REFLECTIONS ON A BLESSED AND HAPPY LIFE NO.29: JANE

 By far the most important outcome of my college education had nothing to do with academics or career options. It had everything to do with my meeting, courting, loving and becoming engaged to Jane Ann Scheimann.

I was hardly a big “ladies man” in either high school or college years. In high school I think I had a total of three formal dates and they led to no special relationships. In my freshman year at college I dated some but nothing special clicked. In my sophomore year at college I did fall for a young woman, but she jilted me. Then a colleague suggested I ask for a date with Jane Scheimann, a woman I had not previously noticed. Not noticing her was my bad judgment. Our first dates were very simple. We’d attend a basketball game together, then maybe go to Petersons Ice Cream Parlor for a sundae.

Dating during my college years presented some challenges: I had no money. Cars were forbidden. “Girls”  had to be back in their dorms early, 10:00 p.m.. most nights. Public displays of affection were quickly admonished by the Dean of Women.

But we managed very well. Some of our best dates involved taking the Chicago el to go the Loop in downtown Chicago. Of course we walked the two miles each way to and from the el station. If we could save a few bucks we would buy discounted tickets to the Goodman Theater, which staged very good plays. Or we would just walk around the Loop, find our way to Lake Michigan and then hold hands, madly in love, staring at the Buckingham Fountain. “Eating out” would be very simple until we had been together for over a year and Jane’s father came to town and took us to Berghoff’s in the Loop for a fancy dinner that included not only great food but also wonderful, romantic violin music

Intimacy options were limited. But love finds a way. Our first kiss was behind the college gym. The Catholic Monastery not far away had massive grounds with secluded trees perfect for smooching.  Old-fashioned vows of chastity were self-imposed until our wedding night.

In our senior year we had a date that could have turned out to be very embarrassing. Cousin Blondie Doering’s mother was visiting. She arrived in her Buick. After all of us going out for ice cream we stopped the car in front of the dorm, but Blondie who had been driving said, “Here, you to take the car for the rest of the evening.” I slide behind the wheel of the car with the engine running. By11:00 we were in the secluded parking lot of a near-by Forest Preserve. A policeman arrived and informed us that the park was closing and we had to leave. I attempted to start the car, but simply could not find the starter. Sweating profusely, I looked everywhere and was still fruitlessly searching when the officer returned. “I warned you two. Now get going or I will arrest you!” I was in a car in Illinois with Texas license plates. I had no ownership papers and I was unaware of where the starter was. In my panic I stomped my feet in every direction. Somewhere I hit a starter button (under the clutch?). The car started! The officer gave us one more incredulous look and sent us on our way back to the college dorm.

And we have been hitting starter buttons and heading on our way together ever since.

Family Reunion in Texas (Texas)

I love going to the annual Kieschnick Family Reunions and I love going to Texas to celebrate that. But I must also admit to what many Texans (including some of my relatives) may consider a set of mortal sins. There is stuff going on in Texas that I hate. I hate the idea of arming the Texas National Guard to protect it from an invasion by the USA. I hate the reality of everyone insisting that it’s important to carry guns to school, church and family picnics. I hate it that too many Texans think sexual orientation is a choice which must be stopped. I hate it when I experience (at best) paternalism for Blacks and downright denigration of Hispanics. And if any of my Texas relatives or friends have gotten past this paragraph and have not deleted this blog and inserted a two word expletive in its place then I am ready to proceed and tell you why I love Texas.

On my recent flight to Austin we had not preceded very far east of El Paso before I began to enjoy the beauty of that vast and varied state. Texas had wonderful spring rains and the fields were unusually green for late July. The hills were alive with lush green trees. Herefords and Holsteins roamed the fields. Massive rolls of hay were strewn in the vast fields. The few visible clouds added just the right touch to a beautiful landscape. The feeling that I have when looking across or driving in the rolling green hills of Texas brings me to bliss.

When my sister Mimi welcomes me into her house with her beautiful slight Texas drawl and the temperature of the house is just right and the refrigerator is filled with cold beer and there is a bottle of Scotch nearby what could be better!

In the morning I join a couple of my California and Connecticut kids and some of their family for breakfast. I get upset when my wait for the table runs to 30 minutes. And then the waitress comes and it’s true joy. Her Texas accent flows from her sweet and accepting face. She offers us all the options we might want with unusual graciousness. Then she brings the just baked biscuits, the cream gravy and the strong black coffee. I could stay here all day.

In the evening we go to the first of a series of feasts. The back yard is as immense as it is inviting. The beer is on tap for everyone. The pork butt bar-b-cue is so wonderful I think it can’t get any better until I add just a bit more of that bar-b-cue sauce and I check whether or not I am already in heaven.

The style of the Pitching Washers game has changed a bit but there is room for all from ages 8 to 88-and from then on the Super Bowl could not be more competitive but it is all in good fun

My granddaughter has come from California to experience Texas and she gets the full treatment. The first gentleman with whom we converse at the first party is a former rodeo competitor and tells about bucking broncos and calf roping. The next day she goes to buy her western straw hat and the salesman discovers she is from California and within minutes figures out that she is here for the Kieschnick and tells her he is a housemate of a person from the Kieschnick clan. He gets just the right hat for her!

The next few days I continue to be immersed in some of that good stuff that is essentially Texan: marvelous chicken-fried steak, freshly picked ripe peaches, crisp pecan pie, fried okra, five or even seven layered dip. And I visit an ancient smoke house where a generation ago at least 7 deer a year were smoked, dried and preserved to provide meat for an entire year.

I drive by the old cotton gins. Brother-in law Raymond’s longhorn cattle come to the edge of the fence to greet us, and the country western tune on the radio blares “Beautiful, Beautiful Texas the land where the bluebonnets grow. We are proud of our grandfathers who fought at the Alamo “

As I walk down the airport corridor for my return flight to California I take one more look at all those U. of Texas Longhorn caps, shirts, etc., hear one more “Howdy” from a Stetson wearing exec and I head into the plane thinking, “Sure hope we come back to Texas next year for another Kieschnick Reunion.”

FINE DINING

I am enjoying the Epicurean delight of a marvelous dinner at Gaddi’s in the Peninsula Hotel Hong Kong. This is dining at its glorious best. In the midst of the late 1990’s economic downturn in Asia, the number of diners a Gaddi’s tonight is limited. Our candle lit table for seven in the prime spot of the restaurant is the center of meticulous service. The peach champagne cocktail is chilled to just the right temperature. The bisque is perfectly ladled over the artfully arranged pieces of lobster in the monogrammed tureens. The salad seems to have come directly from garden to table with only a stop for its presentation to be enhanced. Entrées, whether from the kitchen or flamed tableside, are even more delicious than their Pulitzer worthy descriptions by the maitre-de. The wine is age and vintage appropriate. The soufflé is so light and fluffy it fails to float only because it is held down by the texture of the perfectly melted chocolate.

The dining companions are articulate, interested in topics of substance and gracious in manner.

I’m not responsible for picking up the outrageous tab. It is a fine dining experience and I relish it.

Fine dining is, however, by no means restricted to Michelin starred restaurants. A modest farmhouse with Formica topped dining table can be a gourmet’s dream come true. The menu: french-fried, never been frozen chicken, cream gravy on mashed potatoes, freshly picked garden beans with homemade bread just out of the oven and finished off with cobbler made from peaches picked that morning.

Or how can it get any better than a full Cantonese style Chinese feast with shrimp on toast, roast suckling pig, sharks fin soup, salt baked chicken, etc. etc. until all 12 courses are served?

This list could go on for pages: the jaegerschnitzel and spaetzel in Switzerland, marvelous all vegetarian food in Bombay, outdoor just off the pit bar-b-cue in Texas, grilled salmon beside a stream in Idaho. Name your favorites!

Fine dining: for a newborn it comes from the mother’s breast; for the poor it’s anything that puts bulk into the stomach; for the recovering patient it’s anything that stays down. For the Christian it’s a sip of wine and a wafer of Eucharistic bread.

While eating is a common need and/or pleasure it is also something that separates the human family. Vegetarians from those who eat meat. Those who love pork from those who find this unspiritual. Those who eat around supportive families and those who eat in silent groups or in lonely solitude. Those who eat until sated or those multitudes who wait in vain for any morsel of nourishment.

Fine dining. May we hasten the day when an entire human family enjoys the answer to their simple prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

THROWING OUT THE FIRST PITCH

The phone rang in my office at The Lutheran Schools Association of Metropolitan New York. It was the New York Mets. They told me the Mets were playing the Los Angeles Dodgers at Shea Stadium. The date had also been set as Lutheran Schools Day at Shea. They asked if I’d be interested in throwing out the ceremonial first pitch.

Silly question. Of course. What time should I be there?

Then reality hit. I haven’t thrown a baseball in years. Can I get it from the mound to home plate? What if I bounce it or throw it over the catcher’s head?
The answer is practice. So I visit my grandson. I step off the distance from the mound to the plate. I use an official regulation National League baseball. I get it. I can do it.

On the appointed day I go to the assigned box in the stands between home and first base. The manager and Rod Hundley, the catcher come to greet me. The big right field score board announces in lights, “Throwing Out the First Pitch is Mel Kieschnick of the Lutheran Schools Association.” I’m ready. I ask for the best route to get from the box seat to the mound.

I am told, “Oh no, just stay in the box and throw it to Hundley. He’ll stand right here.”

So I made my great FIRST PITCH all of ten feet of it, from a box seat. Hundley caught the ball, handed it back to me and wished me a nice day.

Sometimes the excitement of anticipation is greater than the thrill of reality.
At least the Mets beat the Dodgers that day.

PEBBLE BEACH - BLISS

I am standing on the 18th hole of the Pebble Beach Golf Links. It’s the most beautiful and awesome meeting of sea, shore and fairway greens in the world. The prevailing wind will accentuate my natural slice from left to right. I nail my drive. The ball sails over the bay, is blown to the right and lands in the middle of the fairway of this incredible par 5 finishing hole. My golf car like Elijah’s chariot carries me to my perfect lie. My ensuing three wood is straight and on line. My hopes soar. A seven or eight iron to the green. There’s hope for a birdie. I swing. I have duck-hooked it. The ball is somewhere under an incoming Pacific Ocean wave. I take my penalty, try again and end up with a double bogey seven. I regret the inability to convert promise into reality, but I do not mourn for long. I have been to golfer’s Mecca and it is paradise on earth.

When I grew up during the depression, the son of a rural parochial school teacher, golf was beyond even my wildest fantasy. Once an uncle “from the city” had given me a golf ball. I treasured it and hit it, fungo-like with a baseball bat, into the cow pasture. I sought till I found it and hit it again. Then I couldn’t find it and I assumed my golfing life was over.

But it wasn’t. I’ve ended up playing more golf than I ever fantasized about and in venues where I still have to pinch myself to be sure I’m actually there. Hundreds of rounds at Hong Kong Golf Club, Fan Ling (no longer The Royal Hong Kong Golf Club). I’ve worked my way around many of the most wonderful courses imaginable: Kapalua on Maui, Hawaii, Westchester Country Club in New York, The Palm and the Magnolia in Disney Land, Cog Hill in Illinois, Torrey Pines in California, Banff in Canada.

There are unique elements of the golfing experience understood only by those who’ve been there, done that. The anticipation that goes with opening a new sleeve of balls on the first tee. The posturing, complaining, negotiating that precedes the first swing. The downward spiral of feeling as a ball just catches a trap, lands beyond the white out-of-bounds stakes, lips out of a cup. The almost orgasmic sensation of a six iron that hooks around a tree and lands on the green, the 30-foot putt that drops. There are always the post-round autopsies over a few cold beers. Although we all know that no one (no one!) really cares about the final score of another golfer, we all rehearse selected agonies and ecstasies.

Yet, it is not unique. Every being that is still really alive is stirred by the anticipation of, achievement, is exhilarated by possibilities, disappointed in failure, and longs for the companionship of a shared experience. Golf is, as they say, a four-letter word. For me that four letter word is LIFE.