Where the Frogs Sing

I stand on the lower deck of the house, peering through the darkened forest toward the Lake. Night has finally fallen here in the mountains, and a tapestry of stars is rising in the black sky. The forest drips with the remains of today’s drenching thunderstorms. Through the filtering pines lies the expanse of Lake Tahoe, sleeping like a massive manatee. It shimmers silver in the light of a half moon, its perimeter encrusted with the lights of human habitation.

Below me, somewhere deep in US Forest Service land, a chorus of frogs fires up. I don’t think

I have ever heard frogs here before. I don’t think of them as alpine creatures. But the streams are roaring with runoff, and the melt is creating bodies of water where none existed before. Maybe a bog sprang to life somewhere down below the house. Could frogs appear that fast? Seems unlikely. But I hear them, singing in full throat. Against all odds, it seems, life finds a way.

I am here, this Memorial Day weekend, to take a quick drink of a place I love, and check in on my stepmother. Beverly turns 88 this year, still living alone on her mountain, in the house she and my Dad built in 1978. The house is very vertical, not at all suited to an aging person. But she is adamant that she will never leave it; pronounces this frequently. Dad has been gone for 21 years.

Bev’s doing pretty well, alone on her mountain. She is slowing down, not handling the stairs as well anymore. But on the whole, the visit has reassured me. She is strong and fit and determined.

This trip, I have tried to ask Beverly about the past. My brother died last year—my first sibling to go. The number of people who know my origin story is dwindling.

One night, over the remains of dinner, I ask her: “What do you know about how Dad found his way to flying?” I am casual, avoiding what Cal calls my “kamikaze interview mode.” Cal’s right. This is a failing of mine. One time when we were wine tasting in Napa, I thought I was making small talk with our bartender. He thought I was doing opposition research for a competing winery.

Here was Bev’s account—much of which matched the one I already had. My father’s family was desperately poor, destroyed by the Depression and my grandfather’s serious alcoholism. Around the time he graduated from high school, Dad got interested in flying, and probably, interested in getting away from Greenville, Missouri. He scraped together the money for ground school, the first step for becoming a pilot. He made his way to Jefferson City, a nearby town with an airport, and took a job as a janitor, washing planes and doing maintenance.

At this point, an angel intervened. Dad went to live with the family of the man who “owned” the airport. (I’m not sure how somebody owns an airport, but that was Bev’s recollection of it.) With help from this benefactor, and perhaps a little from his older sister Dolores, who lived in St. Louis and adored her baby brother, Dad took flight school, solo-ed and got his private pilot’s license. He had just turned 20.

Weeks later, Pearl Harbor happened, and the world went to war. Every one of Dad’s contemporaries enlisted, and he got ready to do the same. The angel intervened again.

“Look,” said the angel. “Anybody can enlist. But not everybody can fly. The airlines are desperate for you guys—any pilots, with any experience. Take one of the planes, fly up to Chicago, and walk into United Airlines. Tell them you are ready.”

Which is exactly what Dad did. The angel was right. United’s response was: come back as soon as you turn 21. On that day, August 13, Dad returned to Chicago and claimed the job that was waiting for him. He spent a

shockingly short time as co-pilot before making full captain. In United planes leased to the military, he flew into the Pacific Theater every week for four years, taking off from Hamilton Air Force Base in Marin, refueling in Hawaii, and ferrying troops, wounded, brass, and materiel into Guadalcanal, the Philippines, and other strategic points surrounding Japan. He never wore a military uniform, but his combat zone experience was just as dangerous as many pilots who did. He took fire plenty of times. And in those days before inertial navigation, many of his friends went down in the Pacific, searching desperately for Guam, the Marshall Islands or some other refueling site. He went on to a 40-year commercial aviation career, at one point becoming the most senior pilot in the United system.

Unfortunately, the name of Dad’s angel’s is lost to history. But Bev’s details—the Jefferson City airport, the angel and his family, the idea of borrowing a plane like you would borrow a car and just show up and ask for a job—those details have added such richness to the story I already had. Are they true? Maybe. Does it matter?

That visit to Tahoe was a mix of a lot of things; a pentimento of memory, longing, beauty and regret. Ghostly echoes of things lost. The ache of things still hoped for. But that night, around a dining room table, we painted something altogether new. We shared memories of a man we both loved, and marveled at how extraordinary life can sometimes be.

The next morning, I head to the upper deck of the house to watch dawn break over the Lake. The sun tries to penetrate a slate grey canvas in the eastern sky. Fingers of cloud reach over the rim of the Sierras, becoming vaporous torrents and flowing into the Basin. They remind me of the massive summer fog banks that spill over the Santa Cruz Mountains into the Bay Area.

I listen for the frogs, but they are silent. Perhaps the bog dried up. Perhaps the frogs only sing at night. Perhaps they have had their moment, and now are gone, as lost to time as that angel’s name.

I savor the memory of their song. I savor stories shared about a man of character and kindness.And I am reminded: you better pay attention. Sometimes, things happen---when and where you least expect them.

Epilogue: Not long after, Bev unearthed the name of the angel. She was curious, and excavated it from an old Christmas card list. It was Johnnie Randolph, and his wife Martha. So, the name is not lost after all. Thank you, Johnnie and Martha. It appears that the magic of memory, shared around a dining room table as darkness fell, has had some legs.