Coffee shop acquaintance

By Marah Hoffman ’22, guest writer

I first met Kalbaugh in a local coffee shop where I was attempting to write an analysis paper. Kalbaugh, a gentlemanly septuagenarian, asked if he could sit next to me. I said he could. Kalbaugh claimed we had met before, promising my smile was familiar. I assured him we hadn’t; although, I appreciated his charm.

During the hour Kalbaugh sat next to me, I did not write much. Instead, I listened to Kalbaugh describe his loathe of cell phones, love of letter writing, the peculiar habits of the pet rabbit he had as a boy, the magic of nature, etc. When Kalbaugh finally stood, he apologized for distracting me (I assured him he hadn’t, though he certainly had) and thanked me for my charm (funny, that was the exact word I associated with him). Before he left, he gifted a beautiful wooden board game that he had made himself to the ladies working at the counter. Then, he opened the dinging door and started down the street.

That last act of giving a handmade game tugged at the strings in my chest. In response, a voice, from that same place in my chest, screamed that there was more to this kindly man than I had heard. Maybe it was the muse, a journalist’s intuition. This, I felt, was just an inciting incident. There was a whole story yet. As an introvert, I considered ignoring it. Then, I sprinted out of the coffee shop, down the street, toward Kalbaugh and his lush past.

Two months later, I was sitting next to Kalbaugh at the same coffee shop, again ready to listen—this time, with a notebook.

***

Bill Kalbaugh’s stories contain soap suds dancing on the wind across an old college campus, alluring women, laughter, submarines, and marine corpses. They are fleshed in the full colors of the storytelling spectrum—romance, drama, comedy, tragedy. But mainly, they exist in that vibrant comedic realm. When hearing them, the most important thing one must remember is they are all true.

“I was born in 1943—79 years ago as of March 2—in Dunkirk, NY…Then, we moved to Binghamton, NY where I was reared along the Susquehanna River. We were only about a block and a half from the river, and my father had a huge garden. Good soil there. That’s how I got my gardening talent. He got it from his father, and I got it from him,” Kalbaugh divulges of his origins.

Kalbaugh is a man who likes to watch things flourish kaleidoscopically, to get his hands dirty, and to recall the significance of roots. So, when he attended Orange County Community College after graduating high school, he knew he had to find a church. Not because he wanted to or was especially faithful (“I believe there is a God, and that’s about it”) but because he came from a church-going family.

Kalbaugh explains, “As a hungry college student, I went to a nearby Presbyterian church that served free coffee. That is where I met my wife, Barbara. I saw this beautiful girl in the corner. Her dress was unzipped this much.” Kalbaugh holds his hands about five inches apart and smiles mischievously. “So, I just said, ‘Your dress is unzipped.’ And I zipped it right up. Her face turned beet red. But her father laughed.” After that, Barbara’s father started inviting Kalbaugh over for Sunday dinners—apparently endeared to him by his audacity.

Kalbaugh’s mischievous streak flared more fervently at Oswego State College (“we called it Succo”), a stunning lake-side school north of Syracuse, where Kalbaugh went after his two-year community college. When Kalbaugh reflects on his time at “Succo,” there are no mentions of books or papers—just pranks of herculean proportion.

Kalbaugh begins, “Me and my buddy, we lived to pull pranks. He had a pet alligator that kept growing. So, we decided to give him to the zoo, but before that, we wanted to have some fun, so we put him in the college fountain. The campus police tried to do something about it. They were ruining our fun. So, we filled the fountain with soap. Soap everywhere. Then, the cops told all the students to go away. But we swaggered up to them and said, ‘Sir, we were biology majors. We can help you remove this alligator.’ They were so gullible, they agreed. But instead of helping, we just discreetly poured more soap in. Then, they had to get enormous fans to blow the soap away. It went everywhere. Succo was the cleanest campus in the state…Eventually, the Dean released a message saying he was going to find the students responsible. He was furious.”

“Did he ever find out it was you?” I ask.

Kalbaugh looks at me as if this is an insulting question. “Of course not,” he replies.

At this point in his education, Kalbaugh had developed a tenacity for perplexing authorities.

He continues his tall tale of a life story with further shenanigans: “We went down to NYC one time, and my buddy had a bench made. We put his bench in Central Park. Then, when the police came along, we picked up our bench and walked away. The police tried to charge us for stealing a park bench, but we exclaimed, ‘Hey, it’s ours!’ 

“Another time, we borrowed a compressor and jackhammers, had safety signs made, and put on some overalls—all so we could pretend we were construction workers. Soon, a cop came along and started directing traffic around us while we broke apart the street. Then, we left. The poor cop was flabbergasted. His boss asked, ‘Where are the men who made this hole?’ And the cop had to say he just didn’t know. They contacted electricians, construction workers, the fire company, engineers, everyone. They could not figure out who did it—what company. The hole was there for three months. It was in the newspaper: ‘Two guys drilled a hole in the street and left it.’” Kalbaugh beams at this part, proud of his ability to evade punishment—like a havoc-wreaking ghost. 

The next chapter of Kalbaugh’s story too contains adventure—but ones experienced under the shadow of mortality. After he graduated, Kalbaugh says, “There was the draft which made me eligible to be a soldier in the Vietnam War.”

During Kalbaugh’s time in the service, he did not date Barbara or anyone else for that matter. Kalbaugh explains, “I didn’t think it would be right to have a person waiting for me, not knowing what was going to happen to me.” By choosing the sanity of his significant other over his own longing for connection, Kalbaugh proves his devotion to his loved ones.

Unlike his decision to cut ties, the choice in which branch of the service to enlist in was easy for Kalbaugh: “I didn’t want to be cannon fodder, so I went into the navy, officers’ candidate school specifically.”

One of Kalbaugh’s first goals—find out what it is like to be in a submarine. There is “a port and starboard side, a deck…and always two torpedoes,” Kalbaugh recounts from memory. But studying a submarine is different than breathing within its walls. He wanted to ride one.

On what turned out to be Kalbaugh’s first and last venture underwater, he describes the submarine’s immensely slow and raucous descent: “I heard that sound, and I was mightily holding onto a rope to pull the lid shut. Then, they said, ‘It is going to take about an hour for this to get under water.’”

The trip turned out to be fine, but Kalbaugh’s reaction on the surface was not: “My ears kept ringing. I went into a compression chamber. Turns out I’d damaged my ears as a kid. So that’s how I got out. After that, I got orders to go to surface school which is for ships on the surface.”

Kalbaugh’s first port was in California, so he drove himself across the country—stopping in places such as the middle of a Texan desert and radiant Phoenix, Arizona. “Always go on journeys with somebody because there are such beautiful things. You have to touch somebody to believe it’s true,” Kalbaugh says reminiscently.

Once in The Golden State, Kalbaugh’s wonderment continued: “I saw the seals on the beaches along the coast…We sailed underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. You wonder how the hell did they build it that high. One day I had off, so I rode all the cable cars in San Franciso from the bottom all the way to the top…I rode the trollies. I saw all the ships on the fisherman’s wharf.”

Kalbaugh’s second port was much further and more foreign than even beachy California. It was in Olongapo, Philippines. Kalbaugh reports their routine: “We would go off for 30 days along the coast of Vietnam and then go back. Unfortunately, where we were stationed, the marines would have heavy casualties. They would load the bodies on our ship, and we would bring them back. It was a gruesome thing to do. I was the officer control on the ship. This ship was made out of armor plate—the strongest metal you could find.  I found out quickly why. When the dead were brought in, their bodies were booby-trapped with grenades, dynamite, anything dangerous. The feeling of the enemy was that if they could kill the medical people, they would kill more because no one could take care of the wounded. It’s traumatic to think about.”

Then Kalbaugh surprises me by pausing—the first time he has done so in the past hour. “I don’t want to say any more about that,” he says. I nod.

After a moment, Kalbaugh continues, saying, “When I was in the Philippines, I met some friends like Danny Cocol. Danny took me to his family’s rice patty. I got to ride a water buffalo. I got to ride right up on the shoulders of this thing… Later, a farmhand climbed up a coconut palm and wacked a couple of coconuts off. The farmer always had a machete. He used it like a toothpick. It was second nature to him…He had me drink the milk fresh from a green coconut. After drinking the milk, you could scoop the rest out with a spoon. Wow, it was so delicious.” 

Kalbaugh looks upward briefly, as if he can see the green coconuts, and I look too–imagining  bright green leaves, the creaminess of fresh coconut milk. The blood, in our minds, has been washed away by this lushness. I notice Kalbaugh chooses to direct his words, his thoughts, his eyes toward the good. So, that is what you see when you listen to him.

On the way back from the Philippines, Kalbaugh says he saw Singapore and Japan: “I watched the flying fish. The water of the China Sea was just glass smooth.”

Of traveling, Kalbaugh declares, “I am not a touristy-type person, but there are certain sites I like to see. Not bars. Not coffee shops.” It is life Kalbaugh seeks. Always.

When I tell Kalbaugh I must leave (to return to my life on campus—papers, classes, track practice, laundry), he is disappointed. “But I haven’t even told you about my childhood yet. That could be a whole ‘nother book,” he protests. “I’d love to hear about your childhood,” I say, meaning it. “Maybe another time,” we agree.

Walking back toward my dorm, I realize there are some people who have stories that never end. Bill Kalbaugh is one such person. I could listen to him for hours, for days, for weeks, and still there would not be enough time for the intricacy, the beauty of his memory.

When I pass the fountain outside of the Subway on my college’s perimeter, I do not consider a submarine’s slow descent—the constant threat of its two torpedoes. Instead, I imagine an alligator’s eyes peeping out, perplexing all who pass. I laugh.