March 30, 2020
Fredonia, New York
The last time I was in Fredonia for my birthday was 48 years ago today. I was 20 and a Junior in college. I was innocent and green and still a very young man. There was no way, of course, to know what wonders the world and life would unfold in all the years that followed.
My friend “Susie two-shoes” called and asked me if I’d like to go out for dinner to celebrate. Why on earth would a human being be called “Susie two-shoes?” Her name was Susan, she was from Long Island, was a year younger than I, and once I graduated, she slipped off the radar for the rest of my life. Wherever she is, she’ll be 70 to my 71.
I am in Fredonia by choice, although somewhat accidentally. I was supposed to be in Trujillo, Peru, but the COVID-19 virus has disrupted everyone’s plans all over the world. Instead of Peru, we felt we had to escape Mexico City where we’ve been all winter. We flew to Ciudad Juarez last Wednesday, crossed the border, picked up a car in El Paso and have been driving eastward ever since. If we have to come home, we might as well make some lemonade out of the trip and see a few things along the road. And one of them is timing the trip home to be in Fredonia by late afternoon.
It has been a day of nostalgia. The car was Wazed to Mayville, New York, where I student taught at Mayville High School so many years ago. I have thanked God all my life that I had a wonderful, compassionate, creative, excellent teacher to work under. Merrill Clute. Many years ago I visited the school, learned he had gone back to newspaper reporting, got his work address and was at least able to tell him how grateful I was to work under him. Great gifts that we only realize how truly big they were until much later in life.
The day was cold and wet and drizzly. I was still wearing shorts because I refuse to change into jeans, denying the fact that we had to leave Mexico City because of the virus. It was no day to see the campus which was a lovely as I remembered it. By the end of the cold walk, I was melancholy and sad, thinking of how many years had actually passed since I’d left the campus as a recent graduate 50 years ago. A half a century! Time moves on whether we want it to or not.
Fredonia. I grew so much there. I was far from home and no one expected me back to Plattsburgh except for the big 2: Thanksgiving and Christmas. I lived with a wonderful bunch of guys for two years on the second floor at 25 Day Street. Mrs. Mary Epolitio was our landlady and how she ever put up with us still mystifies me. She was in her 80’s, had survived both World Wars and the Great Depression. She had a gracious heart and every year, on March 19th, the Feast of St. Joseph, she’d bring up a big dish of pasta for us. I still remember her with great fondness.
She charged each of us $100.00 a semester. I slept on a mattress on the floor in my own room, listened to music from my first stereo system and was happier than I’d ever been in my life. It was a time in my life when I grew into myself, when I finally took off as a student and when emotional growth spurts were greater than probably any other time in my life. I did not know how cook or eat properly, and I put on a horrible amount of weight, but in the last semester of my final year I dropped 55 pounds and took up long distance running and swimming. You can only do that if life is good.
71! Could I ever have imagined that number on March 30, 1970? My father said on his 80th birthday, “I’ve had a good life,” and I can say that now. What a wonderful life it’s been. Career, love, health and sufficient money to life the classic American middleclass dream. I am beyond grateful.
We do not know what this virus has in store for any of us. I think this is why I look upon New Year’s Ever with trepidation. The last few years have been a challenge and if I’d known the bad times were coming on December 31st, I think I would have lived in fear until they really did occur. But the good news is that all the battles were overcome, for both of us, and life is good once again.
No, I am not 20. I can no longer long-distance run, ski or do many of the things as well as I could when I was that young. But I can still walk, and climb mountains, and navigate far-flung countries. We must always view life on the side of what we can do and not on what we can’t.
So here I am in Fredonia. Dan Ladue. Class of 1971. One year from his 50th anniversary of his college graduation, an event he will not attend. Simply to walk the village in this time of lockdown, when few people are outdoors, to revisit the campus and to see in my mind’s eye the boy who first came to this village and the friends he made is gift enough.
Happy birthday, me!
