If you haven’t heard from me for a while, it’s because my wife Donna and I just took a sentimental journey to Cincinnati to visit some dear friends who moved there a couple of years ago. With our busy schedule, who knows if we’ll ever be seeing them again.
On the drive back, after spending a day with Donna’s father in Virginia, we realized how long it had been since we took a “vacation vacation.” With Donna’s 92-year-old dad in Virginia, a son and grandson in California, and a daughter in North Carolina, we devote all our vacation time to visiting family, and our only one-on-one time is en route.
So we decided to treat ourselves to a lunch of Maryland crab cakes in a restaurant we’ve stopped at before, in Crisfield, and then the night at an interesting looking bed & breakfast in a town called Princess Anne. Donna had found a “Booklovers’ Bed & Breakfast” with a long list of positive reviews on the Internet, and we thought we’d give it a try.
Well, our familiar old crab-cakes restaurant in Crisfield was no longer there, which was a blow. We have recently lost several favorite restaurants back home in Connecticut and come to believe that the god of restaurants must be mad at us. It was in a cautious mood that we proceeded to our bed & breakfast.
What we discovered, was a creatively decorated 1880’s house with rooms named after writers and appointed to reflect each one’s personality. Ours was the Langston Hughes room, with dramatic photographs of old New York and Harlem on the walls and books by and about Hughes on the bureau. There was even an old typewriter on the desk with a half-finished poem in the roller.
Hosting us was Elizabeth, the owner, a charming lady, who urged us to take off our shoes, then showed us around the house, including the Robert Louis Stevenson room, the Jane Austen room, the Mark Twain Library and Parlor, and French Café Colette, where afternoon tea and breakfast would be served. There is also, we were told, a cat named Dr. Hobbs who would, “upon request,” come and greet us.
Elizabeth is a warm and charming retired journalist, who has recently written both a novel and a play, and who does not actually live in the house. She does, however, spend a lot of time there, and there are bells that will summon her immediately. As it happened, we were the only guests that night, due to cancellations, and had the whole place to ourselves. An author named James McBride was scheduled to be there the following night and speaking at the library.
We enjoyed the afternoon tea with freshly made brownies and read in the Mark Twain library, well stocked with good books. Elizabeth had urged us to read any of them, except for the leather-bound set of Shakespeare on the top shelf, since the bindings were coming apart. I had to fight an urge to carefully take one of the Shakespeares down and examine it. We had a good seafood dinner at a local restaurant and returned to find brandy and sherry set out for us in the Café Colette.
The following morning Elizabeth served us the breakfast we had ordered the afternoon before. Donna had crepes stuffed with peaches and I a spinach-and-mushroom omelet. When we ordered, I had forgotten to ask our hostess if she could serve some sour cream with my omelet. I always have sour cream with my omelet and the prospect of an omelet without it was like sleeping without a pillow. But, lo and behold, there was a generous pile of sour cream on my omelet anyway. It seems that Elizabeth had Googled me, learned that I was Polish, and decided – on the basis of two former Polish boyfriends – that Poles ate sour cream on everything. (That’s only a very slight exaggeration.)
During breakfast, Donna, a cat lover, asked when we might meet Dr. Hobbs. Without a word, Elizabeth returned to the kitchen, we heard some whispered urgings through the closed door, and she reappeared to hold open the door. In a moment, a black-and-white cat came into the room, walked up to Donna, allowed himself to be petted, and, having performed his duty, marched right back into the kitchen.
A few weeks ago I wrote, in this blog, how much I enjoy the serendipity human contacts that my activities expose me to. The job of a B&B hostess, of course, is to make the kind of contact with people that makes them feel cared for and appreciated. Elizabeth accomplishes this in great style. We left with our spirits well lifted and stories to tell. Should any of you be planning to drive along the Maryland Eastern Shore (I-13) I strongly recommend a visit to www.bookloversbnb, a night at the Booklovers’ Bed & Breakfast, and the gracious hospitality of Elizabeth and the hard-working Dr. Hobbs.

I love to banter. I don’t know how universal this feeling is, but, when I find myself bantering with someone, when we are both saying things that we don’t really mean and that we both know that the other person knows it, I feel that I have an intimacy with that person that gives me great satisfaction.
On a recent Valentine’s Day, I was just coming out of the front door of the Greenwich Town Hall, when I found myself facing a man coming in, carrying a bouquet of flowers. My response was the same as, I’m sure, many of you would have given: I said, “For me?” Without missing a beat, the stranger answered with, “And you thought I didn’t care.” We smiled at each other and continued on our way. But, for the rest of the day, I had a warm feeling about having reached a stranger on a certain level of intimacy.
Over a lifetime, I have had a number of such experiences with both men and women in stores, on subways, wherever strangers rub shoulders. My wife and I banter a lot, and I see it as a sign of the health of our relationship. There wasn’t a lot of bantering in my first marriage.
Going out on my daily run/walks, accosting strangers to spread the news of my book, I look forward to the opportunities to banter. When I ask a woman in a car, at a stop sign, if I might give her something, I hope that she asks me what it is that I want to give her. When she does, I say, “Well, I’d like to give you diamonds and pearls, but I don’t have any.”
This leads to my saying, “But what I do have is this letter about my book.” But I pause first, hoping that she’ll jump right in and say something like, “I’m so disappointed. I was really hoping for diamonds and pearls.” One woman said, “Well, you have some nerve, getting me to roll down my window when you don’t have any diamonds or pearls to give me!” This not only makes it more likely that they will, eventually, buy and read my book, but it also leaves me with a nice glow for the rest of the day. When I meet someone who tells me that I’ve already given him or her my flier, I ask, “And have you read my book?”
Frequently, to my great satisfaction, they tell me that they have. But if they say that they haven’t, I ask, “How do you expect me to become rich and famous, if you don’t read my book?” Of course, my becoming rich and famous wasn’t one of their expectations, nor would their reading my book make a significant difference in that respect – unless, of course, their name is Oprah. But we do part smiling, and it does remind them to read my book.
The other day, I had an interesting chat with a woman who promised that she would buy my book and read it. As she drove off, I saw a second car pull up to the same spot and signaled the driver to open the window. This one turned out to be a man, so when he asked me what I proposed giving him, I said, “I’d like to give you a million dollars, but I don’t have any.”
His response was, “I’ll settle for a couple hundred thousand,” and I felt I had a good thing going with this one.
“Gee, I’m sorry,” I said, ”I gave my last hundred thousand to the woman in that Buick that just drove away. Maybe if you catch up to her, she’ll share it with you.” At which point the man stomped on his accelerator and took off after the Buick.
I don’t want to know what happened a couple of minutes later, a mile or so down the road.

As I look for people to give my flier to, on my daily runs, I discovered that I had the best luck at the entrance to a private school, two miles from here, in New Canaan. I found that at 8:30 in the morning, mothers and a few fathers would be coming out, right after dropping their child off for school. Reaching the road, they would stop, and I could walk up to the car and ask if I could give them my flier.
I realized that I would have to be careful about this. If there were several cars coming at once, I could not approach one because the drivers behind him or her would become annoyed at the delay. Nor did I want to stand around waiting for a car – I didn’t want to give the appearance of “standing around,” but rather that I just happened to be running by when that particular driver was coming out.
For about a year, this worked very well. I always made sure that I was well shaven before leaving the house, and I would find most people to be quite receptive to my polite approach. After a while I would meet people to whom I had already given my flier, who had found it interesting, and who had either gone on to read the book or were, certainly, planning to read it. Only rarely would someone tell me that, no, she didn’t want me to give her anything, and I would smile and wish them a nice day.
One day, last spring, I came across one of the people who were not receptive to my offer, and, as usual I waved her on and continued on my run. On my way back, however, as I approached the school’s driveway again, I saw a policeman standing there. As I got close, he asked me whether I had been on that private property, earlier that morning. This was not totally unexpected. I told the officer that I may have stepped a foot or so into the property, but that I hadn’t been any further.
“What were you doing, sir?” came the inevitable question.
“I was just handing out a flier about my book,” I said. I had had this conversation in my head many times before. But as I reached for the fliers in my pocket, I heard, “Take your hand out of your pocket, sir!” and saw a Tazer gun pointed at my stomach. “Walk over to that car and put your hands on the roof,” he said.
My fantasy had never extended to this point, but I realized that New Canaan police had little to occupy their time. Having seen this maneuver many times on television, I walked to his car, keeping my hands well in sight, and assumed the familiar position. When I had been patted down, I heard, “Now turn around and let’s see that flier.”
I did as I was told, and handed a copy of my flier to him.
As the policeman read the two-sided flier, three more police cars pulled up to investigate the disturbance. Within minutes, I was surrounded by three policemen and a police woman, all reading my flier.
“My father-in-law comes from Poland,” the police woman said. “May I give this flier to him.”
I told her that she could.
“Isn’t Kowalski Polish?” I heard one officer ask another. The answer was in the affirmative, and the fist officer asked if he might give his copy to Officer Kowalski. Soon it turned out that each of the officers had friends and relatives with some kind of Polish connection, and my entire supply of fliers was quickly consumed.
Then it was explained to me that it was illegal to hand out fliers on private property. In addition to which it did not look good for a man to be hanging around the entrance to a school. I had to agree with this logic and promised not to stop cars coming out of that school anymore.
This was not a problem for me through the summer, but now that a new school term is in session, and I see cars that I can no longer approach, come to a stop in front of me, I feel a little pang of longing for the good old days.

It’s been a while since my last posting, and I apologize. What’s happened is that my screenplay writing project, for a miniseries based on my book, just got expanded from two segments to five. Segments three and four to be based on the two completed but not yet published sequels, the fifth on a sequel I have not written and probably never will. In book 3, the story of our escape from war-torn Poland ends as my mother and I sail into New York Harbor, but the producers are so intrigued by the relationship between my mother and myself that they’ve asked me to carry the projected series through to the end of her life.
This, as you might imagine, has caused considerable soul searching at this end. While the story that ends with our arrival in the safe haven of New York City is basically an adventure story, one that follows my mother’s life to its conclusion would be a drama and, in her case, a tragedy. It’s not an undertaking that one assumes lightly.
While I can’t give you any more information on the project, at this point, I do hope to at some time in the future.
In the meanwhile, is there anyone reading this material? While I’ve been told that a blog is supposed to provide opportunity for readers to respond, I haven’t discovered how that’s done. Consequently, I’ve received absolutely no feedback and, for all I know, there is no one reading it.
I would appreciate it if you’d e-mail me at Julianpadowicz@julianpadowicz.com and let me know if you’re out there and how you feel about what I’ve been writing. And, if anyone knows how this can be managed directly on this page, please tell me about that as well.

In the mid 1960’s, when I got a job in New York and my then wife and I moved from Cape Cod to Westport, Conn., we were pleasantly surprised to find that Westport was a real tennis town. My wife and I were both avid tennis players (she was good and I was just avid.) We soon made friends with several other tennis playing couples on the public courts, and our social life grew out of that activity.
One of those couples were Carol and Jerry, and when they built a court on their own property, I was quite honored to be invited to play singles with Jerry one Saturday morning. Jerry beat me quite soundly, which made me quite surprised to be invited back the following Saturday. Soon this became a regular thing, and Jerry and I played singles just about every Saturday for the next 35 years. During the winter, we would reserve an indoor court, so that our tennis routine was uninterrupted. Jerry still kept beating me, but I heard his wife, Carol, say that I was the only one of his friends who could give him a decent game.
When my wife and I ended a marriage that really, really wasn’t working, and I moved out of Westport, I discovered that she had spread a lot of untrue stories about me, and I had no more friends in that town. Except for Jerry and Carol. The tennis with Jerry continued and, when I hit some bad financial times and could no longer pay my share of the indoor tennis, Jerry generously took over the entire burden. My second wife, Phyllis, and I were invited to social functions at their home, and occasionally we would go out to dinner together.
Not only was Jerry a tennis player I looked up to, but he had a brilliant mind and incredible energy; his last job, before retirement, was as VP for planning at one of the nation’s major banks. His presence at one of our parties always made the party a little more interesting. Our "apre tennis" chats would have been an education in finance for me, had I had the ability to absorb it. When I was making an educational film on the legitimacy of emotions and needed a man in a business suit to stand, knee deep, in a pond and say “I feel cold,” Jerry not only volunteered, but nailed the line on the first take.
Phyllis and Carol became good friends, and, when Phyllis passed away in ’86, after an appropriate time, Carol and Jerry had a single lady all picked out for me to meet. I never did meet that lady, because I already had my eye on the woman who would become my present wife, Donna, but Carol and Jerry quickly accepted Donna as a close friend, as well.
We had some twenty more years of this friendship. For financial reasons Donna and I were never fully a part of their social group. Some of their activities were beyond our means. But the tennis and the occasional get-togethers continued.
Then, some six years ago, in his seventies then, Jerry suffered a heart attack and I feared that our tennis days were over. On one of my runs along Hope Street, my muse put the opening lines of a tennis poem into my head, and, on getting back to my study, I finished it. You’ll find it at the end of this blog.
As it turned out, my fears were only partially right. Our singles game was turned into weekly men’s doubles, and just during the summer months. But even that only lasted a couple of years, because Jerry and Carol decided to sell their house and move to Cincinnati, where their son and daughter-in-law had settled. Speaking to their son, just before the move, I heard that Carol and Jerry considered Donna and me to be their closest friends.
It’s been a couple of years since we’ve seen them. When we speak to Carol on the phone, she seems genuinely anxious for us to come and visit. But it's a long drive to Cincinnati, and,with grandchildren and things, we just haven't made it. But last week we set up date to stop at their new home on our way to Missouri, where we may, some day, be settling.
Now that it's on the calendar, I look forward eagerly to seeing our dear friends again. I'm not one to bandy the word, "love" around, and Jerry certainly isn't. I've never thought of a weekly whipping on the tennis court as the basis for that particular emotion, but, if nobody tells Jerry, I would dare to apply it quietly in this case.




A Tennis Player’s Prayer

My knees are both in braces;
My elbow still is sore;
My poor brain, all too often,
Has lost all track of the score.
But I love my tennis.

My forehand is erratic;
My backhand has no power;
My first serve has been rated
At thirty miles an hour.
But I still love my tennis.

My wife has bought me golf clubs;
My son-in-law is wishing
That I’d come up to Michigan
So he can teach me fishing.
But I can’t leave my tennis.

For my heart is all entangled
With my friends who play this game,
Who have listened to my problems
And for whom I’ve done the same.

We have whiled away the years
At this insanity sublime
Hitting tennis balls, pulling muscles, kvetching,
Solving problems, wasting time.

And there is not on this earth of ours
Any other sense at all
To match putting your whole weight
In back of that fuzzy little ball.

So some day, when I’m out there
Decked out in my whites
And I get a really high lob
Lined up in my sights

And I’ve leaped high off the ground,
Four inches or so,
And I’ve dealt that yellow tennis ball
My most devastating blow,

Then I pray the Lord will take me,
Please have no regret,
Because then I’ll never see
That goddamned tennis ball go in the net.

Not all the people I approach with my book flyer respond with equal enthusiasm. About one out of every seven or eight claims to be late for work. Some of these are women, dressed in short shorts and halter tops, who leave me wondering just what kind of work they do. Some tell me I should get a proper job. One Hispanic looking woman, with apparently little command of English, embarrassed me by reaching for her purse and asking if I wanted money. Another woman actually called the New Canaan police, leading to an adventure I will tell you about in a future blog.
There is one woman walker, with a heavy Germanic accent, whom I run into about once a week and who uses the occasion to tell me some more of the book she is planning to write some day. Because of her accent and my having ADD, as well as the fact that her protagonist does not seem to have lead a very interesting life, I internalize little of what she says. But she seems to be a nice lady and it seems to be very important to her that she share all this with me, so I stand there, running in place, feigning polite interest, and trying to come up with some new reason to cut this session short. One of these days she may ask me whether I think her story has publishing potential or even to introduce her to my publisher. When she does, I have no idea what I will say.
Some people make a pointed pretense of not seeing or hearing me at all, and just drive away, usually with an insulted look on their face. One man, in a maroon SUV the other day, with his window half open, was so blind to my presence that he blew smoke in my face before turning hard to the left so that I had to jump backwards to avoid being hit.
As he drove away, I yelled after him, “I just wanted to tell you about one of your tires!” Then, as I continued on my run, I had the satisfaction of looking over my shoulder and seeing him squat by each of his four wheels.

The other day on my run, I saw an SUV, with two women in it, stopped at a stop sign so, as I usually do, under such circumstances, I asked if I could give them a letter about my book. The driver, who looked to be in her thirties, expressed some mild interest. I saw that she had begun reading my letter right there, so I waited to answer any questions she might have.
The woman – I’ll call her Suzan – read the first few lines and grew very excited. “Oh, I can’t believe it!” she said, in an accent that was unmistakably Polish. “You’re the writer that my sister Sophie told me about meeting. And, wow, here I’ve run into you!”
Meeting someone who’s already read my book is always exciting. Just this morning a woman told me that, at a dinner party, she had discussed receiving my flier with a friend, and they had both decided to buy the book the next day. But I had never seen quite as enthusiastic a response as I got from Suzan. She asked if I would talk to her some more, and proceeded to pull the car over to the side of the road.
She asked if I would come to her house some time to talk to her friends, and, since I don’t pass up an opportunity to tell people about my book, I said that I would be happy to. Then she asked if I would come to some Polish holiday celebration at the Polish church in town, and I said I would be happy to do that as well.
Then her phone rang, and it was her sister Sophie. Suzan told her, excitedly, about meeting me, right there on Hope Street and inviting me to her house and the church celebration. While they talked, I got a chance to practice my Polish on the other woman in the car.
When Suzan got off the phone, she informed me that she had made a mistake. The writer that her sister had told her about was someone else who had also written a book about his WW II experiences in Poland. Then they got back in the car and drove off. I haven’t heard from them since.