| November 9th, 2009 |
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I had been in a hard-fought re-election campaign in 1989 and had told Mary that no matter what the outcome, when it was over I would be packing my back-pack and going into the woods for a couple of days, something I had not done in the previous fifteen years or so.
But when the night before the day came, I suddenly received a phone call from my old friend, principal and hiking partner Father Anselment. While he was asking me if I'd like to join his hiking group that Thursday, Mary appeared in the doorway with a new bright orange jacket and warm athletic socks and I figured the whole thing out. The master conspirator got her way again. She wouldn't have to worry about me out camping alone, and I got essentially what I wanted, some outdoor respite after the miserable tension of politics. (I had won, by the way, but since I had a joint party with all my friends who lost, there wasn't a whole lot of hoopla tension release).
The itinerary was a "rainy day" hike up near Putnam Pond state campground, off the road to Ticonderoga. The choice proved an apt one, weather-wise. As we passed through a valley on the way to a lean-to, the heavens opened up and for the next twenty minutes it felt like walking through a waterfall. No amount of plastic covering could keep the icy November downpour from soaking into my heavy courderoy pants. And my "dry" spare clothes were in my wet backpack.
By the time I got back to my car, I was frozen to the bone. I jacked up the heat all the way for the whole two hour drive home, eagerly awaiting the joys of my warm, toasty house.
There was a sign on the back door.
"Rob, the boiler is out and they can't come until tomorrow. Meet us at the Super 8 Motel."
Though the house was ice, the hot water still worked and I took a loooong hot shower, plunged into the frosty air, put on some warm clothes and headed to the west end of town to perform a wedding ceremony.
Finally, I joined the family in a room for four accommodating six. We crawled over each othe a bit, but all things considered, not too bad.
The next morning I turned on the television and rubbed my eyes in disbelief, and then rubbed them again, then sat bolt upright.
People were dancing on the Berlin Wall.
By the end of the day, people with hammers and chisels and concrete saws and chains and sheer will power tore it apart and the walls came a-tumbling down.
***********
Ten years later we sat around the dining room table as I poured a jigger full of beer and handed it to our foreign exchange student from Perleberg, in the former East Germany. I told him we were violating the rules for one night, because this was a very special anniversary.
"Yes," he said excitedly. "I remember this night.
"I was seven years old and sleeping in my bed. My mother woke me up. 'Christian! Christian!' she said. 'Look! Your father is on television!' and he was there, my father dancing on top of the wall!"
Today, thank God, the wall exists only in museums and in the fading memories of the peoples it divided. Sometime later this week I hope to touch a section of it, which stands on the grounds of the presidential library of the man who willed it down.
 
Buy my murder mystery The Evil Has Landed
and don't forget The Judge Report (THE BOOK) is now available, too!
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