Recessional: A Novel (23 page)

“Where will that take place?” they asked and the men showed where, in a relatively flat place in the savanna, they had employed a man with a power mower to clean a narrow strip that could be used for takeoffs and landings. Seeing this field, the residents were satisfied
that their five wizards really did intend to fly their contraption. A thrill of pride spread throughout the Palms; their men, all of them past seventy and one nearing ninety, were going to build and fly an airplane! It gave everyone a boost in morale, especially those in Assisted Living who had generally felt that their hospitalization was probably the beginning of the end. “Hell,” one man recovering from a hip operation grumbled, “they’re all of them older than me. If they can do a crazy thing like that, what might I do at only sixty-two?”

But the effect on the third floor, Extended Care, was even stronger. The sensible people who knew they were close to death went to their windows to watch the mower clearing the space in the savanna and applauded: “I hope they make it! More power to them!” and the elderly team with their flying machine became the symbol of the entire Palms complex, an affirmation of the life force. People immured on floor three prayed that the airplane would soon be finished so that they could see it fly, triumphant in the heavens, before they died.

Eleven years earlier, when the Taggart Organization in Chicago had appointed Ken Krenek to be the number two man at the Palms, it had not been their intention that he should also serve as the person responsible for the social entertainment of the guests in Gateways. But he showed such a remarkable talent for keeping people active and happy, that without ever having been assigned to the task, he found himself making the decisions. “I had a vision of elderly people wasting their hours here in boredom and decline,” he explained to Mr. Taggart, “and I thought that a shame. A waste of human capacity. These people still had years of fine living ahead of them, they could make real contributions. And best of all, it would cost us only pennies to help them.”

When Taggart asked how this would strengthen the Palms, Krenek said: “They’ll enjoy themselves, feel younger, remain active, and when prospective clients come for exploratory visits our residents will become our salesmen. They’ll say: ‘We have a great time here. Something happens every day.’ And the visitors will see retirement as much different from what they had been fearing. You watch! We’ll sign up the undecideds.”

So, given a free rein, Krenek had developed a schedule that would have been appropriate for a summer camp for fifteen-year-olds. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays the private bus belonging to the
Palms started at nine in the morning for a tour of four big shopping centers in different parts of Tampa. Residents who got off at the first stop at nine-fifteen were allowed two hours of shopping and exploring: at eleven-fifteen sharp the bus came back to pick them up along with their sometimes bulky packages. At nine-thirty, with pickup at eleven-thirty, the shoppers were dropped off at the second mall, and so on through the third and fourth stops.

Tuesdays the bus was reserved for a rich variety of field trips, to places like zoos, flower gardens, nature trails, lakes and the starting points for one- or two- or three-mile hikes through interesting countryside, with the bus waiting when the hike ended.

Thursdays were reserved for trips to cultural activities, and here Krenek displayed his extraordinary inventiveness, for he had searched out little theater groups, musical ensembles, university courses in the arts and the various art museums in Tampa, nearby St. Petersburg and Sarasota. Besides the Dali Museum and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus history museum, one of the most appreciated excursions was the one to a series of bookstores in the region. At every such visit the Palms awarded one free copy of a desirable book—a popular novel, a book on Florida birds or a splendid selection of historic maps in color—to a member of the tour selected by lot.

On Saturdays there was a special tour. At eight in the morning the bus left to take the residents who had made reservations to a well-regarded restaurant that served a bountiful breakfast at nine-thirty for a flat fee of $7.50 and was worth, many said afterward, “at least fifteen bucks in New York or Chicago.” Sometimes Krenek would hire a local guitarist or a duo to provide music to accompany the meal, in which case the party might last as long as a couple of hours. Rarely was anyone disappointed in these breakfast forays; one stout fellow in his seventies announced loudly: “All my life I heard about southern grits. I thought they were a Dixie version of oatmeal, God forbid. But that custard of grits, cheese and bacon bits—angels must have been sent down to bake that dish.”

On Sundays the bus started at seven with trips to Catholic churches for early Mass, and was kept busy till two in the afternoon hauling residents to various churches and bringing them back home for the gala Sunday-noon dinner, at which women were supposed to put aside their weekday trousers and shorts and appear in a dress, while their husbands were expected to wear a jacket and tie. A normal
week at the Palms could not be boring unless one insisted on making it so because, in addition to the daily tours, Mr. Krenek also provided at the east and west ends of each floor in Gateways quiet nooks for bridge games, plus a pool table in the recreation room, a library with thousands of books that had been left behind by departing guests, and two top-rated motion pictures on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Quite often, on Sunday evening when no meals were served in the dining room, musical groups from nearby colleges performed or devotional services were conducted by local clergymen, perhaps with their church choirs.

One resident summed it up accurately: “It’s the mirror image of childhood. In those days people served as older teachers, showing us how to learn and amuse ourselves. Today young people instruct us oldsters how we can educate and entertain ourselves. Either way, it’s a good system.”

Andy was so appreciative of the contribution that Krenek made with his program that he asked him: “How did you ever become a professional in a field like entertainment? You don’t seem the type, and nothing in your record would indicate it.”

Krenek gave an involved explanation:

“My parents hadn’t much money, but they loved to take cultural expeditions and vacations that meant something. They were masters of the free museum, the inexpensive weekend. They happened to patronize a Jewish bakery operated by a wonderful fellow named Levy, and he told Pop: ‘The places that give you the most for your money are the big Jewish resort hotels in the Catskills. Grossinger’s, the Concord, and a tremendous value, the Beersheba. You catch a bus, it takes you right into the mountains Friday afternoon and brings you back early Monday morning. Best vacation dollar in America.’

“So the Kreneks became Jews, said we were from Lithuania, and we began frequenting Grossinger’s and the Concord. But my father was always looking for the bottom dollar, and we wound up at the Beersheba, smaller, friendlier and with a much better pastry cook. I was very happy at the Beersheba until my father saw that I was falling in love with a Jewish girl. We stopped being Jewish and became standard Germans again. No more delicious pastry.

“But there was a young man at the Beersheba who made a lasting impression on me, Izzy Korngold, everybody called him Izzy Korn. He was a tummler.”

“A what?”

“Tummler, spelled with a
u
but pronounced
toomler
, and he was one of the best, definitely on his way to the top of his class. Under a different name he became a standard Borscht Belt comedian, and a good one.”

“What were his talents?”

“His job was to keep the guests tummled, entertained but in a very active way. Games, crazy dances, singing. He was a master at Simon Sez, in which he’d have everybody up and down and wagging their ears, and hopping on one leg. I was crazy about him, he seemed to make everybody happy, and I began to follow him around, asking how he did his tricks, what his secrets were, and he was very patient. He told me: ‘The secret, Kenny, is that people are lonely. They want friends. They want to talk with their neighbors, and laugh and cut up. But by themselves they simply cannot do it. Believe me, Kenny, you could have the Louvre Museum, that’s in Paris, right over here and they’d never go see it unless I led them, and joked with them, and told them how much fun it’s going to be, something they’ll never forget.’

“I remembered what he told me, and in college I helped the non-fraternity kids discover things to do and how to make friends. It came naturally to me, and when I came here it was simple to pick up where I’d left off with Izzy Korn. A Jewish widow in Gateways, she’s dead now, bless her, told me one day: ‘Mr. Krenek, you must be Jewish. You’re a perfect tummler,’ and when I told her I’d learned how at the Beersheba, she embraced me, wouldn’t let me go. ‘The Beersheba!’ she cried, ‘Herman and I went there for years, but we never met this Izzy Korn,’ and I told her: ‘He came later. He was very young when I met him but already very good.’ And that’s how I learned to help people have a good time—and a good life.”

Three times each year two buses were required for what had become not only a tradition but also one of the most unusual and instructive tours on the west coast of Florida. On these days Judge Lincoln Noble conducted a tour to a remarkable place, unlike anything the residents had ever known, which he had discovered some miles south of Tampa. Krenek was eager for Andy to see this miracle, so when the next tour came round in April they were both seated in the front bus beside the judge and listened attentively when Noble spoke to him about the origin of the miracle they were going to see: A paraplegic veteran from Vietnam named Tom Scott had come
home in a wheelchair, and to give him something constructive to do his uncles bought him a little plot of land right on the Gulf of Mexico, about as big as a tennis court, no more, but with a sandy beach that extended north and south to touch and included the beaches in front of two expensive condominiums.

“There this enterprising young man with his wife—she’d been his nurse in Vietnam—achieved an amazing feat: they lured to their beach a collection of hungry pelicans, among which were several that had been crippled by being hit by motorboats or entangled in fishing lines, especially the invisible filaments that never rot or disintegrate. Such birds are doomed unless some human being untangles them, and even then many remain crippled.

“The young man, Tom Scott, prevailed upon his uncles to build him, inland from the beach and crammed into a tight space, a sanctuary for birds, pelicans principally, and there in wire cages the birds prospered. As the cripples recovered, but not enough to resume flight in the wild, they began to live their natural lives, building nests, having babies and showing inquisitive visitors how pelicans live. You’re going to have a marvelous peek into nature’s secrets today.”

“How did you find the place?” a woman asked and the judge explained: “As you’ve probably seen, I’ve pretty well tamed a big pelican at the Palms. One morning he brought with him a bird that was hopelessly tangled in fisherman’s filament, bound to die unless someone unwound him. I couldn’t tempt the doomed one to come ashore, but a workman who saw my futile attempts ran up and told me: ‘There’s a man south of here who takes care of birds like that.’ The telephone operator was able to locate him, and up he came in his special Ford pickup truck—he’s a paraplegic but his car has special controls—and he and his helper were able to lure our cripple and take him back to the refuge. When I drove south to visit my bird I discovered this miraculous place, and we’ve been going back ever since.”

“What is the miracle?” the woman asked, and he said: “There’re at least a dozen of them, but there’s one, I am sure, will blow your mind, as my grandson says.”

Andy asked: “What is this supermiracle?” and Noble laughed: “No, you’ve got to wait, too,” and the two buses continued their way south to a spot right in the midst of a cluster of typical Florida condominiums. Andy, looking at the place, told Noble: “You wouldn’t
expect nature to have a foothold here,” and the judge agreed: “That’s what I thought when I first saw it.”

When the buses had disgorged some sixty people, the judge led them to an inconspicuous passageway between tall buildings that opened onto a wonderland. In a space not much larger than a tennis court, Tom Scott and his wife had utilized every square inch to provide pens for various kinds of wounded birds, a rather big central cage filled with pelicans, an office building, benches for visitors, and a walkway down to the beach with the Gulf of Mexico smiling beyond. Rarely had land been so constructively and ingeniously used.

Scott, in his motorized wheelchair, was the most energetic person in the crowd, darting everywhere and delivering a lecture about his establishment: “These are the older birds who have mated and reared their young. The parents will stay here for the rest of their lives, no way they could survive out there,” and he pointed to the gulf. “But their chicks, like those noisy ones over there, we’ll be setting them free before long. They can fend for themselves.” And everywhere he moved, everything he explained, focused on the pelican, that amazing big bird with the stubby body and the extraordinary head and beak: “He was summed up perfectly by an American poet in a famous verse, which I’ll recite. Ten dollars to anyone who can name the author:

‘A wonderful bird is the pelican
,

His bill will hold more than his belican
.

He can take in his beak

Enough for a week
,

But I’m damned if I see how the helican.’ ”

When no one could identify the poet, Scott said triumphantly: “Dixon Lanier Merritt, and no one has ever been able to tell me who he was. If you can find out, write to me.”

When his visitors had studied the ungainly birds close up, he invited them to join him in a crowded office containing a big white cotton screen on which he showed a film clip of pelicans diving into the water to catch fish. “The cormorant is known as the world’s premier fisherman among birds,” Scott said as the lights were lowered, “but bird for bird, the pelican catches far more fish. Let’s watch how he does it. First, at normal speed. See, he comes in just as you and I would if we had wings. Belly parallel to the water, head pointed down
so that the eyes can patrol the waters below, then a bend forward into a diving posture, and with all parts of the body under control, a headfirst dive into the water.” He ran the film again showing an apparently routine dive: “But wait! Did you catch what looked like a blur right at the end? Let’s take another look at that,” and with the film running in very slow motion Andy and the others witnessed a maneuver they could not believe. About two feet off the water, at the end of a powerful flight and with his prodigious beak about to smash into the waves to spear the target fish, the pelican turned over on his back so that he could dive down into the water upside down.