Completely in the Dark

I’m not likely to ever meet anyone again quite like Mr. Tom Harrison.

The Harrisons lived next door to us on Old Baltimore Road in Maryland. I recall little about his wife Phoebe as she passed away a short time after we arrived in Olney.

Mr. Harrison lived in a sprawling colonial overrun with plants and books. There was an observatory in his backyard that housed a telescope. He often invited my brother and I over to peek through it and observe the stars. One night we even got to see a comet.

After his wife died, he and my parents became good friends. Mr. Harrison was a former RAF pilot. He was tall, with thick white hair and a lovely, craggy, angular face (pictured at left with Mom in the early ’70s). I was certain that in his time he must have made a dashing pilot.

But…