My neighbor’s father, in town for a visit, impressed me as a man of some authority. His bearing gently suggested a person used to being in charge.
Bob Herder, it turns out, was a pilot who flew planes for several airlines before his retirement a few years ago. Among the companies he worked for was Eastern Airlines, for three decades one of Boston’s major carriers.
By the time of my birth, the twenties had almost ceased their roaring. The great crash would hit the next year, 1929, when I was only one year old.
Of course, I can remember neither era, times that provided some of the most dramatic changes in our nation’s history.
But on Monday, September 29th, I felt something like what Americans must have felt when the Great Depression began. Bankers and stock brokers were not jumping out of Wall Street windows, but a strange unfamiliar tension had gripped the nation.
Gene Cohen likes to tell a story about his parents-in-law, Howard and Gisele Miller, when the couple came to visit Gene and his wife Wendy in Washington, D. C.
One day, they decided to tour the National Gallery of Art. After leaving the museum, they took the subway toward their dinner destination, the home of their daughter and Gene.
Date: Monday, September 29, 2008.
Trip: New York City to Cambridge, MA
Distance: approximately 200 miles
Time: some four hours on the road.
Left streets of Manhattan at 11 AM, assuming passage of the bailout bill by the House of Representatives in Washington. At our departure, the stock market stands at 10,900, down from Friday’s close of 11,143.13.
In 1928, the year of my birth, the name given to me ranked number six in popularity among American boys’ names. By contrast, in 2007 the name Richard did not even make the top 20.
Nor do I ever recall any boy named Richard in my daughter’s public school classes from 1985 to 1997. In baseball, the worst hitters fall below the Mendoza line, with batting averages under 200. That must be where Richard lies now.
This past August 29th, John McCain reached age 72. If elected president, that would make him the oldest person ever to enter upon that office.
Though it can qualify as an achievement, he did not celebrate his birthday with much, if any, hoopla. The public was not treated to photos of John blowing out even a few candles on a celebrative cake. Nor did we see him running around the block to demonstrate his physical fitness.
Of 23 students seated in a college classroom, guess how many were wearing wrist watches.
You are wrong.
The answer is only one.