“Well, we can fix that in a minute or two.” He opened the telephone box, exposing a maze of wires and coils, and fiddled with the end of the receiver cord. He jiggled the hook up and down, then spoke into the phone. “Hi, this is Peter. Everything’s under control at 105.”
He hung up, smiled, gave me a pat on the head and walked out.
* * *
All this took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. Then, when I was nine years old, we moved across the country to Boston—and I missed my mentor acutely. Information Please belonged in that old wooden box back home, and I somehow never thought of trying the tall, skinny new phone that sat on a small table in the hall.
Yet, as I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me; often in moments of doubt and perplexity I would recall the serene sense of security I had when I knew that I could call Information Please and get the right answer. I appreciated now how patient and kind she was to have wasted her time on a little boy.
A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down at Seattle. I had about half an hour between plane connections, and I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now, happily mellowed by marriage and motherhood. Then, really without thinking, I dialed my hometown operator and said, “Information Please.”
Miraculously, I heard again the small, clear voice I knew so well: “Information.”
I hadn’t planned this, but I heard myself saying, “Could you tell me, please, how to spell the word ‘fix’?”
There was a long pause. Then came the softly spoken answer. “I guess,” said Information Please, “that your finger must have healed by now.”
I laughed. “So it’s really still you,” I said. “I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during all that time…”
“I wonder,” she replied, “if you know how much you meant to me? I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls. Silly, wasn’t it?”
It didn’t seem silly, but I didn’t say so. Instead, I told her how often I had thought of her over the years, and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister after the first semester was over.
“Please do. Just ask for Sally.”
“Good-bye, Sally.” It sounded strange for Information Please to have a name. “If I run into any chipmunks, I’ll tell them to eat fruit and nuts.”
“Do that,” she said. “And I expect one of these days you’ll be off for the Orinoco. Well, good-bye.”
* * *
Just three months later I was back again at the Seattle airport. A different voice answered, “Information,” and I asked for Sally.
“Are you a friend?”
“Yes,” I said. “An old friend.”
“Then I’m sorry to have to tell you. Sally had only been working part-time in the last few years because she was ill. She died five weeks ago.” But before I could hang up, she said, “Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Villiard?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down.”
“What was it?” I asked, almost knowing in advance what it would be.
“Here it is, I’ll read it—‘Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He’ll know what I mean.’ ”
I thanked her and hung up. I did know what Sally meant.
Originally published in the June1966 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.
CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Letter in the Wallet” by Arnold Fine, Jewish Press (January 20, 1984), copyright © 1984 by Arnold Fine; Reader’s Digest, September 1985
“In Over His Head” by Doug Colligan, Reader’s Digest, April 2007
Photographs by Gunnar Conrad
“Not a Moment to Spare” by Kevin Harter, Reader’s Digest, October 1998
“Stowaway!” by Armando Socarras Ramirez, as told to Denis Fodor and John Reddy, Reader’s Digest, January 1971
“To Do or Not to Do” by Mary Roach, Reader’s Digest, June 2002
“Class Action” by Lynn Rosellini, Reader’s Digest, April 2004
Photograph by Kelly Laduke
“Friends for Life” by Ellen Sherman, Reader’s Digest, March 2005
Photograph on page 38 by Chris Cone; pages 40 and 41 right courtesy Herb Heilbrun; page 41 left courtesy John Leahr
“The Prisoner and the Encyclopedia Editor” by Daniel A. Gross, New Yorker (September 13, 2016), copyright © 2016 by Daniel A. Gross;
Reader’s Digest, December 2017/January 2018
Photograph courtesy Daniel A. Gross
“Killer on Call” by Max Alexander, Reader’s Digest, November 2004
Photograph on page 52 by Bradley C. Bower/AP/Shutterstock; page 56 Tony Kurdzuk/AP/Shutterstock
“Grizzly Attack!” by Peter Michelmore, Reader’s Digest, June 1992
“A Five-Year-Old Teaches a Lesson in Grace” by Leslie Kendall Dye, New York Times (November 3, 2017), copyright © 2017 by Leslie Kendall Dye; Reader’s Digest, March 2019
“Emergency Whistle on Block Island” by Floyd Miller, Reader’s Digest, June 1970
“The Baby and the Battalion” by Kenneth Miller, Reader’s Digest, May 2007
Photographs on pages 86 and 93 by Michele McDonald/Boston Globe/Getty Images; page 89 courtesy Maureen Walsh; page 90 courtesy Captain Sean Donovan
“An Evening Drive” by Joe Posnanski, joeposnanski.substack.com (September 17, 2015), copyright © 2015 by Joe Posnanski; Reader’s Digest, November 2016
“One Wing and a Prayer” by Penny Porter, Reader’s Digest, September 1997
Photograph by Roger de la Harpe/Shutterstock
“Summer’s Magical Music” by Allan Sherman, Reader’s Digest, July 1971
“When Your Best Fish Story Is About Catching a Goat” by Rick Bragg, Garden & Gun (June/July 2017), copyright © 2017 by Rick Bragg; Reader’s Digest, November 2017
“Horror in the Heartland” by Henry Hurt, Reader’s Digest, May 1996
Photograph on page 118 by Charles H Porter Iv/AP/Shutterstock; page 128 by Bill Waugh/AP/Shutterstock
“Thank You for Caring So Much” by Peter DeMarco, New York Times (October 6, 2016), copyright © 2016 by Peter DeMarco; Reader’s Digest, November 2017
Photograph courtesy Peter DeMarco
“At the Bottom of the Bay” by Anita Bartholomew, Reader’s Digest, January 2007
Photographs by Kelly Laduke
“Life on the Funny Farm” by Laura Cunningham, New York Times Magazine (May 12, 1991), copyright © 1991 by Laura Cunningham; Reader’s Digest, September 1991
“Stopping a Kidnapper” by Alyssa Jung, Reader’s Digest, June 2017
Photograph by Trevor Paulhus
“The Little Boat That Sailed Through Time” by Arnold Berwick, Reader’s Digest, May 1993
“Buried in Mud” by Nick Heil, Reader’s Digest, April 2014
Photograph on page 158 courtesy Michelle Grainger; page 163 by Jeremy Papasso/Getty Images
“I’ve Come to Clean Your Shoes” by Madge Harrah adapted from the book On Children and Death, copyright © 1983 by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D., published by Touchstone, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.; Reader’s Digest, December 1983
“Gandalf and the Search for the Lost Boy” by Christopher W. Davis, Reader’s Digest, December 2007
Photographs by Ann States
“The Curse of Sigurd the Fingerless” by Ruth Park, Reader’s Digest, September 1984
“The Day We Planted Hope” by Conrad Kiechel, Reader’s Digest, March 1994
“The Over-the-Hill Gang” by Mark Seal, Vanity Fair March 2016, copyright © 2016 by Mark Seal; Reader’s Digest, International Editions, 2017
Photograph on page 192 by Kjpargeter/Shutterstock; page 194 by Shutterstock; page 198 by Metropolitan Police/AP/Shutterstock; page 203 by Stefan Wermuth/Reuters/stock.adobe.com
“My Mamma’s Letters” by Octavia Capuzzi Locke, Johns Hopki
ns Magazine (June 1987), copyright © by Octavia Capuzzi Locke; Reader’s Digest, June 1992
“The Stranger Who Taught Magic” by Arthur Gordon, Reader’s Digest, June 1970, reprinted with permission of the Estate of Pamela M. Gordon
“Runaway Train” by William M. Hendry, Reader’s Digest, March 2002
Photograph on page 216 by Frank Cezus/Getty Images; page 218 by Michael O’Neill
“A Miracle of Mermaids” by Margo Pfeiff, Reader’s Digest, September 1995
“I Captured Adolf Eichmann” excerpted from the book Eichmann in My Hands by Peter Z. Malkin and Harry Stein, copyright © 1990 by Peter Z. Malkin and Harry Stein, published by Grand Central Publishing; Reader’s Digest, February 1991
Photograph on page 235 by GPO/Getty Images; page 239 by Evan Agostini/Liaison/Getty Images
“Some Sort of Magic” by Annette Foglino, Reader’s Digest, August 1998
Photographs by Roger Mastroianni
“My Fourteenth Summer” by W. W. Meade, Reader’s Digest, July 1998
“ ‘Please Don’t Leave Me!’ ”by James Hutchinson, Reader’s Digest, August 1991
Photograph on page 266 by brazzo/Getty Images; page 274 courtesy Royd Kennedy
“How to Ruin a Joke” by Andy Simmons, Reader’s Digest, September 2008
“Nailed Through the Heart” by Per Ola and Emily D’Aulaire, Reader’s Digest, June 1993
“Raising Alexander” by Chris Turner, Reader’s Digest, October 2016
Photographs by Noah Fallis
“On the Line” by Mitch Lipka, Reader’s Digest, November 2008
Photograph by Rudy Archuleta/Redux
“ ‘Information Please’ ” by Paul Villiard, Reader’s Digest, June 1966
A READER’S DIGEST BOOK
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