Monday, March 1, 2021
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Manfred has been part of my life since Grade 11. At that time, he was a teller of excruciating Shaggy Dog stories and atrocious puns, and already was a skilled pool player. He and I would discuss philosophical matters for hours into the night, while playing Gin Rummy, Scrabble or Chinese Checkers.
Back then, he was a piano player of a sort I have still never seen anywhere else. He could not sight-read, could not reproduce a tune by ear and could not improvise. Instead, he would go laboriously through a piece of sheet music, learning and memorizing it note by note. It would take him weeks or even months to learn a new tune. He had a repertoire of maybe a dozen pieces. I’ve tried to recall them but can only remember the Poet and Peasant Overture; the Overture from Tannhauser; Handel’s Largo and the Theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
We used to hang out at a drop-in place in Kitchener called The Fat Angel. Half the crowd there were high school students like us; the other half were Satan’s Choice. There was a rickety old piano and we would all enjoy listening to Manfred go through his repertoire each evening. The place closed at 1:00 but the last bus back to Waterloo was at midnight, so Manfred and I would often walk the four miles together to the spot in Waterloo where our paths homes diverged. My favourite memory from these trips was the time Manfred snagged a loose newspaper and made a paper eucalyptus tree (roll newspaper into a cylinder; pull shreds down from the top; then elongate it by twisting it) which we stuffed through the mail slot of our shared optometrist’s office.
When I ran for Mayor of the WCI Student Council, Manfred was my Campaign Manager. In our school play, Annie Get Your Gun, Manfred played Colonel Buffalo Bill (I played the bassoon). He introduced me to John Cox, who became a very close friend. We each loved to tell each other of the various things we had learned. He made me aware of fractals and Chaos Theory.
Manfred was part of my life for 50 years. It’s very sad to lose him.
Peter Snyder
