The Diva & I

Chapter One

“Wake up! You’re drooling on Mrs. Vanderbilt”, a voice hissed, startling me out of a peaceful slumber, as my head rested on the railing of the Dress Circle at the old Metropolitan Opera House. I straightened up quickly to duck out of eyeball range of the imposing old dowager glaring furiously up at me from her box directly below.

I was on my way to Smith College for a weekend I had been invited to and this was my first visit to New York. Although I hated opera, I wanted to see the Metropolitan Opera House so I decided to go there. The opera singers were warbling away on stage and the farthest thing from my mind was that, one day, I would be married to one of them…the very beautiful, talented and tempestuous, PATRICE MUNSEL…. but the trip to her was a long and convoluted one.

I was born in the beautiful Mississippi River town of Winona, Minnesota. We lived only five blocks from the levee. I always heard the calliope of the big riverboat, THE CAPITOL, when it came steaming into town I would run down to the levee to greet her, then run to my grandfather’s house to get my Aunt Hattie, and off we would go to “Chicken Gus’s” to get supplies for our trip down river to La Crosse. We would stop there for the shoppers and then cruise back up the river to Winona.

One of my earliest recollections of my childhood was climbing the steps to the front porch of my grandparents’ old Victorian house to greet my great grandmother, who always when I made my frequent visits said, “Hello, young man, when did you get on this boat?” as she rocked happily back and forth. I was only five, but it began to dawn on me that my family danced to the beat of a different drummer.