FINAL DAY OF THE MOENCH The building was made of tan-brick, three-storied, with elegant white trim: the balcony midway up with its bronze statue, the columns supporting it, the large block W poised on the roof in eternal flight, the massive double doors in front all were white. Above the balcony were the words Weber College, and higher still directly beneath the roof Roman numerals read MDCCCLXL. Approaching along the walkway, I felt the fall sunlight, muted and frail beneath the flanking chestnut trees, and paused wondering seriously whether to make that final excursion or not. It would be a kind of ritual, a bit like a visit to the cemetery, and I wasnt certain that I could absorb it properly. Wolfe was probably right, I told myself. Maybe you really cant go home again. Seconds later, drawn irresistibly onward, I mounted the front steps, reached out and clasped the brass door handle with its ornately carved design surmounted by the helmeted head of a warrior. That same handle had responded to my touch countless times before, and this was our last contact, one that asserted itself with remarkable familiarity. Then I was inside, walking the empty, echoing hallways, passing the hollow offices that had once housed members of the English Department, all people I knew so warmly and well: Leland Monson, Cluster Nilsson, Larry Evans, my mother Pearl Allred and many others. The entire atmosphere vibrated faintly, and I began to feel a simmering sensation, a bubbly tingling within the cells. Once again, I was being ingested by the Moench, a building named long ago after Louis H. Moench, founder and first principal of the old Weber Stake Academy from which the present college evolved. Located on a quiet stretch of Jefferson Avenue across from Lester Park, it had for years throbbed as the cultural heart of the campus and of Ogden City, and it contained its own unique aroma. There was always a wonderful odor in this building, a former student has written. It was one which seemed to smell of Learning itself made up of the aromatic stuff janitors used for sweeping floors, chalk dust, and various rather acrid emanations from the chemistry and zoology labs in the basement. The words of novelist Joan Sanders, my sister. Although the building had long been deserted, the odor lingered. Even the vapors of rotten egg gas that often evoked tolerant amusement, they too seemed to hover vaguely. Or perhaps it was merely my imagination, for by listening intently with the inner ear I could hear nostalgic echoes, decades past, of J. Clair Anderson at the organ in the auditorium above, the far sweet voices of Roland Parrys Voce Coeds ebbing and flowing, ebbing and fading, along with the calls and laughter of friends, the footsteps of many students. All of it blended, evanesced, yet never quite ended. Mesmerized, I continued down the hall leaving echoes of my own a bit like waves on an empty shore. Slowly I climbed the broad stairway to my left, instinctively running my palm along the polished balustrade which occasional students and even a few intrepid faculty had years past polished further with the seats of their pants, glissading down from the landing above in a precarious kind of side-saddle. But I was ascending now, passing a spacious window full of violet-tinted sky, heading for the top landing beyond to open another final door. Through that door lay the auditorium, and I hesitated on the brink, searching its gloomy confines for answers to questions that could never really be formulated. Slowly, I paced across the frayed, wine-colored carpet, inhaling must and dustiness. Cautiously I mounted the shallow span of stairs to the proscenium, crossed it to the right and groped my way among the waiting curtains. For a time I literally hid myself in their furls, secluded from the world, immersed in darkness and history. How often I had done that very thing as a child, enveloped in velvet, captured within their somber blue mystery, yet safe from all harm in my own majestic security blanket. The rope that drew them open and closed was instantly familiar in the clasp of my hand, like no other. Tentatively I tugged, then more strongly and felt the pulleys overhead respond as always, felt the curtains spring to life, gliding outward in a kind of universal susurration. It was almost like the ascent of some great, winged angel bent on what? Retribution? No, more accurately, restoration. It was on that stage over a span of three decades that my father Thatcher Allred had directed more than sixty major productions: Arms and The Man, Our Town, Night Must Fall, Let Us Be Gay (long before the word gay had been appropriated for the exclusive use of homosexuals), The Importance of Being Ernest, The Taming of the Shrew, The Little Foxes, The Perfect Alibi, and so many others. During nearly all of that period he had served as Chairman of the Speech and Drama Department, becoming known early on to his friends as Mr. Theatre. Leaving my sanctuary, I walked to the center of the stage and waited. There amid the humming silence I heard voices as though they were coming from a recording at very low volume, all but subliminal, emanations from some other dimension. I remembered many names, saw the faces of directors, actors, and actresses from the college and its community: Kathryn Northrup, Fred Nixon, Dan Bailey, Karl White, Jim Andrews, Wayne Bundy, Gilbert Tolhurst, John Kelly, Julian Stephens, John Shorten, Gladys and Amos Sargent, Carolyn Glassman, HED Redford, Leonard Rowley, John Elzey, and Sharon Wallace who at age twenty had become my wife. All returning now from both sides of the veil for one last curtain call. Once more I heard the refrain from The Vagabond King, directed by my father and Roland Parry: Forward, forward, swords against the foe, onward, onward, the lily banners go. Rend the chains that bind us and to hell with Burgundy! Such words had sounded delightfully devilish to my then callow ears. Again I was reliving James M. Barries Dear Brutus, starring my father as Dearth and twelve-year-old sister Joan as his daughter Margaret. As a tender-hearted spectator, age six, I found the emotional trauma occasioned by their separation too much to bear. When Dearth vanishes into the waiting woods, failing to return, Margaret rushes weeping in search of him. Daddy, come back; I dont want to be a might-have-been. Too much! I also began to weep, literally blubbered, and was compelled to make a swift exit of my own to spare the audience. Somewhere still, buried within my attic is an ancient, green-tinted photo of that very scene