Raised in the Missouri Ozarks, Stephen Eidson grew up fishing its many rivers and streams and hunting its forests. And while, nowadays, he spends most of his hours pursuing his other passion — art — nature and wildlife still occupy much of his time.

Now retired, Eidson spends much of his time in his studio, Wayside Art Gallery & Studio in Macks Creek, Mo. There, he can be found working on up to four pieces at a time, creating paintings or drawings, often from photographs he’s taken of nature scenes or wildlife.

In the stark hills and hollows of the Ozarks, Eidson says he doesn’t have to go far to find inspiration.

“What I’ll usually do is take a camera and go driving around. Usually rivers and creeks are the best place — not always, but almost always,” he says. “Around here, in the Ozarks, we have a lot of atmosphere. That makes this a good area to do art in.”

As a child, Eidson was riddled with illness, beginning with measles, which he says took its toll on his immune system. Often stuck at home, sick and in bed, limited in his ability to go or even see outside, he began to develop an interest in art.

“From the bedroom and back, we had kind of a lazy curtain that I would look out,” Eidson recalls. “I taught my eyes to become more critical of what I’d see because I was very limited in what I could see and what I could do.”

Eventually, in 2000, he was diagnosed with Common Variable Immune Deficiency.

Perhaps a reaction to the battles he’s faced in his own life, with illness, Eidson says that what he is drawn to most in nature is the “struggle of life,” which he strives to capture in his work.

“Sometimes, it’s the struggle of nature’s curves, where you see the actual struggle of a tree to live — how the limbs curve, how gravity pulls them down and how they reach toward the light,” he says. “That’s what we admire. We don’t realize it, but that’s the reason we like it. It’s the same way with humans.”

Eidson often seeks out water — mostly creeks and rivers — as the subject of his artwork as he finds it both calming and intriguing. But no matter his focus, he always tries to view it with a discerning eye.

“Something catches my eye and then I analyze it: What part of that caught my eye and made me like it?” Eidson says. “Most of the time, people are just too busy [to notice those things.] When you can kick it out of gear and just be one with nature, then … you can see those things.”

Eidson admits that he also could be better about paying greater attention to his natural surroundings. Yet he thinks his ability to detect the small, magnificent details in nature is in large part due to his training as an artist.

But the same qualities that enable him to notice certain details are also important in other pastimes — which is why Eidson believes it’s something anyone can learn.

“You train your eyes to see something — certain colors, certain shapes,” says Eidson. “You train your eyes the same way you do with hunting.”

This week, I hit a wall. Perhaps it was the change in the weather, but no matter, I found myself completely unmotivated and uninspired.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I rarely stop working. I’m always immersed in some activity, whether it’s brainstorming, strategizing, planning, interviewing, writing, editing or, yes, even housework (i.e., keeping my family functioning and on schedule). I don’t often take time to relax, so — feeling a bit overwhelmed by life and questioning where to go with mine — I allowed myself the time and space to just be. To let go of the pressure that I alone put on myself.

I found myself seeking out past sources of inspiration — John Steinbeck, Hermann Hesse, documentaries and even my own writings.

While my abilities have certainly evolved over the years, many of my old works are no less intriguing. They represent a younger me, at a point in time when, even then, I was trying to figure my life out.

One piece in particular spoke to me, and I wanted to share it with you today.

I had driven by Geoffrey Seitz’s violin shop for years, always curious about his craft and what kind of person he must be, before I finally contacted him for an interview, in 2012. There is something innately fascinating about people who work with their hands, and Geoff was happy to welcome me into his shop to share his story and craft with me. (I’m happy to report that his shop is still operating to this day.)

I hope you enjoy it — and don’t judge my younger self too harshly.

Geoffrey Seitz isn’t just a violinmaker. He’s a “violin nut.”

There’s not much space in his 3,000-square-foot St. Louis shop, that isn’t dedicated to violins. They’re on tables, in cabinets, in boxes, in closets, in safes, on shelves, in frames; hanging from the walls; painted along the tops of the walls; featured in stained glass and paintings; displayed as porcelain objects; and even recreated as a pillow.

This is his paradise.

“Some businesses are strictly focused on profit … whereas we’re kind of violin nuts,” Seitz said. “We’re actually kind of crazy about the instruments. We have to make a profit to stay alive, but we’re really into the instruments.”

Seitz opened his shop, Geoffrey J. Seitz Violinmaker, in 1987. The shop buys, sells, appraises, repairs and builds primarily violins, violas, cellos and basses, but occasionally buys and sells guitars, banjos and mandolins.

While the shop mostly does repairs, Seitz also hand makes violins, a craft he learned at a young age. Having apprenticed with a violinmaker in Spokane, Washington, for nearly five years, Seitz appreciates the undeniable quality of handmade over machine-made.

“The ultimate product is handmade,” Seitz said. “That’s the best thing. They make violins in a factory, but they’re never as good as a totally handmade violin. I make these instruments mostly by hand — very few power tools. I use a band saw and a drill press, and that’s it. Everything else is all hand-chiseled and hand done. So when you do it by hand like that, you get closer to the way the perfected product is.”

And the perfected product, which most violinmakers have since tried to replicate, is a Stradivarius — a violin made by Italian violinmaker Antonio Stradivari in the late 1600s. Because of their value and low numbers, Stradivariuses are difficult to come by.

“His instruments are rare and they sell for millions of dollars now,” Seitz said. “I’ve seen many of them. We’ve had some instruments in here that were actually made by guys that worked with him, but they’re so rare that they don’t really come around very often.”

Seitz, who currently has two commissioned violins, designs all his instruments from scratch, it taking him nearly 200 total hours to complete a single instrument. Like most violinmakers, Seitz uses only the best wood: Maple for the back, sides and neck of the instrument and Spruce for the top.

“Those are woods that have been used for hundreds of years, and you still use the same wood,” Seitz said. “Those seem to work the best.”

While he may not get the opportunity to build violins as often as some of the other aspects of his job, he prefers building — which he said is an easier process—to repairing.

“To do a repair correctly, you have to — whoever made the thing to begin with, you have to keep what they were trying to do in mind, and try to bring it back to where that is, which is challenging because each one’s a little different,” Seitz said. “Whereas making frees you to kind of do what you want to do.”

Besides working with violins all day, six days a week, he naturally plays the instrument as well. Seitz ‘passion for the violin was passed down from his father, who not only played the violin but also was a sort of craftsman himself.

Seitz remembers his father — a machinist and mechanic — always working with his hands.

“He was always making stuff, all the time,” Seitz said. “So I got into working with my hands. I used to do other things. I worked on cars, just did all kinds of stuff, but then I discovered the violin.”

Originally into drums as a kid, Seitz eventually picked up his father’s violin, which he often left “laying around the house.” But having grown up during the 60s, Seitz was fascinated not by the music he heard his father play with the violin, but by The Beatles and Elvis.

“My dad played a kind of country music,” Seitz said. “I had no interest in that at all. But then, when I got older and went to college, I got back to my country roots and got back into that kind of music, and discovered that the stuff my dad was playing was kind of cool.”

With only a limited amount of classical training on the violin, Seitz prefers to play “fiddle music,” playing with several bands in the St. Louis area.

“Fiddle is just a nickname for the violin, so it’s like ‘cat’ and ‘kitty,’” Seitz said. “Fiddle music tends to mean square-dancing music or Irish or bluegrass or country music or something like that. I play that. Although, I’ve had a little bit of classical training, too.”

But what most people consider classical music today is actually much different than when it first originated. Classical music hundreds of years ago was much closer to the folk, or fiddle, music it has evolved to, Seitz said.

“So 100 years ago, a classical violinist would actually do stuff, like they would do tricks with the violin,” he said. “They would throw the bow up and catch it and do all this really weird stuff, and that was acceptable. They also used to improvise a lot. They would just make up stuff in the middle of a Mozart piece. People don’t really do that anymore. They’re much more strict about the interpretation of the music.”

Violins, Seitz said, are made to imitate the human voice — a reason why they have a tendency to incite intense emotions in listeners.

“They almost sound like they’re magic,” he said. “They almost sound like they’re alive. People hang a lot of romantic notions on the violin because of that.”

And Seitz’s shop attracts these people, those who may not play but are simply fascinated by the instrument and the sound it creates.

The playing, and paying, clientele vary in the types of music they play and their walks of life. The shop attracts mostly students and the average player, but also symphony players from St. Louis and beyond, Seitz said.

“It’s a very interesting business to be in because of the people that — you know, musicians that play, violinists, cello players and stuff,” he said. “Some are just incredibly interesting.”

Seitz’s shop also sells some very rare and collectible instruments. One such item is a bow made by Francois Tourte — the Stradivari of bows.

“The bow was perfected in the late 1700s by this guy named Francois Tourte in France,” Seitz said. “We actually own a Francois Tourte. Those are extremely rare. We have it for sale at $75,000.”

His shop, although it is a business, is more about the instruments, being knowledgeable and providing a service — with passion that customers won’t find elsewhere.

“We really focus on getting people instruments that they like as opposed to just selling them a product,” Seitz said. “We want something that they can have fun with.”

What’s one passion, hobby or interest that never fails to bring you back to yourself?

“All I have is this moment right now. If I'm not satisfied with something, I need to change it.”
—Larry Anderson

In late summer 2022, as I waited for an oil change in the lobby of my mechanic’s shop, I overheard bits and pieces of a conversation between the attendant and an older gentleman.

Something about flying airplanes and driving city buses.

I was intrigued, and when they finished talking, I made my way over to the man and struck up a conversation. His name was Larry Anderson, and he was — at the time — 86 years old. He told me about his passion for flying, how he’d worked as a city bus driver for over two decades and how he’d first come to the area from Pennsylvania as a young man.

Always in search of a good story to tell, I got Larry’s number and gave him a call the next day. We set up some time the next week for an interview, and well … the rest is history.

I first published Larry’s story in the fall of 2022 (here), and I often think about him and how he’s doing now. I never heard back from Larry after I sent him the story, but I hope he’s still out there doing what he enjoys, albeit on a smaller scale than he used to — living with “no regrets.”

I say all of this, too, because there’s power in talking to strangers — in the wisdom and insight gained from hearing their stories — and going deeper than a simple “hello.”

I hope you enjoy his story.

“An awareness of the
reality of the moment”

That’s Larry Anderson’s motto and the way in which he’s lived his life for the past 56 years. Acknowledging what is real — not what he wishes or hopes to be real — and recognizing that the past is just that.

“All I have is this moment right now. If I'm not satisfied with something, I need to change it,” he says.

Eighty-six years old, Larry lives in High Ridge, Missouri — a town of about 4,300 people just southwest of St. Louis — tucked in the back corner lot of his subdivision, surrounded by what he loves most: the woods, his wife Shirley and his favorite memories (photos from his wedding day, trips in his 1946 Stinson airplane, camping and hiking trips in Rocky Mountain National Park). With fewer years remaining than those he has filled, Larry seems, if not happy, at least accepting of and comfortable with the life he has lived.

But that wasn’t always the case.

“It was my 30th birthday,” Larry says. “I still remember it like it was yesterday.”

He recalls sitting on the couch in his then-home in Hazelwood, Missouri, when time seemed to catch up with him.

“I thought, ‘I'm 30 today. What happened to my 20s? I feel like the world has gone by me and I'm not on it,’” Larry recalls. “I didn't feel like I had lived my life fully, like I really wanted.”

That day, he decided he didn’t want to live with any more regrets. He’d gone down certain paths and avoided others, often with little thought given — selecting those he did for their ease and comfort — but now, he decided, he was done.

“I did a lot of things. I did learn a lot along the way,” Larry says, “but I thought, ‘There's more, there's gotta be more to it than this.’”

For Larry, the future had always been a question without a definitive answer — a series of largely meaningless jobs and events. But now, things would be different.

Born in Swampscott, Massachusetts, Larry grew up in the steel mill towns of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where his father worked as a supervisor. His family eventually made their home in Beaver Falls, Penn., where Larry and his brother Gary attended Beaver Falls High School.

At this age, Larry began to notice some pointed differences between him and his brother.

“I was too shy to communicate with the other kids. I had a hard time — my brother didn't,” says Larry, smiling. “He always amazed me. He just did whatever he wanted to do — did it without even thinking about it.”

While Gary was spontaneous, making decisions quickly in the moment, Larry took his time. “Most of the time I was taking too much time to make decisions,” Larry says. (Each one later admitted to admiring the other for their approach to decision-making.)

The more introverted of the two, Larry found an outlet in band. “I wasn't interested much in high school. I wasn't making really good grades,” he says. “I just didn't have the interest, except when I started playing trombone.”

His father bought him his first trombone, and it became his first true passion — one that helped pull him out of his shell and earned him his first A. “That was my comfort zone in high school,” says Larry.

But, as he neared the end of high school, the question of what to do for a career loomed large for Larry. His greatest role model, his father, had worked in steel mills all his life, and Larry had seen the effect it had on him.

“When he'd come home, you could tell his mind was still back at work and decisions to be made. He lived for his job, and he brought his work home with him, so he treated Gary and me like we were employees,” he says. “He cared about us and was supportive of us — but I guess nobody's perfect. We didn't hear any compliments or ‘attaboys’ from our dad. I realized then that jobs can be an influence on your home life.”

His own path, Larry decided, would be different. Yet, he still wasn’t sure what that path would be.

Since the age of 5, Larry had been interested in airplanes, and a book he read in high school sparked his interest in Alaska. So when the time came to start thinking about his future, he thought, why not fly planes in Alaska?

“I was always interested in aviation, flying airplanes, as long as I can remember,” Larry says. “Airplanes just fascinated me, and I thought, ‘I need to get a job flying an airplane.’ I had read a book about Alaska called Into the Wild — they call them bush pilots in Alaska — and I got to thinking, ‘Maybe I can do that?’”

But before he could act on that idea, another one came to mind: forestry.

While living in North Lawrence, Ohio, years earlier, Larry would often explore the woods on the farm behind his family’s house to get away. "It was a time when I wasn't really happy. I was shy, couldn't make friends — or didn't know how to make friends,” he says. "So, I'd go up to the woods and just walk around. It gave me peace of mind."

He loved being in the woods, so why not make a career of it? Manning fire towers sounded like an easy and great way to spend time in the place he loved most. The job might require him to go out West or even to Canada. In Larry’s mind, there wasn’t a better job in all the world. “I got all excited thinking about that,” he says.

He got to planning. First, he would have to go to college. But before that, he would have to take a class in a foreign language — an unsavory prospect for someone who was “having trouble enough with the English language,” Larry says. Still, he found himself signing up for French the following semester.

“I went to the first class, and the teacher was patient with all of us because she knew we didn’t know anything,” he says. “She taught us a few French words and phrases — Bonjour, monsieur. That's about all we learned that first day. But it was enough to convince me, I cannot take this class.”

“So, that day cut that idea off,” Larry says. “No more forest ranger.”

Larry graduated that May and took a job working in the produce department at the local supermarket, Pennsylvania A&P. “I couldn't get excited about the job at all,” he says. Fortunately, the experience was short-lived.

It was 1954. The Korean War had just ended the year before, and Larry saw an opportunity.

Knowing he had to sign up for the draft, he contemplated enlisting: If he waited till he was 21, another war might start up — who knows where he would be. But, if he enlisted in the Army, he would have to commit to three years, whereas if he were drafted he would only have to serve two years.

“When I went to the draft board, I'll never forget the lady — I love that woman,” says Larry. “I said to her, ‘If I wait to get drafted, I'll be 21 years old. I don't know if I'll be settled into a career or a relationship, and I won't want to leave at that time. But, if I enlist now, I have to go in for three years.’ She said, ‘I'll tell you what I can do for you. I can put your name at the top of the draft list right now. You'll go in right now, and you’ll only have to go in for two years.’”

“She gave me a year of my life,” Larry adds.

At the end of basic training, Larry was once again faced with a decision. He could select from one of four Army jobs: military policeman — something Larry couldn’t see himself doing; technician — “climbing poles and stretching electric wire,” he says, which didn’t interest him at all; clerk (“I could not see myself sitting at a desk day in, day out,” Larry says); or cook.

“I had no interest in cooking,” he says. “So, I said to the counselor, ‘Well, I'd really rather go to mechanic school.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’”

The takeaway for Larry: “If there's something you want, it doesn't hurt to ask for it,” he says.

Larry was assigned to a base in Straubing, Germany, northeast of Munich, near what was then the Czechoslovakian border. His unit was there to help the Germans protect their borders from Russia, should it try to invade. Larry ended up spending most of his time on hobbies — building model airplanes, doing some leather work and riding his bicycle.

“On weekends, they had tour buses that would go to different German towns or castles. I bought a bicycle and, with it, I traveled around Germany by myself,” he says. “I'd take the tours with the other G.I.s — some of them had their wives with them, too — and then I'd pedal back.”

At the end of his two years, Larry had 20 leave days saved up. With those, he traveled to Holland, England, France and Ireland — the latter he was so fond of he spent 11 of the 20 days there.

“I got out of the Army, and my time was not a complete waste,” says Larry. “I had the chance to tour Europe, I learned more about mechanics — and I got my military time over with was the main thing.”

Back at home, his relief over the completion of his military service was tempered by that lingering question: What are you going to do with your life? Ignoring the voice for long enough to buy his first motorcycle, a Harley Davidson, Larry took a job at the Seven-Up Bottling Company in Beaver Falls. Then, it was on to the local steel mill, where, with the help of his father, he’d procured a job as a heat treater. A good-paying job, it was Larry’s first experience working a swing shift.

“One week, you work the first eight hours of the day during the day, the next week you work the evening shift, and the next week, you work the midnight shift,” he says. In addition to messing up his sleep cycle, the job was utterly boring. “The hardest part was staying awake,” Larry says.

But it was good, easy money, and for the first time, Larry was able to pursue some of his long-delayed interests. He took flying lessons, he bought an old Mercury convertible that he fixed up and another, nearly brand-new Harley.

Within a year, Larry learned he was going to be laid off — the result of Japanese companies processing steel for a lower price than those in the U.S. The knowledge of his imminent firing set Larry’s mind in motion. Where would he go now, and what would he do? The West still called to him — perhaps now he would actually make it out there.

“I had some money saved up, so I sold my motorcycle and threw my suitcase in the car,” Larry says. “I’m sure you've heard the saying, from the pioneer days, ‘Go west, young man’ — so I did.”

With his mind set on the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, he hit the road.

Halfway between the low hills of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, and the towering mountains of Colorado, he made a pitstop. Amongst the farmland of the Midwest, surrounded by the Mississippi Delta, reality began to set in for Larry. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty far from home. I don't know what I am doing. I don't know anybody here. I don't know anybody west of Ohio,’” he recalls.

He got a room at the YMCA in downtown St. Louis — the future weighing heavy on his mind — and decided to have a look around. If he didn’t find anything that interested him, it would be back to the road and on to Colorado.

“I didn't know how long I was gonna be there, didn't know my future,” Larry says.

Twenty-two years old and not sure what he was doing or where he was going, Larry was reminded of one of his favorite songs by Neil Diamond: “Well I'm New York City born and raised / But nowadays / I'm lost between two shores … ‘I am’ … I said / To no one there / And no one heard at all / Not even the chair.”

“That's how I felt when I got into my room at the YMCA,” Larry recalls, “not even the dresser heard me, not even the chair.”

Inspired, in part, by St. Louis’ ties to aviation, Larry decided to stick around a while — but, first, he would need a place to stay. Driving around St. Louis County, he stopped in the small, walkable community of Kirkwood, about 5 miles west of St. Louis City. He found a room for rent with a couch to sleep on and a job at Steak n’ Shake.

“The room had no heat,” says Larry, “and in the winter time, there was snow coming inside the windows piling up on the window ledge.”

One day, while working at Steak n’ Shake, he met Shirley.

The two hit it off — it helped that Shirley wasn’t afraid of flying — and shortly thereafter, they were married. By the next year, they’d had their first daughter Pamela. The year was 1959, and Larry was 24. Three years later, they had their second daughter Robin.

Larry blinked, and suddenly, there he was, sitting on the couch in his Hazelwood home, 30 years old, with a wife and two kids, wondering where the time had gone. “I’d been living my life for other people,” he says. Sure, he’d taken some college classes, had worked as a machinist at McDonnell Douglas for 12-plus years and was raising two daughters. But, he had regrets — neglected hobbies, dreams unfulfilled.

“I felt like there are things I want to do — I’m not sure what they are, but even if I knew what they are, I don’t have time for it,” says Larry. “I kept reminding myself, ‘I don’t want regrets,’ and thought, ‘Well, what am I doing now? Am I wasting time with whatever I’m doing now? Would I regret that I didn’t hike the trails in Rocky Mountain National Park? Would I regret that I didn’t pursue the possibility of flying for a profession?”

So, faced with the culmination of 30 years and the prospect of many more to come, Larry began to take small steps to make sure that, later, he wouldn’t look back on his life in the same way.

He quit his job at McDonnell Douglas and began taking liberal arts classes at Florissant Valley Community College. He bought an RV and began taking camping trips to the Colorado Rockies with his family. He picked back up with flying, initially taking glider lessons, then instrument flying, and eventually earning his commercial pilot’s license and commercial glider pilot’s license, thanks to the G.I. Bill.

“I knew whatever I do in my future, it was going to involve aviation, whether it’s a hobby or a job,” Larry recalls. With his licenses in hand, he considered becoming an instructor or managing a glider port or even moving south to become a crop duster. But, the inconsistent schedule and low pay, as well as the hazardous nature of the latter, turned him off.

“I need to have a steady income, and I liked the idea of being home every night — especially with my daughters at home,” says Larry. “I felt like I needed to be home for them, to help raise them.”

So, flying became just a hobby for Larry — and he was OK with that.

As for making money, Larry had made a promise to himself to no longer do jobs he didn’t enjoy. Work, he realized, didn’t have to be something he was passionate about or that he threw his whole self into — it could simply be a job — but, whatever it was, he wanted to take some satisfaction in it.

“My dad, he lived for his job — some guys do that. I'm not that excited about the work I did,” Larry says, laughing. “I didn’t live a whole lot for my job, but I'll do a job that I'm suited to that I'm not gonna be grumpy about every day.”

With the help of his college classes — ethics, English composition, philosophy, oral communications — Larry was able to clarify his thinking and improve his communication skills. But it was the experience of seeing a psychologist that helped him realize that, contrary to his introverted nature, he actually enjoyed being around and interacting with other people.

“After my visits, I realized I found people to be interesting,” Larry says. “I felt comfortable being out and communicating with people.”

With this knowledge in hand and the newly acquired confidence and skills he gained from his classes, Larry sought out a job that would allow him to interact with the public. He found exactly what he was looking for as a by-state bus driver.

Although Larry admits it wasn’t a glamorous job, it was the right thing for him.

“It was just what I was looking for — being out with the public. Finally, after all those years, I felt comfortable being with other people,” he says. “I could not have done that job without my visits with the psychologist, nor had I not taken those college classes.”

The experience further pulled Larry out of his shell — “A lot of times, people would just want to visit with me, so they’d sit up in front, and I’d visit with them,” he says — and brought with it many lessons. “Early on, I developed two mottos. One was ‘expect the unexpected’ — that’s people and traffic. Don’t be surprised, keep your cool and just deal with it. You’ll get through it,” Larry says.

His other motto: “I’m getting paid to have patience.”

“As a city bus driver, it requires lots of patience. I didn’t realize that before I got the job, but I learned real quick,” he says. “It takes lots of patience, knowing that other people might blame me for something in their words, but actually, they’re upset about their situation.”

Larry took his job, and the safety of the passengers, very seriously and made a fulfilling career out of it, retiring after 23 years.

At 86, Larry is now in the process of letting go of the things he enjoys: trombone, his RV, his airplane. He no longer has the energy or the good health necessary to play trombone or to camp and hike in the Rocky Mountains or to fly his 1946 Stinson, which he has since sold.

“I’m in a transition,” Larry says. "I could say that I regret that I cannot bicycle anymore, that I cannot play the trombone anymore, but I realize they are things I cannot control. So, I have no regrets now about having to let go of those things. I did them — they were great experiences. I’m reorienting myself."

Larry now spends his time going to lunch with his wife and their friends, re-reading old books and pursuing new hobbies.

“I really enjoy working on 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles with easy-listening music on the television,” he says. “It’s just so comfortable to me.”

The knowledge that there are an infinite number of ways he could have lived his life no longer seems important to Larry. He no longer feels nagged by the future or lacks awareness of reality. His regrets are few. His experiences are many. What’s past is past.

For Larry, it’s all about the moment.

“The future, I don't know who knows about all that. All I have is this moment right now, talking with you — and I'm enjoying it,” Larry says, smiling.

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.”
—Oscar Wilde

I can often find it reading a passage from a favorite book or short story (“The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy” is a great one), or watching a clip from an old movie (Charlie Chaplin’s speech in “The Great Dictator,” for instance), or listening to a good song (anything by Tyler Childers will do). But I can also elicit inspiration by going back to some of my own writings.

Reading over old stories of mine — those that I feel proud of — reminds me not only of why I do what I do, but of my own sometimes forgotten and neglected abilities as a writer and storyteller. Of both the internal struggle to adequately capture another person’s often very personal story as well as the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from having done so.

This reminder is often just enough to reignite that flame, motivating me to put pen to paper once again.

I recently re-read one such piece from my master’s class “The Literature of Fact.” The assignment: to interview and write about someone as they went about their job (a police officer, chef, teacher, you name it). I decided to do one better and accompany a mortician on the job. The idea made me uncomfortable, so I knew I had to do it.

Fortunately, my subject, Joe Vitacco, had a great sense of humor and innumerable stories to tell, and while this article was written nearly 15 years ago and I haven’t spoken with him since (I’m not even sure he’s still around), it still has a power to it. It speaks to the writer I was and the writer I still want (and hope) to be. And it’s the type of story I aspire to write more of for Spirit & Sword.

I hope you enjoy reading Joe’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it 15 years ago — and that you find some inspiration in it as well.

ANY GOOD MORTICIAN knows that the mouth is the focal point of the body. When people kneel at the casket, they’re looking directly at the mouth, so it has to look good.

This is one of the things Joe Vitacco has learned over the years, among others. He now knows the difference between loose and pressed makeup and the fact that Europeans wear wedding rings on the opposite hand. He’s discovered the many uses of super glue, as well as how to work in the dark.

Joe is a freelance embalmer. At 71-years-old he’s been in the business for 49 years and made a killing. However, what was once a lucrative trade is now a dying one. “Cremation is at 34 percent in Chicago; it’s really cutting in on us (embalmers),” Joe says. Despite business slowing down—he used to average 1,000 bodies per year, three to four per day—he still averages one body per day. As he proudly tells me, he once held backdoor keys to almost every funeral home in Chicago. But Joe isn’t just a mortician; he’s a teacher, a storyteller.

“COME HERE AND take a look at this, Alex,” he says to me, making no attempts to mask his enthusiasm. Joe is leaning over the body of 86-year-old Ernest Rydell, his latest client. Before today Ernest would have towered over Joe. Now his body lay barely able to fit on the table, his purple feet hanging off the end—an indicator of diabetes, Joe tells me.

A black rubber apron extends almost to Joe’s ankles, giving an inkling as to his height. He’s 5’5,” a characteristic he blames on the Cubs. “I should really be 6’4”, but the Cubs stunted my growth,” he says. An avid fan his whole life, he’d go to games as a kid, eat two hot dogs and drink a Pepsi. They’d lose. “I’d go home and not eat dinner because I was so depressed, then I’d wake up and not eat breakfast because I was so depressed,” he says.

Joe’s personality and energy put a 24-year-old like myself to shame. The best, if not the only, indicator of Joe’s age is his hair—a stark white mingled with a few grays. He speaks with an accent. It’s almost indistinguishable—not quite Italian, not quite Jersey, not quite New York; but it sounds like a little of each. “Are you Italian?” I ask—his name not enough of an indicator for me. “Mediterranean Irish,” he says. He has to explain it to me. A joke.

“ONCE YOU STAND up, you won’t sit back down,” he says. I reluctantly get up from my chair and walk around the table. “See here, I cut the right common carotid artery. This is where I inject the fluid.” I sit back down on the wooden, white cushioned chair by the door, next to the hanging rosaries.

We are in the backroom of Adolf Funeral Home in Berwyn—one of Joe’s three remaining accounts, which include the two Adolf’s and Coletta. Adolf is surrounded by the many bungalow-style homes Berwyn is known for, as well as fast food joints and old savings and loan buildings that now house a variety of businesses. The room’s walls are covered in sea-foam green porcelain tile, reminiscent of a 1960s bathroom. The floor is concrete. Tall army-green and fading tan cabinets line parts of three of the walls.

I remember Joe’s white 2002 Camaro, which seemed out of place as I passed it on my way in the back door. “Nice car,” I say. “Oh, it’s not a car. It’s a chick magnet,” he says.

JOE SPRAYS DISINFECTANT on the body. It smells like Clorox and…slightly like a nursing home. He continues talking—describing every step of the embalming process. It’s obvious he loves what he does.

“I don’t know if you want to include this, but I’ve returned two bodies over the years that weren’t dead,” he says. “One came back the next day. I never saw the other one again.”

Dead bodies don’t bleed, Joe tells me. When blood shoots out it’s a clear indicator the person isn’t dead. I’m thankful that isn’t the case today.

Joe places the head on a head block, elevating it to avoid what he calls “stargazing”—when the head is tilted too far back. Don’t forget the dentures. He produces them from his grip, roughly placing them in Ernest’s mouth. Cotton for under the bottom lip. He stops, takes a pair of pliers from his grip and pulls a tooth. Next he pulls out a Double S-curve autopsy needle (the largest there is) and begins sewing the mouth shut. “Some guys use the smallest needle,” he says. “But geez, this isn’t the Olympics.”

JOE WAS BORN in 1940. His father was a Cook County doctor and eventually medical director for the Chicago Board of Education. His mother was a homemaker, raising their five kids. Joe was the oldest of the five, which included a brother and three sisters. His younger years were spent in the west side of Chicago. When he was 12 his family moved to River Forest, where he lives with his wife Janet to this day.

After completing grade school at Willard Elementary, he went away to St. John’s Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin, and then went on to get his B.S. in Biology from Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois.

Once back from college, Joe began hanging around a funeral home in Oak Park, where the career as an embalmer fell into his lap. “We’d party, and then we wouldn’t go home because we were having too much fun,” he says. He attributes his decision to go to mortuary school to two things: “having it too good at home” and a lack of a desire to go to medical school. Whatever the reason, he graduated from Worsham College of Mortuary Science in 1963 and went on to do a two-year apprenticeship.

THE PHONE, ATTACHED to the wall behind my head, keeps ringing. “It’s not too good when that phone keeps ringing,” Joe says.

He rapidly moves around the room, knocking the large roll of cotton on the floor, dropping a pair of scissors. He may seem a bit clumsy at times, or a little unfocused, but he knows what he’s doing. He bends the hands and arms to break rigamortis. Turns on a pump to counteract Berwyn’s weak water pressure. Clips what little hair Ernest has. Shoves cotton up his nose, causing a crunching sound. I cringe.

From behind Joe’s large, silver-framed glasses he occasionally glances at the body, while paying more attention to our conversation—really leading it. From time to time I’m able to slip in a word or two.

“I make it look easy,” he says. “I can do a lot of things at one time. You see, I’m not even looking at the body. You’d think I was at the mesquite rodeo or something.”

Joe basically has free range when it comes to the bodies. Funeral directors trust him and don't feel the need to check in on him. It’s a good thing he takes pride in a job done well…and easily. “Pa could come out looking like Ma. They don’t know. They don’t come down here,” he says as he takes a bottle of embalming fluid from one of the cabinets. “There were two times I didn’t know if it was a man or a woman. I was too shit-faced.”

DESPITE JOE’S OBVIOUS lack of height, he’s still not what I’d expect for someone who proudly claims the title “mortician for the mob,” specifically the Italian mob.

His relationship with the Mob goes way back. He shared the same neighborhood with Mobsters growing up, many of whom were patients of his father. River Forest, with its sprawling front lawns and lavish houses, was and still is where they call home. Joe knew mobster Tony Accardo, also known as “Joe Batters” or “Big Tuna,” a mob boss who was said to have participated in the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Joe went to school with Accardo’s daughters and could often be found hanging around with them. Joe’s nickname “Pins” was even given to him by Accardo after a bowling excursion with the family.

In more recent years, Joe’s even done several bus tours of River Forest, called Drag the River Tour, to showcase mobster’s homes.

Share Spirit & Sword

EFFICIENT IS A possible word to describe Joe. The shortest amount of time it took him to embalm a body, from embalming, clothing and getting it in the casket—35 minutes. He had Sinatra tickets. It took that same amount of time for another mortician he knows to pluck the nose hairs from a body. A fact that is preposterous to Joe. “Thirty-five minutes!” he shrieks as he lights a match from a small matchbook and holds it to Ernest’s nostrils.

Joe knows how to keep himself entertained. He’s performed what he calls an air raid embalming; he did an embalming with the lights off. “The funeral director comes back and asks what I’m doing. I tell him I’m practicing for an air raid,” he tells me. “He says to me, ‘If there’s an air raid fuck the body and save yourself.’”

Joe’s just a good guy. He did work for the Second Life Pacemaker Foundation; he would collect used, but undamaged, pacemakers from bodies he worked on and donate them to people in developing countries. That is until manufacturers and reps got together and shut down the program.

ERNEST’S SKIN AGAIN has the normal pink-fleshy color to it, as if he’s come back to life. His veins are popping up as the blood is drained from his body—the dark red liquid flowing rapidly from the open artery. I worry he may stand up suddenly.

According to Joe, Ernest probably died from pneumonia based on the amount of red fluid coming from his lungs. Joe is sucking it out with a device called a trocar—also used for liposuction—as I divert my eyes. This body is far tamer than some of the other cases he’s had over the years, which include everything from the grotesque to the thrilling, from a man with seven bullet holes in his hand (“He thought he was gonna stop the bullet,” Joe says) to the queen of Ghana. The most money he’s ever found on a body: “Forty-four one hundred dollar bills,” he tells me.

Joe grabs two plastic grocery bags from the table and begins to place them over the feet. “Not many people like to touch the feet, so I put these on them.”

Joe Adolf, son of the funeral director, peeks his head in and is quickly persuaded by the other Joe to help him cloth the body. Pulling on the pants they find a funeral card in the dead man’s pocket. They return it to its place and begin pulling on the shoes, a task they struggle with.

“I’ve seen it all,” Joe tells me. “How you’ve killed yourself. How someone’s killed you.”

I manage to slip in a question I’ve been rather curious about—does his occupation make him think about his own mortality much? He gives me the short answer. “It’s gonna happen,” he says.

TODAY HE SQUIRTS Lip Stay on the lips and eyes to keep them closed; if he were in a hurry he’d trade it for Super Glue. He’ll be back tomorrow to apply make up and put him in the casket. Another job well done. But another body has just come in. Today’s a busy day.

While most days aren’t as booked as this one, Joe doesn’t seem to mind. At 71, I can’t help but wonder if he has plans to retire any time soon. Not officially. “I enjoy life now,” he says. “I have no schedule. It’s like I’m retired now because I don’t have too much work anymore.”

Nowadays he has more time to do the other things he enjoys, like spending time with his two kids and three grandchildren, walking at the track and watching more sports.

ALMOST THREE HOURS have passed. It’s time for me to leave, and Joe walks me to the back door. We bump elbows—what Joe calls the mortician’s handshake—to avoid me having to touch the yellow rubber gloves he’s been wearing all afternoon. “Remember, any day above ground is a good one,” he says as I step out into the February cold, a chill shooting up my spine.

Damn right.

“Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.”
—Kurt Vonnegut