I took a vacation; there will be no slides

Last month Kathleen and I joined her sibs, Linda and Paul Capcara, and their spouses for a trip to the Capcara homeland in the hinterlands of northern Slovakia and Poland. Friends have urged me to post an account, and though I am skeptical of your interest, here it is.  

Before the homeland we treated ourselves to Budapest, Vienna, and Prague.

In order, Budapest was very agreeable. We toured the massive Dohany Street Synagogue (second-largest in the world), the Parliament, and the central market, which was full of sausages and hams and paprika. We arrived to tour St. Stephen's Cathedral just as the last Pentecost morning Mass was ending, with incense permeating the place and an organ sounding with vibrations you could feel through the soles of your feet. 

Vienna was, of course, elegant and charming, though as imposing as the Habsburg palaces are, they are plainly meant for large formal occasions, and it is difficult to imagine human beings actually living in them. The Staatsoper was gorgeous, and the Viennese know how to produce an opera, with musicians from the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit, elaborate sets, and crowds of extras swarming over the stage. The opera, regrettably, was, Rosenkavalier, but the performance was first rate. (If it had been Nozze di Figaro, I would have happily died on the spot.)

Prague captured my heart, in part because the pilsner was the finest I've ever drunk. Outside the opera house, which we weren't able to enter, there is a small memorial to the premiere of Don Giovanni there. In the tour of Prague Castle, we were at one point in the room where the Third Denefestration of Prague occurred, and I was able to touch the frame of the window through which the Bohemians flung the Catholic Austrian delegates and started the Thirty Years' War. We toured St. Nicholas Church, a Baroque beauty acquired by the Hussite Church; they observe the seven sacraments, deny the authority of the Vatican, and ordain women and bishops. Close to Anglican. 

The Capcara homeland in the Carpathians turned out to be more pleasant than I had expected. After marching through the daily itinerary in the cities, the lodge where we stayed in northern Slovakia was relaxing: fresh mountain air, spring-fed streams running down the hills, time to relax. 

The homeland (which included Andy Warhol's hometown) turned out to be a series of villages, some as small as a dozen houses with a Greek Catholic or Orthodox church with an iconostasis from floor to ceiling and a cemetery. We discovered, after some confusion, that the family name in those parts is actually pronounced "Sapsara." We found a couple of people with knowledge of a Capcara great-grandmother and some grave markers with family names. 

We had arranged through a cousin for a Polish tour guide, and at the end of the tour he said his mother would like to give us lunch. The six of us sat down at the table while this short, gray-haired Polish woman served soup with barley, shredded  pork, and herbs from her garden. After that, the pierogi course: eight glistening cheese-and-potato dumplings on each plate. I ate the entire serving, so as not to offend the house. Then dessert: an apple-walnut cake with chocolate and orange flavoring. I ate three slices, to be polite. 

Many little things remain in memory. The pilsner. The convenience of train travel between European cities. The trams crisscrossing each city. Boats on the Danube and Vlatava. The masses of electricity-generating windmills across the Hungarian plain. The storks nesting on utility poles in Slovakia. And the pilsner. 

Septuagenarian

Granted that I'm elderly, what are you going to call me? "Senior" and "senior  citizen" are just bland, milk-toast terms, so I have looked into the possibilities. 

old-timer That suggests a veteran, an "old hand" who understands how things work. That seems inadequate, since the thing I know how to do, editing, is apparently no longer valued or done. 

codger An affectionate, or mildly derogatory, term, the dictionary says, if you think you can pull off affection and derogation simultaneously. 

coot Old, harmless, and sometimes not bright. I deny "harmless."

fogy Behind the times, overconservative, and slow. Well, you'd have to append "old," because those three qualities are hardly limited to age. 

boomer Since I was born while Harry Truman was president, lumping me with the 1946-1964 tranche of Americans is something I can't very well deny. 

dotard Weak, with limited mental faculties. Not quite yet. 

gaffer I'm not British. 

geezer Odd, eccentric, and unreasonable. I think we may be nearing the mark. 

curmudgeon Crusty, ill-tempered, and difficult. Bingo!

Unless you would like to suggest another.

These just in

 Our job as professional copy editors is to identify and correct your lapses, sparing you public embarrassment. That does not, however, mean that we do not snicker among ourselves. Extracts from desk message traffic: 

"She is not afraid to bawl our teen-agers using fowl language..." sigh. i won't even bother to tell you about "Mount Zion Untied Methodist Church." 

a nominee: 

Line 1 Meatloaf dinner 

Line 2 includes your 

Line 3 choice of potato 

Maimed Professor: "One Decent Typing Hand and an Intact Head All I Need" FANTASTIC! A copy editor you can keep in a filing cabinet!

Photo caption: "Soundless, the mobiles flits in respect to the cows." 

"In its song are the sounds of whirring dragonfly wings and grasses rustling in the hot spring wind: 'Tchi-tchi,tchi, jyuuuu jyuuuuu jyuuuuu jyuuuuuu.'"

N.Y. Times News Service: ORLANDO, Fla. -- Despite a desperate effort that included feeding tubes and an all-night vigil, a rare baby sperm has died two days after it was found stranded on a sandbar. 

b6.1.2 Rabbi passes gas for use in kosher Pepsi Cola 

well, I've been told to sked this story, but based on the lede do you think I'd be justified in simply feigning illness and going home? "WARSAW, Poland -- The Emilia Furniture Emporium epitomizes recent Polish trading history." 

"The house and mill were built around 1746, and the house was of a Maryland-German Hangover-Medieval style." 

"As world markets become increasingly global ..."

"Over the windows are Colonial keystone lentils ..."

"Driving from the north on Route 1, the new 50s-style diner sits atop a hill." the moveable feast 

"Surgeons fashioned each baby a cosmetic naval." Shape up or ship out, kid. 

CALIFORNIA FIRE CONSUME 200 HOMES, INURES 17" People are awfully jaded these days.

"The FAA, Mr. Horne said, takes care of drunken amphibian airplane pilots." FROGS IN THE DRUNK TANK!

"a married, 45-year-old man in western, southern and northeastern Maryland." How fat was he, Johnny?

"Although temporarily covered with plywood, Mr. Dalrymple plans to install two cellar-style doors in the open space." Free at last, free at last. 

Surviving in memory

 

When I traveled to Europe this summer with Kathleen and her sibs to explore the Capcara homeland in the Carpathians of northern Slovakia and Poland, I joked that this year we could tour the McIntyre homeland in Elizaville, Kentucky. Some sites: 

The school that I attended for six grades (and which my parents attended for twelve) has been an apartment building for more than half a century. The general store my grandfather owned (and my father operated for some years after his death) is closed. The Presbyterian church in which I was baptized and confirmed, and of which my mother and her childhood best friend were the last members, has long since be secularized by the presbytery and, I think, now serves for storage. The post office where my mother served as postmaster for twenty-four years (and above which we lived) was shut down by the Postal Service. 

The most recent lost landmark is the farmhouse my great-grandfather, Benjamin Given Early, built circa 1890. My older sister, Georgia, sold the family farm some years ago to an Amish family. We agreed that the land should be owned by people who lived on it and worked it, and neither of us was prepared to go back and take on the responsibility. Last month the owners tore down the house, salvaged what lumber could be repurposed, and burned the rest. It may have been too troublesome to maintain. * 

This is the house where my grandmother fed me her blackberry jam on toasted salt-rising bread, and where I saw her bank the coal fire in the grate just before bed. This is the house where I learned to play the big upright piano in the parlor, and it was in that parlor that I was married the first time. This is the house in which Georgia was born and in which my grandfather and mother died. Now it no longer exists. 

The physical remains of my parents and grandparents lie beneath gravestones on a hillside in the Elizaville Cemetery, from which site it was once possible to see the family farmhouse half a mile or so away. My parents and grandparents will not be completely gone so long as I retain memory of them. And just so, as long as I retain the memory of them and these places, I will remain myself.

*A strict regard for the truth requires mention that the three unoccupied bedrooms upstairs were always a little creepy. Only a few rooms of the house could be heated in the winter, and the whole house was stifling in the summer, requiring the Southern strategy of Not Moving. Since the house was raised slightly on a stone foundation without a basement, it was hospitable to Nature, evidenced by the shed snakeskins found in bureau drawers in those unoccupied bedrooms every spring after the winter guests had departed.