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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Pulling the plug

June 27, 2013 by Terry Teachout

David and Kathy, my brother and sister-in-law, recently moved into 713 Hickory Drive, the house in Smalltown, U.S.A., where my mother spent the last half-century of her life, and they’re now well into the lengthy process of remodeling the interior. Needless to say, they do so with my blessing. My mother’s house was run down at the time of her death last spring, and it needed exactly the kind of loving care that my brother, who is the handiest of handymen, knows how to supply.

232323232%7Ffp4384%3B%3Enu%3D3869%3E896%3E476%3E295-896567233ot1lsi.jpegJust the other day Kathy sent me a link to an online album of some three hundred-odd snapshots showing David hard at work on 713 Hickory Drive. I haven’t been back to Smalltown since my mother’s funeral, and I was thrilled to see the step-by-step transformation of the house into an up-to-date residence more perfectly suited to the needs of its happy new occupants. While I felt an occasional pang of sentiment as I looked at the pictures–after all, I grew up there–it’s far more important to me to know that David and Kathy want not merely to keep the house in the family but to bring it back it to life.

Strange as it may sound, it hit me harder when I dialed my mother’s old phone number the other day and found that it had finally been disconnected. I’ve dialed that number thousands of times. It was in service for longer than I’ve been alive. It was on the phone that I last heard my mother’s voice, and I’m still getting used to the knowledge that I’ll never hear it again.

I wonder how long I’ll remember her number. Probably for the rest of my own life, since I have an unusually retentive memory. It’s amazing–and dismaying–how much useless information is firmly crammed into my well-stuffed head. Sometimes a good memory is a blessing, sometimes a curse, but most of the time it’s just there, taking up space. Why on earth should I know who Richard Dimbleby or Amy Denovo or Henry Vars were? Yet I do, together with countless other dusty fragments of fact that I’m able to retrieve far more readily than, say, the phone numbers of any of my present-day friends.

6a00d8346defcc53ef00e54f5fe8d98834-500wi.jpgAt any rate, I expect I’ll go to my grave knowing that the Teachout family’s phone number was 471-3319 (formerly GR1-3319). No doubt I’d do better to know any number of more useful things, but usefulness, like goodness, has nothing to do with it. In the words of the contestants in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Life is random and unfair/That’s the reason we despair/Life is pandemonium.

All that’s certain–at least in my case–is that I will always be able to go back to the house where I grew up and be greeted with open arms, even if I can’t find my way around the kitchen anymore.

* * *

“Pandemonium,” as performed by the original cast of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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