LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter 4

     The rest of the day passed without incident, aside from the tantrum Walter Prince threw on learning Matt has assumed the authority to unlock Watanabe’s cubicle and present it to Carleton Nairn.  In the beginning, Matt had suffered terrific anxiety over such explosions, but by now he couldn’t even work up a sweat.  He had learned that one of the primary functions of Walter Prince’s assistant was to absorb at least one tirade a day.  If it hadn’t been about Carleton Nairn’s workspace, it would have been something else.

     It was wearying, though, day after day, so instead of boarding a Number 11 bus, Matt walked a couple of blocks to catch a One-Fifty-One and rode it to Water Tower Place.  A little Christas shopping would settle his nerves.

     After all, there were no decisions to be made outside Water Tower Place the month before Christmas.  You just joined the migratory pattern and pried yourself loose once you reached the top floor.  Here the array was beautiful and useless and all browsing strictly frivolous.  Matt’s height made it easy to window shop, and he checked all the store displays, debating whether his mother would prefer a ceramic satyr ir a seven foot vinyl grandfather clock with a telephone holder on each side of the case.  He had no intention of buying either; he was pretty sure he didn’t want to meet any human being who would.  In his pocket was a list of things his mother had mentioned wanting, but he did not check this.  The Benz family had always bought gifts on the Surprise Principle: if you bought someone something they asked for, it wouldn’t be a surprise.

     Finishing the seventh floor, and noting distaste that a boring clothing shop was slated to open between the tobacco novelties store and the designer telephone outlet, he worked his way down through the mall.  Eventually, and not by accident, he found himself in front of the bakery where Beth worked.  The crowd was sparse here.  Shops on both sides had decided to relocate, and remodeling for new tenants was going on behind silvery wooden barricades that completely hid the gourmet pastry shop between.

     There was only one other customer when Matt walked in.  She was enough.  “One without too many nuts,” she said, looking over a tray of precisely identical brownies.  “And not too dry.  The one I had yesterday was like chalk.  And not all mooshy in the middle, either.  You know what I mean: not quite done.  You know what I want.”

     A yellow-haired, red-faced clerk was doing her best to maintain an even temper.  The other counter attendant was a large-eyed creature whose shoulders rose bare inches above the counter.  The soft face was fixed in an expression of concentrated disinterest: large eyes intently regarded a square of linoleum that was not quite the same shape as the rest of the floor.

     This short gloomy person was Beth Zimmerman who, under the name Jinx Bottym, wrote much short gloomy verse.  She had won some attention with her book, Aftermath Alphabet (“A is for Apple, Big and Brown; B is for Burned-out Buildings in Town”).  But writing poetry still paid less regularly than packing fat round cookies into white paper bags.

    “I have some envelopes for you,” Matt told her, unlatching his briefcase.

     “Ah,” she said, not shifting her eyes from the linoleum.

     Not that Beth was ever excited about anything, but Matt could understand a certain lack of glee at the five envelopes with fold marks across them as he drew these from the briefcase.  Acting as her agent, Matt sent Jinx Bottym’s poems hither and yon, getting most of it back in stamped return envelopes.  Beth knew as well as he did the author’s credo: “Big Checks Come In Unfolded Envelopes.”

     Matt slid these across the counter and brought the briefcase up to relatch it.  “Say,” he said, glancing into the luggage on his knee, “These aren’t yours, are they?  I found them this morning and don’t know where they came from.”

     Beth’s glance actually brushed the yellow box he brought out, but then went right past to rest on a spot of powdered sugar marring the surface of a lonely chocolate doughnut.  “No,” she said.

     He raised the lid.  “Well, look.”

     Matt’s heart soared: when that left nostril flared, it meant Beth was interested.  Two small white hands pushed his away from the box.  Matt leaned toward the pictures of the ancient gravestones, her blouse billowing against the countertop to expose what was more of a dimple than cleavage.

     Matt tried to look away and failed.  His moral compass, he felt, had been bent out of shape forever the afternoon he was flashed by the wife of Marshall Silberwetter, a city official so far Matt’s superior that Matt never knew whether to shake his hand or kowtow.  Mrs. Silberwetter had wanted to see what Matt would do.  When Matt did absolutely nothing, this amused her far more than any other action he might have come up with.

     Matt still felt sullied by the encounter.  Hitherto, his association with Beth, though tinged a bit with romance, had been primarily intellectual.  Now he couldn’t look at her without speculation.

     Beth had the top picture out of the box, flipping it over to consider two Xs penciled on the back.  Her eyes, of course, still seemed to be pointing at the lonely doughnut in the display case, but she said, without interest, “Interesting.”

     “Would you….”  Matt’s voice seemed ridiculously breathless to him.  “Would you like to keep them…overnight?”  He felt himself blush.  “I have to figure out whose they are, but I don’t suppose anyone will miss them tonight.”

     The top picture went back into the box, which then slid into a pocket in Beth’s apron.  “Okay.”

     Matt’s heart was high as he sloshed out of water Tower Place to await  Number Eleven.  By the time the bus arrived, however, he was already trying to identify what he had done wrong.  E should have allowed Beth to keep them more than one night; insisting on one was probably too pushy.  Of course, he could hardly have stood there negotiating a special date for the return of the photographs.  Beth’s manager didn’t like employees to stand around talking.  Had the manager been within earshot?  Matt scolded himself for not checking.  He always reminded himself to look for the manager before even passing Beth the envelopes.  After he reviewed the scene in the bakery six times without coming to any definite conclusions about the manager’s whereabouts, he replayed everything he’d said, checking words and intonations for mistakes.

     This took time; his mind was still on it as he walked through the lobby of his building and boarded the elevator.  He was on the nineteenth floor and inside the apartment before he knew it.  Once he did know it, he turned back for a look at the locks.

     Usually, getting past this door involved a certain amount of agony because his mother, hearing him arrive, would hurry to “help”.  Turning knobs, she would lock locks he had unlocked and unlock others until they were both thoroughly confused.  But this time there had been no such reception.

     He slid toward his mother’s bedroom door to see if anything was wrong and then heard a voice ask, “What time does your son get home?”

     Matt, remembering his mother’s fans, nodded and started to tiptoe back toward his own bedroom, hoping to attract no attention.  “Oh,” his mother replied, “By the time he gets home, it’ll be about the time he usually gets here.”

     The other voice had been faintly familiar, reassuring Matt, but the little laugh that greeted his mother’s reply sent shivers shooting the length of his backbone.  He held his position, trying to remember where he’d heard it.

     His brain tossed him a possibility, and he shook his head.  Impossible.  His mother didn’t even know….  He started toward the bedroom again.  One knee knocked the briefcase against the wall.

     “Matt?” called Mrs. Benz.  “Matt, is that you?”

     There was no escape.  “It better be,” he replied.

     Chars shifted; two women came into view from the dining nook.  “Oh, Matt!”  Mrs. Benz turned to her guest.  “This is my son Matthew.  Matt, this is Ada Silberwetter.  We’re here in the dining room having some….  Oh, I still haven’t brought in the tea!”

     Raising both hands to shoulder height, she turned and hurried back through the dining room to the kitchen.  The people she left behind studied each other from opposite ends of the hall.  Matt noticed his hands were poised above his hips as if he was about to reach for his sixguns.  The briefcase whacked the wall again as he swept both hands behind his back.

Keep Your Skirt Down; You’re a Big Girl Now

     In our last thrilling episode, we were considering the Windy Day school of Wardrobe Malfunction postcards.  These small cardboard jokes were aimed primarily at a bit more leg exposure than was allowed the average woman going about her daily chores.  But if the breezes did not cooperate, an artist could resort to more slapstick methods of exposing an ankle, calf, or thigh.  THIS theme goes back to the early days of postcard humor, as you can see above.

     But the accidental leg exposure motif became wildly important at mid-century, when pinup painters busied themselves thinking of possible accidents which would result in accidental exposure.  Artists like Gil Elvgren, whose Near Miss is seen here, did not generally publish their work on postcards, but did benefit from the nostalgia market, which produced this postcard for pinup collectors.

     A dog’s leash, an inconvenient door: anything that would keep a lady’s hands occupied so she couldn’t hold her skirt down would do.  One artist, Art Frahm, specialized in pinups which made matters worse by not only having a skirt fly up while the lady was trying to untangle herself from a leash, but would also make it clear that the elastic in her underdrawers had given way at the same time (though the skirt was generally flying up in a way that denied anything too intimate from being displayed to us, the viewers.  What onlookers at the scene saw was left to our imagination.)  But postcards were generally too subject to postal inspection for this degree of catastrophe.

     Unless the artist could think of a way to make it harmless.

     But a lady did not need to have her hands full for an accident to result in an embarrassing display.  Like our lady at the fence, above, a badly placed prop would be enough.

     Or an inexpert fisherman.

    It was not even necessary for the lady in question to realize what was going on.  The postcard artist could instead capture a moment before it all sank in.

     You will notice that in most of these situations, the artist has NOT included an onlooker (unlike the Frahm “Lady in Distress” pinups, which always included spectators to make the situation even worse.)  After all, that’s what WE were there for.

     And, as always, there was at least one artist to remind us that social exposure is not limited to women.  (See column hereintofore on skinny-dipping accidents for the ultimate in men’s wardrobe malfunctions.)

Now You See It, Now You….

     I was going to write a quick and breezy column about the wonderful world of wardrobe malfunctions in bygone postcards.  Dropped pants, bathing suits torn in quite the wrong places…it was going to be a high class, high tone study of the humor of previous generations.

     But there was a theme that was simply too all over everywhere to ignore.  The single most popular mishap in the world of clothing was the strong breeze.  A high wind could takes skirts higher than intended to the delight of the passing voyeur.  The tradition was passed along for generations, along with the joke about the lady who was reproved for hanging onto her hat in a high wind instead of attending to covering up farther down.  (If you are not up on your Fine Old Jokes, the punchline is, “The hat’s brand new.  What those guys are looking at is twenty-three years old.”)

     Perhaps you think this was not a hazard in the days of long dresses.  This isn’t the least bit so.  That era coincided with one in which a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking.  (Thank you, Mr. Porter.)  Plenty of cartoonists went farther than a lady’s hosiery, in fact, and some no doubt longed for the days of hoop skirts, which offered even greater latitude.

     We have discussed the phenomenon a little in previous bloggery.  One theory of why the phrase “23 skiddoo” (it meant “scram”) was that it refers to a street in New York known for loafers waiting for the wind to toss up the skirts of passersby.  One of the earliest surviving naughty movies is a Thomas Edison release in which an unwary young lady walks over a subway grate just as a train passes, sending her skirts up past her knees.

     The gag continued in popularity well through World War II (when ogling women was another sign that the American serviceman was a red-blooded American boy).

     And into the post-war world.  The joke remained a harmless detour into the very outskirts (sorry) of carnal joys: a moment’s embarrassment for the victim, a moment’s gratification for the viewer.  Nothing, really, to attract the eye of any but the most diligent and severe of censors.

     Really short skirts and the decline of postcards in the sixties muted the joke, perhaps, and attention moved over to the equally old joke of how a lady gets out of a vehicle without showing too much of what the skirts were supposed to cover.  The joke, like the weather that caused it, remains, and will probably never QUITE disappear.

     It has been applied, in fact, in places one might not expect.  But we can dissect the humor of this card someday when we have more space to consider kilt humor, and the various uses of the word “wind”.  We are, I think, doomed to wonder just why the young lady, who is wearing one of the few styles of skirt which will NOT accommodate the joke, is blushing about.

LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter 3

      Matt stood up and put out a hand.  “Um,” he said.  “How do you do?”

     “Er, good morning,” said Carleton Nairna little taken aback, as were most people, by just how much of Matt there was.

    Matt had heard of Carleton Nairn.  Everyone in the city had heard of Carleton Nairn.  The call-in radio shows had devoted time to Carleton Nairn, and the Tribune was in a proper snit about Carleton Nairn.  Carleton Nairn once held a position with the city before taking a court-ordered sabbatical for embezzling.  After his release, he cooled his heels in a consulting job designed for heel-cooling.  His old friends had been seeking to get him on the city payroll again in some position insignificant enough to escape notice.  But Carleton Nairn wasn’t cool enough yet.  A spot in Streets and San brought forth editorials demanding why he hadn’t stayed in prison at least long enough for people to count how much he’d stolen.  So, seeking a spot even less significant, his friends had apparently deposited him in Matt’s cubicle.

     Very little of this concerned Matt.  He suspected a number of his superiors had done less time for more money.  If anything, it made him feel a little sorry for Carleton Nairn, since anyone with such a public flaw was going to be at a disadvantage dealing with Walter Prince.  But it did make him study his new co-worker with some interest.

     The Tribune photographers had flattered Carleton Nairn, or the editors had dug way back in the archives for pictures.  Carleton Nairn was a chinless specimen with bulging eyes and tentative sideburns that did not begin tom make up for the polished gap in his hairline.

     The smile, though, was hearty and professional.  “I’ve heard of you, Mr. Benz,” he said, putting another hand up so as to have Matt’s hand in both of his, as if those fingers were precious to him.

     For one moment, Matt wondered if Nairn would mention short stories.  Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine had accidentally purchased some of his fiction, moving him from local to national obscurity.

     “I read that report you put together on the Pedestrian Underpass Ordinance.  Great.  Great stuff.”

     “Thank you,” said Matt, cancelling a sigh.  “Yes.  Well, uh…glad to have you here, Mr. Nairn.”

     “Carleton,” his apprentice corrected him, still cherishing the handshake.

     “Yes.”  Matt came around the desk as an excuse to lever his hand free.  “Er, they did tell us we’d get more staffing in due course.”

     Nairn chuckled appreciation.  “Yes, and due course is always years away.  Like when your parents said ‘In a while, dear’.”

     Matt chuckled back at Carleton Nairn.  “Well, uh, um.  I, ah, well, you’ll want to see your cubicle.”

     “Yes, indeed.”  Carleton Nairn nodded.   “Enough chitchat, get to work, right?”

     “Oh, I didn’t….”  Carleton Nairn had already turned for the door, and in the time it took him to look back, Matt realized he might have been making a joke.  So, with a semi-hearty “Heh heh”, Matt followed his new subordinate outside, fumbling in one pocket for the key.

     The departures at Down had left three cubicles locked and unloved: Matt’s former cell, the one Nelson Ryan had abandoned after learning he would not inherit Thaxter’s, and that of Richard Watanabe, felled by an anonymous mugger in Grant Park just in time to abolish any calm period between the death of Thaxter and the huffed farewell of Ryan.

     Watanabe’s cubicle was nearest to Matt’s new domain.  Matt unlocked this and looked around it.  It would probably do: Watanabe’s sister had collected his things, leaving the space tidier than its occupant had ever been.  Pens, pencils, and papers still littered the desktop, though.

     Carleton Nairn had to ease around Matt to find standing room inside this little box.  “Half a window,” he said.  “Not bad.”  He picked up a Bears mug that had served as a pencil holder.  “That was a heartbreaker Monday night, wasn’t it?”

     “Mm,” Matt agreed.  It seemed to him that any second Watanabe would still waltz in, explaining that he was a little late because he’d had to attend his aunt’s cat’s funeral.

     Nairn set the mug back down and moved over to give the chair an experimental spin.  “So what should I start in on?”

     Matt’s eyes were on the desk.  Watanabe’s latest heartthrob had given him that pen; his sister had rejected it with contempt.  There was a wire loop from the end, from which hung a swing and a red pompom teddy bear that bounced back and forth when the pen was moved.

     “You’ll need supplies,” he murmured.  “Paper and…stuff.”  His hand went down to the desk in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner.  “Did you meet Maryann?”

     “Nom” said Nairn, looking up.  “Only you, so far.  I think Mr. Prince called the woman at that desk out front Maryann.”

     Walter Prince had made an effort for Carleton Nairn then; the head of Down usually called Maryann “You.”  Nodding, Matt slid his fingers to the red pompom teddy bear.  It didn’t mean much and probably hadn’t meant much at the time: Watanabe had a new fiancée every week.  But you never could tell.

     “Oh, well, um, you need to know Maryann,” he said, turning at the same time he lifted the pen, so Nairn might miss him sliding it into his pocket.  “She really runs the place, you know: she’s in charge of paper clips.”

     He led a chuckling Carleton Nairn along the row of cubicles.  Holly was talking to Maryann, but pulled back as Matt arrived, to let him know she was still affronted.  Like Maryann, though, she was alive to the interesting possibilities of strangers, and didn’t withdraw too far.

     Matt liked both Maryann and Holly.  They were friendly, competent, and fun to be around, and he wondered occasionally if he should compliment them on their work, since Walter Prince never would.  He always stopped short of actually saying anything; it seemed presumptuous.

     “This is Carleton Nairn,” he said, trying to face Maryann and Holly equally while he told them the one thing they already knew.  They smiled at Nairn, and Matt added, “He’s going to be working here, in Richard’s space.  Mr…Carleton, this is Maryann Hoxey, our, er, executive secretary, and Holly…MacTaggart.”  He never knew whether to mention the middle initial.

     Nairn’s pale eyes moved over both women and then back to Matt.  Matt saw something stir behind those blinking eyelids, and knew by the reaction of his stomach that he was being summed up, and pretty accurately.

     “I’ve heard of you, Ms. MacTaggart,” Nairn said, holding out both his hands.  “I read that report you did on Ventilation.  A breath of fresh air.”

     Holly took this the way a horse takes sugar  She also took Nairn’s hands and gave him a frank, open smile, so open Matt could have counted her fillings.

     “Oh, we’ve met,” she said.  “I’d see you at grandpa’s, oh, hundreds of times.  Did Matt show you all the files?”

     “Not yet,” replied the new kid on the block.  He grinned.  “Mr. Benz started me right at the top by introducing me to yourself and to Ms. Hoxey.”

     “Oh, let ne.”  Holly pulled on his hands to lead him away.  She glanced back over her shoulder.  “You wouldn’t mind, would….”

     Her eyes, already not the least conspicuous feature of her face, widened.  “Why do you have a teddy bear on your lapel?”

     Matt glanced down.  He thought he had put Watanabe’s pen in his shirt pocket, but had instead thrust it through the buttonhole on that lapel.  He opened his mouth to explain, and then remembered that look in Nairn’s eyes.  His backbone stiffened.

     “Didn’t you see them at that meeting in October?  They’re slipping novelty pens into the spots for boutonnieres.  A touch of whimsy helps get through all the speeches.”

     Holly’s eyebrows snapped down and she turned away.  Matt recalled, a little late, that she had expected to be sent as Down’s representative to the October meeting, only to be disappointed by Walter Prince.  But Matt could hardly call her back and apologize.

     “You’ll need to know all these shelves, Mr. Nairn,” she said.

     “Carleton,” he corrected.

     “Didn’t you used to be in Streets once?” she said, pulling him into the mass of cabinets.  “I bet you never got  parking ticket.”

     “No,” Nairn told her.  “I could never get a parking place.”

     Holly giggled.  Maryann looked up to  Matt and shrugged.  Matt shrugged back and turned for his cubicle.  He had to finish that list of projects he was working on.  That came in handy whenever Walter Prince barged in and demanded, “Benz, what in hell are you doing?”

FICTION FRIDAY: Three Other Little Pigs

     Once upon a time there were three little pigs.  The first little pig liked broccoli, so she built a restaurant that served elegant broccoli dishes.  The second little pig loved eggs, so she built herself a bistro that served light fluffy egg dishes.  The third little pig had no imagination, so she built herself a diner which served burgers and fries and gyros and tacos and pizza and, when she felt like it, blueberry pie.

     Her sisters laughed at her.  “That’ll fly when pigs fly,” they said.  “You need to do something more niche and make videos about it.  WE each have two million followers online.”

     “Excuse me,” said the third pig.  “Gotta scrape the grill.”

     One day the Big Bad Chef came to town.  He was a huge, hulking retired cook who now did Internet restaurant reviews, and got thousands of likes every time he savaged an eating establishment.  “Little Pig, Little Pig,” he said, when he arrived at the first pig’s place, “Give me a free meal, or I will blow your place down.”

     “Sure,” said the little pig.

     “And just substitute sprouts for the broccoli in this broccoli a la Babe,” he said.

      “Not by the hair on my….”

     And the Big Bad Chef took his phone and he huffed.  And the little pig’s restaurant closed within a week, and she had to go live with her sister, and was reduced to cooking broccoli side dishes at the second little pig’s bistro.

     One day the Big Bad Chef came to the second little pig’s bistro.  “Little Pig, Little Pig,” he said, “Give me a free meal or I will blow your place down.”

     “Not a problem,” said the second little pig.

     “And bring me an eight-egg omelet with nine kinds of cheese, so heavy it takes two of you to flip it over.”

     The second little pig stood back, nose in the air.  “Not by the hair of my….”

     So the Big Bad Chef got out his phone and he huffed.  And the next Tuesday, the bistro was being turned into a Malort bar and the two little pigs had to go live with their sister, imploring her to give the diner a little class by adding broccoli and crepes to the menu.

     And in the fullness of time, the Big Bad Chef noticed the diner.  “Little Pig, Little Pig,” he said, “Give me a free meal or I’ll blow your place down.”

     “Get to the back of the line,” said the third little pig. “Who do you think you are, Kermit the Frog?”

     Since this was the way the Big Bad Chef had treated his own customers when he had a place, he grinned and waited in line, though he was naturally plotting revenge.  “How about that free meal?” he demanded, when he finally got to sit down.

     “I don’t dump the leftovers until midnight,” said the third little pig.  “Come back then and it’s all you can eat.”

     “I like your style,” said the Big Bad Chef.  “Do those sisters of yours help out in the kitchen?”

     “They’ve never been a bit of use,” she told him.  “But they did help with tonight’s special.”

     “What’s the special?”

     The third little pig jerked her snout toward the grill.  “Pork chops.”

     The Big Bad Chef set down his menu.  “I like your style.  Can you use a partner?”

     So the third little pig married the Big Bad Chef and cooked happily ever after.  Though no one heard from the Big Bad Chef online after that, and if you go to the diner, I don’t recommend the Chef Surprise.

Got a Feelin’ You’re Foolin’

     And so we come to April Fool’s Day.  This is a holiday with a rich tradition of postcard-sending, but not so much in this country.  As we have treated elsewhere hereintoforehitherto about the cheerful French tradition of fish postcards which combine April Fool’s Day with the old style New Year celebrations.  So today we will consider the tendency of postcards to try to fool collectors with their variant printings.

     This does NOT include cards like the one at the top of this column, as that’s a separate tradition of jokes being shared (so to speak) by different cartoonists.  Nor yet do I mean cards like the one above, which can be as much fun to collect, as the original had a blank space where the town name was later printed.  Anyone who likes this sort of thing knows that another previously unsuspected example with a town name seldom seen may turn up in a shoebox at a garage sale.

     And we are not going to try to track examples where variations are obvious if one looks.  This tradition of preprinting a jolly message on the picture side of the card turns up throughout history, and though it takes a second look to tell, there are a dozen or so different messages, which that second look can detect in the pictures and text (and color: Wyoming ones were red, Colorado messages blue or white, Montana yellow, etc.)

     No, what we’re going to look at (and I know you were wondering) are the almost identical cards with one detail changed.  The Mesquite Country Club apparently loved this photograph, because this large format postcard exists in at least three styles: one with the little white framing lines, one without, and one with soft focus around the edges.  It’s that third example that shows a conscious decision to issue three different versions.

     Some cases are less clear.  This grown up beauty queen appears on some cards with no red coloring to her bow, socks, or jar lid.  Was this an accident, or a concession to the rising price of printing in several colors?

     I think this one goes the other direction.  This version of the lady with the car is the earlier one (in my theory) and the variant, where the car and her hat are colored in, were done later, when some editor said “If we’re going to charge a whole penny for this, we need to give the customer a little more.”

     A lot of this went on at mid-century, as companies shifted from linen texture postcards to the quicker, cheaper chrome format.  In some companies, the same design goes through changes in color as well as design: the picture gets simpler as time goes by.  Bob Petley produced this card in a full color version, a black and white version, and this version between the two, as he explored whether the customers valued the joke or the expensive ink.

     My favorite recent joke played on me by postcards is this example from earlier in the twentieth century.  After trying to figure out what the sentiment was meant to be (Were they just saying “Here are my good wishes; please accept them” or did they mean “EXPECT All Good Wishes”?), I checked to see what the current market value was, and how many copies were out on the Interwebs for sale.  It turns out that the company printed at least eight different versions of this card, with exactly the same frame and sentiment but different pictures of flowers in the rectangle.  There are TWO, in fact, in which the flowers ride in a boat (the other one is ferrying daisies.)  As I realized this, my face assumed that expression seen on the fish on those Frech April First cards.  Maybe that was the point.

LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter 2

     The skull, taken simply as a skull, was unobjectionable: clean and white, displayed on a black tablecloth for better contrast.  Matt had seen photographs of skulls before: his mother owned at least a dozen such photos.  Before committing murders (to paper), she liked to look at a few pictures to put her in the mood.

     But for years she had been using the same photos.  She changed them around occasionally: putting one away in the file cabinet and bringing out another.  Over the years, Matt had seen them all, and this was not one of them.  His memory was quirky, but one thing it could tell him, instantly, was whether he had seen an object, heard a voice, smelled a smell, at some time in the past.  Anything he ran across seemed to get filed into memory.  On encountering it again his brain checked it against the original, with any differences noted on a mental index card.

     Which made him a pretty fair librarian, but also made it very difficult to tell him a joke.

     Matt tapped the yellow box onto te desk.  He didn’t really mind unusual disturbances.  He just didn’t like them interfering with the usual ones.  And there was work to be gotten through this morning.

     The yellow box got halfway to a drawer.  Then he brought it to the center of the desk.  The skull picture was flat, down at the bottom of the box, but there was something underneath.  Matt pried up the picture with a fingernail  and found beneath it a dozen photographs of gravestones, all gray slate and all obviously photographed on a cloudy day.

     He could see the stones were old, but didn’t know how old until he read the top one.  “Phinehas Van Denover.  Death Like a Mighty Quonker Laid Him Low, in1691 Ano Domino.”  Poetry and proofreading had made no advances in three centuries.

     His mother might have gotten a new assortment, he supposed.  But these were not new pictures.  They were printed on high quality paper that showed its age slowly, but Matt had handled plenty of pictures, and these had to date back at least a decade.

     He looked at the skull again.  It looked back. With a shrug, Matt sorted the macabre array back into a pile and pushed the stack back into the box.  No way of finding out until he got home.  And soon the working world would be staring into his face.

     The box was filed away next to lunch, and more important drawers were pulled open for inventory.  The paper clips were almost all gone.  Lord, that was inexcusable.  Civic government ran on paper clips.  Everything else in Down might eventually be reduced to a blip of computer memory, but paper clips would go on.  Why hadn’t his father invested in paper clip stock instead of squandering money on a bar on Diversey?  Shaking his head over history, Matt rose and moved out to Maryann’s corner.

     Maryann Hoxey, Executive Secretary, Office Manager, and Mistress of the Paper Clips, was just sliding her purse under the desk.  “Morning, Matt,” she said, as she straightened up.  She smoothed her skirt.  “Cold enough out where you….”

     Her eyes went past him, toward the door of Down.  “Don’t turn around,” she murmured.

     Of course, Matt turned around.  The door was closing as a woman all in black leather except for flame red canvas boots strode along the corridor of filing cabinets toward them.  She had easily six times as much hair as she had head, wearing it swept back and up, the better to display her ears and the peanut butter lids which hung from them.  Her lashes had been worked over to make it appear humans were losing the war with spiders.

     Holly L. (which she swore stood for Luya) MacTaggart was the newest of the slaveys at Down.  Just out of college, she had stopped over at Down on her way to better things, to which she was entitled because she had a grandfather.  She wasted as little energy as possible on her current position, conserving her efforts for the better  place in city government her grandfather would certainly buy her.

     “Hi-ho, everybody!” she called, swinging one arm up in bright salute.

     “How can you be so springy in winter?” Maryan demanded.  “It’s perverse.”

     Holly chirped with laughter and was opening her sharp little mouth to reply when a voice of pure ice crawled, “Ah, MacTaggart.”

     Holly sucked in her underlip and wrinkled her nose, showing that whatever else she was, she was a Down employee.  A dark figure draped in an unfastened overcoat that drooped to the floor stepped out of a large cubicle.  His hands held a sheaf of paper; his eyes held the gleam of bloodlust.

     Walter Prince was not Number One at Down.  He was Numbers One and Two and All Rational Numbers Through Ninety-Three Million.  Everyone else was a distant decimal.  The staff existed solely to give him headaches, which he returned.  He knew all his subordinates loathed him; he took it as an indication of his superiority.

     “MacTaggart,” he went on, enunciating with gloomy relish, “This summary is so one-sided I’m surprised to find it printed on both sides of the paper.”

     Holly gathered her breath.  “Why, Mr. Prince, my grandfather likes reports printed on both sides of the page.”

     Walter Prince’s eyes opened wide.  But he was a deliberate man, and before he pressed down on the detonator, he took in the presence and Matt and the hurried entrance of Linda Szarkowksi, the remaining inmate of the department.  Matt watched his eyes narrow; he was choosing the nastiest course of action.

     “Here, Benz,” he snarled, showing the papers into Matt’s midsection.  “You know how to do it right.”  He spun on one heel and marched back into the master cubicle.

     Burned by twin glares from the witnesses, Matt could only back away. Peper clips could await a more auspicious moment.

     Back in his cubicle, Matt tossed the report onto the stack of work in progress.  As usual, Walter Prince would expect this done by last week at the latest.  And Down had been understaffed since July.

     That was when Charles A. Thaxter, who had previously held Matt’s meaningless position as Assistant to Walter Prince, had been killed by a housebreaker who was never caught.  The newspapers had whined about that for a few weeks, claiming that a real reform mayor would have done something or other about upgrading the police department if one of his subordinates was offed.  The mayor had fired a salvo in reply, but things never heated up because a complaint about the racial balance of repair crews on the expressways had come up, offering more ammunition, and the death of a longtime city hall crony retreated into the murk of the letters to the editor and then disappeared.

     Of Thaxter’s four underlings, everyone’s choice as Least Likely to Succeed was Matthew Benz.  So Walter Prince had maneuvered the process so that Matt moved into Thaxter’s cubicle and salary, correctly inferring that thus would alienate the largest number of people.  Walter Prince had already begun to regret favoring immediate gratification over Long Range Consequences.  Not only had Nelson Ryan, Thaxter’s obvious replacement, resigned in a huff, halving the staff, but Matt himself was very unsatisfactory in the position.  Matt was competent, conscientious, unambitious, painstaking, and eager to please.  Matt didn’t worry about maintaining the position; demotion would have been a relief,  Walter Prince complained that threats and insults seemed to bounce from Benz’s thick skull.  His arsenal was reduced to increasing Matt’s workload and turning the rest of Down against the new Assistant, particularly Linda Szarkowski, who had also been ahead of Matt for the position, and Holly, who had started in August to replace another suddenly deceased Downie.

     This did not mean he abandoned threats and sarcasm.  Not fifteen minutes later, he leaned into Matt’s cubicle to cry, “Lord, Benz!  Working?  Why risk tarnishing an otherwise shining record?”

     Matt knew no answer was required, so he did no more than set down his pen and raise his eyes, awaiting the next disagreeable assignment.

     “Got a replacement for Ryan,” Walter Prince went on.  “Shows up just in time to qualify for the Christmas Bonus, of course.”

     He stepped aside to let a smaller man move into view.  “Nairn,” he said, “This is Matthew Benz.  Benz, Carleton Nairn.  Show him what to do.”

     Then he abandoned his underlings to cope as best they could.

Suds and Songs

     The association of wine, women, and song is an ancient one, and carries cultural baggage too multitudinous to unpack in a single blog (or year of blogs).  The tradition in comedy of singing among men who have lubricated their windpipes sufficiently to break down discretion is also a bit much to consider in one blog, but one comic convention frequently expressed on bygone postcards is the association of certain songs with high (and plentiful) spirits.

      A lovestruck kid wrote a poem for his girlfriend Rosalie and teamed up with a composer to turn it into a song.  “You’re the Flower of My Heart, Sweet Rosalie”, bombed entirely in 1903.  The two men saw a poster about the tour of singer Adelina Patti, tweaked the lyrics, and saw it picked up by several of the hottest male quartets in the recording industry.  Boston politician John Fitzgerald picked it as a theme song, and it was sung at all manner of campaign stops, which were known for a certain amount of imbibing.  The first appearance of it as an anthem sung by drunks is attributed to a Charlie Chaplin movie of 1922; and from then on, the honors of singing it on records were split between comedians and heartthrob tenors.

     See, Adeline is a song of longing for a lost love, and, as Thomas Edison learned when trying to sell his early naughty records to the new cylinder saloons, what the drinking public likes to sing as the night rolls on are sad songs, not raucous humor.  We could go into the whole tradition of, oh, Melancholy Baby, Piano Man, My Gal Sal, and half the history of country music, but we have other stuff to consider.

     Earlier in the evening, social drinkers can reflect that SOME of their pals aren’t dead yet.  Hail Hail the Gang’s All Here is or is not a song dating to 1917.  This sheet music, attributed to the same lyricist who gave us “It’s Three O’clock in the Morning”, seems to be little more than a recognition that people had been singing these lyrics to a tune from Pirates of Penzance (“Come, friends, who plough the sea”) since at least the 1890s, when observers noted its popularity among amateur saloon singers.

     The connection between people who sing over a sudsy mug is just one connection between singers in saloons and the barbershop quartet.  The quartets, among the first pop groups available for your phonograph, helped make Sweet Adeline a hit, and were instrumental (sorry) in making any group of four think harmonizing was easy.  One of the popular songs from the “absent friends” tradition, That Old Gang of Mine, in fact mourns the days when they sang together.

     Any song will do for impromptu saloon singing, of course.  “Mother Machree” or other songs of that ilk will do over Guinness, a solid college fight song will draw a crowd of people to join in, and I have even heard tell of a bar which used to really rock out on “Onward Christian Soldiers” (a good deal of foot-stomping was involved, I am told.  This always helps.)

     If you want a song that rivals Sweet Adeline as a boozy ballad, though, always fall back on “How Dry I Am”.  The melody is simple and the lyrics, though everyone has their own personal favorite parody, will not confuse the pixilated.  (Barring those people who grew up singing it as “How Dry Am I”.)  This dates back to 1919, when it started off ”The Near Future”, a song by Irving Berlin about impending Prohibition.

     It is suggested, though, that he decided to start his song with a traditional barroom tune, as the words can be found in nineteenth century sources, and the melody goes back to a theme by Beethoven.  Unless it starts with a pop song of the eighteenth century.  The similarity to an 1855 hymn called “Oh Happy Day” is apparently coincidental.  Its popularity as a theme for saloons is attributed to Warner Brothers, which used it in movies and especially cartoons so any mention of actual drinking could be avoided.  (An archive in Illinois, though, has sheet music from the silent movie era, suggesting it was already used by theater organists to indicate intoxication.)

     Here.  We’ve covered this before.  This Bavarian postcard of 1906 or thereabouts simply quotes a German drinking song.  Nobody seems to know or care when it first appeared, and though I can find videos of old men singing it in bars, no one will give me a translation.  I gave up translating foreign songs after my record-breaking version of “The March of the Kings” (one person who heard it was so dismayed he dropped his 78 of “Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me”.)  But as far as I can determine, the lyrics are something like “drink and tinkle and drink and tinkle and drink and tinkle again.”  Makes “How Dry I Am” sound like the Hallelujah Chorus.

MIDWEEK FICTION: Chicken Social

    Chicken Social was a small yellow chick with good legs, a loud chirp, and a phone.  One day he crossed the road and hopped along the road to see if the worms were fatter I other people’s yard, and came to a high fence around an airport.

     Since he had never seen an airport before, this did not matter, but while he was scratching for worms, he heard a loud roar.  He looked through the wire of the fence as a long passenger plane sped down the runway and took to the air.  His beak opened wide and his eyes opened wider.  He watched for a while and then, realizing this was an epeephany moment, he reached for his phone.

      Once he was on his very favorite social media platform, he posted “Birds are fake!  Birds are fake!”

     And nothing happened.

     So he waited for a while, and held up the phone when another plane roared down the runway for take off.  He posted this clip to the same site, and added “Birds are fake!  Birds are fake!”

     He got a response this time.  Someone called Mouthy Southy posted, “How can a chicken claim birds are fake?”

     “I’m an expert on birds, right?” Chicken Social posted.  “I don’t fly.  All those birds we see flying are inventions of Men. Birds are fake! Birds are fake!”

     Mouthy Southy replied. “How can this be true?  I’ve seen so many birds!”  But someone called Eastie Beastie posted “Expert on birds claims birds are fake!”

     And someone called Northy Forthright posted “Report: noted ornithologist admits birds are fake!”

     Chicken Social reposted these to his own channel, saying “Experts agree.  Birds are fake!  Birds are fake!”

     Mouthy Southy immediately commented “Anyone who says birds are fake is a dull cluck.”

     Chicken Social reposted this as well, but edited it to say “Anyone who says birds are fake is a dull *uck” and added “People who deny evdence resort to abuse.  Birds are fake!  Birds are fake!”

     Westie Bestie commented “How true!  Mouthy Southy should be banned.”  Eastie Beastie posted “Leader of bird lobbyists labels accredited ornithologists with fowl language!”

       “This is what it means to be a debunker of popular superstition,” Chicken Social posted.  “Birds are fake!  Birds are fake!”

     Jerky Turkey started a website called “Flightless Birds Unite to say Birds Are Fake!”  Chicken Social hit “like” and then looked up places which sold custom rings and bracelets.  Soon he was advertising “Birds Are Fake!  Birds are Fake!” merch at so many grains of corn per item.  Eastie Beastie ordered three collars , Northy Forthright ordered two dozen T-shirts, and even Mouthy Southy ordered a collar.  Jerky Turkey reposted Chicken Social’s ad for merch to the Flightless Birds Unite website.

     “Do you have any more reels” asked Westie Bestie.  “More evidence will prove our case.  Put the naysayers to flight, Chicken Social!”

     “Birds are fake!  Birds are fake!” Chicken Social replied.  He posted two more reels of smaller planes taking off from the airport, as well as some footage of two teenagers with a drone.  “Fake Hummingbirds!” he posted.  “Birds are fake!  Birds are fake!”

     Someone called BigBadWoulfe posted “Big Conference in Dark Woods!  Are Birds Fake?  Experts to Meet in cave at base of mountain.  Birds Are Fake merch for sale, lots of worms and corn!”  There was a space for making a reservation.

     Jerky Turkey asked in Chicken Socials DMs, “Going to conference?  I bought a ticket!”

     Before Chicken Social could reply, BigBadWoulfe posted “Experts hope all-time Fake Bird Authority Chicken Social will accept free trip to conference!”

     “Birds are fake!  Birds are fake!” Chicken Social posted.  “Will attend, and put naysayers and haters to shame.  Save me some worms!”

     Jerky Turkey, Chicken Social, Westie Bestie, and Northy Forthright all signed up to attend the conference that very evening.  (Eastie Beastie complained she had a date that night but would try to convince him to register.)

     The next day, BigBadWoulfe posted “Bird Fakery Conference huge success.  Conspiracy debunked by arguments from Dr. Chicken Social, Ch.D.!”  But there were no posts by Chicken Social, and orders to Jerky Turkey’s website went unacknowledged. 

     BigBadWoulfe posted “Findings on fake birds suppressed by authorities!  Chicken Social, other experts go into hiding!  Absolute proof birds are fake!”

     Eastie Beastie sent a donation to BigBadWoulfe’s site marked “For the experts in exile!  Hang tough, Chicken Social!  Birds are fake!  Birds are fake!”

     Several other supporters posted “Birds are fake!  Remember Chicken Social!”  But there was no reply from Chicken Social, and without his leadership, people shifted to posts that cats and dogs were just AI generated.”  Someone called Frodo Dodo caused a minor stir by posting “Chicken Social is fake!  Chicken Social is fake!”  But Frodo Dodo was a known round-earther, so no one paid much mind.  Everyone had fake dogs to stream and meme.

LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chap. 1

    Sunlight rolled across the tawny, intermittently furred body of the cave girl.  Her chin was up, her face turned away from the sun, and a bright red lower lip stuck out in an imperious pout.  Matt turned the page.

    He reached for the diet Dr. Pepper that he always kept on hand while brainstorming.  The caffeine might stimulate a best-seller yet, or at least prod a sluggish and frustrated imagination.  His latest prospective million-seller, “Ascent of the Ruby Slippers”, had run into snarls.

     Chapter five of the Yellow Section saw its band of questers working with Losaigon, who located a vital clue to the whereabouts of the Lost Tower of the Eighth Veil in the yellowed pages of a Craig Rice paperback, a relic lovingly tended since “The Elder Days”.  In looking it over now, Matt found this passage to be amazingly boring, surpassing the tedium of anything he had ever committed to a page.  The copyright to the Craig Rice passage would probably need to be cleared, too.  Who knew who held that, these days?  And though Losaigon had once seemed a reasonable name for the circulation librarian in a rat-infested post-holocaust library, Matt could now see “Saigon” sitting smack in the middle to distract the potential reader.

    So at the very least, he needed a new name for the librarian (who would probably be better as a reference librarian).  Maybe library, librarian, and Craig Rice could all be jettisoned for some  new exhilarating scene which would be spoken of by reviewers and students of fantasy literature for years to come.  He had only to think it up.  In hopes that some image would suggest a suitable replacement, he was flipping through “Yellowbacks of Gor: Great DAW Cover Paintings”.

    Another cave girl gazed up at him past the leatherbound man with the branding iron.  Natt sipped at the Dr. Pepper.  So far, no sultry cave girls appeared in his story at all, but one could appear, solving some part of the problem.  She might make a fine librarian.

     He turned to the next page.  A tall, emaciated woman came through the dining room toward the living room, distracting him from the plumper though two-dimensional women.  She waved her coffee cup toward the windows.  “The sun was shining when I got up, turning her head so got, brilliant light poured into every age-etched line.  “But now it doesn’t look so very good.”

     Stepping back, she turned away from the window.  “Are you reading?” she demanded, squinting at Matt.  “Here.  Let me turn on this light for you.”

     Before her hand could reach the light switch, Matt closed the book loudly enough for her to hear it.  “No thanks,” he said.  “About time to be getting down to the bus.”

     “Already?”  She glanced at her bare left wrist.  “You work too hard.  You should get a rest.”

     “Foo,” he told her, rising.  “I could’ve told you that.”  He put the book back among its neighbors on the shelf, drained his Dr. Pepper, and started for the door, by way of the kitchen.  His mother followed.

     The glass went into the sink and Matt moved past the refrigerator to the front door, where his coat waited for him.  “See you at six,” he said, shrugging massive shoulders into it.  “You won’t let anyone into the place while I’m out, okay?”

     “Oh, of course,” she said, as she always did.  She sipped at her coffee while Matt buttoned his coat.  “Oh, well, now, wait.”  Those nice women who like to talk about mysteries are coming over this afternoon.”

     Matt grimaced.  He had not, so far, met these women, and he didn’t like strangers coming into the apartment, certainly not when his mother was alone.  Still, they had visited yesterday, and had committed no murders, stolen no invaluable paperweights, or rummaged in the cupboard for peanut brittle.

     “What do they come to talk about?  Their favorite books?  Books in general?  Or are they budding garden variety authors themselves?”

     His mother shrugged and waved the coffee cup. “Oh, this and that.”

     Matt hadn’t expected much more of an answer.  At least half of Mrs. Benz’s vagueness was assumed, but not all, ad it was true that she had reached that point in her career where what she wrote most was her own name.  She had started a Regency romance, quite a departure for her, to be called “The Noble and the Nubile”, but this had petered out, rather to the author’s relief.  She might restart it, or begin a new mystery in her long-running series, this winter: cold weather seemed to give her stamina.  Having fans drop by wouldn’t hurt.

     “Just don’t be giving away any signed limited editions,” he told her.  He reached down for his briefcase.  “And be sure they aren’t selling these interviews to Stripes Magazine or some such.”

     “I shall sign nothing but autograph albums.”

     A paper bag sat on the floor.  Matt snatched it up and thrust it inside the briefcase.  He was sure he had already loaded his lunch into the case this morning, but the things you did every morning were easiest to neglect.  You remembered doing them, but what you remembered was doing them yesterday, and you wound up eating Pop Tarts from the vending machine.

     He had to be quick about it, or she would want to inspect the lunch and try to double the amount of food.  “Well, off to the salt mines,” he said loudly, to cover the sound of the latch on the briefcase.

     She kissed his cheek.  “Bad for your health.  Tell them to switch you to the low sodium mines.”

     “Ha!  They’d just assign me to the pepper mills.”  He moved out into the hall, toward the elevator, pausing long enough to hear her close and lock the door.

     In the lobby, Matt paused as Gaston gave the revolving door a push for him.  Being careful to act as if it was just a random thought, he said “Say, do you, er, know the women who came to see my mother yesterday?”

     “No, Mr. Benz,” Gaston replied.  “I only saw the one, and your mother seemed to know her.  Is there a problem?”

     Matt shrugged.  Gaston had no time for long explanations.  “Not really.  Just wondered.”  He moved on outside.

     Sunny as it was, there was a hint of impending Christmas in the air.  Sloshing through sloppy snow to the bus stop at the corner, Matt murmured a magic spell to make the Number Eleven prompter than usual.  This had never worked before, and once again he had time to calculate the cost of keeping a car in the city, right down to the quarters for the Robomatic Car Wash (which had been shut down years ago, but fantasy was fantasy.)  As he stepped up and swiped his care card across the glass box, he concluded that even on his recently augmented salary he didn’t care to risk it.

     He pushed off the bus not a mass of fellow city-slaves downtown, and shouldered his way to the building, through the metal detector, and into the elevator.  In time, he arrived at the city’s Information resources Center, referred to by everyone inside the city government as “Down”.  Whenever one of Them needed facts farther away than two key presses, They ordered these from the central library, commanding, “Call Down and see if you can get this” or “Send what’s-his-name Down for that stuff about Streets and San”.  It would then be the job of Matt or one of his subordinates to plow through acres of paper, consult little blue numbers of a pale blue screen, or make necessary phone calls for the facts requested.  Now and then a few dozen sources would need to be consulted, and data summarized for Their use.

     File shelves and cabinets, the heart of Down, took up eighty-five percent of the floor space.  One day, everyone had bee assured, this would all be available on magnetic tape…large vinyl square…small plastic discs…a cloud.  Somehow contract negotiations had always gone awry.  So for now, and the foreseeable future, the staff of Down resided in tiny cubicles that hugged the walls, trying not to infringe on the space for ever-expanding vital information.  Matt’s cubicle was prime real estate, with a door that locked and nine foot walls, placing him above peons with mere six foot walls, or even no door.

     Matt’s cubicle was the first one unlocked this morning, as it nearly always was.  Inside, his status was further proclaimed by the presence of an entire window and three chairs.  One of these was behind a broad, littered desk, for sitting on.  Matt used the other two for storage and for tripping on.

     He flipped his briefcase up onto the clean portion of the desk and popped it open.  He bent to slide open his lower right hand drawer and tossed his lunch inside.  Then he sat up to close the briefcase again, and stared at the paper bag sitting inside it.

     He opened the desk draw again to make sure.  The other bag sat there unimpressed.

     Gingerly, he put one index finger into the briefcase and poked open that bag.  An apple peeked out at him.

     “Okay,” he said.  He repeated the process with the bag in the drawer.  A rectangular yellow box waited inside, looking very much like the ones his father had used in the darkroom.  He picked this up and rattled it.

     Shoving himself back from the desk with one elbow, he slid from the chair to the floor and then under his desk.  There was really no chance that this box held unprocessed photo paper, not after al these years.  Still, there was no knowing what his mother might keep stashed.  Under his desk, he’d have a LITTLE darkness, in case this really was unexposed print paper.

     He eased the lid open.  Photo paper, yes, but used: somebody’s collection of pictures.  No doubt his mother had been showing some ancient souvenirs to her fans.  Matt slid out from under the desk and opened the box completely.

    A glossy five by seven of a human skull grinned up at him.