A Friend Recalls Professor Robert Day

(For friends and students of longtime Washington College Professor Robert Day, this remembrance was submitted to the Spy by John Harris to remind us of Bob’s influence on our creative lives and enduring friendships.)

How we met

Many years ago I was an editor at the Smithsonian Institution Press, and Maureen Jacoby was my boss—the Managing Editor. She also became a good friend. When Maureen retired she moved to Chestertown, and there she became friends with Bob & Kathy Day (an ampersand somehow seems appropriate—they were a going concern).

Maureen asked if I would be interested in a trip to France to visit the Days in the Gironde, where they were living in a tiny, tumble-down stone house—a shepherd’s hut, so it was said. Ancient. Really ancient. I said: But of course! And off we flew to France. I still hadn’t met them.

Bob & Kathy had agreed to loan us a car for a few days—this way we could wander around a bit on our own.

And suddenly, there we were in France, and there was the car, an ancient Deux Chevaux; more importantly, there was Bob. He leaped out of the car, chuckling because the car had gotten him there and in fact worked at all. On the driver’s door, Kathy had painted a vase of flowers.  I remember his beat-up jeans and raggedy shirt; boots. Cowboy gear, I thought. WHAT HAVE WE GOTTEN INTO? He gave me a quick tour of the car. “How do you turn on the windshield wipers?” I asked innocently. “Oh, you just pull THIS,” he said, pulling something. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He got out and began to pound on the hood of the car. Nothing. Again. And then—the wipers slowly began to function. “SEE!” he said. “Works like a charm.”

And that was my first encounter with the remarkable Mr. Day, a cowboy-novelist-screenwriter-professor of English. Soon I would meet Kathy, his soft-spoken artist-wife. And Bob & Kathy and and Maureen and I remained friends for many years.

Much later, I visited the two of them in Kansas—Bob was sentimentally attached to Kansas. They lived in a tiny town named Ludell when they weren’t busy elsewhere (often in Paris). I once stayed with them in their charming house where Bob had a spacious library/office and had created a painting studio for Kathy that had been, at one time, a chicken coop.

While I was visiting I jotted down a few notes that turned into this poem—a souvenir of a few happy days spent with the Days.

 

 

A Day in Ludell

        for Bob and Kathy Day

10:00

We drive into town—

no gym,

no yoga studio.

But there is a one-room library

where two pleasant ladies bring Kathy

up to date about some neighbors

and their problems:  the dog that died

from a snakebite; the woman whose husband

is going in for ankle-replacement surgery.

A month of recovery at home.

“Just think of him!” cries one. “Just think

of her!” says Kathy, and all three laugh.

 

11:30

A bedraggled parade

is trying to form.

Shivering, short-skirted girls

lead a few awkward cheers,

glancing at one another,

not quite sure what to do;

then the boys on the team—shy

but enjoying themselves—

walk in a circle, high-fiving

the small, waving crowd

before boarding the bus

that will take them hours away

to tonight’s big game.

 

2:00

After lunch, a walk.

The horizon surrounds us,

chest high, a perfect circumference

of fields that grow wheat and corn.

The gravel crunches

underfoot, and startled pheasants

clatter up from the side of the road

as we maintain our companionable

distances, not talking.

 

6:00

A neighbor couple

and their beautiful daughter, a girl

who lives in Denver and teaches ESL,

drive over for dinner. The wife

says, over wine,

“I had to whip that dog. I hated

to, but he wanted to eat

the chickens. Only had

to do it once.”

 

8:00

We climb in the ancient Oldsmobile

and drive into town for a concert.

Between sets sung by a lanky sixty-year-old

in a black Stetson hat, a man from Nebraska

—curly-haired and smelling of cigarettes,

a little drunk—strikes up a conversation

below the immense, \dark head

of a buffalo staring down from the wall.

The man laughs softly. “You’re staying in Ludell?

I used to go to Ludell when I was a kid—

better not tell you why.”

 

11:00

Back home,

the bounding, floppy puppy,

a Golden Lab, finally falls asleep.

A single light on a telephone pole

shines in the dark back yard.

Decades ago, Bob says, as he latches

the door on the porch,

lights like that one

dotted the prairie.

They were known as

“butane stars.”