Goodby, Mr Brown. Tony Brown was our Senior Class English teacher. Chaucer, Middle English, poetry, and the like. He taught us as if we were college students, not Seniors in High School. Never happen in a Public School. He passed away at 90 a couple of weeks ago. I kept in touch over the past twenty years plus.
Mr. Brown had the ability to quiz me each time we met. Iambic pentameter and the like, could I quote Shakespeare, did I read so and so. Lunch with Mr. Brown was more intense than my Doctoral orals. Yet I felt a duty to care for the sick, feed the hungry and bury the dead.
He loved Thomas Mann, and The Magic Mountain. He insisted I read it. I tried, but found it incomprehensible, after all it is about a mad house filled with Germans. I am fond of French and Russian literature, which he found incomprehensible. So much for tastes.
So Goodby, Mr Brown, you were no Mr Chips, but then again it was Staten Island.
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