner in front of the TV while my mom snapped a picture.  I did it because I thought the picture would represent who I was. I didn’t realize that basketball was just something I did.

           Flash forward four decades.  I haven’t held a football in twenty years—unless it said Nerf on the side.  When we moved into a new home I didn’t even bother to put up a ball hoop.  The boys were grown and gone by then and I didn’t feel like shooting around by myself.  When I was a kid I could not have imagined behaving like this but… here I am—more myself than ever. 

Slides 79, 91 and 50

The Slide: My mother , Sally, Johnny, Ingrid and Me on Old Baldy

The Date: October, 1965

The Photographer: My Father

When people ask me where I come from I tell them I’m from a little place in north centrallish Pennsylvania. If they say, “Oh really, what’s it’s near?” I tell them it’s near south westernish, NY.  I do so because, really, it’s not near anywhere. The nearest big city (Buffalo) is about a hundred miles away but I never knew anyone who had actually been there and I knew I never wanted to go.  The only three TV stations we received in my little town were broadcast from Buffalo, so I had watched the local news enough to know I was better off staying right where I was.  Every night I’d hear about the killer fires in suburban Cheektowaga or the four-alarm blazes in lower Lackawanna.  When, as a junior in high school, I finally did drive with my family to the city for the Ice Capades, I was surprised there were any buildings left. 

We were pretty isolated in my little town, but we liked it that way.  On the radio dial all I could get during the day was WFRM (The Farm and Home Broadcasting Company).  But on cold, clear nights, if I tuned my Sears Silvertone very carefully—I can still smell the hot tubes—I might pick up ABC in New York, CKLW in Detroit and my favorite WLS in Chicago.

          “Radar weather, eye-eeeee-iiiii-eeeee-iiiii,” the weatherman’s choir sang in four-part harmony. “Radar weather, eye-eeeee-iiiii-eeeee-iiiii.”

“Hey Chicago, It’s cold out there,” the announcer would say. “Radar weather has forty-one in Des Plaines, thirty-nine on the North Shore and it’s a chilly thirty-seven in the loop.”

Tucked in my bed, I lay in the dark night after night and wondered what the heck a Loop was.  I thought it was probably something like the circular drive at our high school though maybe even longer. We didn’t have the bright lights, subways, fancy restaurants, or a Loop, but what we had was beautiful.  Nestled in the rolling Allegheny Mountains, everywhere you looked it was just so beautiful. All the little towns around were nice too but none more so than mine because we had Old Baldy.

Old Baldy was a big piece of hillside, stripped clean of trees, jutting out into the center of town. I asked my grandfather how it got so bald.  He told me that it was originally clear cut by turn of the century lumber barons.  The forest would have grown back like it did on the surrounding hills but, for several generations, it became a common pasture where town folks grazed their milk cows. The cows kept it bald. 

From my house I could run out the back door, across the creek, and up through the pine grove at the base of the hill. Fifteen minutes later, I’d be standing at the most magnificent spot in my world.  From here the town looked exactly like the postcards at the Five and Dime, but you didn’t have to pay even a nickel for the view.  From here tiny cars drove slowly on rolling country roads.  From here the Pennsylvania Railroad, like a Lionell model, snaked its’ path along the river to unload at the glass factory.  From here on hot summer afternoons, barely discernible from so high, you could spot kids on their bikes weaving their way to the pool.

It was a magical place and from the age of five I climbed there often. On summer nights I’d go up there with a whole pack of buddies.  We carried our sleeping bags and little blue boxes of Camp Fire Marshmallows.  As the sun dropped over the far hill, we’d watch the street lamps blinking on below, only to be outdone an hour later by the blazing stars above.

In the winter we tobogganed down Old Baldy’s icy face, six little blue-lipped buddies, laced together holding on to one another’s frozen buckled boots, screaming at the top of our lungs. In the late summer lying on sleds of flattened cardboard boxes we careened down it’s grassy front.

Old Baldy was just a big piece of hillside in the center of my little town, but it played an important part in my growing up.  I took my first solo hike there as a five year old.  I had my first campout there at eight—pretty big deal.   I met my first girlfriend up there once when we were thirteen. I’ll call her Denise because…well… that was her name. I recall it was exciting but a bit awkward.  We sat up there, side by side, on a log and looked at the town for a few minutes.

I said, “Pretty huh?”

She said, “Yup”.  And that was about it. 

Then she stood up, smiled and kind of waved. She went down her side and I went down mine. Okay it wasn’t a hot date but it was better than having my dad drive us somewhere. 

When I was twenty, I took another girl up there. She was very impressed. For years, every time we visited “home” we climbed there with our kids. 

But the most special times on Old Baldy were the times I spent with my dad—many of them when I was very young.  Dad always pulled on black artics over his shining dress shoes. Then he'd  pull on a scratchy school letter jacket, and a wool hat.  My mother would help me put on every imaginable piece of warm winter clothing that a child could legally be required to wear and off we'd go.

As hard as the climb was, stumbling over my own feet, sliding on the nearly frozen ground, sweating through several sweaters and a winter coat, I plodded upward, I wanted to get to the top.  To me, the whole idea of climbing Old Baldy was to get to the top.  But apparently my dad knew better. He’d stop and say, “Shhhh Listen,” We’d be by the creek or by a stand of pines or under a rusty old oak still clinging to its dry leaves.  “Listen!” he’d whisper so softly I could hardly hear.

I was never sure what I was supposed to be listening for. Then, very faintly at first, I would hear it.  The complaint of a maple gently moving in a breeze. The flourish of a black squirrel running a tightrope from tree to tree.  Maybe the mournful chorus of a thousand geese flying far too high to be seen. And once, I remember, it was the plinking burble sound of trickling water flowing between layers of melting ice.  To my dad it was all beautiful music.  Eventually we would reach the top where we’d rest a while and enjoy the beauty. Then all too soon we’d have to head back down. My dad taught me to experience the climb and I grew to love it.  As a young man though, it became increasingly difficult to be quiet—to be still. I still struggle with the urge to just get to the top. Then I hear my father’s voice, “Shhh. Listen!”

         Old Baldy is gone now.   The hill is still there but it’s no longer bald.  Each year, the pine grove and the leafy seedlings crept higher and higher toward the top.  Sadly, the last time I climbed Old Baldy I stood, surrounded by a deep forest, unable to see the town below.

 

         It’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon in mid October.  The leaves are just beyond peak.  My cousin Johnny went with my father and me to the football game.  We returned home, to find my mother packing a picnic basket. “Thought we might take a hike up Old Baldy,” she said.  “It’s just so beautiful this evening.”  My sister Sally helped little Ingrid into her sweater. “Don’t forget her hat,” my mother said,

         Sally rolled her eyes. “Mom,” she said, “it’s hot out there.”

         “But it might get breezy on top,” my mother said, “and who knows, maybe we’ll want to stay a little while.”

         My father grabbed the camera. 

         An hour later, as the sun was setting, we gathered around a campfire and roasted our hot dogs. My father said, “Hey Johnny, do me a favor and snap a family picture for us. Will you?”

         Johnny grabbed the camera, looked through the view finder and said, “Ingrid! Hey! Hey!  Hey Ingrid! Look this way!” Ingrid, a perfectionist even then, was intently focusing on her hot dog and the job at hand. She never heard his voice. The rest of us looked toward the camera and Johnny snapped a picture forever preserving the memory of a beautiful place.