US/THEM

To his wife, to his old comrades at the Avon County News, or to his acquaintances from over at the College, Gerry Frank might say, for example, "Flaubert once claimed that what he'd really like to write is a novel about Nothing." In his regular feature column, however—in the small-town weekly newspaper of a still largely rural Maryland county—it would have to read something like this:

Frank Opinions, by Gerald Frank Us/Them

The celebrated nineteenth-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, once remarked that what he would really like to write is a novel about Nothing—rather like the comedian Jerry Seinfeld's self-described "TV series about nothing."

After which he might acknowledge that the same was looking to be the case with this week's column, although its author still hoped to make it not quite about Nothing, but rather ("as the celebrated Elizabethan poet/playwright William Shakespeare put it in the title of one of his comedies") about Much Ado About Nothing.

There: That should work as a lead, a hook, a kick-start from which the next sentences and paragraphs will flow (pardon Gerry's mixed metaphor)—and voilà, another "Frank Opinions" column to be e-mailed after lunch to Editor Chadwick at the News and put to bed for the week.

But they don't come, those next sentences—haven't come, now, for the third work-morning in a row—for the ever-clearer reason that their would-be author hasn't figured out yet what he wants to write about, namely: Us(slash)Them. In Frank's opinion, he now types experimentally in his column's characteristic third-person viewpoint, what he needs is a meaningful connection between the "Us/Them" theme—much on his mind lately for reasons presently to be explained—and either or both of (1) a troubling disconnection, or anyhow an increasing distinction/difference/whatever, between, on this side of that slash, Mr. & Mrs. Gerald & Joan Frank, 14 Shad Run Road #212, Heron Bay Estates, Stratford MD 21600, and on its other side their pleasant gated community in general and their Shad Run condominium neighborhood in particular; and (2) his recently increasing difficulty—after so many productive decades of newspaper work!—in coming up with fresh ideas for the "F.O." column [but never mind that as a topic!].

Maybe fill in some background, to mark time while waiting for the Muse of Feature Columns to get off her ever-lazier butt and down to business? Gerry Frank here, Reader-if-this-gets-written: erstwhile journalist, not quite 70 yet but getting there fast. Born and raised in a small town near the banks of the Potomac in southern Maryland in World War Twotime, where and when the most ubiquitous Us/Them had been Us White Folks as distinct from Them Coloreds, until supplanted after Pearl Harbor by Us Allies versus Them Japs and Nazis (note the difference between that versus and that earlier, more ambivalent as distinct from: a difference to which we may return). Crossed the Chesapeake after high school to Stratford College, on the Free State's Eastern Shore (B.A. English 1958), then shifted north to New Jersey for the next quarter-century to do reportage and editorial work for the Trenton Times. Married his back-home sweetheart, learned a few life-lessons the hard way while doubtless failing to learn some others, and at age 50, more or less amicably, divorced. Had the immeasurably good fortune the very next year, at a Stratford homecoming, to meet alumna Joan Gibson (B.A. English 1968), herself likewise between life-chapters just then (40, also divorced and childless, copy-editing for her hometown newspaper, the Wilmington Delaware News Journal). So hit it off together from Day (& Night) One that after just a couple more dates they were spending every weekend together in her town or his, or back in the Stratford to which they shared a fond attachment—and whereto, not long after their marriage in the following year, they moved: Gerry to Associate-Edit the Avon...