What we read

The New York Times arrived on the front step every morning, the Bethlehem Globe Times by four in the afternoon. Life magazine came in the mail every week with images of Russia and Arabia and Kentucky and Texas, and then Alabama and Mississippi and Vietnam. The New Yorker had cartoons by Chas Addams and Peter Arno and some which I didn’t understand, the Talk of the Town, stories by Cheever and Updike, profiles of important people, including my Uncle Max, and long articles on weighty issues like DDT and the atomic bomb. The National Geographic came monthly with its yellow cover and sometimes with naked breasts revealed within its pages and a new wall map tucked inside.

We didn’t watch TV unless my father was away on business, but when he was off in Buffalo or Chicago or North Dakota defending the legal interests of Bethlehem Steel, we brought our dinners to the second floor and watched Bonanza, Perry Como, The Wonderful World of Disney, Laugh In, the Smothers Brothers Show.

It was an environment that fostered the acquisition of knowledge one needs to succeed on Jeopardy, with its wide categories of literature, art, music, science, and an environment that cultivated veneration of the people who created these objects. My parents had moved out to the “country” of Bethlehem from Manhattan in 1955, when my father left the New York law offices of Cravath, Swain and Moore for a position with Bethlehem Steel, but were not far removed from their New York acquaintances. When my father joined my Grandfather as a member of the Century Club, he brought back stories of dinners in New York with Ved Mehta and concerts by Benny Goodman.

Bethlehem, PA

I was brought up in a home which loved books. There was a “bijou” illustrated life of Christ measuring under one inch square, the compact Oxford English Dictionary complete with magnifying glass to read the reduced type, sets of Kipling, Saki, O. Henry, Bret Harte, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Robert Louis Stevenson, the Federalist Papers, Bellonii’s De Aquatilibus (engravings of fish from 1553), Stormonth’s Dictionary, Johnson’s Dictionary in four volumes, Antique Views of Boston, The Life and Times of Archy and Mehitabel, The Flowering of New England; Biographies of Washington, Thomas a Becket, Hamilton; Roughing It and Life on the Mississippi, several biographies of Burr. A book with a heavily gilded face, which, when one bowed the book block, revealed a watercolor scene painted on the edge of the pages. There were Bibles – the ancestral family Bible kept in a box under the bookcase, recorded with family births and deaths dating to the 17th century, to which my father added each of our names when we came into this world. Matthew Carey’s Bible printed in Philadelphia in 1806. There was a book printed by Benjamin Franklin, and books which once belonged to John Jay, my great-great-great-great-grandfather. There was the new hymnal (1980), and the old hymnal (1940), the new prayerbook (1953), the old prayer book (1928), and the old-old prayerbook (1896?). There were books of poetry by Rupert Brooke, Robert Frost, and Alan Seeger. Winston Churchill’s History of the English Speaking People, biographies of Henry the Eighth and Richard the Lionhearted, 1066 and All That, St. Paul’s School in the Second World War.

There were prints and paintings too- Currier and Ive’s Fearnaught Stallions, portraits of my ancestors: William Weymann , A Calder Print- Mobiles – My father’s wire sculpture of a dinosaur featuring his extracted molar as the mouth – his wood sculpted Steotopygia – Algernon, the half-naked life-sized Moor with ivory teeth who collected keys and cards by the front door– samplers in Italian from 1823, engravings of Matthew and David Clarkson – Stuart’s portrait of James - a letter from John Marshall- a piece of the flag of the Kearsage – A small Dutch painting of an angry child near the dinner table, Ackerman prints of the Star Chamber and the fire of London, an abstract Carnival in Rio- a profile of William M Evarts.

Going on Jeopardy

Going on Jeopardy is not that easy. If you happen to live near LA, testing takes place in Culver City throughout the year. There are online tests which are open periodically, and the “Brain Bus” travels to various cities. Basically you have to pass the on-line test or the Brain Bus pre-test in order to be invited for an in-person audition. At the in-person audition, you have to take a fifty question written test, then play a brief game of Jeopardy, complete with buzzers, and then participate in a personality interview. If you make it through all that, you’ll be put into an “active pool” of potential contestants for 18 months. If you ever do get onto the show after all that, you have to hope that the category gods favor your knowledge set, and you don’t freeze on the buzzers. On the whole, seeing as how we live in Bennington Vermont, writing a book might be an easier task.

Writing and publishing a book today in many ways is much easier that it has ever been, although the publishing and printing businesses are both in complete shambles.

You could go on Jeopardy!

A little before lunch on Tuesday May 11, 2010, I was working in my office at Excelsior Printing Company trying to plan a small job for place-cards for the president of Williams College, for which I needed to order some paper, when David Crane stepped in and asked if I had a moment to meet with Sheila, the company controller. As David owned the company, I made time for him, and followed him down the hall. Entering Sheila’s office, it quickly became apparent that the reason I was there was to have my employment terminated.

I had worked at Excelsior for over 24 years, and I had observed the company struggle to be profitable in a difficult economic environment and an environment where the printing industry in particular was challenged by change, and I knew the ropes, so I really wasn’t surprised when David told me that he had some bad news, my position was being eliminated. There was a severance package of course, dependent on various concessions on my part. Some decisions I would have to make. The main decision had been made for me. I called Cathy my wife on her cell phone. It was lunchtime so she was outside on the playground at Bennington Elementary School where she works; she couldn’t believe it. I could believe it, because I had been living it, but she was astounded.

I packed up a few things, gave Sheila a hug, and headed home. Life had suddenly changed. At least it was spring with plenty of things to do. I came home, ate some lunch, waited around for a while.

About three, Matthew, my fifteen year old, came in from the bus. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

I was direct- “My job has been eliminated.”

“You’re kidding! You can’t be serious!”

“I am very serious”.

“I can’t believe it! – What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be alright- we have plenty of money saved up”

“But aren’t you going to work?”

“There aren’t a lot of jobs out there right now; we’ll just have to see what happens.”

“You know what you should do? You should write a book, or go on Jeopardy!”