C.S. Lewis Archives - BillBored.org

While traveling through Europe that year I’d set a tight budget: $10 per day, excluding travel. In London, this tiny allowance would be tested. The first night I tramped about Kings Cross station looking for economical accommodations. Most were at prices that fully consumed my budget goal. I chose the cheapest of the lot and the next day scoured classifieds looking for something under $5 per day. I avoided hostels, to be free of Americans with Eurorail passes moving about in herds. There were a hundred too many young Yanks, each backpacking through Europe with indeterminate plans to some day attend grad school when back home. They simply didn’t interest me. I wanted to live among locals.

A boarding house in northeast London at Highbury & Islington at £2.50 a night caught my eye. The exchange rate of $1.85 per pound was favorable, so the room came to a frugal $4.65 per night. It also included a full English breakfast, so that would cut down on food costs. I had a private room with a free-standing tub, sink, high ceilings, and water chamber down the hall.

**I kept the 1978 map of the London Underground.**

The building was a sprawling Victorian affair, a bit shabby and nearly a mile from the tube stop, which meant there were no tourists in sight. In fact, the boarding house only accepted men, mostly tradesmen and laborers. Breakfast was served from 5:30 to 7:30 am in a drab, low-ceiling basement. We sat on benches at heavy wooden tables hunched over our hot breakfasts. It was the same every day: runny baked beans, greasy bacon, stewed tomatoes, bread toasted on one side, butter, marmalade, cornflakes, tea, juice, and coffee, all served cafeteria style. There was little conversation. Men of all ages sat sullenly contemplating another day’s labor. It was fine by me. I rose early, ate the hearty fare, and was out the door for my day’s adventure.

Soon after arriving, I read about a free concert at Victoria Park in east London. There were expected to be 80,000 fans to march from Trafalgar Square to Rock Against Racism, as the event was known. After observing the masses at Trafalgar I’d hopped the tube to the park. In early 1978, punk music was pretty new. I considered England’s biggest act, the Sex Pistols to be dreadful. But, the Clash were different – talented musicians with inventive lyrics, good melodies, and two front-men, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones who rocked with the best of them.

***The Clash performing in Victoria Park before 80,000 on April 30, 1978.***

I sidled my way up front near the stage. When the Clash performed mobs of young men jumped up and down some with violent intent. From its resemblance to a pogo stick, Pogo-ing soon became a verb. I joined along, but the most rambunctious of the pack swung heads and fists so violently that I beat a quick retreat to safer spaces along the edge. Also on the Rock Against Racism program that day were: the Tom Robinson Band (political rock); Steel Pulse (reggae) and X-ray Spex (punk), with only TRB being any good.

During most days, I’d visit museums, galleries, historical monuments, fashionable squares, parks, and vibrant districts. Hyde Park, Speaker’s Corner was always a hoot, like the half-bearded wit who entertained the crowd for an hour. Towards early evening I’d gravitate to areas with cheap restaurants to peruse menus, looking for the best prix fixe value for a multi-course meal. Those deals were usually found in immigrant districts so I often dined in Indian, Pakistani, or Middle Eastern joints.

**This witty, half-bearded guy entertained the crowd at Speaker’s Corner for nearly an hour.**

I typically planned an evening’s entertainment and often joined the London Walks around famous neighborhoods. These walks had names like Sherlock Holmes’s Baker Street or the Secret World of Jack the Ripper. You’d meet the guide at a pub. Then a dozen or so tourists followed a well-spoken Brit who guided us through the streets of London relating topical stories with anecdotal stops at key points.

At the end of the typical 90-minute tour, most of the crowd topped off their evening with a pint or two in the pub where we’d first met. Some nights I’d catch a music performance, some freely presented in a club or church. I saw a bit of theater, the one to remember being Agatha Christies’ “Mousetrap,” the world’s longest-running play having been continuously performed since 1952. I’d hope to have seen more theater, like my literary hero, Somerset Maugham did when he was a youth 80 years earlier, but ticket prices were far higher than those days when Maugham paid pennies for a show.

Afterward, I’d catch the tube back to Islington & Highbury station for the long walk home under lamp lights to my boarding house. Sometimes the station was filled with festive, red-garbed Arsenal soccer fans, as the football stadium was a 15-minute walk. Sometimes one’s thoughts conjured dire images of walking home alone at night in a foreign city. But fortunately, this area hadn’t much cause for concern as few people were out late, and the ones that were had work in the morning. Still, I stayed alert as getting jumped was never far from my mind.

One night whilst on a London Walk, I met a young Brit about my age who told me Queen was playing at Empire Pool (now Wembley Arena). The thought of spending a night at the opera with Freddy Mercury and Brian May was enticing so plans were made to meet at a certain time and place outside the arena. The bloke never showed so I bought a ticket (£2.50) and found myself witnessing one of the greatest performing bands of all time. Queen rocked most all their hits, including eight songs from “Night at the Opera” and some lesser-known personal favorites like “39” and “Love of My Life.”

**I kept my Queen ticket stub. At then exchange rates, £2.50 came to about $4.65.**

My favorite hobby was reading London newspapers. Newsstands were everywhere, and it was easy to find discarded copies at any rail or subway station. I read them all: Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Evening Standard, Daily Mail, London Times (a tad too dry), and page 3 of the Sun (aficionados will understand). There were also the weekly music rags like Melody Maker and New Music Express filled with stories about rock and pop groups of the day with a listing of nightly happenings at hundreds of music venues scattered through town. Rare but welcome was the International Herald-Tribune, a joint-venture daily by the New York Times and Washington Post, bringing news of home, especially U.S. sports which weren’t often covered abroad.

**Anne Biege in her Oxford dorm room, May 1978.**

I made one brief sojourn from London to Oxford to see a hometown friend, Anne Biege who was studying there. She showed me about the storied campus and we had a pint at the Eagle and Child, the pub made famous by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and fellow inklings. Anne found me a bed in her friend Tim Gallagher’s room. He was an English major with a fascination for Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene.” In an ancient cathedral, I made a brass rubbing from an armored knight. I still have it.

**My rubbing of a knight in Oxford’s cathedral.**

My two-month visa to the United Kingdom was set to expire in a few days. I’d spent a month in Wales (including one week traveling with a rugby team up the Irish coast) and nearly a month in London. Soon it was time to head back to Paris and join my sister, Danica for her birthday, then head for Spain.

Here’s the postcard I wrote home to the folks towards the end of my stay in London.

May 8, 1978

Dear Mom & Dad,

Well, I’m here in London and have been about a week and a half now. It’s a great city though I now have a much different perspective of it than I had 10 years ago. I’ve been trying to go out every night and have so far seen three plays, four movies, five rock groups (all in one day at a free open-air, Anti-Nazi concert in Victoria Park), one classical concert, and innumerable pubs. I’m living in a nice ‘dump’ in the suburb of Highbury, northwest of the city. It’s kind of a working-class boarding house for those single people on the lower end of the economic ladder. Quite comfortable, yet unremarkable, though its cheapness compensates adequately.

I’ve been really active touring and such, having taken in many of the main and not-so-main sights of London. Among the more notable with short descriptions:

House of Commons – where I heard the Rhodesia problem debated.
Old Bailey – where I saw a real live murder trial.
Hyde Park – where the better part of yesterday’s sunny Sunday was spent listening to all sorts of weirdos at Speaker’s Corner.
Tower Hill, a Chelsea pub walk, a Dickens’ Oliver Twist walk, most of the major art museums, the London Stock Exchange, and several assorted churches.

I wrote to Anne Biege and will call her Wednesday in hopes of going to see her in Oxford. Tonight I plan to go to the Marquee Club for a rock concert in the same club the Rolling Stones frequently played in the early Sixties.

Oh, by the way, this postcard represents my favorite picture from today’s visit to the gallery listed below (Edouard Manet, The Bar at the Folies-Bergere, 1881 – Courtauld Institute Galleries, University of London). I’ve been doing that with each visit to a gallery lately. I still haven’t written to Barry. Ahhh . . . tell him I lost his address. I’ve written Jean a couple of times though I just got a letter from Dana the other day. Also, got Scott Hamilton and his English sheepdog, Gretchen off at Heathrow Airport okay.

As they say here, “All the best.” – Bill

My post card to Mom & Dad – I’m still amazed at my tiny cursive script, even more that it was kept legible. Above portrait by Edouard Manet – The Bar at the Folies-Bergere, 1881 – Courtauld Institute Galleries, University of London.

Tom Landis died suddenly 13 years ago today. This is the eulogy I read at his funeral a month later. A few months before I’d seen Tom Landis at a funeral, never thinking that some weeks hence I’d be speaking at his.

“Everyone has a story to tell.” That was Tom’s Facebook page motto. This is how Tom approached life and the way Tom welcomed the people he knew – by listening to their stories. This is mine.

Tom had an ability to communicate with most every one. He was as comfortable discussing medieval philosophy as he was pounding nails. Tom approached each person as a unique individual deserving of his attention and interest. He interacted as well with a child, a teenager, a woman or a fellow worker. When Landis spoke, OFTEN LOUDLY, people listened. I was one of them.

Tom had one of the most brilliant minds I’ve ever known. In every encounter I learned something: an author, a book, a quote, philosophical insight; more often an approach to life through building or construction; less frequently, but most valuably, an insight into my own shortcomings.

I first met Tom in the early 1980s. My initial impression was of a bookish intellectual of penetrating eyes with a quick-witted tongue. The better I learned to know Tom, the more I grew to like him.

Now, I have no intention of painting a false picture of Tom. He could be loud, crude or boorish. I don’t believe ‘alcohol’ was his friend. Tom was no saint, but in his heart he was no sinner.

**His dual nature: Tom Landis staining logs at Shangri-La.**

Tom often spoke through a world of ideas. He was fond of saying that, “small minds talk about people, average minds speak of events, but great minds discuss ideas.” Tom had this amazing ability to take a complex situation and make it simple. He also had the frustrating tendency to take the simple and make it complex. He was at home in words, in poetry, and the appreciation of beauty.

Tom was a religious spirit who sought transcendence in the mundane. He enjoyed the humdrum of everyday living. He was at ease in the philosophy of Buddha as he was by quoting Jesus or the Bible. He believed ‘the journey’ to be more important then ‘the destination’ and that more could be learned through ‘doing’ than from an analysis of how things are done.

Tom loved the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. He would often end a conversation or an e-mail with a quote from the movie. If you moved into a new home, Tom would bring you bread, salt, and wine. “Bread… that this house may never know hunger. Salt… that life may always have flavor. And wine… that joy and prosperity may reign forever.” Tom might even bring you a copy of the novel Tom Sawyer. “Remember no man is a failure who has friends.”

Do this in remembrance of Tom, go home and watch It’s a Wonderful Life in its entirety.

I remember one particular Labor Day weekend at Shangri-La where amidst the revelry Tom used the scenes at hand to explain the 14^th century allegorical poem, Divine Comedy by Dante. I usually came away from a conversation with Tom impressed by his command of culture and man’s place in the cosmos. I think of Tom as I quote Dante, “Speaking he said many things, among which I could understand but a few.”

Tom’s experiences at Drake University shaped his world view. A few years back I sent Tom a commentary on the 1960s in general and the year 1968 in particular. In response, he told of his days meeting the likes of Abbie Hoffman, Mark Rudd, and Eldridge Cleaver in the Christian coffeehouse he ran at Drake. Speaking of that ministry, the mayhem, and the madness, Tom wrote:

“In 1968, I was 20. I wrote poetry, rode a bike, and had small, simple thoughts. I kept myself sequestered among a small group of friend who were Christian centrists. We read, went to the movies, listened well, broke bread together. We argued about things we knew nothing about, such as Heidegger and Nietzsche, but ultimately garnered respect for the simplicity of C.S. Lewis and how he reframed the Christian dialogue . . . During the summer of 1970, I began my carpentry apprenticeship. I guess this was my attempt at cultivating my own garden. Four years later, I joined the Seabees. By then, my garden had gotten bigger although I still enjoyed reading C.S. Lewis.”

Tom recently wrote an auto-biographical novel. It’s the story of a man who dies suddenly in late middle-age. He writes, “When a death happens unexpectedly in a family, you see a person’s life through what’s left on the bedroom dresser: a wallet, a wedding ring, a watch, loose change, Tums, golf tees, a half-empty book of matches. This usually means that the person wasn’t expecting to die suddenly.”

Tom died unexpectedly in late middle-age on Dec. 15, 2009.

Tom wrote much about life on Diego Garcia, a British-American island outpost in the Indian Ocean, where enduring friendships with his Seabee buddies were made. They called it ‘The Rock’ and Tom described the experience “as a cross between Gilligan’s Island and Alcatraz.”

As some may know, Tom wrote his own obituary. In 2007, I received a long email – nothing unusual about that, Tom was the master of long emails. The subject matter caught my eye. In my emotions I was somewhere between amused and bewildered, but knew better than to ask “What’s this all about?”

Instead, I sent some editorial corrections and suggestions for improvement. About three weeks later the finished version arrived. I said nothing, but printed it out and put it away in a safe place. His self-penned eulogy wasn’t the morbid act of some mischievous person, for Tom wrote in the present tense and titled it “My Living Funeral” – with an obvious emphasis on the word ‘Living.’ Tom planned to run the race set out before him.

***Tom Landis in red floral print with best friends, Mike “Baggy” Palshis (left)***
***and Phillip Chard (right of Tom in sunglasses).***

In many ways Tom was a contradiction. He was a philosopher in mind, but a carpenter in hand. He could be ‘fire’ and just as easily a ‘rose.’ Tom was a writer of two volumes of published verse. Tom enjoyed poetry, so I finish with lines from a poem by T.S. Eliot that he would enjoy.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Labor Day Coda:

The late Tom Landis was famously loud. The more he drank the louder he got—especially on Labor Day weekend at Shangri-La. There he sat above the volley ball court as the appeals referee, referred to as ‘Buddha’ by those below. There Tom bellowed the phrase, “You’re all idiots!” for which he will always be remembered.

In his loving memory, a bright red, neon sign now hangs each Labor Day weekend at Shangri-La, a place he loved and where everyone loved Tom. I stood below on the Friday before Labor Day in recognition that Tom was wise and yes, we all are idiots. We just don’t know the next time we’ll prove him right.

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