Aunt Elsbeth's Party

"Els' wants us over for drinks after work. How 'bout it?" asked Bridgette.

Bridgette was my one and only. We were colleagues too. That was how I first knew her. I was impressed with her. She wrote well, something unusual among programmers. And as a programmer she was competent. She was also pleasant to work with, and within a week of my arrival at Wordstream we were constantly helping each other. She was also beautiful and her manners and speech charming. She was also 13 years my junior. Because of this it was almost a year before we became more than colleagues.

Els' was Brig's great aunt and one of my favorite people. She had lived through the era of the great upheaval which had begun with the first war to end all wars and continued into the 30s, an era with which I was familiar from books (like Ten Days That Shook the World and Trotsky's My Life), and from many discussions with people who had participated in the upheaval: my father and mother, my uncle Pat, members of the CPUSA and of the Socialist Workers Party, and many others. And with Aunt Elsbeth who, for her left-wing political activities, had been barred from her profession as a radio script writer. (She continued earning a living at it by selling her scripts to other writers.) She was a gentle, loving person, tho' somewhat ambivalent about Brig's attachment to me. I could not blame her ambivalence about me because I was ambivalent about everything but my work.

"For sure!" was my answer to Brig's question.

So about 6:00 we arrived at Els's place. Brig knocked and we heard Aunt Els' yell, "It's unlocked!" As we entered I smelled a savory lusciousness which increased as we approached the kitchen. "Have a seat!" came from the kitchen before we could get there. "Give me about five minutes and I'll be out."

Indeed, Els' was out in five minutes with a tray of hors d'oeuvres and three gin and tonics.

"So how is it with you guys?" she asked as she put the tray on the coffee table and sat in her armchair.

"Let the genius tell you," Brig replied as she handed a glass to Els' and one to me.

I blushed a bit. "Tell what?" I blurted.

"You know, about the trick."

"Oh. You know, Trojan called me into his office and seemed to be telling me in so many words that he thought me a genius."

"I told him my little invention was not a work of intelligence but one of memory."

"Go on," coaxed Brig.

"What I remembered was from highschool algebra. It's weird, and I never forget weird things. Here it is. The 0th power of any number is always 1. This is true even for 0. So the 0th power of 0 is 1." (Actually nowadays the 0th power of 0 is treated as undefined in mathematics tho' in many programming languages it will still get you 1.) 

"I couldn't believe it!" laughed Brig. "Until he plunked the numbers into the computer."

"Why is it weird?" asked Elsbeth.

"Why?" I stammered. I knew that Elsbeth was not interested in mathematics so her question was understandable. What made me uncomfortable was the sudden awareness that I could not easily explain why I found the fact strange. A loss of words always makes me uncomfortable.

"Well, why is it?" responded Brig.

Now I was beginning to feel like a fool. I began to fish for words, thinking while I did it that I would probably succeed in making myself look like a fool. After a few seconds at it, I felt a rush of relief as I heard a knock at the door.

"Come on in!" Aunt Elsbeth yelled at the door.

Then in trooped about half a dozen men, all of them about Elsbeth's age. As they made their way to the kitchen, one of them cried out, "I know you!" I looked up and saw a dapper little man pointing at me. He then walked on with the rest of the new people.

I looked at Elsbeth and saw to my amazement that she was blushing with excitement. I then looked at Brig and saw that she too was blushing.

"All of these people knew your father. They were all actors together, in the old days," Elsbeth explained.

I realized then that Elsbeth was throwing a party for me. I was of course astounded and grateful and gushing as I tried to express my feelings to Elsbeth. Elsbeth then explained that many of the people at the party were actors in a TV soap, As the World Turns. She went on to talk about working with them in the heyday of radio as a scriptwriter and bit player in radio shows. She did not mention her persecution for her political beliefs. That I knew about from Brig. Then Els got up to be with the other guests. Brig and I remained seated and began to talk as we often did about things technical and about our work on a system at Wordstream and about some of the personalities involved with it. As we talked, a guest would come up now and then and talk about his work with my father. Each of them said at one point what a great actor my father was. "I'm an actor, have been since I was a kid. But just an actor. Your father was a genius."

The guests left altogether and I stood by the door thanking each of them for coming. Each of them stopped to say how much he respected my father as an actor. No one said anything like, "He was a great guy!" Thinking back on that, I wonder at the cause. Perhaps it was because as actors they all felt that anyone can be a great guy, but only a few can be great actors. I'm not sure that just anyone can be a great guy, but I believe that only a few can be great actors. I've become convinced of that after doing a lot of theatre myself and working with someone who was a great actor. As for my father, I never saw him onstage. By the time I was aware of that world he had quit it and often warned my brother and me to avoid it. "It's filled with petty people!" he would sometimes exclaim. I did in fact take up acting as a hobby and enjoyed it much. As to the petty people, there were a few but most of the people were wonderful and I'm still in contact with some of them.

My father and the people in the room had all been in radio in its heyday. They had, at least some of them, also been stage actors and worked together that way until the depression destroyed their jobs.

Though I never saw my father onstage and have never heard any recording of what I was sure was his voice in radio, I have gathered a lot of information about his life as an actor. My education began when I was young. My father would announce at Saturday breakfast now and then, "Listen, boys, there's a boat I want you to see today. It'll be a drive, so have Mom pack some snacks for you." And after breakfast off we'd go.

A staple of these adventures was stops at the roadsides. Southern Maryland and the areas around the Bay were filled with them. My father was an alcoholic of the maintenance drinker variety and he would make these stops about once an hour more or less, depending on the location of the roadsides. Arriving at one, he'd bring us into the place and sit us at a table and bring us cokes from the bar. He'd then go back to the bar and start talking to the bartender. Within a few minutes he'd have a story going and in a minute or so more the place would be quiet as a tomb. When the punch line of the story arrived the place would erupt into laughter and sometimes applause.

These experiences embarrassed me tremendously. I always felt that my father was making a fool of himself and that people were looking down on me as well as him. It took many years of growth and experience before I changed my view of these events. I grieve even now that by that time my father was dead. My father, tho' he finished only the fourth grade, was not only a great storyteller but extremely creative in his use of our language. He spoke with great clarity and an enchanting voice. By the time I was 11 I realized that my father thought much about how he used what he called "the King's English" and how others used it. This habit rubbed off on me and I'm glad of that. I believe that it was from him that I got most of my education in the humanities. I mean the guts of it. What I got as an English major and later a History major just added window dressing to what he gave me.

My mother used to tell me stories about him. He was the star of a radio program in the 30s and into the 40s. He played a college student who roomed in a house with a bunch of interesting people. The name of the show was Pepper Young's Family. You can find out about this and much more concerning my father with Google. His name was Curtis Arnall. What you can't find out is things like this. His picture was often in the papers, and he and the rest of the cast would do appearances in New York theatres to promote the show. So lots of people knew what he looked like. One result of this was that often old women would accost him and lecture him about the way he was treating his girlfriend. Today most people know that what they see in the TV soaps is made-up stuff. Back then many people didn't.

Though my father rarely talked about his life as an actor, now and then he would. One day he noticed the cover of a book I was reading. It was a play by Eugene O'Neill. "You know, I worked with him." Another time he told me of working with Clark Gable. "He was hopeless with his lines. People offstage or in the footlights would have to hold up placards with his lines on them."

My father died when he was 65 and I was 20. One of the regrets I have about my life is that he didn't live longer. It would have given me the chance to know more about him.