Tag Archives: age

01.16.24
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Snow

All through autumn there was little to suggest winter was approaching. 

Now, it’s here.

After the blizzard.

On the west side of Madison, Wisconsin, we got close to a foot of snow January 9-10. Again, overnight January 10-11, we picked up three inches. On January 12-13, we hunkered down under a howling blizzard that dumped another foot of snow. 

Now the temperatures have dropped below zero.

If we have a mild December, Old Man Winter is apt to unleash his cold fury in January. This is my seventy-ninth winter. One gets to know these things.

Too Much is Enough Already

Some time ago, I lost sight of all the charms of snow. The gobs of white frosting smothering the cake of our landscape, the glitter of a million snow-diamonds in the moonlight, the squeak and crunch of ice-crust beneath your boots, the clean crispness of inhaled frost—all these things were lost on me.

I had shoveled too many tons of the stuff. Dug my car out of too many drifts. Dragged out the jumper cables once too often. Watched it all polluted with carbon granules and the effluvia of wandering dogs.

Now that I’m old and pay a man with a plow to clear my driveway, Nature’s whipped cream is tasty again. Like a retired ski bum, I can wax philosophical.

Before the blizzard.

My backyard has become a thing of beauty. One of the great things about snow is that you don’t have to mow it. 

I did have to unlimber the snow rake and pull a few tons off the roof to reduce the formation of ice dams that might cause leakage. Roof raking ought to be an Olympic sport. All the medals would be taken by beefy Norwegians.

My dog, the ever-adaptible Fooboo, has a high old time playing outdoors in the sub-zero sunshine. We think he is part husky. 

When I was his age, I played in the snow with great vigor. So did all my friends. There was no snow fort we could not build, none we could not assail. If we were feeling physical, we could wash our smaller siblings’ faces, unwillingly, in the snow. And boys bigger than we could do the same to us.

It’s All Downhill from Here

Every hill had sledding potential, but there was one, when I was nine or ten, that was par excellence—the Snake Path. It was not only a steep hill, it was a narrow path that took a tortuous drop through trees and brush, down to the old shale road that led to the river. 

In those days, sleds were steerable, but their steering was gradual. You had two steel runners under you. By pulling hard on the left or right end of a wood crossbar, you could warp the runners slightly to the side, sending you and your sled on a gentle curve down the hill. 

But the curves on the Snake Path were not gentle. They were sudden and heartbreaking. You had to yank the crossbar with all your might and sink a toe off the back runner to bend around the curve. Then you had to do it the other way, more or less instantly.

All this maneuvering was hard on your knit gloves or mittens and on the toes of your four-buckle galoshes. The sudden course changes threw cold snow in your face more or less all the time—but you were expected to take it. You had to run the bends without loss of momentum, so you broke the sound barrier while approaching the final obstacle—an earthen mound that made a perfect mogul or, if you will, a ski jump for sleds. 

Your reward for speed was to fly five or ten feet through space, landing with a big whomp on the old shale road. If, at that moment, you wrenched the crossbar violently and planted your right toe, you could turn ninety degrees and coast down the icy road almost a quarter mile to the litte bridge over the Stink Creek.

Then you would stand up, grab your sled, walk back to the top, and do it all again.

I haven’t had that kind of fun in almost seventy years, nor do I expect to, this side of Eternity. But that’s okay; I had the experience once upon a time. 

In my mind, I am always nine years old.

I hope you’re not much older, Gentle Reader.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

05.23.23
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All the Time There Is

On a nice day in May, as I lay in my zero gravity chair in the backyard, looking up, examining cloud patterns etched in a blue dome, its bottoms fringed round with the yellow-green of spring trees—it occurred to me that however much time this reverie took, I could spare.

Growing older, I become more patient. With each passing year—each step closer to the chasm that ends this life and drops us into the next—I am less concerned about running out of time.

When young I was often impatient.  

Now, my impatience is all used up.

In the midst of the storm and strife, the middle years of life, there are things to accomplish that seem time-bound. We must prove ourselves in some minor skill before we can move up the ladder. We must pile up enough gold to send our kids to college by the time they are ready to go. We need to stretch and to strive, to scrimp and to save, to squirrel away assets against the future.

All that is behind me. Now, everything worth doing seems to want all my attention. It is less vital to finish than to engage. 

Kipling sketched a remarkable image of the afterlife—only I suppose it applies to my here and now:

When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it—lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.
And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair.
They shall find real saints to draw from—Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!
And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one will work for the money, and no one will work for the fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!

We who have lived beyond the hustle and urgency of mid-life know a secret we could tell to those still trapped in that gosh-awful hurly-burly. But it’s no good; they would not listen. 

Or rather, they would not hear. Even gifted with the best intentions and the strongest focus, they could not hear. You don’t have ears for that secret until it becomes your own. 

It is the whisper of Eternity. It says: Go. Do. Enjoy. Be. You have all the time there is.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer 

04.14.23
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A Postscript

Perhaps you recall reading about my old band teacher, Emerson Ebert, in a post on Tuesday, March 28.

Emerson Ebert, a recent photo.

I learned, to my delight, that Mister Ebert is alive and going strong at age 98. So I printed a copy of the blog post and mailed it to him, with a cover letter expressing, first, how startled I would be if he remembered me after more than sixty-five years; and, second, how much I was hoping he would not be offended by my writing about him.

A few days later, I received this wonderful note from Mister Ebert, written in a firm hand: 

Dear Larry,

What a surprise when I received the letter from Larry Sommers.

Believe it or not I do remember Johnny Stevens, Jack Spencer and Larry Sommers.

You certainly described the Streator music program in detail.

This was a real walk thru the past for me.

At any rate you can’t imagine how rewarding your letter was to me. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Emerson W. Ebert

98 years

He was not displeased. In fact, he was pleased.

Encouraged, I put through a phone call to a number I had which I thought might be his. I left a message, and when he called me back I was delighted to speak with a man I knew back in the Fifties, when he was a grown man and I was a kid.

We had a nice, long chat. It included pleasantries, memories, and updates. Finally, we rung off.

Two things come out of this, Dear Reader:

1. When you reach the far end of life, you often appreciate more those people you took for granted, or were not particularly close to, in the early days. Such is the case with Mister Ebert, who really struggled heroically in the parlous exercise of teaching us music.

2. The rewards of authorship are not limited to money or fame—neither of which is guaranteed, anyway. There are moments when something you have written kindles a new friendship or reaffirms an old one. These rewards are just as sweet as the other kind.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

07.13.21
by

A Poem

Blood Quarrel

O purple splotch,
How dare you? 
 
Arriving by stealth
to the back of my hand,
claiming space, a fait accompli.
 
You are an intruder beneath my skin. 
I say again, How dare you?
 
Your coup unheralded,
even by minor pain,
suddenly you were just there.
 
In days of old this could not have happened. 
In days of old my forces would have marshaled 
thick skin and stout-walled capillaries 
against your onslaught. 
Had you attacked in strength—
the bang of a hammer blow, 
the tread of an opponent’s spikes, 
the slam of a door where my hand rested on the jamb—
I would have known it in that moment.
 
This noiseless, painless incursion is a new strategem,
the exploitation of brittle skin and numbed receptors,
but be forewarned: I am on to you.
 
You and your cunning ways, 
how you will linger 
flaunting your port-wine-ness in my face,
then six days hence decamp 
as silently as the Arabs, 
making me doubt my senses
until the next signalless foray.
 
How dare you?
 
But at last, these marches can avail you nothing; 
for I have received the cure
and simply wait for the finality 
of its deliverance.

#

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

BUY NOW

(History is not what you thought!)

06.15.21
by

Patience

My old friend Jay came up from Chicagoland last week, with his lady friend Harriet. We chatted over a very nice Italian dinner at a local restaurant. At some point, Harriet inquired about my quest as a would-be book author. 

I told her I had the complete manuscript of a historical novel, but by submitting it to various agents and publishers I learned the story needed a complete, tooth-to-tail revision. A daunting prospect, but one I undertook bravely. The problem is that, even though the writing is a lot better in the new version, the many changes of plot and character made me fear that by the time I got to the end, the story would be an incoherent mess. But I was plugging on, regardless.

At this point, Jay made the obvious comment: “Well, at our age, you don’t have that much time left to finish this thing and get it published.” 

Jay was, of course, correct in his assessment. But I shared with him this amazing secret: The older I get, the more patient I become.

It’s hard to account for. Against all rationality, I look forward to thirty or forty more years of productive life. Therefore I can afford to spend time getting my manuscript right. 

Just when time is running out, I have learned patience.

#

The manuscript is another matter. Since the conversation with Jay and Harriet, it has become clear that I have two separate stories—a Norwegian couple making their way in 1850s America, and an African American slave in the deep South struggling for freedom and meaning. I am not creative enough to make the two stories mesh.

My spouse observed long ago that I was writing two books at once. She was right.

For now, I’m laying it aside. Maybe I can sort out the separate strands of story at a later date. I have a lot of other work “in the hopper,” no end of things to write about. 

One avenue of expression is these blog posts. Until getting bogged down in the rewrite project, I was posting here weekly. I now hope to resume that habit.

And I would like to pick up where I left off in what I call “the Bradbury Challenge”—writing a short story a week for a year.

And my daughter recently suggested an excellent setting for a screenplay. All it needs is a story to go with it.

So never fear, Dear Reader. I’ll keep busy. Someday, I’ll get back to the historical novel. Patience.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

BUY NOW

(History is not what you thought!)