Published: May 15, 2008 12:20 pm         

Old friends, come and gone

I overreached myself at the Cooperstown Rotary luncheon a couple of weeks ago.

My intentions were good, but I think that I left some Rotarians confused about a number of things, including my national origin. More about that below.

Our British guests, Barbara and Michael Thrower, are now safely back home. They spent two wonderful weeks with us, weeks full of reminiscences and laughter and pleasant travel together, For Anne, and especially for me, the time was restorative. And that’s just what our friends had intended.

If you drove past our home during that time, you may have seen the Union Jack flying in front of Anne’s office, which was the Throwers’ American headquarters. (Michael raised the colors each morning and lowered them at dusk. I’m sure he hummed something apt as he did so. Perhaps, “Rule, Britannia.”)

And you may have seen the four of us tooling around Cooperstown and the county as we showed them changes since their last visit a dozen years ago.

You may even have seen Michael and me ambling around Cooperstown (and West Winfield and Richfield Springs) as Michael did some banking business.

We two looked remarkably similar in khaki pants and windbreakers, about the same age and height. Michael’s a few pounds lighter and, as I’ve said, better at balding than I am; but the glasses are alike, as are the moustaches and goatees. To see us side by side, you’d almost mistake us for — but wait. It’s not yet time for the Rotary story.

The Throwers made a great hit with the Fly Creek General Store regulars, who enjoyed their accents and good humor. On their second visit for lunch, staff members John and Crystal assured Barbara that they’d taken trouble to special order “tomah- toes” for her sandwich. On his part, Michael delighted in the repartee that goes on endlessly in that store — a kind of floor show without cover charge.

Anne’s friendship with the Throwers goes back a good dozen years, and mine, a dozen year before that. Michael was principal of a large college that developed a linkage agreement with my college down in Maryland. The two institutions exchanged staff and students; and in the process the Throwers and I became fast friends. After my first wife’s death, my college’s president and Michael conspired to have me sped a sabbatical semester in England, shadowing Michael in his job and taking notes on British higher education. More than once, at educational meetings, Michael introduced me jokingly as his brother from America. I’d been sent there, he said, for safety at the time of the blitz and had only recently found my way home.

That separated-brothersreunited story grew more elaborate with each telling, with me playing the part of a bemused Yank only now discovering his heritage. It drew such good reactions from Brits that I decided to spring it simultaneously on Michael and an American audience, the Rotarians.

Bad choice. I bombed. The worst thing possible happened to the joke. Some took it as literal truth. I’ve been puzzling over that ever since and think I’ve found two causes. The joke worked well across the pond because it reflects an attitude toward Americans that Brits would politely deny: To a degree, they still look on us as errant relatives whose terrible mistake was to break away from King and country. Over here, however, my story of a lost son finding his way home had nothing of that overtone. It sounded, well, touching.

Jokes are never touching. I knew the effort was in trouble inside the first few sentences. Some Rotarians were right with me, smiling knowingly. But a lot, too many, looked puzzled or lost. And after the meeting, some of them asked tablemates if I really was English by birth. Oh, my.

If I were given a chance to retell the story (unlikely), I’d cast it in the negative from the get-go: “Despite our close resemblance, it’s not true that Michael and I are fraternal twins, separated by the horrors of WWII. It’s not true that our family sent me to America for safety. (They were oddly indifferent to Michael’s fate.)

It’s not true that the tag on my little overcoat got lost and that I arrived over here without an identity, and that a kindly Annapolis took me in and finally adopted me. Not true that fate had me discover my real roots and my look-alike brother only in our late-40s.”

All those “nots” might have done the trick. But at Rotary, I cast the whole story in positive, plaintive sentences. That worked in England. Here, it produced a lead balloon. I have, you see, a lot to learn yet about story telling, and especially audience analysis. “Ars longa, vita brevis,” as they say. Anyway, I’m sorry, Rotarians. You’re a fine, open bunch, ready to laugh generously at the most feeble joke. But I gave you next to nothing to work with.

Another time, on another visit, Michael must be the weekly Rotary speaker and tell you about his real blitz experiences as a small boy in London: His father surviving the troopship “Dorchester” when it was torpedoed and blown from under him. His mother struggling to hold the family together, moving them twice because they came up from the shelters to find their successive homes flattened by German bombs. And Barbara could add her own memories of her wartime childhood in Portsmouth, a major navy base.

She remembers being dragged out of deep sleep and being rushed, stumbling, down into the neighborhood shelter as the ground shook and bombs blew the port to bits. She remembers leaning against her mother and staring across at an old lady who’d saved one treasure when she fled her house. The woman sat cradling a hatbox covered in faded flowered paper. In it was her Sunday hat.

Barbara and Michael. Those two have real stories to tell.

Find out about Jim Atwell’s book, “From Fly Creek — Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country along” at www.JimAtwell.com. Old friends, come and gone