My last visit with Ken.

Beginning in the late 1980s and throughout the early ‘90s, I would get together regularly with an old Austrian friend of mine. Ken and his wife resided at an independent living facility in a small neighboring town, my friend having retired from Chicago after a career as an accountant. Ken was a small, wiry man with a mischievous sense of humor. He and I would meet periodically for breakfast or lunch and talk over the problems of the world. We’d also get together once a month at his home, where he would attempt to elevate my intellect with prepared readings of European philosophers. (For better or worse, Ken, little of it took.) We continued these discussions until the week before his death, at age 80, in 1994. Ken and I were friends for just over eight years, and even today his friendship remains one of my most valued.

In his will, Ken bestowed on me his library of a couple of thousand books. A conversation with his nephew at the time of Ken’s death gave me a fuller picture of who Ken really was. I discovered, for example, that this unassuming little man had been one of the youth officers in Austria’s Social Democratic Party. The party led an armed fight in the February Uprising of 1934 against the Austrian Fascists. As that fight became increasingly desperate, and with a price on his head, Ken was smuggled out of the country (and eventually changed his name).

In my library hangs a picture of the two of us. The photograph was taken when Cindy and I, returning from a hiking trip in the mountains, had stopped in to say hello. Ken died the next week. Often, I’ll stare at the photograph and remember him with great fondness. He taught me some simple yet key lessons.

1. Not every question needs to be answered. One day, out of the blue, Ken asked me, “Do you still like your boss?” Nothing unusual, except that the question was presented in the quiet reading room of the genealogy library where I worked, in the very loud voice of the hard-of-hearing, with my boss standing nearby and a roomful of patrons sitting at the oak research tables. I paused, feeling the pressure of the rock against a hard place, then replied simply, “Ken, it is good to see you.”
2. Curb your optimism. In 1989, when I was preparing to open my own bookstore, Ken advised me on making a business plan. Each time I would present my plan, he would push back and say it was too optimistic. “Plan for no sales and pay your bills with that,” he told me. That is some pretty darned good farming advice right there: when your crop fails or no one buys what you have on offer, you’d better be prepared with a contingency plan.
3. Find your place and stick. Eventually, as part of a resettlement program, Ken made it to the U.S. in the late 1930s. He was set up with a job in Houston as an auto mechanic. That did not last. To know Ken was to know that there could not have been a job or location for which this bookish Viennese Marxist would have been less suited. A few months later he was resettled again, this time in Chicago, where he trained as an accountant and where he remained until retirement.
4. Spend time in quiet contemplation. Ken had a poster of a Gustav Klimt painting displayed in a special alcove of his home. He said he liked to just sit and stare at it. He told me over lunch one day that every time he did, he saw something new. I don’t get Klimt, but I do get the concept. Routinely, I’ll sit in my garden and just stare. Eventually, I’ll see it differently, come to a better understanding of what should be done.
5. Find and praise competence in the small places. Ken always insisted on talking with the manager or owner of a business when a clerk had excelled at his job. To a bemused auto parts manager, he would outline, his heavy Austrian accent at elevated volume, what specifically the employee at the counter had done well. “Call attention to good work habits,” he told me, “and the world becomes a better place.” When the young man helping me build a fence has persevered in hot weather with good cheer, I’ll thank him for a job well done — and also tell his mother for good measure.

The two of us during that last visit.

It’s been more than 25 years since Ken’s passing, and I’m still grateful for my unlikely friendship with such a unique and interesting man. Cheers, Ken, and thanks for that.

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Reading this weekend: Local Culture: journal of the Front Porch Republic, Drawn and Quartered (Chas Adams)