OCT 25 IS OKAY WITH ME, BUT IS NOT OCT 25 THE DATE OF EVENT 50?

I am certainly in favor of dedicating the night to the dead and missing and would like to hear lengthy toasts to each lost member of the class, and should a member have been not well known by any one of us we could have a guest toaster, say Ed Sullivan, make the toast in our stead. An alternative might be to invite a member of the class who was familiar with the dead member. For instance, was any one of us friends with Frank Briggs? We could have someone from the class especially invited, perhaps only to make the toast honoring Frank.

As capacities have shrunk, and as there will be numerous members to remember, may I suggest that we toast with water or grape juice -- and in small glasses at that.

Some of you may want to honor past wives, past girl friends, or past lives. That is also okay with me, though I would draw the line at Margot von Vanderwort, a skinny girl whom I am very glad that none of you had the misfortune of meeting during the short time that I was embroiled with her. That she went to Smith and became a State Department official and at one time Ambassadress to Belgium, does not make up for the night we spent in my car in front of the Spry sign across the Hudson.

I didn't like her father either, who was President of the Corn and Merchants National Bank and who refused to pay compound interest until deposits were held by the bank for ninety days. Where was Eliot Spitzer when we needed him? In the First Form, I suppose. Margot's mother, however, was a charming, diminutive woman who often handicapped horses under my father's watchful tutelage.

I would like to dedicate the entire evening to the very great, and much missed, Stick Shift Bergavoy, ace driving instructor.

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Word tennis


Katz emerges from the electronic shadows
And loudly announces his return with 3 short calls.
Then in the course of his day he strolls
Energetically down the quiet main street to the banks
Of the Mighty River.
There with a broad sweeping gesture of his arm
He intones the first lines of "we are strangers met in
Friendship...." as a memorial to the lost boys of HM.
Oh Dick oh Danny oh Peter we remember your not so
Heroic lives.



At river's edge I memorialize the living too,
O Prince Hal, Mike, Malcolm, and St Eve,
Come now to the verge of the shadowy wood,
Where the mighty Hudson merely trickles,
And leave the Holy Rood,
And dip a toe, to make it tickle.


Cool feet and praise for the living,
But the dead ones murmur the future silence
The ceased flow of the mighty river,
The thinklessness of nada
Peter knows;
Richie though surprised has come to realize.
And Danny smiles.

A collaboration, SS & mek, cold spring, ny, July 2006