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The day was unseasonably warm, even though I had long remembered it as being cold. Maybe because the cold front that in fact moved in that night and into that long, unforgettable weekend overwhelmed it all in appropriate coldness.

Mr. Reichart, my piano teacher, was due at four o'clock for yet another one of my dreaded lessons. I think he dreaded them far more than I did, and was as anxious to see me as finding a fly in his musical ointment. He was a short, reddish-faced man on the nervous side of obesity and despair, with a neck that was perpetually too big for his collar and looked as if it was getting bigger with each visit and about to explode. I think he was German or Austrian, and when I went through his forcefully directed series of scales and chords that would inevitably result in chop-sticks and chaos, his neck took on an even more explosive look.

I may have been thinking of Herr R's impending visit as I sat in my fourth grade classroom waiting for the three o'clock bell. There was also Thanksgiving (and food) to think about that would arrive the next Thursday, and then Christmas (and, of course, more food and presents), then New Year's and beyond. My life as a Catholic school kid was basically confined to school and church and (most importantly) play...(and, of course, those piano lessons). I knew little (except for a child's often distorted view learned through geography and history books) of life outside of Brooklyn, New York...and even that was limited to the blocks within my immediate neighborhood. In the days and ways before Google Earth and Frequent Flyer Miles and Cable TV and the like, a savviness of the world wasn't as easily acquired by a child (not even by most adults). The West to New York kids meant the "Old West" of movies, television and myth. Dallas, Texas on that Friday (that now seems so long ago) was no exception.