Tag: Somerset Maugham

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Musings

A Single Moment Captured

Mom snapped my picture a couple of day before I left for the Oregon Coast.

In September 1975, I moved to the Oregon Coast. I was fresh out of college, grew a beard, long hair, and bought a motorcycle. I wasn’t looking for work, just loafing. I collected weekly unemployment checks of $93 from a coal mining job I’d quit six months earlier, then dodged Employment Security rules by only seeking jobs for which I was miserably unqualified. It was a practice upon which my parents rightfully frowned.

The summer crowds had gone home. It was just me, my Honda 360, and a head full of dreams living at the Lincoln City cabin my parents inherited from my grandfather. I walked for miles along empty beaches to out-of-the-way places.  On a long hike to the most secluded stretch of beach imaginable, I found a Japanese floating glass ball. I fixed grits for breakfast upon which I slabbed thick slices of butter.  I learned to bake cheesecakes and ate them over the next few days.  There was no shower at the cabin so I took long, hot baths and contemplated in silence.

The Lincoln City home my grandfather, John H. Morris purchased in 1968, and my parents inherited after his 1973 death.

Some pages of history are best left unturned, but not this one.  I was stupid. The third night there I decided to make popcorn the old-fashioned way, so heated cooking oil in a pot and left the lid on.  It got hot!  When lifting the lid the oil caught fire.  I panicked and badly burned the knuckles of my left hand.  That night I slept on the sofa with my hand in a gallon-sized jar filled with ice water to stem the pain. By morning the burned skin had filled with liquid and grew to the size of a lemon.  Foolishly, I sought no medical treatment but lived with it for days until poking a sterile needle through the skin at the base of the burn to slowly release excess fluid.  Months after healing, the skin was still stained a reddish hue that took years to fade to beige.

An organic food co-op had opened a few doors up from the Old Oregon.  It was a thrown-together, hippie-type place with barrels, buckets, and jars of grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables.  The co-op was operated by volunteers and after several visits, I offered to help.  I joined the staff and one day reorganized shelves to better display the myriad jars of grains.  I had grown close to a guy named David who was part of the co-op structure.  When mentioning to him my layout improvement, David admonished my boastfulness.  The co-op’s ethos was to not take credit for personal accomplishments but to subdue our egos for the advancement of the common good.  David was in his early 30s, charismatic, with a kindly wife and daughter.  He invited me to join his family at the Taft Tigers high school football game on several Friday nights. It was just like being back home in Enumclaw.

I watched movies at the Lakeside Theater (now the Bijou), but many nights walked to the Old Oregon and hung out with the hippies and long hairs that populated the tavern. There were two pool tables and a jukebox in the corner loaded with good 45s.  On some weekends, a local rock band occupied a spot in the corner and patrons danced. Usually, I  can recall the times and places by which songs were popular, but the only ones I remember that fall were Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and the Eagles’ “Lyin’ Eyes.”

One night at the Old Oregon, I made the acquaintance of a pair of carpenters building a home on the Salishan spit.  We joined for breakfast the next morning where I drank my first cup of coffee.  Even with cream and sugar, I could stomach its bitter taste.  Afterward, we drove to the house they were framing where I hung out half the day. Mostly I wanted to access this long spit of land forming Siletz Bay that was only accessible through a private gated community.

In mid-October, I geared up to watch every inning of the 1975 World Series between Boston and Cincinnati. For years World Series games were played during the day when I was in school, so I only watched on weekends.  With no obligations, this series would be different.  To prepare, I bought copies of Sporting News and Sports Illustrated reading every article.  I got lucky because that showdown is often called one of baseball’s greatest.  If you’ve forgotten, the Big Red Machine won the seventh games, after Carlton Fisk’s game six walk-off homerun tied the series for Boston.  My parents visited for a couple of days during that week, picking up Danica on their way, who was in her first year of college at Lewis & Clark.

Generally alone, I found solace at the Driftwood Library. It was a three-block walk to this ramshackle building of uneven floors and narrow passageways.  The library was like an overstuffed bookstore – the kind with a sleeping cat in a window – except this repository observed the Dewey decimal system.  I mostly read classics like John Steinbeck, Jane Austen, Somerset Maugham, and Isaac Asimov’s science fiction.  Bolstered by my recent World Series fascination, I read Roger Kahn’s classic, “The Boys of Summer” joining the author’s love of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I explored the poetry of Robinson Jeffers and wrote a few lines myself.  I spent long afternoons reading in front of the cabin’s picture windows with stunning ocean views. I absorbed “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” and stared in wonder at the birds on the beach. But that autumn’s most surprising literary leap was Albert Einstein’s “General Theory of Relativity.”

Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity.

It’s not a difficult book to comprehend.  Einstein’s genius was to use thought experiments to illustrate scientific principles. There in Bern, he formulated his theory of relativity while employed as an examiner in a Swiss patent office. He simplified the speed of light by conjuring the image of a streetcar rushing away from a clock tower.  Einstein surmised that as the streetcar gained velocity, time for the human rider slowed relative to the hands of that clock in Bern.  As the tram approached the speed of light, the second hand on the clock would appear to stop – at least to the passenger with telescopic eyes looking back.  But, the passenger’s clock in Einstein’s streetcar beat normally.

A storm broke loose in Einstein’s mind after realizing that time elapsed at different rates depending upon how fast the observer moves through space.  Upon arriving at his theory, Einstein insisted that he’d tapped into ‘God’s thoughts.’

The Bern clock tower with Einstein’s thought experiment briefly explained.

As for my thoughts, I’d grown lonesome and figured my current life experiment hadn’t produced satisfactory results.  Cashing unemployment checks, alone at movies, reading books, and endless beach walks are interesting diversions, but not the foundation of a gainful life.  Volunteering at the food co-op for an hour or so, reminded me how much I enjoyed working with others.  My months of seclusion needed to end, so I packed my bag and rode my motorcycle home, arriving the week before Thanksgiving.

The best buddy trip of my life soon launched.  I’m not quite sure how it came together, but Keith Hanson, then working at Almac-Stroum planned a one-week vacation and invited Bill Wheeler and me to join.  Wheels secured his dad’s Lincoln Continental Mark IV with Eugene Wheeler engraved on the dashboard.  It was a solid fatherly reminder for three guys in their early 20s, as to whose car we were driving.  We left the day after Thanksgiving.

Bill Wheeler, Bill Kombol, Keith Hanson, late November 1975 standing in front of the Lincoln Continental in the Kombol family driveway at 1737 Franklin Street.

On Friday morning, Mom captured our mid-70s fashion with several photos in the driveway. For most of the trip, I sat in the back seat while Keith and Wheels traded driving duties.  On that first day, we traveled all night through a snowstorm to Reno, arriving Saturday morning to a cheap breakfast and games of Keno. There we played blackjack and roulette, then tested our luck with dice. Wheels and I stayed out very late only to be awakened abruptly Sunday morning after Keith, a fan since his North Dakota day turned on the Vikings game.

We drove south for L.A., stopping at the Joshua Tree desert on our way to an adventure in Disneyland.  After that, we twisted north along Highway 1, admiring Big Sur scenery and listening to the 8-track Beach Boys tapes we’d bought in San Luis Obispo.  After picking up my sister, Danica in San Francisco, we toured the Sonoma wine country getting buzzed on Chenin Blanc and other blends, then, lest we wear out our welcome drove north along Highway 101.  We continued up the Oregon coast driving all night through rain storms that never stopped arriving back home the following morning.  It was a road trip that more than anything solidified the bonds of friendship we’ve shared for five decades.

Back home, I hung out with Wayne Podolak who was similarly out of college and unemployed.  That December we played tennis on the Junior High courts during which we hatched a plan for a long trip to Hawaii in spring.

I hadn’t yet digested how my months of solitude added up.  I didn’t keep a journal back then, but each day I typed out lists of words and their definitions to improve my vocabulary. I was inspired by Uncle Evan who gave me the handwritten pages of words he memorized thirty years earlier while in college.

At the time poetry seemed the best way to convey thoughts and feelings I couldn’t fully articulate.  There in the warmth of my childhood bedroom on a fog-bound day with Christmas fast approaching, I penned the first draft of a poem initially called “Beaming.”

The original poem titled Beaming, rewritten later that day as A Single Moment Captured.

Channeling the Bern tram car of Einstein’s thought experiment I rewrote the poem and gave it a new title:

A Single Moment Captured

Traveling on a beam of light
bound to live until
a single moment captured
motionless and still.

A simple thought now trapped in time
caught within that wave
a glimpse of yesterday revealed
now listlessly engaged.

Light, oh light shine on from here
and never stop to rest
your brightest beam will one day find
its destiny no less.

Bill Kombol – Dec. 18, 1975

I was trying to make sense of the uncertainties of where life was taking me.  At the moment, the tram car I was riding had no particular destination.  But, I found comfort in believing it had a destiny.

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Musings

Living London’s Life – 1978

The brass rubbing from an Oxford cathedral and a photo of me by Anne Biege.

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.
Categories
Musings

Come Saturday Morning

The 8,000-sf home built by Axel Hanson in 1922 was owned by the Coppin family for many years and stands at 1610 Griffin Ave. in Enumclaw.

One’s 15th year of life is particularly fraught with change.  Childhood dreams give way to adult realities.  Adolescent collections such as baseball cards, coins, and comics sadly fall out of style – better left to tweens and those still trapped by out-of-fashion obsessions.  Jobs and college take center stage.  College prep means growing loads of homework and a heightened seriousness about school.  Grades play a more prominent, but still minor role in high school hierarchies.

If you’re of average athletic ability, competitive sports are increasingly past tense.  Pickup games with friends are fading options as those holding driver’s licenses abandon the glory of sporting fields for cruising in cars.  In Enumclaw, they called it posing – driving up and down Griffin Ave, from east to west and back again waiting for something to happen.  That September, we were sophomores all without driver’s licenses.  Without a license or car, we principally relied on parents, friends, or sometimes a special older sibling.

Girls grew progressively more attractive, though self-doubts played havoc with one’s desirability.  Acne pops up at all the wrong times and in all the wrong places. Growth spurts (or lack thereof) pit short boys against tall men, who share the same birth year.  Somerset Maugham didn’t miss the mark by much when noting the world is an entirely different place for a man of 5’7” to one of 6’2”.

In 1968, Chris Coppin had just moved back to Enumclaw following a five-year absence.  I’d first met Chris eight years earlier at Kibler Elementary.  There we’d shared a second-grade teacher, Mrs. Stobbs. But an earlier introduction came through his younger brother, Ed whose pet turtles inhabited a two-gallon glass jar with rocks, and a skiff of water.  I made repeated turtle visits to the Coppin home.  Chris and I were friends until 4th grade when their family moved to the Bay Area, where Mr. Coppin, a flight engineer for Pan Am was transferred.

Chris Coppin, left and Bill Kombol, right from our 2nd grade class photo. This collage is an optical illusion as Chris was (and still is) a half a foot taller than me.

At that young age, it isn’t long before friendships are forgotten.  In junior high, out of sight means out of mind.  In short order, Chris was a faded memory.  But like so many mysteries of youth, the Coppins moved back and Chris resurfaced.  We were soon again fast friends, meeting at their stately white house at Griffin and Franklin, built in 1922 by a local timber baron, Axel Hanson of the White River Lumber Company.  It was the biggest home in Enumclaw and had a front parlor, fashioned as a billiards room where we played pool after school.  The Coppin digs were ground zero during our high years.

With twelve kids, their household was a beehive of activity.  Mrs. Coppin was unflappable, often in the kitchen but always ready for a short chat that included a kind word and light-hearted banter.  When home, Mr. Coppin was typically puttering away with something.  His was of a quieter manner, still willing to engage in probing conversation, the better to pry us from our shells.  As for the cluster of Chris’ younger siblings, mostly girls, it was a constant case of asking, “Which one is that?”

The Coppin family in their stately home at 1610 Griffin Ave., circa 1968.  Chris is lower right.  Dan is the top row, right holding his sister, Alice.

His four older brothers were different, distinctive, and spirited.  Dan was the most inviting.  He was four or five years older than us.  And during that magical year, Dan was our ticket to ride to the movies.  I’m not talking about the Enumclaw Roxy, and later the Chalet.  Dan packed us in his car and off we’d drive to Seattle, destined most often for the UA-70 and UA-150 theaters at 6th and Lenora.

In 1969, they were brand new, state-of-the-art movie houses for the masses – their massive screens nearly outdone by amazing sound systems.  The Cinema 70 screen was equipped for 70mm films and UA-150 once showcased “Star Wars” for an entire year.  On occasion, we’d go to the Cinerama, another theater capable of projecting 70-millimeter films on its huge curved screen.

The UA-70 and UA-150 were located at 6th & Lenora in the Denny Regrade area of downtown Seattle.

Each was magnificent.  And for a bunch of teenagers from Enumclaw, they were a taste of sophistication – plus exposure us to films that wouldn’t play back home for another six months, if ever.

The outings were usually spontaneous.  We’d be hanging around the pool table Saturday afternoon listening to records, when Dan wandered in asking, “You guys want to see a movie?”  He normally had one in mind.  Phone calls were made and a couple of hours later we piled into Dan’s car for the trip to Seattle.

How I wish our conversations had been recorded – the shouts, giggles, chitchat, and nonsense.  We purchased our $1.50 tickets, double the price at the Roxy.  Someone bought popcorn.  I have no idea how many times Dan took us, but these movies jump to mind: “2001, A Space Odyssey,” “True Grit,” “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Sterile Cukoo,” and “If.”

Some of the movies Dan took us to, as best we can remember. “If” was a personal favorite (collage by Oliver Kombol).

It was truly a golden age, not just for movies but being alive to changes experienced during a time when fashion and culture were turned upside down.  Most discrete memories of the specific movie outings are gone, and only formless feelings remain.  But what I remember well were the books we read and movies we saw those years.

There . . . caught in the rye of Holden Caulfield’s world of phonies, with a growing awareness that we were living under the suspicious eye of George Orwell’s Big Brother.  All the while, transfixed within gorgeous romances like Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet,” seen weeks after reading the play in Mrs. Galvin and Ms. Thompson’s joint English class.

And equally enthralled by all-night showings at the just-opened, Big E drive-in of Sergio Leone’s trilogy of Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns: “Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”  Or sometimes down to Auburn for the Valley 6 Drive-in.

The novel, “Wuthering Heights” was difficult to absorb.  Perhaps just as well, for it was the ‘best of times and the worst of times,’ the opening line we memorized from Dicken’s “Tale of Two Cities.” Our senior year with Mr. Bill Hawk (who every girl loved and every boy envied) was pure joy as he read out loud to us the entirety of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and “Macbeth.”

Mr. Hawk, left, in Senior English lit before a class of admiring students gathered around his desks as he smiles approvingly.

And what to make of the curious worlds described in “A Separate Peace” and “Lord of the Flies,” for there was something in that youth-filled air.  Change was everywhere, within us and without us.  One summer night Dad and I walked to see, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.”  It was one of the few times I remember going to the movies with Dad.

“The Sterile Cukoo” starred Liza Minnelli and featured the song, “Come Saturday Morning” in a 1969 tale of love between college freshmen.

To this day, I remain ever thankful to Dan Coppin, Chris’ older brother who asked us if we wanted to see a movie.  For, he was our chauffeur through a tiny part of those precious high school years.  And more than 50 years later, the lyrics from one of the movie songs still play in my head:

“Come Saturday morning, just I and my friends,
We’ll travel for miles in our Saturday smiles,
And then we’ll move on.
But we will remember, long after Saturday’s gone.”

 “Come Saturday Morning” was the soundtrack theme song from “The Sterile Cukoo” and a minor hit single for the Sandpipers.