Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

“When I heard the learn’d astronomer;

The day smelled wet, gray, chilled. Late 1950’s early vernal promise out of the brown compost of layered leaves. My father circled the blacktop in front of Allegheny Observatory then parked in front of a set of concrete steps that lead the entry door.

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;

My passions like tendrils creeping ever downward to tap roots, it seems, have been with me since my beginnings. It’s enough to make me believe in a calling. It’s enough to make me sad that I fall so short.

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;

Eighth grade Seneca Junior High School Social Studies Class. The last major project, as I remember it, before the end of the school year was a report about our “calling”. We were assigned the task of interviewing someone who was presently involved in what we believed would become our vocation. My head was ablaze with the idea.

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,

I had a thought, far too daring, almost unspeakable, for my introverted troglodyte teen age. A call to meet my call. My uncles mostly worked in the building trades. As did my father. Should I interview Sofis Pedersen, one hell of a plasterer, or Bettino Fragale, one hell of a painter, or even my old man, one hell of a carpenter. It would have brought home the grade, but it just didn’t seem right. I looked around our small suburban neighborhood. Streets like the promise of small town America. A public swimming pool at the bottom of the hill. Should I interview a township solicitor, a school teacher an insurance agent?

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

I called Allegheny Observatory. Somehow got through to a guy who was on staff who was an astronomer who would interview with me. I felt the spheres of the solar system click into gravitational place. More than a priest, more than a pope, here was a religion that I not only understood, but was in full mental, physical and spiritual accord. The actual meeting was closer to the Walt Whitman poem dispersed throughout.

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,

I had a wad of gum chewed, devoid of all spearmint and sugar, in my mouth. I realized it as disaster as a left the car. Never interview with chewing gum in your mouth. Pretty sure that was in the lesson book somewhere. Maybe it was just my superego out for a laugh. I took it from my mouth and placed it in my right winter coat waist pocket. Never throw wet sticky spent gum on the concrete walk. I think that was a PA State law. My hand felt sticky. And wet. I was pretty sure I was going to have to shake Frank’s (the only vestige of his name left in my psyche) hand. Always introduce yourself with a firm handshake. Never chew gum.

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

I turned his hand into a sopping gooey mess. He didn’t seem to notice. We settled down. He showed me a 3 1/2 Questar Telescope. (Just looked on their website and the 50th Anniversary Model would be about right) Unbelievably small, unbelievably beautiful, unbelievably beyond my outstretched reach. Unbelievable.

I had orchestrated this whole rambling, haphazard interview to lead up to the one question of unimaginable import. “Frank,” I’m sure I called him Dr. so and so, “did you choose astronomy or did astronomy pluck a celestial chord, call like the Lorelei, haunt like a very very sweet melody and choose you?” That was the intent in any case and most likely not the actual words.

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
— Walt Whitman

He, poor guy, broke my heart. “No,” he said, “I thought I might give a try to chemistry when I first started out, but the course was pretty full and they were just developing astronomy department, so I chose it instead.”

I’ve compromised far more than ol’ Dr. “Frank” in my life. It shows. But somewhere down really in the depths of me lies the universe in all its awe and mystery. Just takes a dark night on the back porch. You’ve got it too.depths of me lies the universe in all its awe and mystery. Just takes a dark night on the back porch. You’ve got it too.