Earlier this year, I found out she’d passed away after a 10-year battle with Parkinson’s Disease. That’s a hell of a horrible way to die. I wrote this for her at a time when I used to think about her often and didn’t know where she’d moved to. Every now and then, don’t we all do that? This was once upon a time, then . . .
. . . and it’s a hard story to tell. Jim Harstad, my high-school writing teacher, told me once, after I read him a piece about my great-grandfather murdering my great-grandmother, that the hardest thing to write about convincingly is death. I don’t disagree with that, but for me, writing about love is a fairly tough assignment as well. All too often, when I write about women who’ve been important to me, I tend to get maudlin. The stories sound like poorly written, terribly sung, horribly played country-western songs. I don’t like to sound that way. That’s one reason why this particular story is hard to tell. Another reason is that it’s too damn complicated, as far as stories go. Maybe the complication comes from the fact that, in a way, this story might be considered by some to be a little bit strange. I don’t know. I’m just going to try and tell it as best I can. You be the judge. I mean about whether the story is, in your opinion, odd, and, if not, if just ordinary, whether it’s just a plain hard story to tell.
Right now I have two jobs, three if you count getting an education as a kind of job. And just one if you only consider getting paid, some kind of wage-for-work contract, to signify employment. The paying job I currently hold involves working ten to fifteen hours a week for the KOKUA program at the UH-Manoa campus as a student hire, recording textbooks and other written materials for students with visual and learning impairments, and taking notes for them in their classes. I love this job. Unlike some I’ve had, I actually get to feel good about what I’m doing. Like I did teaching English and being the college counselor at the Lab School, say, or teaching computer literacy at Dole Intermediate, or even, and maybe most especially when I did private tutoring.
There’s just something about teaching and the educational process. And when that teaching is one-on-one, intensely personal, like it was with someone such as James Christopher, a 1985 University Laboratory School graduate, for instance, the feeling you get when the student succeeds is unlike almost any other kind of feeling. I won’t waste words trying to describe it, and I refuse to bore you with sickening similes, dead metaphors, and lame clichés. This isn’t a country-western song, although I admire that style of musical artistry very much. But those songwriters and singers live, breathe, and were born country; I don’t have the benefit of that kind of background. If you don’t know what that teaching feeling is like, then all the words in the world won’t convey it to you anyway. Suffice it to say that Dorothy Loring, principal of the Lab School, often has referred to me as James Christopher’s father. James and I aren’t related, except by academic sweat and mutual respect, but when I watched him graduate at Andrews Amphitheater, I did watch my son graduate. =
He works in Hollywood now, as a lighting technician, raking in the bucks. Soon, he tells me, he’ll get his shot at director of photography. But James, like me, has a non-paying kind of job too. It began at Varsity Theater when he worked as an usher. He couldn’t stand the music they played during intermission, so he volunteered to mix several tapes for them. They loved the music he chose. I haven’t been in Varsity Theater for a while, and it was torn down years ago now, but the last time I went – I think I saw Henry V – they were still playing his music, and he’d been in California two or three years by then. Now, he spends all of his free time, outside of lifting weights, and all of the free money that he doesn’t spend on new cars and food, on mixing music. He owns thousands of dollars worth of studio-quality equipment. The way he describes it, it sounds to me like he does have a studio setup. You know, where with minor additions he could cut an album. But you see, he gives these mixes away for free, to friends. There’s no money involved, although I’m sure he could make a killing if he charged market value for what he produces. These tapes are in high demand. It seems like his friends are clamoring for this or that kind of collection all the time. If he charged, though, he’d have to pay for rights, royalties, and all that. And doing that would make it a business, real work. He does it, this mixing of music, all for love.
I remember how James practically jumped up and down when he found out I had an AM/FM radio in my Ghia. Remember, this was many years ago. Hooked on KDEO at the time, thanks to my years in the Midwest and, especially, to my job at a Madison record store, the first day I gave James a ride home after I tutored him over in the Hemenway Hall lounge on the University of Hawai‘i campus, I turned over the engine and caught the last half of Emmylou Harris singing “Boulder to Birmingham.”
“Is that KDEO?” James asked.
“Yes. You’ll probably find this hard to believe, but it’s my favorite radio station.”
“My dad listens to KDEO all the time,” he said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. That’s Emmylou Harris, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is. How do you know her?”
“Well, like I said, my dad listens to KDEO all the time, so I hear it a lot too. Emmylou Harris is great.”
“Yup, James, she really is. Every time I hear her it takes me back to Madison. I saw her in concert there, a long time ago, with a good friend of mine. From that record store I told you I worked at? I mean, whenever I hear Emmylou, I go right back in my mind to that night I went to the concert.” I looked over at James. He gave me an amused chuckle. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like a moron.”
He laughed. “We’re talking major babe here, huh?”
I turned down the volume. “So is KDEO both you and your dad’s favorite station?”
“Ah, nooooo, not really,” he answered.
“Oh. Well, why don’t you switch it to your station?”
“Can’t,” he said. “It’s an FM station.”
“Sure you can. This is an AM/FM radio. Switch it.”
“No shit? Right on!” It was as if he’d just hit the lottery or something. He found the switch, flipped to FM, and turned the dial.
“What station is this?” I asked.
“98 ROCK. Mind if I crank it up?”
I didn’t mind. He turned it up and then some.
From that day on, the first thing James would do when he jumped in the car would be to switch from KDEO to 98 ROCK. I still listen to 98 ROCK from time to time these days, even though it’s settled into a decidedly far more commercial format than when James first introduced me to it. But I listen to it because it reminds me of him. You know, my son. I tend to do that. Associate people or places with certain kinds of music. Like James and 98 ROCK. The Madison record store where I worked and KDEO.
James truly lives for music. I have known very few people about whom I could say that. And this second “job” of his, his hobby or avocation or whatever you want to call it, he does purely out of passion.
His vocation, the lighting technician work, he loves too. His favorite kind of film project is shooting music videos. I think he must feel about his career nearly the way I feel about working in education. Someday I’ll write about James – I’ve written three pieces sort of about him already – but not today. I mention him here, and my experience with him, to help tell this story. There are people for whom music is an integral, inseparable part of their existence. As I say, I personally don’t know too many of them, but I have known a few. And I want you to see that passion for work can very definitely have little or nothing to do with whether you get paid for doing it. You have to have a good idea by now, knowing some of my feelings for teaching and for students like James, about how work, especially teaching more than almost anything else, can be a labor of some deep emotional value for me.
You know, I’ve never been fired from a job. Every job I’ve had, I’ve left by choice. For a good reason. Let’s see:
Dole Cannery: seasonal worker
FAST printing project: job completed
Aloha Airlines: summer hire.
Bulk mail processor: freight handling job
Freight handler: back to school
Memorial Union janitor: comprehensive exam study
Record store: move back to Hawai’i
Duty Free: still unexplained two-year illness
College of Continuing Ed: English 100
English 100: teaching position at Dole Intermediate
Dole Intermediate: teaching position at the Lab School
SCOPE Summer School Program: summer hire
Private tutoring and the Lab School: English PhD program
Do I have them all here? I think so. Fourteen jobs. A mini-resume of my employment history. Plenty of teaching experience. Plenty of passion. But which job have I loved the most? Well, it really is hard to tell.
As I said at the start, I had two jobs in those days. This is the one that you might call a pastime. Every time I visit Hamilton Library on the UH campus, I look at a different telephone book. (Yeah, they still had them back then).
When they switched from actual books to microfiche, the job became a little more complicated, but I still managed to keep to my schedule of searching a different city each time I went in there. Sometimes, if I was in Hamilton long enough, I’d do two or even three cities. Call it a hobby, call it whatever you will; I’ve done it every time I go in there for nearly six years now.
It was far easier back when I knew I could go right to the Madison phone book and find what I was after. These days, I figure that by the time I drop dead, I’ll at least have given this task an honest attempt, perhaps have gone beyond every city in the United States and expanded into the international directories. Canada and Mexico seem like good choices if I ever get that far because, after all, they are contiguous with the continental U.S. But my instincts tell me that if I do get to the international stage, cities in some French-speaking country might be a good bet. Actually, Quebec would be my first logical choice if I ever get that far. A smart choice for both geographical and linguistic reasons.
Maybe I’ll just jump ahead and check out Quebec when I go in there this afternoon. This seems like a kind of job, even though I don’t get paid for doing it. But the big payoff will come, one day I’m sure, from performing my task conscientiously. Like a religion. In not-so-great moments, I worry about unlisted numbers, but I always manage to convince myself that this number and address will be listed. I do this to keep myself going. I have to. Does this pastime compare to James’s? In a way, I believe.
I’ll never forget the day my District Manager, Al Souza, called me at the record store to tell me that my new Assistant Manager would be an old Assistant Manager at that store, someone who was taking a break from her college studies to come back to Galaxy of Sound and earn some money. On the phone, he had to repeat her name several times.
“Can you spell that for me?” I wrote it down. “Wow, Al, that’s some name.”
“Well, she’s some girl. You’ll see what I mean. She said she’ll be coming by this afternoon to introduce herself to you. Tomorrow she’ll start work. One of the best employees we’ve ever had. She knows more about classical music than anyone who’s ever worked for us, except maybe that guy, Chris. The one I told you manages our Oak Park store. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah, I remember what you told me about Chris.”
“Take advantage of her classical music background,” Al advised. “She’s majoring in ballet, she’s been studying flute for maybe twelve years, and she takes piano too.”
“Hey, Al, are you sure you don’t want her to take over as manager? Sounds like I should be assisting her.”
He laughed.
“So how will I recognize her?” I asked.
“She’s got kind of blondish brownish shoulder-length, straight hair. About five-four or so.”
His description ended. That was it?
“Great,” I said, “that really narrows it down in this town.”
“Don’t worry, Lanning. She’s a college student. She’s more than smart enough to introduce herself to you.”
For the next few hours, I scrutinized every woman walking into the store who looked like she could be a dancer. Somehow that seemed like the feature that would distinguish her from the rest. The suspense was killing me.
Around three in the afternoon, I was helping a customer near the back of the store. The record I’d been playing had finished. Just as I’d located whatever it was we were looking for, Emmylou Harris started singing over the store speakers. “Together Again.” I looked over toward the stereo, and there she was. I could feel right away that Al had been nearly right: She was some woman.
Which job I’ve had that I loved the most? If I were put on the spot, you know, forced to tell you, I’d say managing Galaxy of Sound, West Towne, at least before the end came in sight. Never would I have told my boss to take the job and shove it, but things had become pretty dismal near the end. To say I left the record store to move back to Hawai’i doesn’t quite paint an accurate picture. I mean, it wasn’t as if I had to move home so I just had to quit. The day I met my new Assistant Manager, and for many months thereafter, I had this strange feeling that I would settle down in Madison. Something I had never dreamed might happen. Unfortunately, my plans were finally forced to change direction.
The day I gave my two-week notice, Al said, “You know, West Towne has become the number-one classical sales volume dealer in Madison. You’re even outselling the Oak Park store.” “Gee, hope that doesn’t break old Chris’s heart.”
“Nah, he’s strong. If anything, this’ll get him going. You’ve really jumped the figures.”
“Yeah, well, the two of us have been working on that. It’s a format. We laid it out, developed it, you know, and put it to work. Our program, well, we knew it couldn’t fail. She’ll be a good manager for you.”
I swear, Al had never sounded so emotional. He’s a kind man, but he’s also business-world tough. You have to be that way to make it in the retail game.
He said something like, “I used to know that things were great between you two. You could feel it in the store. But I can tell it isn’t that way anymore. I’m sorry to see this happen. You’re two of my most favorite people.”
“Yeah, Al, for a while there we were two of our most favorite people, too. But I guess, well, some things can’t seem to work, huh? No matter how hard you try or how much you hope.”
I barely, just barely, dragged myself back to Hawai’i. When I came through the gate from the plane my mom took one look at me and gasped. I guess I did look like death warmed over – one of her favorite lines. On the way to the baggage claim area, she kept saying things like, “I’ve never seen you look so sick.” “Are you all right?” “What’s happened to you?” But I didn’t want to talk about it. It was still too hard a story to tell at the time. I still hadn’t been able to distance myself enough from the situation, you know?
Friends told me that the newly promoted manager of Galaxy of Sound, West Towne stayed on for a few years. She hurt her back, apparently a kind of permanent injury, so she changed her major from dance to French education and finally became a high school French teacher. She married, took her husband’s name, and after a while left Madison. Where she went, I didn’t know.
I don’t want to believe that I’ve wasted all these words. I mean, the main character in my piece has hardly appeared. But as I said, this story is very hard to tell. Maybe it’s just too complicated, for me, in the end, at least for the time being. In fact, it’s so hard to tell that I’m afraid I’ve left the heart out of it, that the center is, finally, empty. Some stories, I understand, have to be written that way sometimes, but this is odd. For me. It’s really not my style. I simply do not write stories like this one, and I never will now.
These days when I hear Emmylou Harris – and I have all her albums – I always picture long winter walks in the night, a hundred dozen roses, macaroni and cheese, gin and tonics, peppermint schnapps, Manhattans and white wine, long, long Greyhound bus rides, and Le Festival.
I imagine how every time she told me so, she said it in her funny rolling R way: “Lanning, I am yourrrs for good.” And I can’t ever seem to stop wondering, wherever she is, if my old Assistant Manager remembers me in any way near the same way that I remember her.
Eventually, she did move back to Madison with her husband Peter. They had two children, a girl and a boy. I’d like to meet them.
As I say, I found out earlier this year that she passed away after a 10-year battle with Parkinson’s Disease. I still wonder if she ever, from time to time, thought about me, what we had, and what might have been. Every now and then. Thought about it. Like me.
Note: This is my rough draft for Monday 12.18.23.
Lanning Lee 