essays

There are three items here: an essay about an adventure I had as a college freshman, an addendum to a physics poem by Robert Frost, and a bit of verse about a more recent development in Lakewood, Ohio.

On Meeting Arturo Toscanini in March 1952

''There are no words…”, I stuttered. Jim just said, ''Bravo, maestro.” Arturo Toscanini looked at me quizzically, and then at his son, Walter, saying something like, ''l'm tired; let's go home. Wanda Horowitz, holding her father’s arm, gave us a friendly smile. She asked: ''How do you boys get back to Manhattan College ''. “Oh, that's easy; we take the A train to 168th and then switch to the IRT to 242nd St.'' ''That must be so interesting! Walter, could you have the car meet me at the station?” ''Some other time, Father wants to go directly home.” Another round of shaking hands, and Jim and I were off to the subway.

Jim Burke was into classical music. He had great stacks of pink 45's with whole operas and symphonies. He had a pile of piano scores to match. He'd play them on the piano in the college auditorium, and sometimes on the organ upstairs in the chapel. l'd sit and listen, and after a while I learned how to turn pages for him.

Jim came from the Christian Brothers High School in Manchester, New Hampshire, and I graduated from LaSalle Academy in Providence. We were halfway through our first year as boarding students at Manhattan.

Every week that winter, Jim wrote away to ask for two free tickets for NBC Symphony Orchestra performances at Carnegie Hall, and more often than not, he succeeded. A few times, he invited me to go along. Jim somehow learned that the Maestro's home was in Riverdale, just a half-hour walk from school, and we'd gone up there a few times to have a look. It was a fine house overlooking the Hudson; it had a broad terrace with steps leading down to the lawn.

One weekend in March no complimentary tickets were sent out. That week, the orchestra was performing the Beethoven Ninth in a benefit performance. We listened to it on the radio. I already knew the major themes, thanks to Jim's piano playing. After the broadcast, Jim said, ''Hey, why don't we go up to the house and see if there's a party or something?''

We were excited to see that there were several limos in the drive, including 10-T-1, the Maestro's Cadillac, which we had seen at the Carnegie Hall stage door. It was already dark; we walked down the hill a bit, toward the Hudson, and then back up the lawn. The terrace was empty, and after a few minutes we dared to climb the steps and peek in from behind pillars on each side of the closed glass doors. These led to a central hallway, and most of the guests seemed to be off to the right in a large reception room. After a few minutes, though, a lady and gentleman came quickly toward the terrace doors and stepped out between Jim and me. She was showing her guest the splendid view of the Hudson. We didn't know if we should run - or if somehow they would not see us when they turned back toward the house.

They did see us. The man instinctively moved to protect her as she asked, “what do you want? Who are you?” I think it was I who said that we were much more scared than they. They laughed at that, seeing our Kelly green winter jackets with MANHATTAN in big block letters. The woman told us to wait a moment while she went inside to find her brother. Walter Toscanini came to the terrace with the same question: “What do you want?" The Maestro's daughter, Wanda Horowitz, returned carrying glasses of champagne for us; she invited us to enter the hallway. They seemed, all three of them, delighted to find that some American college kids would be so interested in the music and the Maestro. Some of the guests, including tenor Jan Peerce, came out to see the uninvited arrivals, and I think the Maestro took a quick look from the other room, but we were not to meet him that night.

Walter said that the orchestra would be recording the Beethoven Ninth the following week. He asked us if we would like to sit in at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday. Wow! of course. We said our good-nights and thank-yous, and set off, elated, back down Riverdale Avenue to the college. We had missed Brother Bernard's 7:30 room-check, but our excuse seemed to satisfy him.

Monday was a heavy class day but it finally passed. I was able to arrange to make up the chem lab scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday morning, dressed in white button-downs, Repp ties, penny-loafers, and our high-school graduation suits, we presented ourselves to the security guard at Carnegie Hall's stage door.

"Good morning. We've been invited by Mr. Walter Toscanini to sit in on the recording session today." He got on the phone and called upstairs. Walter came down within a few minutes and, asking the guard why he had called, did not even seem to see us standing there. The guard looked at us as if he had filtered out a couple of interlopers. "Mr. Toscanini, we're the two students from Manhattan College." "Ah yes, how nice. Come upstairs with me". The guard looked a bit disappointed.

The recording session had, in fact, begun the preceding day, when the chorus, directed by Robert Shaw, and the soloists, Farrell, Merriman, Peerce, and Scott, sang in the fourth movement. On the Tuesday, we were led to two seats in the back row of a control-booth which overlooked the stage. From that angle, we could watch the Maestro as he faced the orchestra. There were fewer than a dozen engineers and other people in the booth. They were amused when we told them how we happened to be there. We sat quietly throughout the long afternoon, fascinated by the interaction between conductor and orchestra. The first three movements were recorded several times through. We were struck by the strength of the Maestro's voice as he delivered staccato commands to the musicians. He would take breaks from time to time, presumably to listen to playbacks. He would then return to explain something to the orchestra, and they would repeat a section or a whole movement.

I think that it was during this session that photos of the conducting Maestro were taken by someone in the center of the orchestra. These are the photos which appear on the cover of many of Toscanini's LP albums, where 20 action shots are arranged in a rectangular array.

Rather late in the evening, it was announced that the session would be continued after a short supper break. Jim and I were not sure that, if we went out to eat, we would be allowed to return to the control-booth. But we were as hungry as the rest, and went for corned-beef sandwiches at the deli on Seventh Avenue. Somehow we got past the security desk for a second time and found our places for the final two-hour session.

The recording session was over. It was after 11 PM. The Maestro was relaxing in his dressing room. He was 85 years old and had been on his feet and conducting for more than 12 hours. I was 17 and had been seated most of the day, and I was bushed. This was the moment we had hoped for. As the Maestro was coming down the hall with his overcoat on, Walter led us forward to be introduced. That was the moment of my tongue-tied offering. The entourage swept down the stairs and disappeared into the limo.

In minutes Jim and I were getting on the A train at Columbus Circle. Only when we were seated did Jim ask me what the heck I said to the Maestro. l explained that I was trying to say something like, "There are no words to express, blah, blah, blah......'' and it just sputtered out after four words.

An hour later we were galloping down the stairs of the van Cortlandt Park IRT station. We trotted around the corner, up Spuyten Duyvel Parkway past the Green Leaf Bar, up four flights of library stairs to the campus, two more to the dormitory level of de La Salle Hall. It was long after the 11 PM lights-out.

Before heading down the hall toward his room, Jim turned and said, "buddy, shake the hand that shook the hand.'' Copyright W. Fickinger 2008

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An addendum to Robert Frost’s poem about the Millikan measurement of the basic electric charge in nature.

Millikan used a telescope to watch tiny oil droplets move up and down under the effects of gravity and an electric field. He found that they all had electric charges which were multiples of a smallest possible electric charge. This must be the charge on every proton and electron.

A hundred years later, it was found that the proton consists of three quarks, with charges +2/3 +2/3 and -1/3, which add up to +1. Many people tried to repeat the Millikan experiment in hopes of finding a drop with one or two quarks on it.

A Wish to Comply

(a whimsical poem by Robert Frost.

Did I see it go by,

That Millikan mote?

Well, I said that I did.

I made a good try.

But I’m no one to quote.

If I have a defect,

it’s a wish to comply

and see as I’m bid.

I rather suspect

all I saw was the lid

going over my eye.

I honestly think

all I saw was a wink.

(Bill Fickinger brings it up to date in the 1980’s for his student lab)

I did see it go by

that Millikan drop.

I turned up the field

and made the thing stop.

I raised it

and lowered it

though it’s not very large;

and I hereby announce

that I’ve measured its charge.

I both wish to comply

and desire to please,

but I have to report

that my quarks came in threes.

WWW dot GONE

On the occasion of the removal in 2005 of the big blue W’s from the roof of my neighboring building, Winton Place. The signs atop the 30 story building shone down on my apartment windows.

There’s a puzzling lack of blueness in my room.

My east-facing neighbors all must feel the loss.

The big blue double-yous on Winton Place

have been heli-ported gently to the ground.

heli www 3 From now on it won’t be all that easy

to find home or tell friends how to come.

What prompted the Wintonese to pull them down?

A Cleveland Gold Coast landmark all could see.

Perhaps to confuse the perigrine falcons

and send them off to Toledo to find their nest?

Imagine the oreboats out there in the lake.

“Now where's that crooked river’s hidden mouth?”

“Just east of the blue lights!” “What blue lights?”

Do you think the Carlyle might mount some big blue C’s,

high on a spire to be seen from downtown,

above the newly barren brow of Winton?

Bill Fickinger 3 Feb 2005

(note added in 2008, maybe they just wanted W to go away)