Charles Frenzel

My wife, Lydia, and I have moved out of our house and placed all of the stuff we didn’t haul off to the county dump into a ten by fifteen-foot storage shed. There are also trunks, dishes, and an antique chest stuffed into a friend’s garage. It took us ten years to fill our modest […]

August I feel the dog’s big paws shake the bed, and I pry open my eyes. I am lying on my right side facing the window. Dawn’s light filters through the narrow blinds like an unwelcome searchlight, and all I can make out is the black shadow of Burt’s head peering at me over the […]

It strikes me that this is the moment in time in which their dream, not yours, is fulfilled. We are there for them. It is their time to remember and to know. We do not yet know, and so cannot remember. Next year, I tell myself. Next year I will understand. I hear one of […]

Here I am with Lydia in a snack bar in the Seattle airport. As usual, the plane is forty minutes late. I’m having a snack of mild, Cajun sausage—now there’s an oxymoron—and some soupy, potato stuff that is too salty. She’s having something described as Stroganoff. I use a damp paper napkin to scrub a […]

That evening, we sit about a table up on the fifteenth floor (again) for a dinner with just the governors and their partners. The topic of conversation turns to some protests by a group of women in Canada. According to Ron (or was it Elaine?) these women actually burned down their houses in protest, then […]

I get up at 6:30 A.M. the next morning because Lydia is going to an early meeting with her fellow Rotarian governor nominees and I am attending a special “Tea”. I rise to the fifteenth floor of the West tower and enter a world of white, frilled aprons, perfume, and the chatter of female voices. […]

I put down on paper the preceding thoughts either late Wednesday night or very early on Thursday morning, in Anchorage. Thursday, October 3, and where has the time gone? I have a luncheon with the Governor’s spouses. I sit at table five, between LaVonne and Elleen. There’s not going to be much room on the […]

Neither the drinks nor the food is very easy to get, the place is so crowded. The stage show is rather funny, though some of the jokes are too explicit for the genteel half of our company. Fortunately, they are in the minority. The rest of us get rather raucous and rather drunk during the […]

The women and I are seated in a circle around the edge of the room, so each of us in turn takes about thirty seconds to introduce ourselves. Valerie, the stunning redhead that I sat next to last night, says she is a little nervous about speaking, so she will follow some advice and imagine […]

The morning of October 2, I follow suggestions from the tourist information center behind the hotel and stroll over to the 4th Street Theater. There, I walk around on the restored stage which has some of the sets of the previous play still leaning about on some boxes. It looks like an interior design for […]

Finally, all have arrived in the correct tower, in the correct suite, and we are enjoying very close fellowship with cheese, wine, and an athletic sour cream dip that springs from the toasted sesame wheat cracker and crash lands on Elaine’s bosom. I do not try to recover anything from the crash sight. Dick and […]

Once we get the lady reunited with the bottom half of her dress, we are fortunate to obtain an elevator loaded like a can of compressed anchovies. Someone has disconnected the overload alarm. Our lady of the shortened skirt trips over the two inch ledge created at the lobby level when our cage sags below […]

We stop in at the museum for refreshments and a quick look at exhibits of authentic dance masks and hand fans. I’m surprised to learn that the largest part of the collection comes from French artists who bought up the real masks at the end of the nineteenth century from travelers and collectors who foresaw […]

Outside the air crackles as crisp as a dry ginger snap. The sign at the corner alternates between time and temperature, but the glass appears to be broken and all it says is 0.-8F, which might mean 08, or 18, or 28. We do not know. I picture the inside of my lungs looking like […]

The lobby is furnished like a lodge, featuring large overstuffed chairs and comfortable couches. We are apprehended by two very friendly Rotarians designated as the greeters. The man is dressed in a dark business suit and a fur cap. He extends a limp hand towards Lydia and booms “Welcome to Anchorage.” A tall, raw boned […]