Being tall is not all bad. Sure your hit your head a lot, and people are always asking you to get something breakable down from high places or rescue a cat. But my height has served me well a time or two. Once, during my senior year at the University of Arizona, one of my professors asked me to carry the English department banner in the Founders’ Day parade. Academically I was completely unimposing; it was not my fame, but my frame that suited me to fly the banner in the sol­emn procession. Not long after, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts summoned me to his office and asked me to pick up Robert Frost at the airport and bring him to a luncheon at the Tucson Country Club. “Why me?” I stammered. “Because we think Robert would appreciate having a student be part of the weekend’s activity,” he answered. “We’ll take over after you get him to lunch. You do own a car, don’t you?” I replied that I did but asked again (hoping I had distinguished myself in some way I had yet to be informed about) why I had been selected for this lofty task. “I saw you carrying the English banner on Founders’ Day,” he said. “We can’t ask a math person to do it, for heaven’s sake. Do you want the job or not?”

I had just a couple of days to get my battered vehicle into shape to bear the great man. There was much to be done. I thought he might be more comfortable if I stuffed the innards back into the rent in the passenger-side seat and taped it shut, and that he might be more likely to appreciate the view if I pinned up the headliner that hung in a festoon over the passenger-side window. A wash and wax, and I was ready to go.

In those days passengers deplaned down a stairway and were met out on the tarmac. My heart skipped a beat as Frost appeared. He did not look about to see who would meet him, and he didn’t seem too thrilled that it turned out to be me. I introduced myself and reached out to shake his hand. Without speaking, he reached back to give me his garment bag. He was wearing a threadbare light blue suit and tattered blue canvas boat shoes, one of which exposed the tip of a toenail. “New England frugality,” I told myself and started feeling better about my car.

I deposited his bag in the trunk, and got him seated. I admit I was disappointed that he didn’t say anything about the wax job, but then he didn’t say anything at all–all the way back into town. Turned out he was very hard of hearing. His longest reply to my feverish efforts at conversation was little more than a grunt. And I had prepared such perfect questions–ones calculated to flatter him and at the same time elicit information that might be useful for a paper. We finished the ride in silence, and I thought back to the dean’s office. Had that been a snigger I heard as I stepped into the hall?

 At the country club, I gladly passed my charge off to professorial and administrative types and sat down at my place in the back of the room. During the luncheon, one of the worthies went to the microphone to offer Frost a large copper me­dallion commemorating the university’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Frost had no idea what the speaker was talking about and remained steadfastly hunched over his plate, shoveling his food in. When he did not respond to the request to come to the podium, the presenter walked over to him and attempted to drape the medallion over his neck. Startled, Frost shouted, “Get away!” and flung out his arm, detaching the medallion from its red and blue ribbon and bouncing it off table and crockery onto the floor where, after a long, wobbly spiral, it unspun itself and fell over with a clank. The embarrassment in the room was so acute you could almost hear it in the silence that followed, a silence that ended only when Frost, who had stopped mid-chew to watch the whirling disc succumb to gravity and then to look around to see if he could figure out where it had come from, started sawing away at his chicken again. A variety of speakers lavished more praise to which Frost paid not the slightest attention. Either he could not hear them at all, or he thought they were trying to get him to pay for his lunch.

When the orations finally ended, the company headed for the parking lot to gather again near the campus at a small house recently donated by the author Ruth Stephan to shelter visiting poets. It was a beautiful little place with polished wood floors, comfortable furniture, sunny rooms, and a fine library. Frost mumbled a rather spare dedication speech on the front porch and followed the benefactor on a tour. When he had seen enough, he announced it was time for his nap and headed off to a car with other people who looked like they could use a nap, too.

I thought my connection with Robert Frost was over, but as I was leaving the house I saw his medallion, the ribbon reattached, lying in an open box on a table by the front door. I grabbed it and got to his car just in time. I practically broke a window to get his attention. He turned, looked at the medallion, and waved the driver on. I guessed he had run out of room on his mantel.

Frost’s poetry reading took place the following evening. I got to the auditorium early for a good seat, but I couldn’t work up any excitement. The glamour was gone. As I waited, I vowed never to give another famous person a ride. The lights dimmed. After a brief introduction the curtain came up, and Robert Frost walked onto the stage. A baby spot lit his gleaming white hair as he seated himself in an easy chair center stage. He picked up a book from the table beside him and, when the applause finally died, said, “Good evening. I want to say some of my poems to you.” I can’t begin to express the magic of the rest of it. He read to us in his low, flat, New England voice, each syllable crisp as an apple with “every fleck of russet showing clear.” It was over before anyone wanted it to be, and no amount of ap­plause could bring him back. There was a reception for him afterward, but I didn’t go. I went home, got out my Frost collection, and read the “Witch of Coös” and the “Pauper Witch of Grafton” straight through for chills, then “Brown’ Descent” for an antidote. I read aloud but heard his voice all the while. Even today I don’t read Frost by myself. Couldn’t if I tried.