HEALTHY COOKIES

You can't substitute oil for solid shortening in a cookie recipe. It seemed, as the saying goes, like a good idea at the time, because oil is widely considered to be healthier than fat that's solid at room temperature. There are, it seems, other factors to be considered.

Oil is fine in muffins and pancakes, and all right in a cake if you aren't particular about the texture. The trouble with cookies is that as the dough softens in the oven the oil runs out in all directions. In a cookie sheet with sides, the result would be oatmeal-and-raisin islands floating in oil -- more or less deep-fried. The flat cookie sheet I used allowed the oil to escape off the edges and onto the floor of the oven, where it caught fire.

I slammed the oven door on the flames and subsequently explained the situation to a pleasant fellow who answered the phone at the fire department.

"So, what should I do?"

"Call us."

I think that was the time that, as Laurie rounded the corner on his way home from work, a fire truck rumbled past him and he heard its radio say something about "36 Circuit Street" -- our address. Somehow the possibility of fire didn't occur to him. He was afraid that I had been injured and was greatly relieved on arrival to find nothing much the matter.

I think that was also the time my sister called in media res.  "It's a wonder you're alive," she said.  She's probably right.

The fire department cheerfully extinguished the flames, and I now know enough not to try to make healthy cookies.

PANIC ON GOUGH STREET

For financial and logistical reasons I avoided dealing with my motorcycle's slipping clutch until it failed entirely, leaving me and the motorcycle stranded on Gough Street in San Francisco. A precipitous hill dropped off behind us; the summit was a few staircase-steep yards ahead.

First priority had to be to discourage the bike from going into free-fall backwards down the hill and taking me with it. Between us, the bike and I weighed about six hundred pounds. As long as I stomped the brake as hard as I could with my right foot and maintained a death grip on the hand brake, we stayed put. If I let up at all on either brake, we started to roll. My left foot, of course, had to stay on the ground to balance us.

I might have lowered us to the bottom of the hill a few inches at a time, releasing the brakes and then grabbing and stomping them again, probably hundreds of times. I might even have managed it without ending up in the hospital. But I felt strongly that there was more potential energy in the system than I wanted to risk releasing at a rate that I wasn't at all sure I could control.

I tried to back up and turn around, or at least park; but I couldn't support all that weight at anything like the angle that was developing between the vertical line of the bike and the dizzily tilted pavement. Long before I made any progress toward the curb, the hill fell away dangerously under my foot. Nor did I begin to have the strength and agility to get off the bike and lay it down or drop it.

I looked around for a pedestrian, preferably of the young male persuasion, who might be willing to help. There was no one in sight, not even any cars. I thought about bursting into tears, but it wasn't clear what good that would do. So I sat there for a few minutes, immobilized, my mind racing and coming up empty.

Then, exactly because I couldn't think of anything to do, I gingerly let the clutch out. It caught, sort of, and we moved slowly and tentatively up and over the hill (I was told later that the plates in the clutch must have cooled off enough to function). I drove home by the levelest route available between San Francisco and the Peninsula, and continued to hang out in the lowlands to the extent possible until I was able to get the clutch fixed. I'm not sure I ever came home from the Avenues by way of Gough Street again.

EIGHT PIANOS

Sanders Theater at Harvard University reopened in September of 1996 with a concert of piano music, after renovations and the purchase of a nine-foot Steinway concert grand. The finale was Rossini's overture to Semiramide as arranged by Carl Czerny for eight pianos, thirty-two hands. The nineteenth century liked multiple-piano concerts and has left us these arrangements of orchestral works for massed pianos. In America particularly, a visiting conductor would propose such a concert, and the local citizenry would round up as many as twenty or thirty pianos and haul them in from the surrounding countryside on wagons or whatever was available.

A few weeks before the Sanders concert, Laurie told me what was planned and described what his role was to be: to select the pianos to be used and tune them all to each other. Many times in his career he had tuned two pianos to be played together; I don't think he had ever done more than two. He seemed to have no doubts about his ability to bring it off, and I'm sure no one else did.

I asked him how the promoters of nineteenth century piano orchestras, with visiting conductors and not much lead time, tuned all those pianos -- especially since pianos don't respond well to being moved by nonprofessionals and bumped around the countryside. Probably not very well, we decided.

Laurie came home every day with a progress report as the pianos were assembled on the stage and tuned. It took him a total of thirteen hours to tune them all together, and seven hours to keep them in tune until the concert.

At some point, I remarked, "We're going to this concert, right?"

"Oh, it's for honchos at Harvard," he replied, "It isn't for the general public."

"I can't believe," I said, "that Lew couldn't get you a couple of tickets if you asked him." Lew was head of the piano shop and Laurie's boss.

Laurie said, Grumble.

"Laurie," I said, "I've got to hear this. Please get tickets for us."

So he did. When I met him at the Oxford Street entrance to Sanders Theater, he had that look of impending doom that I'd seen once or twice before when he expected some ax to fall. "Now," he said, "I get to find out whether I walk out of Sanders Theater, or crawl."

The nine-foot Steinway D, of course, was in perfect tune -- Laurie's pianos always were -- and performed splendidly for its part of the program. Then sixteen young pianists, all students at Harvard, took their places for the Czerny/Rossini piece. To our satisfaction, the mistress of ceremonies hailed the piano tuner by name as the real hero of this piece.

The sound of eight pianos played together is metallic and percussive but also, due to tiny discrepancies in timing, suggestive of sustained strings. Laurie observed that the tuning wasn't perfect, as many things in this world aren't, but I can't believe anyone heard the flaws but him. He got to walk out of Sanders Theater with pride in a job well done. The recording of the piece that Harvard gave him is one of my prized possessions.

TO GRANDMOTHER'S HOUSE

One fine day during the summer of 1948, when I was barely six and my sister three and a half, we decided to visit Nana, our maternal grandmother, in Brooksvillage. We thought we knew the way, and probably did, having been driven there many times. We had no concept of the four or five mile distance.

We set out westward on the sidewalk by our house, which quickly contracted to a ribbon and then dwindled still further until it wasn't much more than an indentation in the grass. We knew it did that, and cheerfully held on our way for maybe a quarter of a mile. Just past a small brick house where a group of boys on the porch jeered at us, a trickle of water flowed down from the house and rippled along the groove that should have been the sidewalk. For some reason, the water daunted me. I suggested turning back.

We retraced our steps, pausing to slide down the bank beside the sidewalk. It was by this time nearly 6:00, and the afternoon sun poured full upon the warm grass. As we were thus amusing ourselves, a car pulled up on the other side of the street and our father called to us to come over there and get in. Route 68 was not then as it is now. With a go-ahead from him, we ran across. He asked what we were doing there, and we told him about our plan to visit Nana. He said little, with the kind of seriousness that tells a kid that something is amiss and that said kid is going to get it.

We arrived at home to find our mother frantic with worry. She must have been ready to cry with relief when we all walked in the door. Dad's mother, who also lived in the house, was sternly concerned and berated us for "running away." We were sent to bed without supper, although something was brought to us later; my parents wouldn't have starved their children however much we deserved it.

I remember my sense of bitter desolation, looking out my window through my tears at a young pine tree in the corner of the field (it has since become an old and craggy pine tree; a white pine can grow a lot in sixty-odd years). My gaze turned to a favorite toy, a pink plastic horse that moved somehow. I vividly remember having no interest in it. I was overwhelmed by the injustice of it all. We weren't "running away" -- we were going to visit Nana. We hadn't known we were doing anything wrong.

     The next day, Mother walked us up the sidewalk to a road sign -- NO PASSING -- and declared that this was now our limit. Then she took us in the other direction to the corner of the Winchendon Road, which was to be our limit that way. A later rule allowed us the run of the field beside and behind the house, but we were to stop at the stone wall a few yards into the trees. Of course we knew better than to attempt to cross or set foot in any roads. With ground rules clearly established, we never "ran away" again.

     There is something archetypal about this memory. I was always getting in trouble for something it never occurred to me would be a problem. It still happens occasionally.

PLAYING WITH THE BIG KIDS II

Cousin Sallie is two and a half years older than I. One day, when quite young, I found myself playing dolls with her. We fed our baby dolls from toy bottles (in 1950, any other method of feeding babies was out of favor and its existence carefully concealed from the young and innocent); burped them; put them in bed for a nap; responded to their cries when they woke up; changed their diapers; and started over again. Following Sallie's lead through all of this, it dawned on me that that's what you're supposed to do: you're supposed to pretend that the doll is a baby and that you're its mother.

That had never occurred to me.

Furthermore, it struck me as hugely boring. I was used to playing dolls with Paula, who, as much younger than I as Sallie was older, followed my lead in using the dolls to act out elaborate fantasies. And it wasn't just dolls. When I was given a set of colored pencils, instead of sharpening them and drawing pictures I gave them names and personalities and made up stories about them. Paula and I did the same with marbles, evolving around them a complex fabric of stories and props.

I never understood the way Sallie and Cousin Priscilla played with paper dolls -- in fact, didn't play with them.  They would buy a book of paper dolls (I don't suppose they still make those big books with underwear-clad dolls that you cut out of the covers, and many pages of clothes with tabs that held them onto the dolls).  Sallie and Priscilla and I would sit next door on Sallie's grandmother's screened porch and patiently cut out all those clothes, some of them quite intricate. I went along; but my heart wasn't in it. I was waiting until everything was cut out and we could get on to playing with the dolls and their wardrobes.

It didn't happen.  After Sallie and Priscilla finished cutting out a book of doll clothes they would fold it all up  carefully and place it in a drawer, where as far as I could tell it stayed forever. All that snipping was the point. It seemed not to occur to them to play with the dolls and their attire, ever. I continued to cut paper dolls with them because I was outnumbered and Sallie was older; but I didn't understand it.

I still don't. Spending hours on a summer afternoon freeing paper dolls and their clothes from a book, and then re-imprisoning them in storage without doing anything further with them or, as far as I ever knew, intending to, seemed to me -- and still does -- as  pointless an activity as I can think of.  Even the gadget that does nothing but shut itself off is vaguely amusing to watch. Nor did I ever understand what was wrong with using dolls and pencils and marbles as props for story-telling (my mother thought I was crazy; she may have had a point; but that's another story).

By the time I started high school, instead of hanging my fantasies on toys I walked around the six-acre field behind the house looking at flowers and plants and other features of that micro-landscape and setting my stories there.  My daughter-in-law -- an artist, who would at least have made proper use of the pencils -- says I was obviously born to be a writer.

PLAYING WITH THE BIG KIDS I

In the summer of 2005, musicians came from all over the US and Canada to the Early Music Institute at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge to perform the works of Guillaume Dufay (1397? - 1474) under the direction of some local big names in early music and Alejandro Planchart, a world-class Dufay scholar.  In three intensive weeks we learned and performed a four-part motet and a mass, both based on the plainchant Ave Regina Coelorum. Congratulating us on how well and how quickly we learned these pieces, Planchart maintained that they were written to give a run for its money to Dufay's choir at Cambrai Cathedral, one of fifteenth-century Europe's best.

The local singers that made up the choir were expected to be expert sight-readers. Now, I couldn't, and can't, sight-read my way out of small town church choir. My disreputable little secret, as I told everyone who would listen, was that I had sung both these pieces before -- largely memorized them in fact. Even though that was twenty-five years previously, with a baby, a divorce and remarriage, and lots of music intervening, once I know something that well I don't forget it readily. I dug out my old book of music from the Ockeghem choir of San Francisco in the late 1970s and perhaps even my copy of the motet from the Longy early music program in 1971. I don't part with music readily either.

Head start notwithstanding, it was all I could do in this company not to become separated from my section and fall on my face. For those three weeks I sat on the edge of my chair, exercising performance-quality concentration for an hour and a half a day.

In order to do that, I first had to get there. You can't park at Longy. If you can get within half a mile, its out of the settled order of nature and you can't expect to do it again. In this Institute I learned that (1) Crippled hip and all I could walk half a mile, and back again as well; (2) Taking a bus from Belmont to Harvard Square and back didn't require anything I couldn't do; (3) The little fold-up chair that makes it possible to wait for a bus fits nicely into the green canvas music bag;
(4) It is possible to study complicated music while waiting for a bus, without any way of checking pitch.

I learned some things about Dufay as well, and got through it all without disgracing myself. After years of hoping against
hope to get another crack at those two pieces before I die, I found them as satisfying as I remembered.

DURANCE VILE

At the point where Winch Street crosses Grove Street at a sharp-ish angle, a Framingham police cruiser lay in wait. It was in plain sight. Justin and Nathan, about twelve years old, may have been making more of a distracting uproar in the back seat than usual. However that may be, I saw the cruiser in plenty of time to come to a full, legal stop but failed to do so. I mentally noted that I had better be sure to come to a proper halt, and then did my routine rolling not-quite-stop through the stop sign anyway. The connection between consciousness and
action is much less clear than we assume.

The officer pulled us over on Winch Street, across Grove Street from the point of ambush. Justin and Nathan were in the back seat with Justin's computer game hard- and software (whatever it may have consisted of at that time) and a television set belonging to Nathan. Why all that was going to school would require a distracting level of explanation; but such was the case.

The officer quickly determined that worse iniquity was afoot than running a stop sign. He pointed out that my driver's license had expired, issued me a couple of citations, and made it clear that I was not to think of driving another foot until I provided myself with a valid license. At that, I was lucky. An elderly minister of my acquaintance was arrested for driving on an expired license. Either this officer was being nice, or thereare complications attendant upon arresting someone in charge of a couple of kids.

We locked the car and hiked down Winch Street towards the school, a distance of what looks on the map like about a quarter of a mile. Nathan carried the hardware and software and Justin the television, which Nathan claimed was too heavy for him. On this inconveniently warm day, I wasn't looking forward to walking to my office and then to the Registry, a total of some miles; but I blessed my lucky stars that there is a Registry in Framingham, and on the Sudbury rather than the Natick end.

The officer had driven off down Winch Street but must have circled around, because he came up behind us -- likely enough to make sure we were, in fact, not driving the car. Taking pity, I suppose, on this hot, fat, frazzled lady and the two burdened kids, he offered us a ride to the school. Too relieved to think farther than the moment, we accepted.

He pulled in, not just into the parking lot, but right up to the front door, which you're not supposed to do except on very particular business. I remember the usual crowd of people on the porch as larger than usual, but I could be wrong about that. I'm sure Justin and Nathan thought nothing could be cooler than arriving at school in a police cruiser. I did not share this perception. As soon as the wheels of the cruiser stopped turning, maybe a little before, I prepared to jump out and flee.

You can't do that, of course. The back doors of a police cruiser don't open from the inside. The few seconds before the officer opened them was an eternity to me. I thanked the officer again for the lift and made my escape under all those wondering eyes while the kids unloaded their gear.

I was able to deal with the license and get back with the car to pick up the kids at the end of the school day. I subsequently appeared before a Clerk Magistrate, who told me that driving without a valid license is an arrestable offense and fined me a couple of hundred dollars, which I couldn't afford.  I've kept an eye on my license expiration dates ever since.