Cal celebrated his 90th birthday this December with 60-plus friends at his party. I wasn’t able to make it, but I heard about it.
Cal is my oldest friend in two senses — in actual age and in the total years we’ve known each other. I’ll be 89 in January, and I’ve known Cal since I was 8. If you consider other factors, we go back more than a century to the early 1900s. My mother’s parents lived across the street from his mother’s parents. My mother grew up with both of Cal’s parents. But this is only hearsay. Neither Cal nor I was around then.
Cal and I drifted apart as our individual lives and interests diverged, then converged intermittently. He lives in California, I in Washington. We renewed our friendship nearly 20 years ago when Cal visited my wife, Jolie, and me in northeastern China. We were teaching English in the old Manchurian city of Dalian about halfway between Beijing and Pyongyang, North Korea. Cal and I now try to schedule biweekly chats to catch up. Our conversations range far and wide. We’ve already agreed we’re getting old but refuse to dwell on the fact. Our unfocused discussions lead from one topic to another until one of us hears a background reminder that dinner is ready.
What can two old duffers possibly find to talk about for an hour or so every other week? The obvious response is health. I have frequent conversations with others who share my decade and some considerably younger. Many, though not all, flatten my ear with detailed dissertations about aches, pains, pills and costs of the last. But Cal and I are both surprisingly healthy, except for my encroaching blindness from degenerating maculae. Our conversations touch on creative political speculation. (Not recommended; we both remember Hitler, World War II and the first atom bomb.)
Other topics include Cal’s recurring adventures with a play-reading group he’s been involved with for years. In their last performance, Cal was both assistant director and universal understudy. They don’t just read; they rehearse and give public performances. Cal’s always been a fan of drama, from Shakespeare to grand opera, as well as British comedy. He knows stories, plots and key lines from many. He loves to provide background information on famous actors and the roles they portrayed. I share many of those interests, though without Cal’s in-depth knowledge. He’s a walking Wikipedia of drama.
I, on the other hand, have sung all my life, from early days of high descants in my soprano to Broadway tunes, even operatic arias and choral singing, after my voice settled at bass-baritone. I even sing and plunk the banjo when nobody’s listening. But it was choral singing that led me to my wife of 63 years.
Both Cal and I went to Hamilton College, although not at the same time. I sang in the choir, an all-male ensemble. We performed challenging music and did it well, singing concerts from Buffalo, N.Y., to New York City. Sometimes we needed women’s voices for the really good stuff.
In the spring of 1960, my senior year, the women’s chorus from the Craine School of Music in Potsdam, N.Y., joined us for a full orchestral performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor.
Jolie was a voice major at Craine. I’d met her before, but this time we clicked. We married a year later. Whenever we hear the B Minor Mass, we gaze into each other’s eyes and, in two-part harmony, repeat affectionately, “Listen, Dear, they’re playing our song.” More recently, at his birthday party, Cal and his wife, Ginny, may have matched that with their duet of “Aba Daba Honeymoon,” performed to rave reviews.
Cal’s life fascinates me. We both have had multiple careers, but their directions diverged. Straight from a prestigious law school, Cal began practicing with a corporate law firm but wasn’t happy. After a year, he joined the California Attorney General’s office. Three years later he entered a Christian seminary, became a pastor, and served different congregations for a decade. After more second (third?) thoughts, Cal rejoined the Attorney General’s office to finish his career. I, in contrast, had begun as a writer, then earned a Ph.D. in systems ecology. I’d analyzed environmental impacts for years, then taught English in China. I still write.
As elders reflecting on our lives, Cal and I reminisce about the “good old days” when we lifted the handset of a landline telephone to hear an operator ask, “Number please?”
Haug and his editor and wife, Jolie, work together on many projects. Contact Pete at petes.pen9@gmail.com. His internet archives are at favs.news/author/petehaug/.
