Little Gray Books Lectures, 2001-2002, hosted by John Hodgman at Galapagos in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Egyptian Tricked-out Halls of Faith
Script, audio performance, Little Gray Books #9.
Every year I spend Christmas with my family in the Philadelphia area. One time my cousin Sally and her husband came in to town to sightsee with their kids. One place they wanted to go was the Masonic Temple.
The Masonic Temple in Philadelphia is a rather imposing, multistory, stone building across from City Hall on North Broad Street. It was built around the turn of the century, and features carved relief sculpture and some interesting symbols around the facade. I had no particular interest in the Masons, but the building was kind of interesting, so I joined my cousins on the tour.
Inside smelled musty, like old wood. We were escorted through various rooms where they held meetings and events. Each room had its own theme—one room was the “Egyptian” room. It had pyramid and hieroglyphic symbols throughout its decor. Other rooms included the Medieval Room and The Chinese Room. There were probably 12 to 15 of these rooms, each able to hold a few hundred men. The ceilings in each room were offset by intricately painted moulding. All the furniture was wood, and had been carved with iconography to specifically match the theme of the room. If they ran out of seats in one room, they told me, they would not remove chairs from a different-themed room to fill the space.
In the center of the main floor was a large, room with a cathedral ceiling and glass cases displaying various artifacts of the history of the masons. These include a lambskin skirt worn by George Washington at his initiation. We were studying the skirt, and trying to imagine what the initiation entailed, when the conversation turned back to our family, and I learned that my father is a member of the Society of Freemasons.
Now, my father has been in drag racing for most of his life. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, he was winning enough to support a middle-class suburban Philadelphia family. He had been a scolarship student at Cornell’s School of Engineering in the 1950’s. Rather than moving in to a career in designing or teaching, my father was the first to apply physics and mechanical engineering to drag racing engines, with a high degree of success over the traditional tinkering methods of backyard hot rodders. He started racing his own cars in 1965, and by 1972 he was considered a legend in the racing world. His weekends were spent on the road, traveling to races around the country, while weekdays he was in his shop, under the hood, perfecting for the next NHRA meet. In other words, he is the last person you could imagine wearing a lambskin skirt.
I recently asked him about this Mason stuff. Now he’s not much of a talker, especially about personal things, and he has kind of a “gruff” manner, which is how he got his professional nickname: Grumpy.
So here’s how the conversation went:
Track 01 (1m48s)
I’ll just mention at this point that you may think he’s being evasive because we’re talking about the Masons. As it happens, they threaten severe penalties for revealing the secrets of the society. But this is how he has always talked-- regardless of the subject matter, as if conversation itself is an annoyance.
This gruffness makes it hard to approach him, even for his daughter. It also makes him inscrutable. In recent years our conversation has become easier, but it never evolves beyond family concerns or business.
Track 02 (2m45s)
At first I was disappointed that I couldn’t get him to talk more about the Masons. But then I realized I had never heard him mention God before, or anything having to do with faith.
It just astonished me to think that we could even have a conversation about faith. To me he’s always been married to science, and certainty. Faith wasn’t something that I thought he ever considered.
So I decided to call him back.
Track 03 (1m09s)
At first, his candor on this subject was so remarkable, that for a moment I thought I had found a golden key to unlock the clock ticking away in his inscrutable mind. But then I realized that it had come too easily. I asked him whether his belief had any affect on how he lived his day to day life.
He thought about it, and said no.
I don’t think he was being elusive with me, at that point, but maybe with himself.
It’s still hard to imagine my father in a lambskin skirt walking the plush halls of the Egyptian room.
But if I can take one lesson from this inquiry, it is that the mysteries of the lambskin skirt and the Egyptian room, albeit strange and intriguing, may pale in comparison to those hidden in the minds of our closest family members.
Track 04: (0m13s)
Thank you.