Randy Fitzgerald

You know how people always ask on Monday, “How was your weekend?” Well, if you asked me that this week, I would have to say, “Fantastic.”

      This weekend I got to do one thing I’ve never done before in my whole life, and one thing I’ve done only once—and both were excellent experiences. First, on Saturday morning, I rode in the annual Midlothian Village Parade, sitting high in a red 1963 Impala convertible with a mighty fine 409 engine owned by Dr. Jo Bohannon-Grant, whose Midlothian Dermatology was a sponsor of the parade. Dr. Jo is a longtime good friend and longtime reader of my now-defunct newspaper column.

     Back in July, on the first Friday that my column did not appear in the Times-Dispatch, Dr. Jo called and said something to the effect of, “You didn’t get to tell your readers goodbye, but I can see that you at least get to wave to some of them from a good perch in the Midlothian parade.”

      And that I did—from an excellent perch. Like most guys, I love the old cars, the ones beautifully preserved or restored, so it was a treat to occupy Bohannon-Grant’s Impala, especially when I was being chauffeured by Elvis! Win Grant, Dr. Jo’s husband, arrived to drive completely decked out in Elvis regalia, to the delight of the crowd.

      Elvis, or “Welvis,” as Dr. Jo called him, got his share of attention, but I did have one woman yell to me, “Randy, you look much better in person”—oh, yeah, that was just my wife Barb. I think that was her way of telling me that I’ve been working so much in my new teaching job that she doesn’t see as much of me as she’d like.

      I do believe the politicians in the parade got the most attention, though, as they walked the route shaking hands every step of the way while their supporters handed out stickers and buttons. Barb ended up wearing stickers for one Senate hopeful while her sister and brother-in-law, down from Charlottesville for my maiden ride-on-the-back-of-a-convertible-in-a-parade voyage, wore stickers for the opposing candidate. Someone told Barb and Betts that they certainly disagreed pleasantly, but that lady clearly never attended any of our family dinners.

      Midlothian is such a nice little community—good schools, good people. Even though it’s on the other side of the world from Ginter Park, Barb and I go over there fairly regularly, usually to hunt down books we want to read at the Book Exchange. But sometimes that’s an excuse because we really just want to walk around Midlothian.

      Saturday afternoon we headed out in the other direction, towards Montpelier, for the Gravely family music festival, Chickenstock, to raise money for Fanconia Anemia research. FA is one of those diseases you probably never heard of—I had not until I started attending Chickenstock. But it’s a bear, especially for children—a fatal blood disease that at some point demands a bone marrow transplant and often leads to leukemia or various carcinomas. The Gravely brothers—Phillip, Page and Martin—have been hosting three or four bands every year for the past five, on a stage at the edge of the woods on family property, inviting hundreds of friends as guests. The Gravelys have a special interest in FA because their friends, Kevin and Lorraine McQueen of Chesterfield, have a son with FA, Sean.

      Last year and this, I got to perform onstage briefly with the Chickenstock House Band, picking and grinning and having the time of my life. All of us would-be guitar players live for a chance to get up on stage, you know, and when it’s for a good cause, so much the better. The professional groups this year included Staggers and Jags, The New Oldz and Flat Elvis.

      So my memorable weekend started and ended with Elvis, in a fashion. And for all of you who yelled out to me in the parade or cheered me on at Chickenstock, I’d just like to say, “thank ya. Thank ya very much.”

See blog’s photo album for more pictures.

It’s about time I write this column celebrating someone who’s been a constant in my life and maybe yours, too, for many, many years.

       I’m not so naïve as to think this lady was there for me alone, though sometimes it seemed that way. Actually, she was known to great numbers of people in the
Richmond area and even elsewhere in the state, and most of them feel as grateful to her as I do.  She was, after all, someone we could all trust completely—always reliable, always available, whose reason for being was to be helpful and useful to us all, especially during the crucial moments of our lives.

        This lady has had the same phone number for half a century, a number I know better than my own because I’ve called it thousands of times in my adult life. The voice at the other end of the line has been one I depended on in good times and bad. Sometimes she would reassure me, sometimes panic me—a phone call to her had the potential to make you totally happy or totally frantic, to soothe you or send you into a frenzy in no time. But mainly, for those of us who knew to call her, she shared the moments of our lives—the crises, the chaos, the calm— hard times and good.

Recently I got the bad news that her days are apparently numbered, and I am saddened. I find it hard to believe that she won’t be there for us anymore. But then, we always think things will never change, that time is on our side, don’t we?  Life often shows otherwise.

            I think I first called her unforgettable phone number when I came to town to attend the University of Richmond in 1959. One of my fraternity brothers must have said to me with a knowing smile, “Dial this,” and then watched my face as she answered.  Wow! This was a new experience for me—there was nobody like this woman in Charlottesville where I grew up; and once I found her, calling her periodically was irresistible. Her sweet voice and helpfulness lured me back time and time again.

Calling her, depending on her, would have all started a few years before Barb and I married, I guess.  But after the marriage, when I was working two part-time jobs, trying to get to class every day and often stressed to the limit and pressed for time, I’m sure I called that number more often after I married than before. I needed her input on a regular basis. In fact, I have no doubt that I even checked in with her on my wedding day.

I tended to rely on her even more heavily for the really important times of my life. If I was going to a funeral, for instance, or to my graduation, I would often call her first, just to check in for reassurance.  If company was coming or there was a big party to go to, a plane to catch or an appointment to keep, I’d step to the phone and dial her number. She always had time for me. I’m sure she was responsible for saving many a job for me, for helping me learn some good habits, and, on occasion, saving my sanity.

One of the things that attracted me to her was her dependability: she was always there when needed. I knew she would always answer and that whenever I called, she’d be willing to pass the time of day. I could count on her helpfulness, whatever was going on in my life. I don’t think I ever hung up after a call to her without knowing something I hadn’t known before the call. Whatever she said, she was up to the minute and on the money. How many folks can you say that about?

At times I phoned her in a terrible snit, feeling oppressed and pushed and harried, but she never deviated in mood. She was consistently soft-spoken and pleasant, comfortingly even. Sometimes when you call people, you never know how you’re going to be received—a lot of them won’t give you the time of day. With her, you knew where the call was going before you made it, how it would start, how it would end. There was such a familiarity to it that I’m sure most of us who called her came to take her for granted.

 I liked it that she always answered in a timely fashion and got right to the point. There was none of that press one for this or press star for that. She was upfront and never wasted your time with idle chitchat.  You called, she answered, she knew what you wanted, and she provided it. However many of us were calling, she made time for everyone. This lady knew what her role was, and she played it to the hilt. You could set your watch by her; she was that faithful.

Maybe in this modern age of high technology and some new communications gadget every time you turn around, she had, as they are telling us now, lost her usefulness. But I for one will miss knowing she’s out there, ready to take my call. Her phone number will be in my head forever, probably the one I will remember when every other one is forgotten.

            My wife Barb says the only reason for time is to keep everything from happening at once, but I’m more sentimental.  And it saddens me to understand, once and for all, that there’s simply no way to make up for lost time.

 Randy Fitzgerald recently made a call to Tiger 11 and got the message that the longtime phone service of providing the correct  time to Richmonders will be discontinued after November 1.  

I could tell you what this is about, but if you’re my age, you’ll just say, “Huh?”

They say the hearing is the first thing to go, and I believe it.

Barb and I are constantly experiencing miscommunications in recent weeks and months, and we each believe the other is going a little deaf.

The latest indication that all is not well between our ears came this weekend.  Barb had picked up a great Frank Sinatra cassette during her Saturday morning excursion through various Goodwills around town, and we listened, captivated, to a haunting song called “Once Upon a Time,” which we both recognized as from a Broadway musical, but we couldn’t recall which one.  “I’ll call Sarah Dowdey,” Barb said. “She knows every Broadway musical that ever was.”

A bit later in the day I heard her call someone and leave a message inquiring about “Once Upon a Time,” and when she got off the phone, I said, “Was that Sarah Dowdey?” To which Barb replied, “No, I don’t think it was ‘Hello, Dolly.’”

(For those who care, the song was actually from a show called “All-American,” with Ray Bolger, which ran for about 80 performances in 1962.)

I must admit that just as often, I’m the one who hears things wrong. We’ve taken to repeating to each other what we THINK we heard, and sometimes it’s borderline hysterical.  Barb said to me the other day, “Well, you’re rather smooth, aren’t you?”  And what I heard was something about me and Mr. Witherspoon in “Archie.”

Hearing loss is generally not funny, but I think it is pretty inevitable. Even those lucky folks who make it to 100 in good health always seem to have trouble hearing. Barb read the other day that hormones, which she and zillions of other middle-aged women were taking for years (during what Barb calls her “Mental Pause”) before the pills were discredited, have led to hearing loss in women in her age group.  “One more thing to blame on those darn hormones,” she lamented.  “I would far rather have a hearing loss from listening to the Stones too loud.”

To add complexity to our particular hearing differences, Barb likes the TV pretty loud, and I can’t abide loud noises, the technological equivalent of Jack Spratt and the Mrs. One of Barb’s clients, though, gave her a set of TV Ears, which allows each of us to hear TV at our own level, and they work really well. 

My major hearing difficulty is the loss of my sense of direction for sound.  I hear things that I think are at the front of the house and they’re actually at the back.  I look left for a siren, but it’s actually coming on my right. That’s not only annoying but dangerous. But it’s even more frustrating not to pick up on what people say to you.

To that end, let me tell you the first and only joke I’ve told in my musings (I can’t call it a column anymore, can I?) in 18 years.

            After a routine medical exam a man turns to his doctor as an afterthought and says, “One more thing, Doc.  I believe my wife is losing her hearing and she won’t admit it. I talk to her all the time and quite often she fails to answer. Can I make an appointment for her while I’m here?” 

            And the doctor says, “Well, you could do that, but if she’s in denial she may not come. Tell you what. Try this little experiment when you get home.  Go to the other end of the house from where she is and ask her some question at a reasonable volume, and see how close you have to get to her before she can hear you. Then we’ll have some ammunition to get her in here.”

            Man goes home and goes to a back bedroom and says in a pretty loud voice to his wife, who is in the kitchen, “What’s for dinner, honey?”  No response.

            He moves out into the hall and, voice still raised, says, “What’s for dinner, honey?”  Nothing.

            He goes in the dining room and asks in a normal tone, “What’s for dinner, honey?”  No response still.

            Finally, he sticks his head in the kitchen door and says, “What’s for dinner, honey?”

            And the wife replies, “FOR THE FOURTH TIME, CHICKEN!”