I called my dad this week to ask him about time spent commuting with Mr Beale. In the late 1950's and through the 1960's, the two dads would often walk up to Giel's together in the morning to catch the bus into town. It was never coordinated but they often ran into one another as they walked down Green Valley Drive and then up Harts Run Road. My dad worked in the tubular steel division at Jones & Laughlin and Mr Beale wrote ad copy for an advertising company. (Meagan,Wendy-pls fill in details or correct any erroneous info.)
One day after a family vacation to Cape Cod, Mr Beale wistfully said that he would love to move permanently to the cape and he had found a house near the water on one and a half acres but it was too pricey at $30,000!
On another bus ride into town, Mr Beale lamented that he had run out of ideas after five years, for a client that made religous candles in upstate New York. (How many ways can you make that interesting?!)
The year that the "Complete Book of Running" by Jim Fixx was published, Don suggested to Jack that instead of walking up to Giels, perhaps they should jog. Jack said,"That might be a little dangerous but we could run up the hill behind our houses and then down from Farmview." Picture the men with their wingtip shoes, suits, and HATS!
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Oh, that bus! That was quite a community, with the same people riding the same route for years! My Dad usually read both going into town and coming home, and thus was fairly oblivious to the high life going on around him. (But he was able to get through the entire issue of The New Yorker every week, a real feat in those days when the magazine weighed about 2 pounds.) The morning bus was pretty quiet, but that 6:15 pm was very lively...a real soap opera of Middle Roaders. Although my Dad did indeed walk up to the bus, he was often late, and so my mother would drive him--charging up the hill and down Hart's Run, trying to intercept the bus--and sometimes chasing it up Middle Road. One summer morning, when Mom and Dad and Meagan were at the Cape, and poor me was at home, working, Mr. Seidel and I made the bus on time, but the bus driver just sat there at Geil's, looking up Hart's Run. Finally, I walked up to the front of the bus and said, "Are you waiting for the guy in the red car? Because he is on vacation this week." And with that, we took off.
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