Gross asked Hall how he liked being old.\u00a0 Hall couldn\u2019t complain, he said, but then he did for several minutes.\u00a0 Hall talked about how he had published a story in the New Yorker<\/em> in which a security guard at the National Gallery had treated 83-year-old Hall like a child; the guard had leaned over to Hall, who was in a wheelchair, and asked, \u201cHow was din-din?\u201d<\/p>\n I could listen to Hall talk about aging all day.\u00a0\u00a0 I didn\u2019t really want to get out of my car and shop for prunes, yogurt and salmon.<\/p>\n I used<\/strong><\/span> to be a lot younger . . .<\/p>\n Fifty, for instance.\u00a0 In 2000 my then-teenage son attended a New Hampshire summer camp an hour from Hall\u2019s house. I visited the camp on parents\u2019 day.\u00a0 Should I look up my English teacher?\u00a0 I had taken courses from Hall 30 years earlier?<\/p>\n Maybe Hall lived way back in the woods.\u00a0 Maybe he sat on his front porch with a shotgun.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n Hall\u2019s house<\/strong><\/span> was not deep in the woods.\u00a0 It was about 50 feet from a federal highway and across from a summer camp.\u00a0 (There are a lot of camps in New Hampshire.) \u00a0He could sometimes hear \u201cReveille.\u201d<\/p>\n Don Hall at family house, New Hampshire, 2006 (Photo by Ken Williams\/ Concord Monitor)<\/p><\/div>\n Hall was happy to see me, and said pretty quickly, \u201cI\u2019m rich.\u201d \u00a0Hall made his money mainly from his award-winning children\u2019s book Ox-Cart<\/em> <\/em>Man<\/em>. Only a poet would ask, \u201cAre you rich?\u201d\u00a0He added, \u201cHow about you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m doing OK,\u201d I said. \u00a0I had a kid at a New Hampshire summer camp. Enough said.<\/p>\n In 1973,<\/strong><\/span> when I had graduated college, Hall\u00a0discouraged me from returning to Cleveland. He had said, \u201cWhy do that — to sell insurance?\u201d<\/p>\n I went home.\u00a0 I \u201csold insurance.\u201d\u00a0 I joined my father\u2019s real estate biz.<\/p>\n Hall took me to a fancy restaurant near his farm.\u00a0 I said, \u201cI own and manage apartment buildings.\u00a0 I’m a landlord.\u00a0 And I play clarinet.\u201d\u00a0Meaning: I can improvise. I\u2019m still in the arts!<\/p>\n Donald Hall and Bert Stratton New Hampshire, 2000<\/p><\/div>\n My first year<\/strong><\/span> at Michigan, Hall had looked like a stock broker. He went hippie about a year later, I think.\u00a0In New Hampshire he wore a hippie shirt, and I <\/em>was the guy in the polo shirt.<\/p>\n Hall quit his tenured job at Michigan in 1975 and moved to his grandfather\u2019s farm near Wilmot, New Hamphsire.\u00a0 Hall did exclusively freelance writing.<\/p>\n At the restaurant, Hall said he had traveled to the Amazon River on a private jet with a Michigan grad who had made it big in the movie business.\u00a0 The student owned a movie company. \u00a0Hall said, \u201cHis family was in the grocery business in Detroit, until I warped his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n Hall warped<\/strong><\/span> many minds. He told me to guard against bitterness.\u00a0 His late wife, poet Jane Kenyon, had died five years earlier, at 47.\u00a0 I remembered her from English classes.<\/p>\n Hall had struggled with colon and liver cancer, which was supposed to have killed him, but didn\u2019t. Instead, his wife died from leukemia.\u00a0 He said, \u201cEvery generation thinks they know more than the next generation.\u00a0 Schopenhauer was writing about this in the 1700s. You don\u2019t know more than the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n Hall wouldn\u2019t even let me pay the tip.<\/p>\n The next day<\/strong><\/span> I drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, and flew back to Cleveland to evict people, fix leaky faucets and collect late rents.\u00a0 It was not poetic.<\/p>\n Eleven years later I mailed several of my published op-eds to \u201cDonald Hall, Eagle Pond Farm, New Hampshire.\u201d\u00a0 (He doesn\u2019t use email.) \u00a0I wrote: \u201cFrom your student — your 61-year-old student.\u201d \u00a0I dated the letter.\u00a0 Hall is big on dates.<\/p>\n Don wrote back, \u201cI know you know I know that you feel old and know you are not.\u201d<\/p>\n Get out<\/strong><\/span> of the car.\u00a0 Buy the prunes, salmon and yogurt \u2013- and some beers.<\/p>\n I want to make it to Hall’s age.<\/p>\n —![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/hall-at-farm-2006-300x199.jpg\" "\\"hall")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/donald-hall-and-bert-aug-2000-new-hampshire-300x199.jpg\" "\\"donald")
\nDonald Hall, 84, is poet emeritus of the United States and a recipient of \u00a0the 2010 National Medal of Arts.<\/em><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/hall-and-obama-2011.jpg\" "\\"hall")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/hour-glass-ralph-donald-hall-story-300x240.jpg\" "\\"hour")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"