R.I.P., APL

The man who owned a company I used to work for passed away a few weeks ago.  I think Al was about 80 years old, but in great physical and mental shape.  Spry and sprightly would describe him accurately.  His passing resulted from a completely pointless infection due to a bone broken in a fall.

Al wore beautifully tailored '50s-cut suits, and his hair had to have been trimmed no less than once every four weeks.  His glasses were olde school, with heavy black frames.  And he held one hand in his trouser pocket as he walked.  It was a casual posture, not an affectation.  The family had Main Line money and he had been the valedictorian of his class at Yale.  His confidence was real, but relaxed in the way that he was comfortable in its second nature.  His walk always said to me, "Self-doubt?  Why would I have that?  Sounds counterproductive."

One afternoon my mother met me in the office lobby so we could go out to lunch together.  He walked in and said something like, "Oh, my, that is family resemblance."

I read somewhere that Mel Brooks described David Lynch as "Jimmy Stewart from Mars."  Not only do I wholeheartedly agree with that moniker, but I'd describe Al similarly, down to his saying things like "oh, my" and "good heavens" without irony.

I introduced Mom to Al and she told him that back when his father ran the company, she'd been in the secretary pool in their since-closed Suburban Station office.  That thrilled Al, he literally couldn't believe it.  Mom says she was 18 or 19 when she worked there, which meant she had met him and his wife when they were in their 20s.  Al remembered the man for whom Mom worked and they reminisced about some other names from the department.  And from that point forward, Al referred to me as "The Legacy."

Cool nicknames are not easy to come by, especially because the words so rarely keep their actual meaning to the giver or the audience.  "The Legacy" was dead on and made me feel connected in a way I didn't experience in college.  Frankly, I was flattered to have it.  It was just a nice, friendly mention to have made and I liked that Al and I shared that little joke between just us.

Interestingly, that didn't turn out to be our only joke.  Through a mutual friend, I found out about a decade ago that Al was the croquet champion at his lawn club.  That cracked me up no end, one, because I didn't know lawn clubs hosted croquet facilities -- at mine, it just meant grass tennis courts -- and two, because I am not surprised at all.  Of course he was club champion.  That fit him perfectly -- competitive and a seasoned winner in a realm he could own.  The facts that he had held that title for years and was a serious competitor really just make me laugh harder.  One of my dearest friends is the source of the croquet champ news, and his family and Al's family go back decades.

So in addition to his greetings to me involving my cool nickname, he'd usually follow up with questions about how my Mom was doing and did I have any news of our friend circle.  Many times these updates involved the current standings of the prestigious croquet league and the social events centered on it.  Terry, my friend and the son of the friends in common, is who clued me in to the croquet connection.  His family is from the Main Line area, and when his parents retired further south, I relied on him and his local cousin for news about how they were enjoying their new home and into what adventures they were getting.  I passed that information on to Al in our work sit-downs, though he was always infinitely more informed than I was by his country club network of social connections.

The "Jimmy Stewart from Mars" similarity came into play after a longtime colleague retired.  Rohm and Haas is the name on the building in which Al's company had been located.  Al and Mr. Haas had been friends for many years.  Mr. Haas either opened or bought an existing hardware store in Olde City, an easy walk from the offices.  When Al would leave the office, he would stop by and browse in the store and catch up with his old pal.

I was the recipient of Al's hilarious observations of hardware store stock and it tickled me so much that he was almost otherworldly in how out of touch he was with everyday things many of us don't think twice about.  To be honest, I would doubt very much without evidence to the contrary that Al had ever serviced his own car or knew how to install an appliance or repair a broken one.  My folks are contractors.  If you need a 16-speed floor drill press, just open their garage door.  Want to load your own sport-gun ammunition?  Help yourself to the wads, shot and primers in the labeled bins.

Al marveled at the existence of red light bulbs.  He'd never seen such a thing.  And who knew hardware stores carried upwards of a hundred different kinds of nails.  "Did you know there were that many?  Probably more?"  To say nothing of all the different sizes and shapes of screws.  Drill bits.  Hand saws.  "Isn't it fascinating?"  Not a trace of irony.  He genuinely didn't know.

I tell this not to mock, because if the situations were reversed and my many shortcomings were under scrutiny, I'm sure people would be appalled at my lack of business sense, never having ever filed a tax form correctly and general cluelessness about all things financial.  But it wouldn't be nearly as charming as Al expressing real joy and wonderment at learning socket drives and handles are referred to as "female" and "male."