Rimsky-Korsakov

by

Dr. Robert E. Plucker

                In another of these essays I mention a 1936 Oldsmobile that I owned during the time between hitches in the Army.  That would have been 1947-1950. This was the first car I had ever owned that had more than one hundred thousand miles on the odometer by the time I traded it in for a new car.  It had served me well for thirty thousand of those miles.  It had few amenities compared to cars of today, but it had a fine built-in radio (very rare in 1936) with a large speaker mounted on the headliner just above and to the rear of the windshield.

                When I was discharged from Army active duty in the spring of 1947 I was rather out of step with what had been going on at home while I had been occupying Japan.  My former girl friends seemed to have distanced themselves from me, mostly because they had become involved with some fellow who was much closer than Japan.  But I did know some of the younger girls who had been a couple of classes behind me in high school, and one especially who seemed rather exotic to me because of a deformity, strangely enough.  She was about my height, a Norwegian-type blond, pretty face, slim elegant figure, a quick sense of humor and brainy.  The deformity?  She had been born with no right hand.  She was never seen without wearing a long-sleeved garment which covered the missing hand, and so I never did see the extent of the problem.  She had an intact and shapely arm all the way to the wrist.

                I happened to see her in a cafe in Lennox with a couple of friends one night; I stopped to talk to her and found that I liked her a lot.  I had lots of times with her after that - mostly double movie dates with her cousin Lowane and my good friend Alvin.

                When I returned to Brookings, and South Dakota State College I found that the ratio of men to women was nearly seven to one.  Every time I worked up the nerve to ask one of the college women for a date, it seemed there were at least six or seven guys ahead of me, so I was glad that I had my old 1936 Oldsmobile to drive the 80 miles back to Lennox to see my girl friend there.  I met her parents, I met several of her sisters (she was the youngest of six girls), and she met my parents.  Our friendship seemed to be well on the road to a serious commitment, but then we had a spat one evening.  She wanted to drive to Sioux Falls to a late movie with Alvin and Lowane, but I didn't want to go all the way to the big town, stay out late, and then drive back to Brookings to be ready for church choir the next morning.  So they went to Sioux Falls, the three of them, with girl friend Lois in a huff.

                We made up several weeks later, which was fun, but then came a Sunday afternoon drive with Lois.  It was summer, a truly fine day, the Olds was running well, the sun was shining, the fields were green, and there was glorious music on the radio.  I know now, that it was Rimsky-Korsakoff's "Sheherezade Suite".  I had never heard it before, and was completely under the spell of this great piece with its great tunes, wonderful orchestration, and the exotic mood it set for me. 

Portrait of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1898
 by Valentin Serov
Thanks to Wikipedia for the photo

                Lois reached over and turned off the radio, "Do we have to listen to that?" 

                I tried not to show shock and amazement that she could nonchalantly turn off beauty like that.  I had been thinking thoughts of what life would be like, married to this pretty girl, but to turn off Sheherezade!  And then to say the unthinkable thing about having to listen to THAT.

                We had some dates after that, I think, but I had lost heart and was dragging my feet and wondering what I should do with this "friendship".  My mother spoke to me about Lois one morning.  She told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to string Lois along any longer.  She said I was being terribly unfair and I would either have to ask her to marry me or to drop her entirely. 

                It was not easy to break up with her, and yet, I could not imagine spending my life with someone who not only was not interested in classical music, but actively disliked it.  So although I had known she was not a lover of serious classical music, this simple act of turning off the radio was a turning point in my life.