Seven Miles to the Horizon

I note this week even Hitler saw the sunny side of the Munich agreement.

Most historians agree the pact tied the angry dictator's hands at the same time he was intent on war. At first blush they are right. Upon further reflection, the Fuhrer realized the very generals who opposed agression against the Czechs would be retired when actual hostilties commenced, and was, for a time, content to wait them out.

This would not have been the case had Herr Schickelgruber taken his tea alongside the old timers I was with the past few days for they've never retired.

One, serendipitously, is the daughter of a General who had a hand in winning the war Hitler started after his recalcitrant generals took their pensions - her father, a cavalry officer, played polo with Patton at Ft. Riley when old Blood & Guts was inventing American armored tactics, and before both men riding Sherman tanks swept across the deserts of Africa and the French plains.

Another, at age 97, plays gospel hymns on the piano at nursing homes in Richmond. She led us, holding hands in a circle, singing love given away always comes back like a penny well spent.

Come Wednesday morning in senior camp at the Shrinemont Episcopal Retreat Center, atop Mt. Jackson, the agenda listed conflicting workshops. One featured a new Bishop who'll replace the old bishop upon his retirement; the other called Stories to Pass On.

Choosing Stories, implying nothing untowards the new Bishop, who seems an earnest young man, follows a personal pattern of avoiding situations where any whiff of ambition is present. I've never understood why I resent ambition. It might have something to do with a lack of the quality in myself instead of the person to whom the resentment is mis-directed - yet, when you sail farther from shore, closer to the horizon, even small ambitions, never realized, drop away, freeing the personality to pursue nobler things, or nothing at all, if you so choose.

When asked to tell stories they wish to pass on, an elegantly dressed woman revealed, living as a child, on Park Avenue, at 92nd street, she saw a stoller begin to slide down a hilly sidewalk, only to be rescued by the family dog who grabbed the handle by his teeth.

A 100-year old woman described her life purely in economic terms, recalling a 60 cent water bill in 1946, $7 rent, $5 a week for wages, and 2 cents a quart more, by picking strawberries, butter beans and blackeyed peas (and happy to get it!).

The aforementioned piano player told of Mennonite gatherings at harvest time and attending Princeton when Einstein was in residence. She advised us to always sing the meaning of hymns.

When travelling by car, rather than plane, I carry a multitude of books which I arrange in stacks around the unfamiliar room, so upon awakening, I may spend time, as I do at home, in the shifting worlds I'm currently investigating. It's not surprising to any Spotsyltuckian reader that the idea of the American small town is a subject to which we frequently return.

Two books in one stack on the bedside table, Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, and Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson, contrast ambition and reflection as did the selection of workshops. The former tells the story of a young woman determined to beautify a Midwestern town; the latter contains meandering tales of what Anderson originally called grotesques which carry no ambition but to draw only upon episodic emotion.

A third, on a second stack, Lipton on Lipton, also ventures here, describing the split of method acting schools, one following Action-Objective and the other pursuing Emotional Memory; the first relies upon action to induce emotion, the second, drawing upon emotion to instigate action.

Shrinemont itself for Virginia Episcopalians is a small town where action invests motion, and then all emotions, henceforward, are informed through action. The circumstances of individual visits blur while the emotions of tradition linger to open a heart so that even a foolish love song offered by a 97-year old saint carries effortlessly the quaint wisdom of gentility.

There's a reknown soft-serve ice-cream stand in our fair town. If I park around back, an elderly gentleman inevitably appears to warn my pick-up projects too far out in the passing lane. He was similarly advising another patron a few weeks ago when a man with a gun ordered him to sit on the ground. When he refused, the robber fled, only to return and demand his wallet, also, to no avail.

The intrusion of violence belongs not to this story. When the circle of ancient Episcopalians concluded their stories, I told them how I worry, approaching retirement, that the structure gluing my life together may not hold, and I'll be lost, as if an assailant disrupted the night.

After basking otherwise in the light of this honorable company of women, I now imagine sailing the last seven miles to the far horizon trailing only a gentle wake marking courageous passage.