Same person encountering the words in 1956 and 2020 and responding much the same way to them.
I had left after 11th grade to be a railroad telegrapher and on 4 January 1956 was just released from a TB sanatorium with orders to stay in bed for months (5 months, it turned out). On the first of January I started reading and on the 4th got to CYMBELINE. It's impossible to remember and hard to imagine what hopes or aspirations I could have had then. In 1954 I had met a black couple, the husband a teacher of junior high school near Beaumont. Mr. MacDonald had taught junior high school at Wister, and had been a role model. His legs were shriveled so that he had to sit on the desk. He was commanding there. To teach junior high school was an aspiration. I must have known that I might get well enough to go back to work on the railroad, as I did in the late summer of 1957. I had reached a stage of acceptance. I loved CYMBELINE 64 years ago. And had a season, day after day, with the plays, over and over again. I had taken a couple of correspondence courses in English from the University of Oklahoma when I was in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. What a lopsided creature I was by June 1956! And now the riches of audio versions of many plays. So the actors are not professionals. They respect the words and usually understand the syntax. What a bounty now for shut-ins of any degree of health and any age.
I had left after 11th grade to be a railroad telegrapher and on 4 January 1956 was just released from a TB sanatorium with orders to stay in bed for months (5 months, it turned out). On the first of January I started reading and on the 4th got to CYMBELINE. It's impossible to remember and hard to imagine what hopes or aspirations I could have had then. In 1954 I had met a black couple, the husband a teacher of junior high school near Beaumont. Mr. MacDonald had taught junior high school at Wister, and had been a role model. His legs were shriveled so that he had to sit on the desk. He was commanding there. To teach junior high school was an aspiration. I must have known that I might get well enough to go back to work on the railroad, as I did in the late summer of 1957. I had reached a stage of acceptance. I loved CYMBELINE 64 years ago. And had a season, day after day, with the plays, over and over again. I had taken a couple of correspondence courses in English from the University of Oklahoma when I was in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. What a lopsided creature I was by June 1956! And now the riches of audio versions of many plays. So the actors are not professionals. They respect the words and usually understand the syntax. What a bounty now for shut-ins of any degree of health and any age.
No comments:
Post a Comment