an old writer and his words

  • A CHANCE MEETING

    For two years we occupied the same spaceevery week for nine months each year, yetwe never met until thirty years later, at the homeof friends in common, and the realizationwas the source of surprise and humor.How could you inhabit the halls and studiosof a radio station, college but the worlddid not know that, at least…

    Lou Faber

  • SIR, YES SIR

    The hardest part wasn’t the marching,wasn’t the godawful food, although almost so,wasn’t the heat and humidity of San Antonio.It wasn’t the thought that I had nearlyflunked out of college under the sway,or was it swaying away with, recreational drugs,until I cut a deal with the Dean, my futurefor producing a DD-214, an honorable discharge.It wasn’t…

    Lou Faber

  • COLUMN B

    In college, as an English majorI chose Chaucer as my mandatoryColumn B on the menu, Shakespearemy easy Column A choice since the bardand I were at least passingly familiaralthough he claimed not to remember me.Milton just wasn’t my cup of meadso he easily became the odd man out.I listened to the lectures, got comfortablewith the…

    Lou Faber

  • COLLEGE DAYS

    All these years later he still could not fathom why he had done it. It wasn’t something he had thought about doing, but one day he just did it, showed up and got the gig on the carrier current station that reached 96% of the campus. On a good day. But he liked it and…

    Lou Faber

  • HOME

    I don’t know what I expected to findstanding on the corner of a residential streetin Charleston, West Virginia, the domeof the capitol peering up in the distance.That is not surprising, the orange brick homewas much larger than I had assumed, but youlived there only a few years before leavingQuarrier Street to start a life of…

    Lou Faber

  • I DIDN’T DIE

    I can tell you why Idid not die in Vietnam, sincethat was my war, yours aremuch newer and still remembered.I didn’t die becauseI enlisted and was not draftedso I got to choose and pickedthe Air Force, which reducedthe odds of dying significantly.They would have been higherif I were an officer, but thatwould have required a…

    Lou Faber

  • CLUELESS

    As someone who once taught Introductionto Literature at a local college, I was alwaysamazed to learn how little my studentsseemed to know about the great canon of workthat was the foundation of all they read.Some at least recognized that the West Side Storytheir parents had forced them to watch,and worse, to listen to, was based…

    Lou Faber

  • POOR MAN’S SAUCE

    It was a four burner stovetwo of which still worked.Money was always tight,our parents refusing to understandwhat it cost beyond tuition, room and boardto be a student, forgiven for theyhad never gone to college.We became masters of cheap cooking,two steps beyond ketchup and waterbut the cheapest tomato saucewe could find, and sale herbswell past their…

    Lou Faber

  • AIRPLAY

    I heard several people say thatif you were under 30 and livedin Boston or Cambridge and weren’ta student at Harvard, Brandeis or MITyou were either in a band or managed one.I went to college in upstate New York,but I was quite capable of managingtwo turntables, the microphone andan ancient tape cart machine,always timing my intro…

    Lou Faber

  • DYING TO KNOW

    Last week my doctor saidI really needed to updatemy Advance Directiveand Living Will. There isnothing more joyous thantelling doctors whento pull the plug and let youslip away into the crematorium.And now that I did, I realizeI must redo it for it is onlywhen I can no longer writea poem that I will be sufficientlyfar gone…

    Lou Faber