Then there was Will. A friend. A tear.
From "Some Stones Don't Roll"
There are other Bills in my life. There is Bill Rewalt who was in my class at Trinity. They say his parents did it once a week and you could see it through the window of their apartment. There was Bill of the family I took as my own at the age of three until it was over and I became homesick, There was Uncle Bill one of my Cleveland family who had one of those chiseled, aged almost permanently smiling faces I associated with ageless Ohioans. He came to live with us as his agelessness morphed into death. There was Bill Saltonstall at the end of the Harkness table at Exeter talking of Herodotus and Thucydides in 1951. I later got into trouble for suggesting he run for the Senate in New Hampshire. Then there was Will. A friend. A tear. I do have friends. Now dead or gone. My angel is my friend. Her name is not Bill.
When we got to the turn to Amherst I saw the familiar bulk of UMass on on the left and we dead-ended into the large rectangle at the end of which Emily Dickinson waged war with words or were they minnows? Tony's shop was on the East side up the stairs. Did I lend Bill the money for the guitar? I don't remember. Money for me was and is an oddity. If I lent it to him, then it was my guitar. Do I want to sell Bill's guitar so I can return money that was mine to Bill's parents in whatever town they occupy? Can I work up sympathy for them. They are probably long gone too? Like all the instruments I once owned.
There are other Bills in my life. There is Bill Rewalt who was in my class at Trinity. They say his parents did it once a week and you could see it through the window of their apartment. There was Bill of the family I took as my own at the age of three until it was over and I became homesick, There was Uncle Bill one of my Cleveland family who had one of those chiseled, aged almost permanently smiling faces I associated with ageless Ohioans. He came to live with us as his agelessness morphed into death. There was Bill Saltonstall at the end of the Harkness table at Exeter talking of Herodotus and Thucydides in 1951. I later got into trouble for suggesting he run for the Senate in New Hampshire. Then there was Will. A friend. A tear. I do have friends. Now dead or gone. My angel is my friend. Her name is not Bill.
When we got to the turn to Amherst I saw the familiar bulk of UMass on on the left and we dead-ended into the large rectangle at the end of which Emily Dickinson waged war with words or were they minnows? Tony's shop was on the East side up the stairs. Did I lend Bill the money for the guitar? I don't remember. Money for me was and is an oddity. If I lent it to him, then it was my guitar. Do I want to sell Bill's guitar so I can return money that was mine to Bill's parents in whatever town they occupy? Can I work up sympathy for them. They are probably long gone too? Like all the instruments I once owned.
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