National Story Project
With Paul Auster

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July 2000 -- In this installment of the National Story Project, Paul reads stories by Joan Wilkins Stone, Mel Singer, W, Holly Heffelbower, Jennifer Pye, and Stan Benkowski.

Joan Wilkins Stone
My father never went anywhere without one of his hats," writes Joan Wilkins Stone of Goldendale, Washington. "They hung outside the back kitchen door on pegs. Same size, same shape, same smell - a mixture of Old Spice, Lifebuoy soap and a touch of the Brilcream he used to tame his unruly hair. He never wore one inside, but when he was outside it was on his head or in his hand. He'd tip it when greeting a lady and take it off when entering a building - even the post office. His manners were perfect, but he didn't feel comfortable without his hat. My mother made him leave it in the car when we went to the movies, but he would have preferred holding it on his lap. Years later, my brother and I and our families were with our parents in a department store in Portland, Oregon. We were trying to help Dad find a new hat. He tried them all on. Wrong size, wrong color. The brim was too narrow, the band didn't match. This went on and on, and the salesman was running out of patience. Finally, Dad found the perfect one, and with a huge grin he showed it to Mom. We all breathed a sigh of relief - Until Mom looked at it and said: 'Ted, you old fool, that's your own hat.'"

Mel Singer
Mel Singer of Denver, Colorado answered her ad in the personals column, and one cold night in November they met in a bar. "She was a tall, slender brunette," Mr. Singer writes. "She was pretty, she was smart, and I liked her. I definitely wanted to see her again. Even better, I felt that she would be happy to see me again, too. As we got ready to go, I lifted py parka from the back of the barstool and, firmly gripping the collar with my left hand, inserted my right arm into the sleeve. With the coat half on and half off, I stretched out my left arm to catch the left sleeve hole. But somehow my target eluded me. I tried again, and once more I missed. Not one to be deterred, I intensified my efforts. My body began to twist, turning in a counter-clockwise direction. I was working so hard that I failed to notice that as I twisted my body, the coat was twisting too, which kept the sleeve hole at the same distance from my thrusting hand. Beads of sweat began to break out on my forehead. It was as if the sleeve holes had grown closer together during the past few hours. My grunts and groans gave audible proof to the intensity of my struggle. With all that twisting, however, I hadn't realized that my legs were beginning to corkscrew - and that I was beginning to lose my balance. As I went on stabbing at the moving sleeve hole, I slowly sank to the floor. I lay there in a heap, partially covered by the coat, and then glanced up at my companion. Neither one of us said a word. Never before had she seen a man wrestled to the ground by his own coat.

W
An anonymous contributor - we'll call her W. - was sharing a house for the summer with college friends at the Jersey shore. One Tuesday night at about 9:30, she walked out of the house and went down to the beach. No one was around, so she pulled off her clothes, left them in a pile, and dove into the surf. She swam around for twenty minutes and then rode a wave back to the shore. When she came out of the water, her clothes were missing. As she stood there pondering what to do, she heard the sound of voices. It was a group of people walking along the beach - and all of them were walking in her direction. She decided to make a dash for it and run back to the house, which was fifty or sixty yards away. She could see that the door was open, or at least that light was coming out of the doorway. "But as I ran closer," W. explains, "I realized at the very last second that there was a screen. I ran right through it. Now I'm standing in the middle of a living room. There's a father and two little kids sitting on a couch watching TV, and I'm in the middle of the room without a stitch on. I turned around and ran through the busted-up screen door and tore back down to the beach. I went right and kept on running and eventually found my pile of clothes. I didn't know that there was an undertow. It had carried me about four blocks from where I had gone into the water... The next morning, I walked the beach looking for the house with the broken screen door. I find the house, and as I'm walking up to knock on what's left of the door, I see the father inside, walking towards me. I start stammering and finally manage to say, 'You know, I feel really bad about what happened, and I wanted to give you some money for the screen door.' The father cuts me off and very dramatically throws up his hands and says - 'Honey, I can't take anything from you. That's more entertainment than we've had all week.'"

Holly Heffelbower
When she was a senior in high school, Holly Heffelbower of Lincoln, Nebreaska was chosen to sing in a state-wide choir at a National Music Educators convention. "There were several hundred students," she writes, "so we all had seating assignments. There were three charts posted in various location. On two of the charts I was placed in one seat, and on the other I was one row and one seat forward. I was confused by this and went to the seat that had been on the two charts, assuming the third was a mistake. Part way through the first day of rehearsals, I heard someone yell 'Heffelbower.' I turned around and didn't see anyone I recognized, but a young blonde woman responded to the call. It suddenly dawned on me that I had encountered something I had never encountered before: another Heffelbower. She was named Lee Ann Heffelbower, and I was named Holly Ann Heffelbower. No wonder the seating charts had been switched. We got to know each other. For a while, we dutifully exchanged Christmas cards, but then we lost touch. Seven or eight years later, I was still living in my home town, in an apartment building called the Holly. On Valentine's Day, I came home to check my mail before going to the funeral of one of the members of my church choir. I put my key in the mailbox, and it didn't work. I looked at the mailbox, and it said 'Heffelbower,' And I tried the key again. It wouldn't turn. I looked at the box again, and it still said 'Heffelbower.' But so did the one to the left of it: 'Heffelbower.' I put my key in the other one, got my mail, and rushed off to the funeral. When I got home, I discovered that Lee Ann had moved in across the hall from me. She had just come back to Lincoln from Ohio and had rented the only place she could find that allowed cats. This time we became the best of friends and eventually became roommates. Two years ago, I sang at her wedding."

Jennifer Pye
Jennifer Pye was having one of those moments high school teachers live for. "The class was silent," she writes, "Listening with rapt attention to one of their classmates give his sociology report. The students had chosen to investigate a particular aspect of their cultural heritage, and Bruce had focused on Judaism, the religion to which he had converted at the age of ten. He was demonstrating the rituals of devout prayer to his classmates, something only the most daring teenager could pull off without embarrassment. Bruce was a tall, handsome senior. The paragon of cool, his peers listened to him whenever he deigned to speak. Standing before the class, he explained that donning the tefillin was a sacred act and must be performed in complete silence. To my pride and amazement, the entire class sat still, practically holding its collective breath. Bruce prayed and slowly wound the thin black starp over his forehead. I could never have imagined such complete and reverent respect inside a public school. When he was finished, the students asked questions in subdued tones. Bruce answered with professorial patience, then returned to my office to remove the straps in private prayer. I was filled with renewed faith in The American Teenager, and for a week I repeated this story of religious conviction and adolescent self-confidence to anyone who would listen. The following year, Bruce came back to visit the school just before Thanksgiving break, as many recent graduates do. I overheard him telling a bunch of admiring kids how he'd deferred going to college for a while and was riding rodeo somewhere in the South instead. He'd developed a distinct drawl and was leaning against the doorway in his blue jeans, a bandanna casually stuck in the back pocket. He talked about riding bulls as if he'd been doing it all his life. When the other students had gone on to class, my curiosity got the better of me, and I pulled Bruce aside. "Bruce," I asked, "I just want to know how do your cowboy buddies react when you leave the rodeo to keep the Sabbath?" 'Oh no, ma'am,' he said. 'I gave all that up. I'm born-again now.'"

Stan Benkowski
I began with a story about a hat, and I'd like to end with another story about a hat. It was sent in by Stan Benkowski, who grew up in Detroit and last went to Tiger Stadium (then known as Brigg's Stadium) when he was eight years old. "My father came home from work," Mr. Benkowski writes, "and announced that he was taking me to the ball game. He was a fan, and we had gone to several day games before, but this would be my first night game. We got there early enough to park on Michigan Avenue for free. In the second inning, it started to rain, and then the rain turned into a downpour. Within twenty minutes, the loudspeaker announced that the game had been cancelled. We walked under the stands for about an hour, waiting for the rain to let up. When they stopped selling beer, my father said that we should make a run for the car. We had a black 1948 sedan, and the door on the driver's side was broken and could only be opened from the inside. We got to the door on the passenger's side panting and soaking wet. As my father fumbled for the keys, they dropped out of his hand and fell into the gutter. When he bent down to retrieve them from the rushing water, the door handle knocked the brown fedora off his head. I caught up with the hat about halfway down the block and then raced back to the car. My father was already sitting behind the wheel. I jumped in, collapsed onto the passenger's seat, and dutifully handed him the hat - which now looked like a wet rag. He studied it for a second and them put it on his head. Water poured out of the hat - splashing onto his shoulders and lap and then onto the steering wheel and the dashboard. He let out a loud roar. I was frightned because I thought he was howling with anger. When I realized that he was laughing, I joined him in a bout of hysterical laughter. I had never heard him laugh like that before - and I never did again. It was a raw explosion that came from somewhere deep within him, a force that he had always kept damned up. Many years later, when I spoke to him about that night and how I remembered his laughter, he insisted that it had never happened."

The National Story Project can be heard the first Saturday of every month on Weekend All Things Considered.