German officers
This is a joke an Engineering Economics instructor told the class.
There are four types of German officers. The first type of officer is brilliant and hard-working. He turns his ideas into wins on the battlefield. The second is brilliant but lazy. He doesn't work on his ideas or pass them on. The third is stupid but lazy. He ideas are bad but because they stay in his brain he doesn't do great harm. The fourth type is stupid and hard-working.
A Maharishi in Manhattan
A ninth-grade highschool teacher told this story to the class. I remember the teacher as a thin, elderly man who was going bald, but I was young and memory is fallible.
A guru, or Maharishi, a seer from India, stood on a sidewalk in downtown Manhatten facing the street. He wore a white robe and had a gray beard. Behind him was a large department store window. Hundreds of items for sale were displayed behind the glass. The guru turned his head back for a moment to stare at the window, then turned his head to again face the street. He then named every single item behind the window.
The teacher acted out the story as he told it. He turned his head to the side and then back, as if he had his back to us and was looking backwards. When he turned his head to the back of the classroom, his eyes widened as if focused for a few seconds on the items behind the window.
My step-father sinks a sailboat
After my Mom married her second husband in a small stone church in Upper Nyack, New York, my mom, sister, brother, and I moved into my step-father's house. His house was about a mile north on the main road. From the front, it appeared to be a one-story ranch house, but because the house was built on a slope, the basement had a large window and a door to the outside.
The house looked out onto the Hudson river on a spot where the land was mostly level. On one side of the house was a gravelled circle for cars to park or turn around. A path at the far end of the circle went down to a stone cottage by the shore.
On the other side of the house was a yard, surrounded on three sides by a wall. The wall was about five feet high and surrounded the yard with embrasures like an actual castle wall. At the far end of the yard a footbridge spanned the one-lane road that led to the house and went on to wind its way down the hill, turning left under the bridge. Where the road turned left, on the right a path led to a pond surrounded by the castle walls. I'd go there to collect frog eggs and watch them become tadpoles. Past the bridge, near the shore on the right, the castle wall rose in height and against it stood a fireplace, the remains of a second stone house.
The road reached the river's edge and turned left again, parallel to the shore leading to a wooden dock extending onto the water and the stone cottage beyond. Children about my age would bring their fishing poles to the dock to fish for perch. Along the water's edge were stones of various sizes. The smaller, flatter ones we'd pick up and throw to see how many times we could get them to skip off the water. The bigger stones were covered with a green algae and slippery. Horseshoe crabs slambered over them and slid into the water.
When you opened the front door of my step-father's house, the kitchen was on the right, the door to the garage converted into a bedroom on the left, and before you was the living room. From the large window that went nearly to the floor you could see the Hudson river, the dock below you, and Westchester on the other side. The window was composed of large glass slats called jalousies. Beside each slat was a crank for opening and closing. On weekends, my step-father would sit in his recliner near the window in his bathrobe.
H. Russell Drowne the third was a business man, rodeo cowboy, and polo player. He had one or two horses he kept in rented stable stalls. He was the fleet manager of a Chevrolet dealership in New York City. His father was an Army Brigadier General. He had rifles for shooting skeets and a handgun he kept on a shelf in the hall closet.
H. Russell Drowne's step-father was Richard Jewett. Mr Jewett was the mayor of Upper Nyack from 1959 to 1977. We knew Mr. Jewett as "Mort." Mort's father, Major Richard Jewett, built the castle walls and stone houses in the early 1900s. H. Russell Drowne's house belonged to Mort.
Joe Targett lived alone in the stone cottage on the shore of the Hudson. He had a kayak and a sailboat moored to the dock. He taught English at Columbia University. I don't remember this, my memories are fragmented, but my sister told me we'd go down the path to his cottage and knock on his door so we could listen to his stories.
One day, I can't say exactly when, my step-father took one of his guns, cranked open a jalousie window, pointed it at the sailboat and fired and fired until the boat sank. I don't know what was said later about it, or who took care of the sunken boat. Its remains were taken away and not seen again.
In early April, either the same or following year after his sailboat sank, Joe Targett set out onto the Hudson river with his kayak. A storm appeared, capsizing his kayak, and he drowned. His body was found two weeks later. This is what I remember, but was there a storm?
New York Times April 15, 1962
Hartford Courant April 26, 1962, page 50
Not long after Joe Targett's personal belongings were taken away, H. Russell Drowne's eldest son, Henry Russell Drowne the fourth, we knew him as "Rusty," moved into the cottage. When he got married his wife, I believe she was a nurse, moved in and they lived together in the cottage for a long time. Rusty was a good man. He flew down from New York to attend our half-brother Alex's funeral service. Rusty died in 2003 at the age of 58.
A Professor demonstrates infinity
My Dad studied Chemistry as an undergrad at an Ivy-league university. One day everyone was sitting at their desks waiting for the Professor to arrive. The Professor entered the classroom, walked to the front of the class, and said, "today I am going to demonstrate for you Infinity." The Professor picked up a piece of chalk, went to one end of the chalkboard, drew a horizontal line to the other end, walked to the window nearest to the board and jumped out.
The story is missing a few important details. Was this a course in Mathematics, Physics, or Economics? How tall was the building the classroom was in and what floor were they on?
Notes
Creative Commons
My step-father sinks a sailboat
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Until recently, I thought Joe Targett's name was Joe Target and I couldn't believe it was a real name. At an Upper Nyack elementary school reunion in June 2017, I asked a former classmate, do you remember Joe Target? Was that his real name? He replied, yes, that was his name.
