I spent Friday night at a motel outside Lancaster and in the morning drove the backroads of Amish country. The last time I did this was two years ago, on an evening in May (before a family reunion) when everything wore a fresh coat of green; now the farms were draped in gold. There was less activity at the start of a fall day than there had been at the end of a spring one, when men rode their horse-drawn plows and barefoot girls in bonnets worked in gardens. But I did see a bearded elder stuffing leaves into a bucket with his grandson, and two boys directing a team of horses. Most everyone who saw me gave me a wave. I stopped on one empty road to take a picture of laundry hanging on a line, the clothes arranged in groups of black, white, and solid colors.
I’ve been visiting this world since I was a child – my mother grew up in Mechanicsburg – and I am always touched by its beauty: the rolling fields, the barns and silos standing tall, the large farmhouses shaded by trees, the shiny black buggies parked in drives. There is a pleasing neatness to the land that is never sullied by political signs.
Friday I flew to Pennsylvania for my uncle’s funeral. I took an early morning flight on Spirit, and when the cart came around, I asked for a glass of water. The flight attendant said that they don’t give water out for free but that he could give me a cup of ice. I took the cup of ice while trying not to think of the philosophical distinctions between a cup of ice and a cup of water. Apparently executives, or accountants, at the airline had already done that for me.
We arrived early, I picked up my rental car, and made my way to Route 30. When I was at the Sun-Sentinel I wrote about this highway, which begins in the gritty streets of West Philadelphia, winds its way through the gracious Main Line, passes through stolid, Mid-Atlantic towns before entering the pastoral beauty of Lancaster County, where, at an intersection, I saw a horse-and-buggy waiting to join the traffic. I stopped for lunch and, getting out of the car, was greeted by the pleasant aroma of manure. Directly behind the restaurant, a dozen horses grazed around a patch of pumpkins.
Lancaster is a miniature Philadelphia, with redbrick row houses lining streets named for trees. The funeral took place at a congregational church in a leafy part of town, where the Trump signs seen along the highway were replaced by those for Harris. The service had distinct touches of my uncle – an imposing man not just in size but in voice, a deep baritone that served him well as a local sports announcer. The famous 23rd psalm was interspersed with James Dougherty’s personal reflections on each line, an interesting and revealing touch. Two of his children gave eulogies; his daughter’s included an impressive litany of nicknames he had coined for her. Also, the fact that the term paper he had once written for her, on Latin American literature, had received an A. Hymns included “Amazing Grace” and “Go, My Children, with My Blessing.” At the conclusion, a pianist played “What a Wonderful World.”
A reception was held at the Elks lodge downtown, where mementos from my uncle’s life – old baseball caps, team photos – were displayed on a table. I had not known until I read his obituary that he is in the Pennsylvania Softball Hall of Fame.
Sam Graff was the husband of my first editor, Sally Lane, back in 1977 at the Trenton Times. Sam had worked at the paper before moving on to the Daily News in New York, commuting every day by train in suit and tie. In summer, he sometimes wore a white suit that went well with his thick mustache. He looked very good in hats.
To me, Sam was the ideal of the big city newspaper editor. He loved opera, spoke German, and was armed with a formidable store of knowledge on a vast array of subjects, which he would never flaunt, but reveal quietly when the occasion demanded it. He was worldly and yet a proud Trentonian, sophisticated and at the same time possessing a remarkable kindness and warmth. And he was very funny, able to see the humor in life, the countless absurdities of the modern world, and comment on them with wit.
When my first book, Unquiet Days, came out, Sam and Sally came to New York to hear me talk about it at the Kosciuszko Foundation. After the talk, we met with some other friends, one of whom asked me if I was working on a second book. Sam answered before I could: “Unquiet Nights.”
In her book Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris writes of a group of people who “form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones! … They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it.”
Farewell to one of the lordly ones.
One of the many differences between adulthood and childhood is that now I enjoy going to the dentist. Especially around Halloween, as mine puts out candy. Friday, as I was deliberating over which to choose, my dentist said, “Take one with lots of nuts.”
I'm off on a little Florida road trip - will be back here on Thursday.
The editor of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson, is retiring after 15 years. In his farewell column, he wrote that the magazine pays allegiance to no political party (he wrote “tribe”) but to “elegance of expression, independence of opinion, and originality of thought.” It was the perfect distillation of the magazine’s character, and the reason I find it so readable. But he did leave out one quality: wit.
Yesterday I spoke at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach as part of its Florida Voices series. On arrival I was tickled to find a display of old books about Poland that had been created by programming librarian Amanda Kiernan. Scattered around the books were red and yellow leaves, which were decorative, seasonal, and, as Amanda explained, a subtle nod to the title of my memoir.