today when i stopped in at country meadows in wyomissing to visit my four poem-sources there because i am hoping to schedule an upcoming poetry reading with them at the library in their borough, i learned that resident jim dalrymple died earlier this month.
his poem is the very first one in my second volume in this project, and i just read his poem in mid-september on poets' pause on bctv.org, not knowing he had died a few weeks earlier. i also found out that his family called specifically asking to be notified when his copy of my latest book arrived from my project because they wanted to be sure to pick it up soon afterward. and they wouldn't have known that i chose his poem to introduce the whole entire collection of 25 stories told through the use of line breaks.
jim made it to the incredible age of 100, and he had great specific memories about his old job at cartech from before the 1980s. here is a link to his obituary.
i have felt tremendously fortunate that for the past two years of this three-year poetry project, not a single senior (to my knowledge) had passed away. now with jim's death, this circumstance has changed. and while living to the age of 100 is something which doesn't happen with a very high up there number of people, especially when some people leave this life at much earlier ages and through often extreme tragedy, it still seemed hard not to fall into a more somber mood at the loss of jim. knowing less pain is involved for him now, though, is some solace, though. pain can be so crippling, and i wouldn't wish it on any kind soul.
jim liked to throw humor into his conversations every time i'd visit him, so i am sure he did this with others in his life, too. not everyone has that jovial way about them, so this tends to stand out. and it made me all the more grateful to know jim, if only briefly through my project. it is good to be a part of creating one very special continuing memory for his loved ones, toward the end of his days, through the poem about him in this project.
to honor jim and the energy of his life, below is my photograph of him, the cover of the second volume of poetry from this project, with him on it, and not just an excerpt (like usual, here), but his entire poem.
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jim dalrymple, wyomissing borough | born: 1916
i lived out my childhood days at 397 pine street in west
reading, completing high school in 1935. my father moved
here first, landed work as a sign painter and an artist, very
clever. he sent money to my mother so she could travel here
by boat. the two of them married once they had their scottish
feet planted on the ground in this country. in 1936, i knew
cartech’s machines by heart. i learned how to run all of their
equipment—the milling machine, lathe, planer, boring mill.
in those days, we were one of the only places across the u.s.
making steel of exotic combinations. i had books of formulas,
400 different combinations of mixtures, grades. with repairs,
i often worked around the clock. they’d phone me any old
time of night, when an issue surfaced. the foreman would
call and say, jim, you have to come out—we have a problem.
i heard those words more frequently than i could keep track
of them. guys stood around, watching, waiting for me to finish
my fixing. my boss relied on me to keep that mill going. now
and then, you noticed the rolls breaking. you had to replace
the bearings. during the war years, i worked a couple of days
a week, getting paid 22 cents an hour. when the government
found out what they were giving us, they made the company
pay the minimum, 23 cents an hour. suddenly, we thought,
we’re rich. i believe we sent shipments to england, where
they used our supply to build mercedes airplane motors.
sales reps for grease and oil took me out to lunch, wined and
dined me, if they had accounts with us or wanted to land us
as clients. by 1980, i left my fixing-career,
finally able to sleep through the night.
