Kings X!

That’s what we used to holler when we were just about to be caught and become “It” in the game of Tag, back when we were kids. You too? “King’s X! I need to tie my shoe!”

I never intended this blog to be “tagged” as a political blog. It just turned out there was a lot of politics going around when I started writing on it, and it drifted that way. Retirement is about doing something different every day, I’ve decided. So from now on, I’m going to try to write a couple of days a week about what I see going on around me. A little boring for some of my political junkie friends, I’m afraid, but I’ll try to throw a little red meat out once in a while. Meanwhile . . . “Kings X” from politics . . .

Two very good things happened in my world this week. First, I got to see Camelot on the stage at the Bismarck Civic Center. Second, the North Dakota Health Department gave the Hettinger Nursing Home a “clean bill of health” and the wonderful staff there is back in the business of taking care of people instead of dancing around in a regulatory never-never land. More on that later. First, Camelot.

My, it was wonderful. Lillian will tell you I am a sucker for vintage musicals. West Side Story. My Fair Lady. The Sound of Music. Paint Your Wagon. Oklahoma. The Music Man. And for old movie theme songs. When we’d go into movie rental stores (in the days before Netflix) she’d steer me away from the classical movie section because she shuddered and put a lot of distance between us when I’d launch into “Moon River” in a very loud voice every time I spotted “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” on the shelf.

But Camelot stands alone. Partly because of the story of King Arthur and his round table, a story of idealism and innocence and innocence lost. And partly because of the wonderful song lyrics, especially this, from the title, song:

A law was made a distant moon ago here:
July and August cannot be too hot.
And there's a legal limit to the snow here
In Camelot.
The winter is forbidden till December
And exits March the second on the dot.
By order, summer lingers through September
In Camelot.

The rain may never fall till after sundown.
By eight, the morning fog must disappear.
The snow may never slush upon the hillside.
By nine p.m. the moonlight must appear.
In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.

Those lyrics include one of my favorite phrases: “happily-ever-aftering.” I’ve never heard it used anywhere else. Using that phrase as a verb is magical to me. It’s what we should be doing. We should be about happily-ever-aftering all the time. The world would be a better place if we spent more time happily-ever-aftering.

Camelot, of course, also calls to mind President John F. Kennedy, whose name will be forever linked to it. The story goes that shortly after Kennedy’s death, the author Theodore H. White, who wrote The Making of the President—1960, (as opposed to the other, British, T.H. White who wrote The Once and Future King, the semi-historical novel on which Camelot, the musical, is based-there’s a bit of irony) was interviewing President Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, for a story in Life Magazine, and she told him that President Kennedy, before he went to sleep at night, loved to play records, and the song he loved the most was from Camelot, the title song, and the lines he loved to hear were

“Don't let it be forgot,
That once there was a spot,
For one brief shining moment
That was known as Camelot.”

Mrs. Kennedy told White that there’ll be great presidents in the future, but there’ll never be another Camelot—this was Camelot.

That article appeared in Life Magazine just a couple of weeks after the President’s assassination, and it forever attached the word “Camelot” to the Kennedy administration. One brief shining moment, indeed. Far too brief. Like Arthurian England, America lost its innocence on that November day in 1963, and sadly, I fear, we shall never get it back.

Happily-ever-after stories just don’t get told much any more. But there is one this week, right here in western North Dakota. It’s the story of the Hettinger Nursing Home. And I’ll tell it next time I sit down at my computer to write.

P.S. If you’d like to hear Richard Burton in his original Broadway role as King Arthur sing Camelot, click here. Go ahead. It will make your day brighter. It worked for me.


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