Tale for a Trail

Somehow we acquired a recording of Great Expectations. Complete in 14 CDs, I imported the story into my laptop and then exported it onto my iPod. For the last couple of weeks I have listened to the whole thing, mostly while taking my morning walk on the Quinnipiac Gorge Linear Trail.

I loved the story.

This is a bit to my surprise, since I didn’t expect to like it at all.

How I wish my father were around to discuss this book with me. He was a great Dickens admirer. He loved A Christmas Carol, of course, and would describe how that tale had been retold by Choate’s headmaster – in a specially redacted version – while he was a student. We made it a Church family tradition to watch the Alistair Sim version each Christmas, once it became available in remastered video tape and then DVD. Its memorable lines – “are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?”are etched in our collective consciousness.

Dad didn’t limit his Dickens to the familiar works, though. I think he loved Chuzzlewit, Drood, Twist, and others, as well as the films based on these novels.

As a kid, I had difficulty getting into Dickens. I read Tale of Two Cities – largely because my cousin Roger Squire came home from prep school able to recite its first and last two paragraphs. This was a feat I felt challenged to duplicate, and one I can still perform, almost. While I read and enjoyed the tale, my comprehension was a bit shallow at that period of my education.

Dad read David Copperfield aloud. I loved that and loved listening to him emote. He was superlative in his furious scorn when he got to the wonderful scene when Aunt Betsy chases Mr. and Miss Murdstone off her front lawn with a broom when they come to try to retrieve David. We stopped at that point. I thought it was the end.

Several years later at prep school myself, I decided to read David Copperfield as one of my elective books for English. It required a short book report upon completion and I thought this would be an easy choice, seeing as I’d already read the book. As was my wont, I waited until the last week to reread the volume. When I came to the end and read of that tremendously satisfying scene with Aunt Betsy, I was dismayed to read, at the end of the text, “David Copperfield continues in volume two and three.”

Frantically I called home to have these hitherto unsuspected volumes parcel posted a.s.a.p. and I did manage to get through the remainder of the novel. But Dickens suffered as a result. I decided that the author really should have ended Copperfield with Aunt Betsy.

Dad had tried to read Great Expectations to me, but at an age when I could hardly appreciate Pip and the convict, much less the relationship with Miss Haviasham (what in the world was she about?) and Estella. I gave it up. The same thing happened years later when I tried again.

So it was much to my surprise that I found this reading of Great Expectations to be vastly entertaining, not to mention moving and suspenseful and half a dozen other positive adjectives. It was pretty satisfying from beginning to end, and Dickens was a master of pathos. He loved to read his works aloud to audiences. He loved to make people cry. And I did.

The only unsatisfying aspect is that, having finally read this book, Dad isn’t around to share it with. So, I guess, this is my way of saying, as perhaps Dickens repeatedly had Joe Gargery say to Pip, “Dear Boy, I finally saw the light and realized, too late, old man, what you were trying to show me.”

Back to the Bank

The Bank was iconic in my childhood.

It was where my father and his father worked

It was a place of decorum, of mystery and of quiet.

The Bank was not exactly child-friendly, even by the standards of the 1940s. By contrast, when I went into the Squire Company, where my other grandfather and his brother were found, a welcome noise was generally generated to greet me. The women who worked there knew me on sight and greeted me with smiles. There was cold bottled water with little paper cone cups, and they’d help me to them. (These always leaked through before I could drink the water, threatening to puddle.) My Grandfather Squire generally interrupted whatever he was doing to talk to me. Once, he even took me outside to climb up into the cab of the last scheduled steam engine going along the Springfield Line, just behind the office.

The Bank was something else. No travel brochures or giveaway calendars: just silent corridors, quiet offices. Other employees, who clearly knew who I was, nodded respectfully but continued working. Occasionally my father took me to the area of the bank holding the vault. The Meriden Trust & Safe Deposit Company itself did not maintain a vault, since it was not a commercial bank, but had occasional business with safety deposit boxes in the vault of the Meriden Savings Bank, which occupied the other half of the building. These were the days of interlocking directorates, so much mutual business took place between the Meriden Trust and Meriden Savings, with overlap among their boards and those of the other half-dozen local banks.

It always seemed momentous when the guardian of the railing around the vault pushed a concealed button, allowing my father and me inside the sacred area giving access to the vault. Vaults actually held cash in those days, and on one occasion I was permitted to gaze at and even hold some prodigious amount of money.

But The Bank held other attractions, even for a child. First and foremost was the adding machine. I had no idea what it did, but it was electric: when I was permitted to switch it on, punch the buttons and pull the enormous handle on its right side, large bundles of inky fingerlike patens erupted from the machine and marked numbers on the roll of white paper coiled at its neck.

Naturally, since I had no idea of this machine’s function, I regularly entered numbers beyond its capacity, causing it to jam and obliging my father to come and unsnarl it. He was not amused.

Less accessible than the adding machine was the air conditioner. It resided in Grandfather Church’s office – naturally, since he was the president of The Bank. I wanted to turn the cool on, as it was so much more effective than any fan (especially in the winter). He didn’t much care for this idea. Nor did he really want me fussing with his Dictaphone, which I thought was extremely attractive.

But Grandfather Church’s office held the ultimate toy, which drew me like a firebug to arson. He was a pipe smoker. Both his office and his home were redolent with the scent of his tobacco, carefully stored in airtight canisters. I delighted to watch him select a pipe, knock out the dottle, ream the bowl, open the canister and stuff the bowl with Prince Albert (“Hey, do you have Prince Albert in a can? Then let him out!”)

And then, bringing over the standing ashtray, he slid the box of wooden matches out of its holder, opened it, selected one, and struck it against the abrasive on the side. Then he drew fire into the tobacco with that particular puffing sound only a smoker makes, and the distinctive smoke erupted from his mouth and from the pipe.

I didn’t want to smoke. I didn’t mind the tobacco, either the smoke or the scent of the raw, moist mixture in the canister. What I really wanted to do was strike those matches.

And of course my grandfather, a prudent man, was not about to permit me to mess with fire, not by any stretch. I never tired of matches to play with – but of course, I never was permitted to play with them.

All these elements came back to me in mid-June when Justin Piccirillo, one of the cartoonists I worked with at the Record-Journal, held an exhibit of his work. He does photography as well as political cartoons, and the show was mounted – in both senses of the word – at a place called the Sandman Gallery and Frame Shoppe (the business which now occupies the quarters where The Bank was).

Lois and I went to chiefly to support Justin, who’s a friend. But once inside I recognized the space. Ghosts indeed lingered, for only me to see. Grampa’s office was locked, but the vault, now a useless but very secure room, was open for viewing.

 Being within this space again after many years gave me double vision. We enjoyed Justin’s show, ate some of the cheese and crackers on offer with a glass of punch. Before I left, though, I had to have a quiet word with some of those ghosts.