Stories/Memories

BOULEZ AT HARVARD

Boulez was to spend one semester teaching at Harvard in the spring of 1963.  To greet him in style, a number of music department professors (David Hughes, Robert Moevs, Billy Jim Layton, and several others) went to Logan Airport to meet his plane.

As passengers disembarked: no Boulez.  There was some grumbling among the faculty to the effect that his manager had been difficult and they had indeed wondered whether Boulez would, in the end, show up.  Very soon Mr. Hughes, chair of the department, was summoned over the loudspeaker.  It turned out that Boulez had walked right by them, got in a cab, and was now having lunch with G. Wallace Woodworth, the one professor least interested in his visit. Woodie always pronounced the name Boo-lay and thought that Boulez was an electronic composer.

That was how the visit began.

At the end of the semester, the faculty took Boulez to a nice restaurant to celebrate the success of his visit.  At the end of the meal, as no arrangement had been made to deal with the check, it was being passed from one professor to the next to see who had ordered what.  Boulez excused himself to go to the men’s room.  The next thing they knew, he had paid the entire bill.

Sgt. Smith was a memorable figure from my youth. He was a policeman in charge of safety education in the schools.  Young, unmarried, neatly uniformed, a veritable Mr. Clean, he would appear in our third grade class with a portable traffic light.  We’d line up in right-angled lines to practice stopping at the red light and walking on the green.  He gave us a series of rules one of which was not to trespass on private property. I particularly remember that one because, on the way home, I unthinkingly walked my usual path through a parking lot behind some stores.  And there was Sgt. Smith. He took down my name and showed up at our class the next morning.  I wasn’t the only perpetrator.  Several of us were made to stand in shame as he enumerated our crimes. Miss Cavenaugh, the chagrined teacher, said (tearfully) that among the group of baddies were some of her most trusted students.

My grandmother, a member of the Golden Age Club, enjoyed hearing Sgt. Smith sing in an Irish tenor voice to their membership.  She hoped that he would oneday find the girl of his dreams.

Sgt. Smith was still around when I was in high school.  His clout had begun to fade.  At one assembly program, the students were on to him.  When he would issue a rule—such as “close the cover before striking a match”—they would break into tumultuous applause.  “Look right and left before crossing the street” would be met with cheers and whistles.  I have a clear image of the helpless look on his face.  Finally the principal had to intervene.  Thus can the powerful fall. Sic transit gloria mundi.

 George Labalme’s Grandmother at the Opera

George Labalme’s grandmother enjoyed going to the Metropolitan Opera with her daughter, George’s mother.  But the elderly lady was obsessed with getting a taxi afterwards so she would send her daughter to secure one before the opera ended, thus beating the crowd.  So, as George enjoyed saying, it was not until she married his father that his mother learned how the operas ended.

Don Lindsay and Mr. Lamont

This was one of two stories Don liked to tell on himself.

At the annual Eliot House banquet, ca. 1962, Don managed to get himself a seat next to Thomas S. Lamont ’21, vice-chairman of the Board of Directors of the Morgan Guarantee Trust Company.  Don had always the hope of entering the banking profession and saw this as an opportunity to strike up what might prove to be a useful friendship.  Conversation went swimmingly.  Don was at his amusing best. He also drank just a bit too much.  Coming down the elaborate staircase with the distinguished gentleman, Don at the bottom felt an imperfection in the carpeting.  While still carrying on a lively conversation, he tried with his foot to smooth out the lump in the carpet.  Suddenly, Mr. Lamont said, “What’s happened to my hat?”  Don had been grinding it into the floor.