Louis Roney: A smatter of chatter

• In the Yankee dugout, someone would ask catcher Yogi Berra, "What time is it?" Yogi would answer, "You mean now?" Yogi became famous for his imaginative use of the English language.

• When I came back to my hometown of Winter Park, b.w. and I decided that it would be nice to have some world-class music in the Bob Carr. For 17 years we brought great symphony orchestras and soloists to usually full houses. At age 80, I retired.

My b.w. and I had just brought the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the Bob Carr for a concert. Afterwards, in a private dining room in a restaurant, conductor Charles Dutoit asked me across the table, "Tell me, Louis, what is that Ravel’s ‘La Valse’ all about?” I said, "If you don't know after your fabulous performance a few minutes ago, only Ravel knows, and unfortunately he's out of reach!"

• Guys who can "fix things" have a track beaten to their doors, or leading to the doors of others who need them. You don't have to be an Adonis to be popular: Your looking like Tyrone Power or Clark Gable means nothing to a gal whose front door lock is kaput, or whose kitchen sink is stopped up. Better to be clever about how things work and be full of Boy Scout helpfulness. That smile of thanks on the lips of a pretty girl is often easier to get with a screwdriver than with two tickets to Atlantic City.

Things that don't work right can arouse feelings of exasperation that caresses can't compete with. There is something in the human brain that needs the assurance that fundamental things are "going well," and things come to a standstill if that state of equilibrium isn't there. We want things around us to be in order.

There is a certain romance in being among things that are all working as they should. "Hunky-dory" and "shipshape" bring smiles to faces. Half the human race at any given time is trying to keep things from becoming "fouled up" and the other half is trying to get everything back "in order."

• As the eminent American philosopher Woody Allen once observed, "Showing up is 80 percent of life." Anyone who has a home, and tries to keep it up in today's insecure job-market knows that getting someone to show up as promised and do work at your place is an iffy proposition.

• Had a nice telephone chat the other day with my 1942 Harvard classmate Jay ("Tex") Myers, who has a ranch in Carrizo Springs, Texas. Now in our 90s, we fellows who were friends in our teens are still seeing each other sometimes at class reunions. Jay tells me he still keeps busy by "working his herd!"

• When I entered Harvard from Winter Park High School in the fall of 1938, I did not know if I was one of the first Winter Parkers to do so or not. I see that two WPHS students are going to Harvard this fall, so I guess somebody figures if I could make it, it mustn't be so difficult after all. The antiquity of a college that started in 1636, not long after the Pilgrims had landed, rubs off on one whose early life was in Florida where, though the Spaniards were in St. Augustine in the 1500s, they didn't leave much of a cultural calling card. Someone historic wrote that "nothing good ever comes from a warm climate," and I guess that includes my WPHS classmates of 1938 and I – but send us up North in the ice and snow, and something good may happen after all!

About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)