The Education Bubble

For some time now, I've been engaged in an informal survey of college majors. Whenever I cross paths with a person speaking about upcoming college plans, I always ask them what their major is. Although I've talked with many people, only one was majoring in STEM. He was a recent high school graduate who was spending the summer waiting tables to earn some money before embarking on a four degree in Chemistry. My wife, Christine, congratulated the young man on his stellar choice of study, telling him that her company hires interns each summer in that field. In my day there was never an abundance of students majoring in science and math, but today it's as if there are none. What gives?

Instead of bashing millennials which my generation is fond of doing, I put the blame squarely on the vast number of colleges across the country which are all vying for the billions of dollars doled out by the Department of Education via Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. Back when I was in school colleges got money too through government grants made directly to the institutions, and financial aid and Pell Grants issued to the students. The fed gave out money to schools with the caveat that the institutions had to ensure that their dropout rate was kept to a minimum. Back then legislators didn't want young people to become encumbered by a debt for an education they didn't complete. Colleges sought talented students who had the tenacity to get through a four year degree. The carrot and stick policy ensured that federal money gave each party something of value. That was 35 years ago when about 20% of the population earned a college degree.

Today federal money is disseminated to academic institutions primarily through financial aid. Colleges are allowed to have as much as 90% of their profits come from federal sources. Initially the restriction on funding from federal sources was much lower. Lobbyists for educational institutions managed to get the limit raised over the years. Federal law requires institutions to provide a quality education, but drop out rate is no longer used as a metric impacting funds. Unconcerned if a student actually graduates, educational institutions now lure in high schoolers with simplified programs which give them little chance of landing a job.

In my informal survey many students told me that they were seeking degrees in anthropology, communications, theology and exercise science. Worse yet there are fields of study which are mostly activities turned into college degrees as in animal rescue, turf and golf course landscape maintenance, puppetry, equine care, fermentation science, bowling industry technology, packaging, poultry science, piano pedagogy and floral auctioneering. One kid was majoring in Canadian Studies. What's to learn about Canada other than their chief exports are Canadian money and Justin Bieber? Another told me that a college counselor asked him what he enjoyed doing. He answered,

"I like to wash my car."

So he's getting a business degree with an emphasis on car detailing. There's always been degrees that are worthless, but back in my day a liberal arts degree would land you a good paying full time job with benefits managing a department store. Today those jobs are mostly part time and filled from the floor. A degree in Communications, often sited as one of the worst college majors, is what you get if you tell your guidance counselor that you hate math. The problem is you can't succeed in this world by avoiding math. Additionally, many institutions let students "make your own major," a policy which vastly expands enrollment while diluting the value of a college degree. Today 30% of the US population gets an undergraduate degree, up fifty percent.

When I was applying to colleges in the early 80's, the brochures for the schools mostly highlighted what the institutions were known for academically, any renown laureates on the faculty, and significant research conducted at the institution. Today high school graduates are recruited by colleges who send unsolicited brochures which espouse the wonderful "campus life" and the many amenities they offer including the views from the dorms and the extensive food programs. The advertisements read more like a country club rather than an academic institution.

During the 2016 presidential election, Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, espoused the idea of making two year community colleges free. Hillary Clinton chimed in and said that all community colleges should offer free tuition paid through increased taxes on the rich. More recently Cardi B told Joe Biden that her fans mostly want a "free college education."

To which he responded,

"By the way, we're going to have, if I get elected president, free college education for four years of college, flat out."

The problem with government subsidies is that federal money drives costs up, not down. Biden's tuition free program applies only to families making less than $125,000 a year which includes undocumented students. Many kids transfer credits from community colleges as a more economical means of obtaining a degree. As federal money rolls in, the cost of college will soar. There is also no restriction on the majors a student can aspire to under the Biden program. As a taxpayer I don't want to indirectly fund some kid's anthropology degree unless I at least get a chance to impart on them parental wisdom at the proper decibel level. I usually start with "a worthless degree is still worthless even if it's free." 

When I was young, my juvenile head didn't need to tap out for me to understand that you can't do much with an easily obtainable degree, but the recruitment effort was vastly different. Today young people are courted by institutions of higher learning offering useless degrees in exchange for massive debt. The education bubble is not going to burst. It will slowly deflate as fewer students sign up for a worthless education offering a phony promise of success.

When it comes to this latest bubble, the education is in front of us not behind.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on August 3, 2017.

Fire House

All the news about the wildfires in California and the blaze Jimmy Kimmel lit in a trashcan on stage during the Emmy’s got me thinking about my childhood experiences with fire. We didn’t have gender reveal pyrotechnics when I was a kid nor did we have large scale forest fires in New England, but our house did almost burn down twice.

We lived in a 1200 square foot ranch located in a working class neighborhood of a town that was historically founded on the principles of gerrymandering. In 1980 when I was in high school our town went bankrupt due to a combination of budgetary mismanagement and grassroots efforts to resist increases in property taxes. The school board had to make some tough decisions to save money so they offered to cut buses or the football team. The townsfolk rallied to save the football team. After the cheese wagons were nixed in favor of preserving the jock's glory days, I walked to school carrying my 20 year old physics book which predicted that “someday men would walk on the moon.”

Red Fire Alarm Box

Our house was located a block down the road from The Station, a nightclub that caught fire in 2003 during a set by the headlining band, Great White. Pyrotechnics set the place ablaze killing a hundred people and injuring many more. I recall that the tragic event was covered by all the national news outlets including CNN. My hometown is best known not as the birthplace of a famous scientist who postulated groundbreaking theories that changed the world, but for the fourth deadliest nightclub fire in the United States. Mediocrity was so inbred in my town that in a competition for avoidable catastrophes, we couldn’t even pull off a bronze.

Years earlier when I was in middle school, two fires occurred in my childhood house, both in the kitchen. Residential smoke alarms were not required by code back then, and we didn’t even own a fire extinguisher. No matter. There was a red fire alarm box affixed to the telephone pole at the head of our driveway. As kids we were told never to touch that box unless, of course, something was on fire.

The red metal box always intrigued me, thermostat level intrigue. The central emergency number, 9-1-1, wasn’t yet nationally adopted. No matter. Having a fire alarm right down our short driveway was like living next door to a firehouse. My friend, who I considered to be brought up wrong, sometimes pulled down the white cover to reveal the business end of the fire alarm, the mysterious metal lever. For me touching that thing was sacrilegious.

Once as I rode past the red box on my bike, I envisioned a meteor streaking across the sky then crashing into our neighbor's house. I imagined that I darted for the alarm, pulled down the white cover, then yanked on the elusive lever, summoning the emergency calvary. I was heralded as a hero for my quick thinking which saved my neighbor’s lives. Unfortunately, their house was a total loss.

“Bobby! Dinner,” my mother hollered from the side door that opened to the kitchen.

My mother always called everyone to the table before the meal was ready. She knew we all had to wait our turn to wash hands in the one bathroom of our house. She wanted us clean, relatively, and seated when she was ready to serve. So I wasn’t surprised that as I passed through the kitchen, the large pot of oil on the stove was just coming to a boil.

My oldest sister, the firstborn, was taking her sweet time in the loo as I queued up behind my sister, Jeannine. Jeannine is the middle child while I am the youngest. As the alpha vacated, she pushed past both of us with indifference, broken only momentarily to convey disgust. Jeannine went in next.

“Come on Bobby! I’m just washing my hands,” she called out.

Confident I wasn’t going to see my sister involved in bodily functions on the throne, I entered the bathroom.

“Mom’s making mushy chicken,” Jeannine announced as we washed.

My mother liked to fry chicken except she never left the chicken in the oil long enough to crisp up. The egg and bread formed a soft coating which although mildly tasty probably still contained live bacteria. Jeannine darted from the bathroom. As I entered the kitchen, something was wrong. My oldest sister was seated at the table, tending to her nails with an emery board. My mother was on the phone, her hand to her mouth as she looked out the kitchen window. My father, always last to sit, was in the living room reading the newspaper. Jeannine had stopped in her tracks and was staring at the pot on the stove.

“What’s she doing?” I thought, “Why’s she not sitting at the table?”

I watched Jeanine’s hand rise like the moon. She was pointing at the pot of boiling oil. As the frothy liquid popped and sputtered over the lip, it ignited into a spectacular orange flame. My mother dropped the phone as she screamed for my father. My dad burst into the kitchen still clutching his newspaper. In a move best described as superhuman, my father jettisoned the paper, reached through the flames and spun the knob on the stove. The thick orange glow of the metal burner faded, but this did little to dissuade the grease fire now raging in the pot. Someone brushed past me. It was the alpha receding to her room. As my family was locked in a life and death struggle to save our home, the firstborn's first thought was to return to the safety of her room as if the David Cassidy posters on the wall would save her.

While my father stepped backwards trying to think of his next best move, my mother filled a glass of water from the sink. She ventured to the cauldron on the stove with the glass held aloft. When she dumped the water into the flames, a fireball arose from the pot and spread out over the ceiling. Jeannine and I mentally came to the same conclusion,

"ABANDON SHIP! Every man for himself!"

She bolted for the door with me not too far behind. As I traversed the kitchen, a second fireball belched from the pot. My parents recoiled as I ducked my head. When I reached the threshold, I yelled to Jeannine who had made it to the driveway,

“Pull the fire alarm!”

“No don’t!” my mother shot back.

I turned to my mother in disbelief. The inside of our house looked like the launch pad for a Saturn V rocket at T plus 2 seconds, and she didn’t want to alert emergency services? Best I could come up with in the middle of the chaos was that she probably didn't want the firemen to track mud in her house. My father grabbed the closest thing in reach, my vinyl schoolbag. He beat back the flames which now covered the entire top of the stove. Knowing that my books, pencils and papers were now in peril, I yelled,

“Not my schoolbag!”

The smoldering remains of my education hit the floor with a thud. My dad snatched up the braided area rug which he piled onto the stovetop, adjusting it each time a flame snuck out from underneath. I called to Jeannine who was poised in front of the fire alarm,

“It’s out!”

My father periodically lifted the rug to check on the status of the rest of our lives in that house. Any hint of orange, and he would slam the rug back down. Once he was sure the crisis was over, he hauled my mother’s smoldering mess of a rug outside to the lawn where he hosed it down. As the commotion subsided, I recall hearing the muffled lyrics of a Partridge Family song emanating from my sister's room,

So what am I so afraid of?
I'm afraid that I'm not sure of
a love there is no cure for.

I think I love you.

I'll tell you what I was afraid of. Fried food! The second kitchen fire took place a year later. It wasn’t as ominous of an event as The Great Grease Fire of 1974, but since we never had a family debriefing after the first fire, we were equally unprepared for the second. It was the day after a holiday party. My mother was cleaning up the debris from the previous day's cheer and merriment, which included a large, yellow Tupperware bowl filled to the brim with Cheez doodles. (I have no idea why "doodles" is not capitalized). The large bowl full of orange baked puffs that sort of resemble insect larvae kept getting in my mother's way. Now when I say that this was a large bowl, I mean it was much more than merely big. It was a Fix N Mix Bowl #274 which according to the internet can hold 26 cups of your favorite shit. She kept moving it here and there as she cleaned so eventually she came up with the master class idea to stow the plastic container and all 26 cups of Cheez doodles in, wait for it...

the oven.

Hours later when my mother was preparing to reheat leftovers for dinner, she put the oven on "preheat." Momentarily, a foul oder permeated our tiny home. My father, the house whisperer, noted it first from the living room,

"What's that smell?" he asked aloud.

My dad sniffed in different directions then took two steps then sniffed again. He olfactorily dead reckoned right into the kitchen where he met me trying to retrieve a box of crackers from a high cabinet.

"Something stinks," I announced.

My mother's muffled voice emanated from the bathroom.

"The Cheez doodles!"

"Get your mother the Cheez doodles," my father ordered.

I looked about.

"Where are they?"

My father scanned the kitchen.

"They're in the goddamn stove!" my mother said frantically.

My father and I looked at each other puzzled.

"They're not in the stove," my dad exclaimed with a chuckle.

"You don't cook Cheese doodles," I offered.

"They must be around here someplace."

The door to the bathroom cracked open.

"They’re in the oven!" my encumbered mother screamed through the opening.

My father and I both looked to each other then to the oven. Through the dark, charred flin caked on the glass window in the oven door, I could just make out a faint yellow glow. My father reached for the handle. As he was getting ready to yank it open, he paused then released the handle. He pointed in succession to each of the many knobs and levers on the console above the burners, looking for the one that was set to "Go For the Moon." As my dad reacquired the handle, I stepped back. My father cautiously cracked open the door. A foul vapor poured out from the oven but no flames. Yellow goo was dripping from the grate and pooling at the bottom of the oven. My dad released the door.

"Not too bad," he ascertained.

Before he finished his assessment, the yellow glowing flicker, fanned by a backdraft, ignited. My father saw it right off.

"Oh shit!" my dad shouted.

He reached for the rug I was standing on and pulled it into the air. I fell backwards onto my fundament. Briefly, I thought that this just might be the chance I was waiting for. Maybe, just maybe, I might get to pull the fire alarm. My father swung open the door then proceeded to beat the flaming pile of Cheez doodles with the rug which sent fiery bits of doodle in every direction. They landed on the floor. Some even made it up to the counter. While my father's go-to method of fire suppression did, yet again, suppress the flames, embers were drifted about the kitchen. Although I wasn't going to have any snacks in my lunch this week, at least we weren't going to lose the family home.

Unbeknownst to my dad and I, my mother had exited the john. After seeing the mess my father was making, she armed her favorite cleaning implement, the canister vacuum cleaner. My father hated the sound of that thing, partly because it was loud and partly because my mother loved it so that when she vacuumed it was like a trip on the S.S. Minnow, a three hour tour. He retreated to his chair in the living room and resumed the word jumble in the newspaper as I picked myself up off the floor. Hours passed as my mother vacuumed with delight. She was on her hands and knees working on freeing up the burnt yellow, solidified plastic blob in the oven with a butter knife when I crossed through the kitchen. My mother momentarily stopped scraping.

"Look at the mess your father made!" she bellowed.

I was near the canister which, the best I could tell, was glowing.

"You better change the bag in that thing," I offered, believing that the motor was overheating after three hours of sucking up Cheez doodles.

My mother resumed scraping. I went into the living room to continue my self-study of The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Actually, I was going to try to tune in the UHF selector on the TV to Channel 56 to watch Speed Racer. After a few minutes of fiddling, I got it.

Go Speed Racer go!

I was just wondering how Trixie learned to fly a helicopter when my dad lowered his newspaper.

"What's that?" he asked while looking up in a seemingly random direction.

"What?"

As my dad rose, he dropped his paper onto his chair. He made his way down the short hallway to the kitchen. I looked through the passageway to see him staring at my mother as she scraped the stove. Returning to my cartoon, I thought,

"Where did she even get a helicopter?"

Picking up the vacuum wand, my father sniffed the end. Recoiling, my dad was satisfied that he had found the source of the miasma. As he inspected the vacuum cleaner, I confidently explained,

"I told her to change the bag. The motor is overheating." 

My father looked down the hallway as I rattled off my expert advice. As his attention shifted to the handle, he adjusted his grip while demonstrating excellent trigger discipline. With a flick of his thumb, the vacuum sprang to life. I looked towards the noise, unsure why my father was powering up a machine he loathed so completely. As I focussed on the canister, he shut it off. I thought I saw for just a moment a flame coming out of the exhaust port. To this day, I recall that it was blue. I half expected the canister to start rolling across the floor then after reaching take off speed, lift skyward. My father looked to the canister then tried the trigger once more.

"What the heck!" he shouted as he abruptly switched off the machine.

He quickly rolled the vacuum to the door then tossed it down the stairs. As it bounced off the concrete steps, the canister broke open revealing a core of smoldering dust, dander and doodles that had burned through the bag. Once it breeched the filter, the compressed air driven by the motor created a low thrust jet engine that fried the inside of the canister.

The opportunity to activate the red fire alarm box at the end of the driveway never presented itself to me again even though we were hardly an accident free family. Back in those days you went to the hospital if you couldn't stop bleeding from an artery. You passed on an emergency room visit for a concussion even if you blacked out. My family depended on a general practitioner who gave you a bottle of orange medicine for every malady with instructions to "finish the bottle." It didn’t work and stained your teeth, but it didn’t kill you either so down the hatch!

After I was on my own on a bright Sunday morning my father choked hard on some steak grizzle. Having worked so memorably well with the grease fire, my mother rolled out her glass of water trick. As my asphyxiating father drank the warm water, the steak lodged even deeper. Eventually, he had to choose either entering a white tunnel to the afterlife or performing the Heimlich maneuver on himself. When they told me the story, I asked my mother if she called 9-1-1. She hadn't.

My parents generation never felt that their emergency rose to a level which required intervention by trained professionals. They treated the fires which could've easily claimed our home or one or more of us as an embarrassment. I know this because my mother put us kids under an explicit gag order not to disclose the fires to our friends, especially the Cheez doodle Syndrome of 1975. She regarded that incident as her fault even though the first time around she poured a glass of water in a pot of boiling oil.

As an adult I sat them down and explained that emergency personnel want you to call them, but it never sunk in. When a ladder my father was on slipped down the house, and he broke his nose on a rung, my mother called a neighbor who rushed over to find my father holding a towel to his face as he bled profusely. The neighbor wisely called emergency services against my father's wishes. When the paramedics arrived he refused to go with them because as he put it,

"I have to take my wife to her hair appointment this afternoon."

He didn't tell me about his accident until I saw him a week later. I was shocked to see my dad so banged up. He said,

"I didn't mess up anything I need. I just broke my face."

Later when we talked, he wondered aloud what the paramedics must have thought of him. He asked,

"You think they thought I was nuts?"

After a long pause, I answered,

"Yes, definitely."

He confided in me that the whole experience alleviated his fear of hospitals. He recalled all the jokes he played on the staff during his brief visit including asking them if he would be able to play the tuba after they fix his nose. They reassured him that he would to which he said,

"Oh good! I never could before."

When I think of how as kids we were unrestrained in car seats for all those years, crossed active train bridges that spanned raging rivers, avoided the groovy drugged out hippies of the 1970's, roamed forests and rivers alone all day long, ventured at night into deep trenches being dug in the streets for sewer pipes, passed on going to the hospital for a concussion and survived our homes catching fire, I wonder if any of it built character or took some away. This is when writers usually proclaim that if they could do it all over again, they wouldn't change a thing. I, for one, would've taken a pass on The Great Grease Fire of 1974.

It still gives me nightmares to this day.

The Boy in the Cotton Mask

Last week our youngest, William, returned to school after a long absence due to the pandemic. Six months ago, the entire student body was pulled from the school to avoid infection. We know more about COVID-19 now than we did back then, but out of an abundance of caution, in our town parents may choose to send their kids back for two days per week or not at all.

Most kids hadn't a chance to say "Good-bye" to their friends or even collect up their belongings when everything closed. At the end of the term the teachers in Willy's school tried to give them closure by hosting a vehicle parade through the school parking lot. They encouraged us to decorate our car, but William wasn't interested. As we drove through the winding route past the teachers and school staff, all waving and smiling with music and bubbles streaming through the air, smiling kids poked through sunroofs and leaned out of windows while clutching balloons and pin wheels. When we neared William's teacher my wife, Christine, said,

"Willy, there's Mr. Thomas."

William sat quietly in the back seat. He didn't smile. He didn't wave. As the line of cars came to a halt, Mr. Thomas approached our vehicle. He called to William.

"Great job Billy!"

William turned towards the window. Mr. Thomas stopped short of our car. At first I thought he was social distancing, but then I realized he was just close enough to see Willy's face. Mr. Thomas dropped his arms to his side. His smile faded. William raised his hand summoning a half-hearted wave as he said,

"Good-bye Mr. Thomas."

I was driving so it was difficult for me to ascertain what was unfolding. I glanced back to see my nine year old stoically bidding farewell to his third grade teacher.

"Cripes Willy! You'll see him next year. It's not like we're moving," I exclaimed.

Christine tapped my arm. My male conflict avoidance system sent out a class five priority alert which told me that this was something beyond my emotional range, and I should shut up and let my wife explain it to me later. Christine gazed out the window as she waved. Unlike William, she smiled but my male mandatory facial feature recognition survival system, which alerts me to when my wife has her hair done, told me that her expression was a mask.

Normally Christine attends Willy's parent/teacher meetings. I did all the secondary school conferences for our oldest son, Aidan. Now it was her turn, but the last time Christine had a work conflict. Being older parents with me older than her, I seem to have lost patience for run on meetings. As I've aged, I've become a get it done kind of guy. The clock is ticking, and before I'm relegated to gumming grits in between shouting at the TV, I'd like to get back to that birdhouse I'm building in the barn. So I had to fill in for my wife and listen to his teacher tell me what William was deficient in. During the meeting Mr. Thomas explained,

"We test Billy on a new math concept, and he gets a 70%. Then we give him a little instruction, and he gets it all right. When we move to another concept, the same thing happens."

I always knew Willy was good at math. What I didn't know was that everyone in his school called him "Billy." Apparently, in first grade William announced that he wanted to be called "Billy" because it was easier to spell. I never dreamt I would hear comments like what Mr. Thomas was about to say,

"He's doing the next grade level in math, and we haven't found the ceiling yet."

I was floored. I was always a good math student, but sometimes the apple falls by the tree then rolls down the hill and drops into a river. We knew math came easy for Willy. I just didn't know how easy it was for him. I was thankful that his school had the resources and desire to push kids like Willy when they exhibit proficiency in a subject. It all came to end though when the pandemic hit.

The online program that was cobbled together after the shutdown didn't include any proficiency enrichment. At first we were just glad that there was something to default to, and Willy quickly learned what was required of him. As the term ended, it was clear that his interest in math had waned. We thought we could make up for the abrupt closure and loss of his friends by keeping Willy busy with fun activities throughout the summer, but he had developed a fear of contracting the virus and was reluctant to leave the house. Eventually, we settled on a routine in which he and I enjoyed a local playground while his brother took a tennis lesson. We especially liked rocketing down plastic slides then touching a support pole to discharge the built up electrons. As the summer wore on, the increased humidity prevented slide shocking so we resorted to following a nearby abandoned trolley line. Eventually, Willy agreed that it was safe to venture to the beach so we carved it up on boogie boards for the rest of the summer.

As the school year geared up, we told Willy he would be attending class in person for two days per week and that only six students would be in his class. The other days would be online even though we now know kids for the most part don't spread COVID-19. He was okay with all of that. On the day he was to ride the bus to school, Christine loaded up everything he needed including his lunch into his backpack. Recharged and refreshed from the summer break, Willy and I walked briskly to the end of the driveway to wait for the cheese wagon. He was full of youthful exuberance and happiness. Gone was the boy who solemnly waved to his third grade teacher.

"Dad, did you like fourth grade?" he asked.

I attended Catholic school which was fresh in my mind, having just penned a piece about it last week. Not wanting to spoil the good vibe nor fib to my son, I compromised with,

"Uh, it was alright, I guess."

"I can't wait!" Willy admitted.

We reached the rendezvous drop zone for ole yellow. The sound of the bus rumbling down the road was familiar and comforting. I looked to William. He was smiling as he saw Old Number 22 lumbering towards our position. I imagined he was recalling his secondary school glory days.

"William your mask!" I exclaimed, jarring him back to the present.

Willy squirmed free of his backpack then zipped open a side pocket to reveal his supply of masks. He pulled up his pack then affixed a mask to his face which I adjusted as the bus rolled to a stop. Willy darted forward. He stopped short of the road, turned and through his mask said,

"I love you, Dad."

The sight of his covered face with the idling bus a short distance away filled the empty spaces of my heart. He waved then turned sharply. I was going to yell to him to look both ways, but he paused at the edge of the street and complied with my silent orders. He crossed the road then disappeared behind the bus. The driver looked skyward as she waited for Willy to find a seat. The bus revved up then rolled away. I remained until the sounds of the birds calling to each other replaced the dull rhythm of the engine. I breathed in the cool morning air hopeful for the future. Not so much for mine, but for his. Then I said,

"I love you too, William."

My Middle School Education

For most of my childhood, I was educated in a private school. As busing was being argued in legislative chambers across the country, I avoided having to board the cheese wagon for a lengthy ride to an integrated school. I wore a uniform which identified me as a member of a select group of lucky kids. I was overseen by men and women who were committed to my education. They were so dedicated that they never married. You probably think I was privileged. I would think that too until I tell you that the private school I went to was Catholic. Now you’re likely thinking,

“You poor bastard.”

Some of my classmates were into the whole religious thing. They could recite biblical versus, were altar servers, and knew all the seven sacraments. They used words like “ecumenical” and "liturgical" in meaningful sentences. Not only did they know who the Pope was, they could list them in order all the way back to Saint Peter. I, on the other hand, flunked religion. In a parochial school failing nonsecular instruction draws out the ire of the teaching staff. Back then Catholic schools were still taught mostly by nuns, unmarried, childless women who wore dark clothing. They were called by God to live a lonely, celibate life. Their focus was supposed to be their parish, not their husband nor their kids. That was the theory anyway. In practice, raising children causes you to be more introspective. Having kids enrolls you in an upper level course on patience. When you experience birth, it softens you. Before kids, you sympathize. After, you empathize.

For the first two years of my Catholic education, I didn't say a word in school. I was too scared. All the nuns were old, mean and French in that order. They each had odd things about them like Sister Ahmad, who taught third grade, always asking,

“What did Jesus said?”

None of us kids ever corrected her grammar because we were afraid of her. Sister Ahmad was a thousand years old. She had no qualms with corporal punishment, and we all entered third grade knowing it. Most of the nuns didn’t hit us, but a few were quite adept at sparing with defenseless children. In fact, the only time Sister Ahmad smiled was when she was exercising the devil out of some hapless kid. On the first day of school we lined up in the front of the class as Sister Ahmad read off our names then assigned us a desk. When my name was called, I walked forward. Sister Ahmad noticed that my tie was black with thin red stripes, not the solid dark blue required by the uniform code. She pointed to me and angrily asked,

"Why is your tie like that?"

I froze. Sister Ahmad continued badgering the witness,

"Why don't you have a tie like everyone else?"

I tried to speak, but I could see on her face that it wouldn't matter what I said. She leaned forward then yanked on my tie as she commanded,

"Get the right one!"

Sister Madeline was the fourth grade teacher. She was very tall. She had accidentally lopped off the end of her middle finger with a paper cutter. To punish kids that got out of line she would make them hold her foreshortened digit. She once told this story to us,

A poor boy was very sad. He had to weed a large field. He didn’t think he could do it. A little angel appeared before him and said,

“What’s wrong poor boy?”

“I have to weed this field, and I can’t do it,” the boy said.

The little angel told the boy to weed a small patch which he did because it was easy. When he finished, the little angel said,

“Now do this patch.”

The poor boy weeded it because it was easy too. The little angel had the boy weed patches after patch until the whole field was done.

What’s the moral to the story?

I raised my hand. Sister Madeline called on me,

“Bobby Languedoc thinks he has an answer.”

Now here is where good judgement and youth do not intersect. I said,

“Forget the moral to the story. This kid saw an angel?”

From the look on her face I thought her habit was going to burst into flame. I was lucky though. Instead of having to clutch her amputated stub of a finger, Sister Madeline resorted to her second go to punishment, rapping you on the head with the stump.

Sister Evangeline was the fifth grade teacher. For some reason, she was always spitting up phlegm even in the summer. If she made a math error on the board and one of us pointed it out, she would say,

“Thank you teacher.”

Sister Evangeline had no need for science so she skipped that subject in favor of extra tutelage in French. My father had a subscription to National Geographic from which I got all my science instruction in grade school. Once Sister Evangaline asked us,

“What causes the tides?”

I had just read an article about how gravitational attraction between the earth and moon resulted in two bulges of water in the ocean moving around the planet. My hand shot up. Sister Evangeline said,

“Bobby Languedoc thinks he has an answer.”

Confidently, I responded, “The moon causes the tides.”

Before I had a chance to elaborate, Sister Evangeline interrupted,

“God causes the tides, not the moon.”

I thought of Galileo when the Inquisition put him under house arrest for stating that the sun and not the earth was the center of the solar system.

“I’m pretty sure it’s the moon,” I issued.

“Who made the moon?” Sister Evangeline asked.

I hesitated as I tried to recall previous issues of National Geographic.

“God made the moon!” she shot back.

I got off easier than Galileo on that exchange. All I had to do is write “God made the moon” on the board a hundred times while my fellow students mocked me.

On another occasion, Sister Evangeline was seated at her desk in the front of the room when she reminded us that Jesus was born on Christmas Day in a manger because there was no room in the inn. I had read a newspaper article that stated that the actual day Jesus was born was likely not in the winter because shepherds didn't tend sheep then. The author suggested that December 25 was chosen as a day of christian celebration to compete with pagan festivities around the winter solstice on the 20th. Quoting the article I noted,

"The Gospel doesn't say anything about the season when Jesus was born."

Sister Evangeline glared at me at length, her face flush with anger. She wheezed audibly as she labored to breathe through ample pent-up loathing. Flinging open a drawer to her desk, she retrieved a green grade book which she flipped open. Snapping up a pencil, she licked the end then peered through her bifocals as she scratched something on the page. She closed the book abruptly then returned it to the drawer which she slammed shut. She paused briefly as she glanced in my direction then said,

"The three wise men brought gold, frankincense and myrrh."

To this day I don't know what Sister Evangeline wrote in that book, but I'm sure it wasn't a praising acknowledgement of my extensive understanding of historical events.

Sister Stellar was the sixth grade teacher. She was short and had a scar on her chin. A classmate of mine once mused that her scar was from a bullwhip accident while under instruction when she was living in the order. Sister Stellar hated when any of us looked to the back of the church during mass. She would point any infraction outright in the middle of the service by yelling,

“Bobby Languedoc is more interested in what’s going on in the BACK of the church.”

The priest conducting mass would frown after Sister Stellar's frequent outbursts which she took as approval, but I was pretty certain he didn’t appreciate the frequency of the disciplinary disruption which was more distracting than some kid glancing over their shoulder towards the choir. You can always tell the Catholics who were confirmed as adults. They’re the parishioners who look about the church during mass. I alway feel compelled to tell them,

“The miracle is happening up at the alter.”

But I never say anything.

Sister Betty Ann taught seventh grade. She was on loan from a parish in Kentucky. She was tasked to venture up here and straighten us yankees out. Every Wednesday morning the whole school went to mass. After each service, Sister Betty Ann sauntered to the front of the church and critiqued our participation by grade. She would call out the fourth grade for not singing loud enough or the sixth grade for not enunciating during the Lord’s Prayer. We were all inadequate sinners not worthy of our station. Once Sister Betty Ann played The Devil Went Down to Georgia for us then asked,

“What's the meaning of this song?”

I raised my hand. Sister Betty Ann said with a twang,

“Bobby Languedoc thinks he has an answer.”

“I don’t know what that song is about, but who taught the devil how to play the fiddle?”

“How would I know that?” Sister Betty Ann exclaimed.

"Wasn't it a sin for Johnny to gamble his soul for a golden fiddle?"

"Yes, it was."

“How come the devil admitted to Johnny that he was a better fiddle player? Doesn’t seem like the type.”

“I don’t know."

"What key did the devil play in?"

"It's just a song."

“What does ‘chicken in a bread pan picken` out dough’ mean?'”

“What?”

"Sister, why do we get presents on Christmas when it's Jesus's birthday?"

“Because, uh...”

"Sister, do you hear God's voice in your head?"

"Yes! I mean no..."

"If God knows everything, does he need to know how to read?"

"Huh?"

By the time I had reached seventh grade, my education was complete. Sure I had a lot to learn, but I no longer feared humiliation. My parents scraped up what little money they had to send three kids to Catholic school, and we heard about the sacrifices they made often. In 1976, my father went on strike from his factory job, and mid year he stopped paying the tuition. The school sent my parents a letter stating that if they didn't resume payment, I wouldn't be allowed to take finals and would have to repeat the sixth grade.

I wore the wrong tie all through middle school receiving admonition from many of the nuns for what they believed was my brazen rule breaking. The truth was my parents were often strapped for cash even in good times. My Catholic education taught me a lot. As my parents cobbled together what they had to get by on a limited budget, I learned to absorb aversion as I stood out from the crowd, not for academic achievement but for my inability to afford conformity.

What better lesson to survive in this world today.

A Family Tape Scandal

In 1976 the country was celebrating the bicentennial with fireworks, parades and reenactments of historic battles. The big event was the gathering of tall ships in New York City for the Fourth of July. Before they sailed to the big party in the Big Apple, the ships were to convene on Newport, Rhode Island. Although my home state, we didn't actually go see the tall ships because my parents had only one crappy car that wouldn't have made the trip even though Rhode Island is the size of a large ranch in Texas.

My father was the only breadwinner in our family which meant that even if we made it to Newport, two of us would've had to crawl under the fence to get in to the festivities. I was the youngest and my father exploited this every time he had to pay an entry fee. He tried to pass me off as twelve long after I learned to drive and grew a mustache. Lucky for us the local news outlet was covering the visit of the tall ships all day and into the evening.

Back then videocassette recorders (VCR) were state of the art in home entertainment. At the time you could record one channel while watching another. On "extended play" (EP) you were able to tape eight hours on one videocassette. The quality wasn't so good, but you could stuff a whole miniseries like the The Thorn Birds on one tape. On "long play" (LP) you could capture four hours of television with a bit more quality. The best picture quality was achieved on "standard play" (SP) which offered the shortest duration, two hours. Videocassette tapes weren't cheap, but we were so we always recorded on EP. This would work out perfectly for my mother's master plan for the tall ships bicentennial celebratory extravaganza which was coming to our television that summer. The local news station planned on covering the event twelve hours a day for four days. My mother used a piece of paper and a pencil along with her Radio Shack calculator for the heavy math involved in determining the number of tapes she needed.

On her first attempt she came up with 24. At two dozen tapes, it looked like the once in a lifetime nautical circus would pass us by like a ship in the night. I checked her numbers.

"You can fit eight hours not just two," I noted.

"But I want the best quality," my mother declared.

I convinced her that it was impractical to switch out tapes every two hours. On extended play only six tapes were required which is the way they were often bundled and sold in bulk. Prior to the event my father picked up the blank tapes from Benny's, the local department store chain. My mother told him to get the highest quality tape, Sony, but my dad returned with six tapes labelled "GoldStar." My mother looked them over disapprovingly. She frowned but said nothing. She was a bit of a spendthrift. Once when she went grocery shopping, she returned with a broom handle and a scrub brush. My father asked,

"Where's the milk?"

"I didn't know we were out of milk," she admitted.

So my father did all the household purchasing. It made sense since he earned all the money. My mother taught art lessons in a studio she set up in the basement. She charged so little that she operated at a loss for decades. My father once said that her income didn't cover the light bill. Unlike my mother my father was good with finances. Along with lying about my age to get into events for less coin, he filed some pretty creative income taxes over the years. He wrote off my mother's art business losses with a devil-may-care attitude. As a struggling head of a household working two factory jobs while treading water in the stagnant economy of the 1970's, my dad thought a lengthy stay in prison for tax fraud would be a lighter sentence. He said that he always expected a letter from the IRS informing my mother that after a careful review of her tax filings, they recommend she try something other than teaching tole painting.

My mother often complained about money which led to my father taking on a second job. It never dawned on her that she should get a job herself in lieu of toiling away in her basement for fifty cents an hour. As long as she got her tubes of cadmium yellow, prussian blue and titanium white along with enough turpentine to level the family home should the stove catch fire, she was going to refrain from expressing her overt distain for the knock off videocassette tapes my father brought home.

As the historic event neared, my mother commandeered the television then dutifully manned the VCR, taping all 48 hours of the tall ships sailing up the bay, then down the bay, then back up the bay. The parade of sail dragged on all day and into the evening as each country unfolded their glorious flag under sheets of white canvas. My mother watched the spectacle of primitive power from yesteryear live so she could pause the recording during the commercials. As she watched, she commented,

"Raymond look. Spain."

My mother never left Rhode Island but over four days in the summer of 1976, she was a world traveller.

"Oh look. Brazil."

I was outside tossing a football with my friends in the street when she stuck her head out the door and yelled,

"Bobby, France!"

She even called up her neighbor, Dolores Schmidt, to tell her that the German ship was on even though Mrs. Schmidt was Polish. It was an exhausting four days, but we got through it. I missed the Price is Right and reruns of The Andy Griffith Show while my mother painstakingly recorded the entire epic event. She filled all six tapes with what my father secretly described as "the most boring shit ever recorded." My mother hand wrote the labels on each tape in her exquisite penmanship, identifying the day and date, then arranged each tape in the bookcase adjacent to a set of World Book encyclopedias. And there they remained for the next quarter century.

Whenever someone came across the six VCR tapes neatly lined up on the shelf, my mother would say,

"Those are my tall ship tapes."

This was usually followed with polite inquiry. My mother often explained the content of the tapes in great detail then followed with the declaration,

"They're worth money, you know."

A few years later we bought a boombox for my father on his fiftieth birthday. It picked up AM and FM radio as well as played cassette tapes. My father enjoyed everything from jazz to rock and roll. His favorite band was the Beatles. He took his boombox everywhere he went. On the weekends he stretched an extension cord across the lawn so he could listen to music while he puttered around his vegetable garden. One day he asked me if his boombox could record a radio station on the cassette deck. I took a look at the many knobs and levers. As I scrutinized the controls, I noticed that his boombox was a little banged up. One of the speaker grills was cracked and a knob was missing.

"What have you been doing with this thing?" I asked.

"Oh, it fell off the seat on the way to work," he answered.

The missing knob was for the selection of the tape type with options for,

1. Fe₂ O₃
2. Cr O₂
3. Fe₃ O₄
4. Metal

I wasn't sure what to set the tape selection to. Best I could tell it was positioned on the first compound and without a knob I recommended we skip the chemistry lesson and leave it where it was. I found the source selection for the cassette and set it to "Radio," popped in a tape then pushed the record button. When I demonstrated that the cassette contained the music played on the radio, my father exclaimed,

"Great! WPRO is playing the Beatles all day on Saturday. I'm gonna tape it."

My father purchased a block of ten 90 minute cassette tapes. Being doubled sided he had at his disposal 30 hours of recording time. On Saturday morning when the Beatles marathon commenced, my father was poised with his boombox and stack of cassette tapes. He painstakingly paused the recording between songs. He wrote down each title and counter number for ease of recall. As the day wore on my father manned his station filling up cassette after cassette with the entire Beatles discography. He burned A Hards Day Night, Help!, The White Album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, hours and hours of music.

"How did it go?" I asked.

"Go ahead. Ask me any Beatles song," my dad proffered.

"Ok, Norwegian Wood."

My father pulled out his logbook and flipped through the pages. He ran his finger down the list of hastily scrawled titles which he ripped from the radio royalty free. He tapped his finger when he found the title, tape and counter numbers. After he exchanged the cassettes and reset the counter, he proceeded to fast forwarded to the target tape position. As the numbers rolled into the desired integers on the counter, he pushed the play button. Sure enough the familiar melody burst forward from the speakers, but that's not all he recorded. He also picked up the disk jockey blathering about a summertime sale on lawn chairs at Sears before the recording gave way to the lyrics.

"Alright!" my father exclaimed triumphantly as the song wound to a close.

And when I awoke

I was alone, this bird had flown

So I lit a fire

The deejay's voice interjected to inform us that Jake Kaplan Auto Group's blowout end of summer sale was underway.

"Everything must go to make room for new inventory!" the baritone voice boomed.

Isn't it good, Norwegian Wood?

"Go ahead. Ask me another," my dad commanded.

"Are they all like that one?" I inquired.

"Yeah, the audio is great!" my father offered, "Ask another."

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

Picture yourself in a boat on a river

"Barry's, Barry's, Barry's, the video dance club in Warwick, now with six dance floors..."

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly

"Nickel beers on Thursday nights!"

Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile

The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

"There's still time to get your Fudgie the Whale at your participating Carvel ice cream dealer."

My father smiled broadly as he patted his boombox. He wasn’t merely happy. He was proud. He could barely contain the intense satisfaction he felt for pulling off the heist of a lifetime. Forget the time he claimed the family cat as a dependent on his taxes, or when we sat through Star Wars twice in the theaters. He had just acquired hours upon hours of Beatles music for the magical mystery price of zippo. Unlike my mother my father actually played his tapes. He played them in the house. He played them outside. He played them in the garden. He took his collection and boombox to the factory where he work as a silversmith. Having trouble toting the many cassettes and boombox, my dad repurposed a plastic bag he used to transport his apron to and from his place of work. He tossed all the cassettes into the bag and was good to go. When I saw the tapes all free floating in the bag, I noticed a brown film on the inside of the satchel.

"What's that powder in the bag?" I asked.

My father snatched the plastic sack and peered into the opening. He wiped up some of the powder on his fingers.

"Pumice," he answered.

"Pumice?"

"You don't know what pumice is?" my father said with astonishment.

Now, I was pretty sure that pumice was a type of lava rock. I just wasn't sure why my father hadn't noticed that he had an abrasive powder inside the bag he used to carry his magnetically recorded pilfered music collection.

"You might not want to keep your tapes in a bag of pumice," I advised.

Dismissing my suggestion, my dad asked,

"The thing with the missing knob, what's that for again?"

"The tape type."

"What should it be set on?"

I really didn't know all that much about magnetic tape coatings, but I didn't think that was the real issue. Forget chemistry. The bigger problem was more likely to be geology.

"Set it to pumice," I said.

My father expanded his recording activities to include scheduled tapings of television shows via the VCR. Back then you had to enter start and end days and times through a cumbersome interface on the front of the unit. Mess up one AM/PM designation and you either got nothing or eight hours of a Public Broadcasting Service telethon. The aerial on the roof was also attached to a motorized unit that rotated the antenna when a dial was turned to a new compass heading on a box atop the TV. Forget to rotate the antenna and instead of recording Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, you got an hour of static.

My father taped a host of shows and movies on extended play. Often he wasn't exactly sure how much tape he had left so when he recorded a movie, sometimes the tape ran out prior to the ending. His note and counter method of finding a recording, successfully employed with his Beatles pumice anthology, often resulted in taping over the finale of the preceding show. I urged my father to set the VCR to SP which shortened the tape duration to two hours, affording enough space for a few shows or one movie. It was much easier to locate the media he recorded with less entries on the tape. He numbered the videocassettes, then kept a list of what was on each in a notepad.

The system worked well for years. The incidents of cropped conclusions were dramatically reduced. Although he rarely saved a recording for very long, preferring to overrun his collection of tapes weekly, he did find that the number of videocassettes he managed started to grow, especially when he replaced the antenna with cable. With a hundred channels of unfettered televised bonanza flooding through the coaxial pipe, my father had no choice but to purchase more videocassette tapes. There is only so much time in the day, and my dad recorded much more than he could ever watch.

My father was a consummate fan of The West Wing, starring Martin Sheen as President Josiah Bartlet, Phd. He referred to the series as "adult TV" which is a little like describing comic books as "literature." Written by Alan Sorkin, the series employed the "walk and talk" to make the White House appear like a buzz of activity since a show chronicling government employees sitting in meetings would be both overtly boring and intrinsically uneventful. Most public servants saunter into their 9 o'clock meeting fifteen minutes late with their third danish in hand as they dribble their fourth cup of coffee onto the office carpet. I also pointed out to my father that the West Wing of the White House is not as large as depicted on the show and is certainly not as dark. The poorly lit set used on the series helped portray an air of intrigue. I've been in the West Wing, and I can say for certain that it is well lit.

One evening, my father was in a bind. His favorite show was on that night, and he was out of tapes. I assumed he looked through his collection with the intent on recording over the tape containing the material that least interested him. I was certain that's what he had done as I saw the VCR spring to life at the proper hour to capture the gripping drama chronicling the braintrust of our society making important decisions like how big of a tax break they should give toy wooden arrow makers. The steady stream of recording bliss continued over the coming years until the day arrived when my mother rediscovered her collection of six tall ship tapes neatly arranged on the bookshelf. As she slipped the first tape into the slot on the VCR, she reminded us all,

"These are worth money, you know."

The familiar scene of the tall ships under sail slipping beneath the Newport Bridge faded into focus. My father sat in his chair with the newspaper unfurled blocking his view of the television. My mother swooned,

"Oh look Raymond. Brazil."

I could recite the order of the countries for the first five minutes of the first tall ship tape as that is the only tape and duration my mother viewed throughout the remainder of the 70's. Ignoring the tapes for two decades, my mother now oddly displayed the same enthusiasm she exhibited when the event unfolded in technicolor years earlier. Her commentary continued,

"Oh my. Look at that one..."

"Romania," I interjected.

"How did you know that?' my mother asked, certain that middle school Catholic education couldn't have imparted knowledge of the Romanian flag.

"I watch those tapes all the time."

"Oh yeah, then what is the next ship?"

"Portugal."

When the Portuguese flag appeared on the television, my mother was astonished.

"Why don't you watch one of the other tapes before you wear out the first five minutes of that one," I suggested.

My father stirred uneasily as my mother retrieved another tape from the bookcase. As she exchanged the tapes in the deck, she reminded all of us,

"These are worth money, you know."

More legendary sailing vessels appeared on the television. My mother was riveted to the screen, mouth agape as she solemnly shook her head in a combination of disbelief and anticipation. She knew that she had captured in its entirety a historic, majestic bygone era that future generations will cherish with envy. An endless parade of square rigged sailing vessels gliding up and down the bay filled the television screen. And it was all worth money.

My father rattled his newspaper. I looked to him curiously then to my mother. She was focusing on my dad who hid behind a black and white paper shield. My mother looked to the television. The steel-hulled Argentinian schooling vessel, Libertad, was unfurling its sails. Her gaze returned to my father. Later in life I would recall this scene with more mature eyes which at the time were incapable of recording my mother's sixth sense, developed after four decades of marriage to the same man. She announced,

"Let's watch another tape," then she turned to me and added, "Shall we?"

She moved towards the bookcase. My father brought his hands together to advance the page of his newspaper, a gesture which made me think of a butterfly, strangely. My mother ran her fingers over the five remaining tapes on the shelf in the bookcase. She stopped on the one which was second to the end. It was number five of the series.

"This looks like a good one," she declared.

After ejecting the tape, she inserted another. I distinctly recall seeing the label disappear behind the door to the slot of the VCR,

"Tall Ships - Thursday, July 1, 1976 #5"

The television screen was black. My mother watched intently. Gone was the glee. Instead her pursed lips and stern gazed betrayed her resolve. I first heard the orchestral strings playing a familiar tune which I just couldn't quite place. Was it God Bless America? No. Bach maybe? I couldn't tell. Then the Presidential Seal appeared. For the briefest moment I thought my mother had captured a patriotic, bicentennial speech by Gerald Ford, the only president no one ever voted for, but the seal was quickly replaced by three words that flashed momentarily through white and yellow shimmering graphics. My father folded up his paper and began to rise while Rob Lowe's concerned face appeared on the television. My mother went through the entire cast line up. When the helicopter appeared followed by Martin Sheens's upward gazing face looking a little like Thomas Jefferson on Mount Rushmore, I turned to my father and blurted,

"You taped West Wing over the tall ships?"

My father was busted. In hindsight, it was bound to happen. With his recordings piling up, stuck without a blank tape on the night of his favorite show and not wanting to overwrite any of his recent recordings, my dad did what any cornered silverback would do. I thought of the scene in the 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth when Hans caught the antagonist Count Saknussemm eating his pet duck. The Count said,

"I needed food so I took it."

And that's what my dad had done. He took it. My mother was furious. My dad explained that he had inadvertently put one of his tapes on the shelf for safekeeping. He was sure her fifth tall ship tape was among his videocassettes. My mother ejected the tape cutting off Martin Sheen's rant on the sanctity of each citizen's duty to cast a vote. She read the label which was in her own handwriting. My father shifted his story from a case of mistaken identity to accidental premeditated overwriting. He erringly recorded over my mother's tape. She wasn't buying that defense either so my father did the only thing a defendant presented with overwhelming evidence of guilt could do. He blamed me. Now that might have worked back in the day, but now that I was no longer the omega of our little troupe, I wasn't going to take the rap. Left with no other options to squirm out of the predicament, he fell on his own sword and confessed. The last time I saw my mother that mad at my father she caught him cheating at Scrabble.

My dad tried to make light of the situation by appealing to my mother's logical side which if was anywhere to be found was playing solitaire somewhere in the depths of her soul. He reasoned that no one ever viewed any of the tapes over the past twenty years. He explained that cross magnetization likely rendered the recordings unviewable which I found both compelling and impressive. He noted that the shelf life of the tapes had expired years ago. My mother handed the tape to my father then turned about revealing a broad smile. She left the room with a chuckle, leaving my father and I puzzled.

Apparently, the six tapes on the bookshelf caused my mother a certain amount of anxiety. She knew she was never going to watch all 48 hours of those fucking tall ships gliding about Narragansett Bay. In all those years she had viewed only five minutes of the first tape maybe four times. Even she thought they were boring. Now that the set was incomplete, she was finally free. A few days later the tapes disappeared from the shelf in the bookcase. The only one that survived was the dubious tall ship tape #5 which my father commandeered for his recording scheme. Eventually, it wore out.

As the years passed, I was certain that my mother's tall ship tapes ended up in a landfill somewhere in Rhode Island, but the truth is she never threw anything out. Most of my mother's belongings were spirited off by a friend of hers who after my father passed convinced my mother to make her the executor of her will. When my mother died, I was allowed to retrieve a few items from my childhood home. I took my wedding picture that was tucked in the back of a closet. I also got a framed collage of my sisters and me as children. I retrieved a bowl that a local artist made which I gave my mother on her sixtieth birthday. I was required to document everything I removed from the house I grew up in. When I emailed the information to my mother's friend, she didn't waste the opportunity to tap the animosity that had hardened on the surface of my family. She emailed me with,

"I find it astonishing that you are interested in family heirlooms."

I thought of responding with,

"That's funny. I was going to say the same about you."

But I didn't. Instead I answered,

"Enjoy the tall ship tapes. They're worth money, you know."