We have spoken, hereintofore, of the custom of our ancestors to send New Tear cards. We don’t know that a lot nowadays. Nice custom, really, but when people look over what they’ve spent on Christmas cards and the like in December, the impulse no longer exists. We have also spoken of the prevalence of pigs on such cards. (By the way, a number of the cards in this article are NOT things I currently have for sale, but come from the collection of one of my clients, who fell in love with New Year pigs on postcards. She would also like to know what became of all the papier-mache pigs you see in these cards, so if you know where a genuine vintage pig exists let me know. It might bring us all good luck.)
The whole package was designed to wish the recipient luck. A pig around the house meant you would never lack for company and, come the right time of year, sausage. These pigs are often accompanied by other signs of good luck, or prosperity, especially money bags, four leaf clovers, horseshoes, and…chimney sweeps.
The chimney sweep starts to appear in western literature around the early modern period, when people started to gather in cities in cottages and shops and houses hastily constructed without use of architects. Civic authorities realized that many patched-together chimneys around wooden houses were a danger, and the sweeping of chimneys became an important part of being a homeowner. But how did the sweep become a symbol of good luck? (A sweep was also a symbol of something exceptionally dirty, but there’s no mystery about that.)
Right up until today, among the British, it is considered good luck for the bride to see a sweep on her wedding day, leading to a nice side income among those of the chimney professions. (There still are such people. They say the work soots them. You knew it was coming, so don’t make that face.) Was it because they were so obviously alien, a creature from another world with their mysterious equipment and darkened garments? Does the custom of, say rubbing your buttons when a sweep passes come from a darker tradition of averting demons (frequently identified in folktales as someone of the wrong color)?
In Germany, the Interwebs informs me, the sweep is still associated with New Year’s Day lucky wishes: with toy sweeps attached to bouquets, or candy sweeps included in New Year’s gifts.
They don’t even have to appear with pigs for the charm to work. They can come with any sort of benevolent wishes for the new year, again, primarily those signifying prosperity.
Or impending spring, which may explain the prevalence of birch twigs (which some scholars say have meant spring as these were the first trees to come back after the Ice Age; I think they’re reaching) and the amanita muscaria or fly agaric mushroom (although some of the same online anthropologists trace this to the poisonous and/or hallucinogenic properties of the fungus, others insist it turns up so often in art because it’s pretty. That’s why Smurfs live in them.)
Maybe the sweep is also a symbol of prosperity, since you need money to hire one, or good luck, since having your chimney cleaned keeps your house from burning down. In any case, the sweep is always appearing on New Year postcards to wish you luck.
ALTHOUGH sweeps also symbolized other things to the population at large. THIS New Year card makes reference to the long-standing stereotype of sweeps romancing the maids in the houses they served. (Here, obviously, an upstairs maid.)
It was a running gag on postcards, not unlike the frequently expressed belief that your cook was spending her time (and YOUR money) entertaining policemen on their beat. This may have happened as often as it does on postcards, or it may simply have been because the evidence (a floury handprint in the case of the cook, a sooty e on the part of a sweep) was so easy to illustrate.
Sherlock Holmes is not required to understand why this sweep didn’t finish his job the first time around. Anyway, it sort of fits in with the jolly, lucky attitude of the sweep.
None of this covers the dark side of chimney sweep history, with its tales of climbing boys bullied into cleaning tiny chimneys, or the number of books in which the sweep is the villain (consider Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies.) There ARE one or two postcards which suggests running into a sweep might NOT be grand good luck. But it’s the way of the world. These are the people who probably don’t want pigs in the yard.
“Oh, my goodness!” Meadow Saffron threw herself backward in the sky, a hand across her forehead. “I thought we’d never do it!”
“It was a fight to the finish from the start,” Sweet Pea agreed, flipping flower petals around her.
“Gotta remember that joke,” said Bluebell. “Hey you! There’s a joke about a girl whose privates bits could sing the national anthem? Have you heard it?”
“No,” said Primrose, flying by upside-down.
“You must have: it’s the Star-Spangled Banner!” This punchline provoked peals of laughter, al of them from Bluebell.
“I cannot believe she ever played an angel,” Primrose, still upside-down, remarked to Unfirom. “She’s so pretty!”
Meadow Saffron came up from behind Unfirom to pull his hair. “How will it come out now, Wingshoulders?”
Unfirom shrugged. “Oh, they’ll shock their children.”
This called for squeals and high fives, some of which involved feet and buttocks. Unfirom looked away, scanning the park. “You have also changed the lives of several women running around the track,”
“Hey!” Bluebell kicked his ear. “If you’re so powerful you can see the future and stuff, why can’t you just do this job and let us chew our toenails?”
Undiron’s head tipped back. “If it was a matter of holding back that statue before it fell on someone, I could do it. But I lack the touch for delicate work.”
“Oh, well, that’s right.” Bluebell zipped away, slapping her heels together. “Yer way too big for delicate stuff.”
“We’re dainty,” Primrose agreed.
“We’re experts at daintiment,” Meadow Saffron chimed in, swirling in a midair pirouette.
“Dibs on that ice cream!” shouted Bluebell, diving past the other two for a puddle on the sidewalk.
“I saw it first!” shrieked Primrose, zooming to cut her off.
“Wait! Wait! There’s angels here! We have to share!” Sweet Pea dropped from the air to sit with a splash in the pale puddle, and then launched herself back into the air. “There! Now everybody can lick it off!”
Unfirom raised one hand to her with thumb and forefinger extended, as if to catch hold. He thought better of it, and turned away. As he strode across the grass, the phronik were singing
Sister Susie’s cause was folks with icy legs,
So she spent all her dollars making darning eggs;
But everybody laughs today at fixing socks
So now she lives on Plum Street in a cardboard box!
Percolator, coffeemaker,
Subaru and Studebaker:
All ya got is all yer gonna get,
Waddya bet?
The angel moved across the grass. He mourned again that his powers were limited to the reasons couples got together, and not whether they did at all. He might have been able to do some real good, instead of serving simply as a guide for the phronik.
He paused at the side of a bench, looking over the woman with the handmade sign leaning top down between her ankles. She pulled back a sleeve to check her watch. Unfirom knew her as well: she was another Griese Park regular. And she was always early.
Today, there was more amiss than earliness. She slumped back on the bench. She was rather a slumping individual at the best of times, a bit heavier than was considered the current fashion. Also neither up to current fashion, nor quite suitable for the weather, were the heavy, baggy clothes she always wore to the park.
She checked her watch again, and then checked left and right along the sidewalk before turning her eyes again to her sign. Her shoulders dropped in toward each other. Unfirom could tell without any recourse to reading her thoughts, that it wasn’t so much a matter of her being early as everybody else being late.
She had fought hard to keep the fight against the passive park idea visible. She had helped people compose letters to the right people; she had led marches. She had been, perhaps, a shade too diligent. Her followers counted on her to keep doing the majority of the work. It looked as if she would be marching alone today.
No purpose in materializing to march with her this morning. If by chance someone took a picture of the march–or if she remembered to take a group photo herself–he wouldn’t be able to make his image register. This would make her crusade even more difficult.
She stared at her feet, or perhaps the burger wrapper pinned down by the pole of her sign. She shifted. This might have been a coincidence, but Unfirom felt sure she had spotted the words ‘BIG BOOTY” staring up from the greasy paper. But perhaps he’d been listening to the phronik too long.
Still invisible, he took a seat on the bench, keeping a safe margin between himself and the mortal. He raised one hand, palm pointed at the side of her face. It did not touch her, but the energy radiating from it did. The woman blinked. Unfirom listened in on her thoughts.
Yes, the first thing he needed to do was turn her eyes away from that wrapper. In her brain, she had connected her less than elegant form with the untidy nature of Griese park; she was wpndering whether both weren’t simply unnecessary to the town. He needed to find a way to turn her thoughts to the larger picture. This was not, as he had mentioned to Bluebell, his forte.
He sorted through her thoughts for the ideals and memories that had led her into this crusade. Lots of movie scenes in there, many of them dealing with young lovers in parks and meadows. He tried to ease these to the forward of her consciousness, pushing back her awareness, more bitter though no less sharp than his, that there were no pictures of herself as part of a pair in a meadow anywhere.
Her eyes came up to the runners on the track, and the tennis players. Unfirom brightened her memories of couples and green grass just a bit, and then retreated from her brain. She needed to do the rest by herself.
The chin wrinkled. The eyelids came closer together. The pole of the sign poked a hole through the burger wrapper as she rose.
At the same moment, Unfirom spotted the woman with the stroller. Nodding farewell to the crusader, he marched back toward the fallen ice cream.
“My turn!”
“Is not! You had two turns in a row! Probly seven!”
“Whee!”
Apparently they had decided to argue about who got to sit in the ice cream instead of who got to eat it. Unfirom reached in, took a pair of wings at random, and pointed the owner at the benches which lay across the softball diamond from the ice cream.
The woman with the stroller was taking a seat on the righthand side of the righthand bench. A man in a tight blue suit was already sitting on the leftmost edge.
“They’re the ones, hmmmmm?” inquired Primrose, the owner of the wings the angel held. She kicked a drop of ice cream from one tow toward the benches.
“They’re the ones.”
Bluebell was apparently paying attention. She sped across the park to peer down into the stroller, and then at the paperback book on the diaper bag. She squealed.
“Who is it?” Primrose demanded.
Bluebell swung around, drew herself perfectly upright, and with hands folded before her, sang
I have a favorite author:
Her name is Judith Krantz,
Because in every book of hers
The folks take off their pants.
“Oooh!” Ice cream streamed from Sweet Pea’s elbows and knees as she zoomed across the park. Unfirom let go of Primrose so she could join the others. Meadow Saffron did a loop around his head before completing the group. Despite starting last, he reached the bench before three of the phronik, and pulled Bluebell down to listen as he held the rest back.
“These two will get together at a party eight months from now. They won’t remember each other from the park because they have hardly noticed each other.”
“You want us to make it so they notice each other,” Bluebell stated, trying to pry his fingers from her ankle.
“If you would,” the angel replied.
“Why?” she demanded, kicking at his fingers with her free foot.
“He won’t learn about the baby until afterward,” Unfirom replied, “And he will say the wrong thing at the wrong moment. The woman will buid this remark and make it go further than it should, which will lead her to suicide on a rainy street less than twenty=-four hours later. When the man hears of this, he will be so stricken with guilt that he will spend a great deal of money trying to adopt the baby, who will, naturally, be awarded to an aunt and uncle instead. He will stalk the family for four years, until finally the uncle shoots him down on another street on another rainy night.”
Meadow Saffron stuck an index finger into the dimple on her chin. “Kind of exciting, really.”
“Oh!” cried Sweet Pea. “But the gun will wake up the baby!”
Meadow Saffron frowned. “There is that.”
“Well, I like working with babies,” said Bluebell, who know had both arms and one leg wrapped around the angel’s thumb. “They throw their food.”
“Yeah!” said Sweet Pea. Her colleagues joined her in front of the bench as Unfirom let go of Bluebell. The angel shrugged. Whatever worked.
I never knew my Great-Uncle Walter. According to my grandfather, who seemed to like his brother-in-law, Walter was one of the finest mechanics in that corner of Iowa, a man who could repair an engine in moments and understand at a glance why a furnace had stopped giving off heat. But Walter felt he was wasted on such a job.
What Walter WANTED to be was a farmer, one of those souls who must gauge the humor of nature, dealing with good weather and bad, and then estimate the needs of the market. My grandfather felt Walter was fair-to-middling at growing crops, but an utter failure at selling them. Once the crops were harvested, he would hold off on the selling. This week was too early, for Walter, always. NEXT week, demand would be higher, and he’d win a much better price for his year’s work.
And every year, at least according to his brother-in-law, he would be the last to market, selling when buyers were glutted with product, and get a lower price than anybody else. My grandfather never knew why Walter didn’t go back to fixing engines, or try to repair his own timing.
Great-Uncle Walter came to mind while I was reminiscing about one of the many people who tried to tell me how to do things in the days when I sold used books. In a way, he was like a lot of my unpaid advisors, who liked to tell me not to sell things. It seemed sometimes that everyone in the world who was willing to share their business acumen with me felt I could make more money by selling less. From bestsellers (there are way too many of those) to books more than five years old (no yuppie would ever pick up something like that), their advice told me my big mistake in selling books was trying to sell books.
What made this chap different was that he was all for selling books: he just felt I should hold back on CERTAIN books. “Hang onto that,” he’d tell me. “You’ll get a better price for that in two or three years.”
Barring the fact that I had not been allocated any spaces for boxes labelled “Books To Sell Three Years From Now”, I pointed out that in most cases where he gave me this advice, the books were very much in the news, and the time to strike was now. He would shake his head and explain the dangers of my situation.
The first book he advised me on was a signed first edition of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, famous at that moment due to the fatwah decreed against the author. Letting word out that I even possessed this signed copy would bring people rushing to the Book Fair for all the wrong reasons. (This was advice I had from a number of other sources on all kinds of things I wanted to offer for sale: publicity would be impossible, as it would bring thousands of protestors to ring the building. I waited and never did see this phenomenon, but it may have been something about our publicity. We didn’t advertise to the right crowd, I reckon.)
But the sum of his advice was “Much better to wait until AFTER he’s been murdered.”
As a reasonably modern marketer, I am not averse to capitalizing on someone else’s tragedy, but this struck me as perhaps a bit iffy. I also did not have a shelf in storage listed “Boos To Be Sold After the Author Dies.”
This was not the only time he made the same suggestion There was a tell-all book on Chicago crime, a book of poetry in which the author accused her father of molestation…his advice was always that I wait for the inevitable murder. He was absolutely adamant in 2009, when a book arrived which, as it turned out, was verifiably inscribed to an old friend by the new President of the United States. “You set that away,” my advisor told me. “It may be worth a lot now, but it’ll be worth a hundred times as much after the assassination.” African-American himself, he refused to believe that Barack Obama could make it through four years in the White House.
I sold the book that year. My business practices were never beyond question (“You want to put out ALL those copies of the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood?”) but, unlike Great-Uncle Walter, I was content to grab the money and run. On the other hand, my advisor still has HIS job (he’s hanging onto it until his paintings really sell, though they’re too advanced for today’s critics), so use your own judgement.
Getting really tired of this, America. Where is our sense of historic preservation? Why is there no reliable place where we can look to find the names of those heroes and heroines who have made our lives worth living? Are we so caught up in proving we are the peak of civilization that we can’t look back on those who went before, raising their flickering torches to dispel the darkness?
All I wanted from the Interwebs was a hint about the identity of the unsung genius who invented cinnamon toast. And what did I get? Everything else.
Now, I will admit right off the bat that I wasn’t really expecting a name and a date. It MIGHT be possible, but as bread and cinnamon have been known for roughly as long as humanity has been interested in food, with neither butter nor sugar any younger, it seemed unlikely. The most I was hoping for was perhaps a clue to what part of the world first produced this classic accompaniment to winter and/or bad colds.
First, the Interwebs tossed me down another rabbit hole entirely. Cinnamon Toast Crunch has such a fanatic following that it was assumed THIS was what I wanted to know about. But other people have written the tale of Chef Wendell and his improbable success. I wanted to go back farther.
Clearing away to boxes of cereal, I found the Interwebs littered with recipes and reminiscences. That was more or less what I was looking for, with hopes of perhaps running into citations from grease-stained cookbooks of generations past. I did run into a reference to a specific cookbook, but the writer would not tell me the name of the cookbook, which appears to have been one of those where people in a community donate recipes, and get their names printed under these. The one I was shown came from Illinois, which was a letdown,. I still have no serious data on the subject, but I am convinced that cinnamon toast is older than Illinois.
I wandered among the reminiscences involving people’s grandmothers making cinnamon toast for adoring grandkids. A few of these grandmothers, shown in pictures, um, looked to be about my age. Others seemed to be contemporary with MY grandmothers. But only two facts stood out from these warm recollections.
Every one oof these Grammas made cinnamon toast differently. AND NOEN OF THEM DID IT RIGHT.
Cinnamon toast, as is well known, is CORRECTLY made when it is made the way you remember it, down to whether it is cut into two triangles or four. (Yes, I see those of you who cut it into strips. I will allow for this variation, since it makes for good dunking. WE never dunked our cinnamon toast, but do your own thing.)
First of all: the ingredients. Most everyone agrees that storebought white bread is the proper starting point. Yes, when cinnamon toast was new, I presume homemade bread was used, and I see no reason to sneer at such a thing. But storebought bread is already sliced into the proper thickness, after all.
Then comes butter (or whatever butter substitute you prefer. Those who cheat by using a cinnamon-flavored spread are out of the running. We’re going for the classic here. You perhaps use a sugar substitute as well: I wouldn’t trust it, but that’s a matter of personal conviction. And you need cinnamon, of course.
AND THAT’S IT! Those of you who add vanilla, nutmeg, mace, sunflower seeds, walnuts, or pecans are gilding the lily. If you’re going to that much trouble, go bake a pie.
There is considerable differentiation in whether you spread the butter cold and hard or warm and soft, and whether you put the cinnamon on top of the butter and then the sugar, or the sugar first and THEN the cinnamon, before the cookie sheet is put in the oven. And then…hold it.
Oven? Children, did you not hear about a device called a “Toaster”? It existed for years as a long-handled device to hold over the fire before household electricity gave us a squat buddy to sit in the kitchen or the dining room, perhaps covered with a quilted toaster cover (a nice science fiction story explained once why some people use these and some don’t). I did not find one cinnamon TOAST recipe on the Interwebs which mentioned the TOASTER.
Once again, I must go forth into the Interwebs as a pioneer, and explain how cinnamon toast is MEANT to be made. No one online has bothered with MY Mother’s recipe, so here it is. (No, I have no idea where she picked up the recipe. Either of my grandmothers might have been involved.)
You take two pieces of bread from the bag and put them in the toaster. (If you have that much counter space and use a four-slot toaster, go for it.) Once this toast pops up, take it from the toaster (with or without saying “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!”) and put on a plate. Spread butter on this hot toast. Now comes the tricky part.
For many years, my mother made enough cinnamon toast that she kept a broad salmon-colored Melmac cup filled with her cinnamon and sugar mixture. This was plain old table sugar and cinnamon from a red can, mixed about half and half until it was a uniform color (no streaks of cinnamon or sugar). Sprinkle this liberally on the buttered toast. Pause. Now, taking a piece of toast by one corner, hold it diagonally over the broad cup and tap, so any cinnamon and sugar not adhering to the butter falls back in the cup for next time. Repeat with second slice. Return the toast to the plate and cut diagonally into halves (if you’re in a hurry and the tea is getting cold) or fourths. Serves two: one if eating alone and feeling self-indulgent, three or four if the smaller people have very short attention spans. If more is wanted, the toaster is still there.
The nice thing about this recipe is that just about anybody over the age of six can handle it without the need of oven mitts or cookie sheets (a broom and dustpan, maybe, if the small person hasn’t mastered toast-tapping skills.) I don’t know why this recipe is being suppressed on the Interwebs, but perhaps the Cookie Sheet Lobby will allow this blog to be printed.
By golly, it’s enough to make me despair of my NEXT project. Who was it, do you suppose, who first came up with the cinnamon roll?
Lewis Switzer regarded the world around him as he did himself: with a grand benevolent satisfaction. That the air hinted at impending rain worried him as little as did his own faults, and he found nothing displeasing about the slightly shabby park around him (as it included the limber limbs and interestingly torn shorts of the young lady currently rounding the track.)
He had always found something reassuring in the onset of autumn. No doubt it went back to Kindergarten, where you learned the new year started neither in January nor April but in September. He should have been a teacher or professor himself, he supposed, but selling used books was somewhat in tune with the old rhythm. The bookstore experienced rebirth about when the campus did.
Not that slack or busy seasons worried him. The store served to occupy his time in retirement, a congenial rectangle of calm after the madness of managing several links of a chain bookstore. Once he had worried about quarterly statements, about unlocking doors precisely at ten: things that had nothing to do with the natural rhythms of life.
Now, since the life of a dealer in used books need not start before noon, he could come here and study the users of the track as he pleased. The freshmen had yet to discover the track: they would start to appear after the college teams really started to monopolize the track on campus. They would come by twos and by threes, stripping off sweats to cries at the cold and the wind and giggles at the danger of dashing around in shorts in a park so far from home. Sophomore women, still largely in twos and threes, would ignore them or give advice, whichever flattered their air of sophistication and experience. Juniors or seniors were more often found running alone, or in the company of a congenial Significant Runner.
Lewis thought the male runners were similar, but couldn’t tell them apart. In fact, he couldn’t tell the male runners apart much at all, unless one was in the company of a female runner who interested him. Best after all, he supposed, that he had not become a professor; he would have been discharged long ago, and for just cause. There were no faculty rules for book dealers. So he could retain what income he made at the store, with his savings and pension, to be apportioned among his second and third wives, along with his dwindling number of minor offspring.
As the weather was pleasant, the recollection of his wives and children also pleased him. In days to come, when he was gone, the boys might very likely amble here as he liked to do, and enjoy the scenery as he had always done. What became of the store and savings did not concern him nearly so much as the hope that he could bequeath to his sons and daughters the pleasures of such autumn mornings.
“Puget!”
A dog he had not noticed was charging onto the grass, following the scent of a pizza crust Lewis had had no reason to observe before, even if it had been there. He pulled back against the fence to let the dog pass, if the dog was so minded.
“Sorry!”
The dog was not hostilely inclined, so Lewis was at liberty to consider the woman with the animal. She was tallish, roundish, rather too old, but not way too old, and she had a pleasant smile of apology.
“Oh, I like dogs,” he told her. Puget, who had put on an unexpected burst of speed, now just as irrationally stopped short. He frowned at the spot where he was sure that pizza smell was and sniffed around the grass for it. No one noticed that it had bounced into the air some six or seven feet. On the other side of the fence.
Shirley checked the ground to be sure Puget wasn’t gobbling up trash, and then checked the stranger Puget had nearly bowled over. This was a man of medium height, in a worn tweed suit. His nose was aquiline, his eyes large and commanding, his hair—where it appeared—salt and pepper, a phrase she had not, now she thought of it, heard for years. Manners, she supposed, kept people from using it around her.
A grave dignity showed in his smile: a professor at the local college, she supposed. Going further, she decided he was likely an English professor. Something in his face put her in mind of Dr. Salter, who liked to quote line upon line of the juicier sections of Chaucer to the women in the front row of English 101.
“I have a schnorkie, myself.” Force of habit, Lewis decided, had made him strike up a conversation with a woman he rather wished wasn’t there. One of the runners might seem them together and assume this was his wife. She looked old enough…too old, he hoped. Still, his appeal to the freshmen was as a father figure.
She had been leaning down to address the dog, but the word caught her attention. “I beg your pardon?”
“A schnorkie. Part Yorkshire terrier, part Schnauzer. Schnorkie.”
She laughed. “I do like that word. Schnorkie. She tugged on Puget’s leash to encourage him to stay. She had come to town, after all, to talk to some of the local characters. This character seemed willing to talk.
“Some words do just roll off the tongue. Rhodomontade. Candelabrum. And Wirbelsturm: that’s German for cyclone.”
Shirley’s head moved slightly to one side unconsciously mimicking Puget. “I know that. In fact, that was my maiden name.”
Her head drew back and her shoulders came up as the man leaned in, staring. She looked to the small canister of pepper spray on the handle of the leash/
“Charley?” he demanded.
It had been a matter of decades since anyone had called her Charley, a nickname her stepfather had given her. On informing her mother’s new husband that her name was Shirley, not Charley, he had replied, “Yes, but I am not a priest and I refuse to preside over a Temple.” Joke and man were endeared to her at that moment, and in the same moment one of nine Shirleys in the second grade that year had cheerfully become Charley.
“Ye-es.” The man was standing back now, looking her over as if not entirely pleased by a discovery. “It is. Charley Wirbelsturm.”
“It used to be.” She studied his face. “And you would be….”
He turned his head, looking toward the dusty track. “Do you remember walking through Robertson’s Woods just as the rain started?”
Her lips drew in. “Well, no.”
He raised his chin, still pointed to the track, as if his profile was supposed to assist her recollections. “Do you remember a little white box with a little gold ring inside?”
“Not really.” The profile was telling her nothing.
His lower lip slid forward just a bit. “Green velvet lining in the box?”
Puget wanted to move on, and so did Shirley. “I’m afraid I>>>>”
She moved one foot forward, but his face came toward hers again. The lips started to move, but he stopped whatever he had been about to say. His shoulders dropped a bit, and he sighed.
“Do you remember me sticking two footballs under my sweater to imitate Professor Flowers, not knowing she’d just walked into the room?”
“Lew!” she exclaimed, making Puget’s head come around.
“I knew it.” His voice was suffused with gloom. “They’ll scratch that on my tombstone.”
“Ha!” She took a step forward. “Your hair! What became of it?”
“Mmf.” He turned to the track. “For all you know I lost it after graduation and I’m just now regaining it.”
“Rogaining it, I suppose.” She chuckled. “Of course it is you. But I haven’t seen you in….” The hand she had been moving between Puget’s ears came up to point. “You skipped the class reunion last month>”
He shrugged. “I only attend the ones ending in zero or five.”
“Lew, it was the fiftieth!”
His shoulders came up as he turned to stare. “Was it? Really? But that ends in th.”
He put a hand down for the suspicious dog to sniff. “If it comes to that, Charley, you had more hair in those days, too.”
She patted herself behind the left ear. “Well, I started bald, so I figure I’m still ahead of the game.”
She looked him up and down. How like Lew to wear tweed in September. In college he had always, always worn those cardigans, thinking they made him look British and thus more intellectual. Which they had actually, if you were a simple underclassman and not very sophisticated. She supposed that was why she had picked him from among all the would-be athletes with letter sweaters and would-be beatniks with beards.
Lewis looked at his foot as an ice cream container, perhaps dislodged from the grass by a doggy forefoot, rolled in front of him. “Do you still have your collection of all those napkins they rolled around the nineteen-cent cone at Joe O’Neota’s”
She flashed shining teeth at him. Hers? Yes, of course, drat the luck. He’d seen them too many times to mistake them. “No, I sold the whole collection to my daughter. She insulated her house with them.”
She’d put on some weight, he thought. Not so much as little Jenny Calhoun, he supposed, who had been going to make a big noise as a dancer. Last time he’d seen Jenny, she was still capable of making a big noise, but only if she fell down on the dance floor.
“Say, did your brother ever….”
“He did, but it didn’t last.” She reined in Puget, who was taking a close interest in that ice cream cup. “Now he runs a Vegan Tx-Mex place in Iowa: The Greenest Taco.”
Both of his chins withdrew into his neck. “They served us green tacos at the Gran Mexicano, but we never ate them.”
Shirley nodded in sorrow. “I tried to explain that to him, hut he didn’t get it.”
“You always were quick.”
“After eating a green taco, yes.” Her head tipped to one side. “There was a time when I was fast.”
“That’s what they tried to warn me about, but I ignored them, and lost my reputation.”
“As I recall your reputation, that was just as well.” Lewis thought her face had gone a bit stiff. “Do you hear much about the others?”
He thought this over. “Well, there was a story about Myrtle going to a special clinic in Switzerland, and taking classes so that now her private parts can whistle The Star-Spangled Banner. Have you heard that?”
Her face was now thoroughly frigid. “I have not.”
Lewis’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, you must have! It’s our national anthem!”
Shirley pressed the butt of her left hand against her forehead. “So that was you, then?”
“Who?”
“That killed vaudeville?”
“Not I, Prosecutor. Those DNA tests were contaminated.” His drawl was casual, unconcerned. But his thought was, “How pleasant: not at all as awkward as last time.”
Her thoughts were running along the same lines. “He was so stiff at that reunion. Maybe he’s growing up at last. Better not to tempt fate.”
“Well, Puget will be wanting to move along,” she said. She gave the leash a little tug, but Puget himself seemed to be studying something on the ground next to the fence. He started in the direction opposite to the pull, and took her a step forward, himself bouncing the man against the wire of the fence.
“Puget!” she snapped. The leash got a fiercer pull. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Not at all.” Lewis reached down to pat the dog again, turning to try to see what the dog had lunged for. All he saw were new white lines painted on the ball diamond. “He didn’t get far, poor puppy. He didn’t know he was dealing with the only girl trombone player in the marching band.”
“Gloriosky!” Round eyes rolled up. “The one who turned left instead of right and wound up marching thirty yards backward.”
His upper teeth showed in a grin. “The one who used to sneak out after halftime, climbing the fence so Macfarlane wouldn’t catch us.”
She scowled. “I remember you giving me a boost.”
“So that’s why you always made me go over first after that.” He sighed. “Of course, we missed some thrilling last second losses by our heroes on the gridiron.”
“Pneumonia would have been a small price to pay for the excitement.” Shirley shifted the leash to her other hand. “So what are you doing now, Lew?”
“This and that.” Shrugging, he leaned back against the fence. “Took an aptitude test and found out what I’m most qualified for is retirement.”
She shook her head. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“Why not?”
There was the slightest twitch of her upper lip. “I was going to.”
Lewis grinned in appreciation, but thanked the powers that were that this affair had not gone as far as it might have. Living with Charley would have been a constant competition. He bounced his back against the fence. Not that he wouldn’t have won, of course, but even if you did have the fastest car in town, you didn’t want to be racing ALL the time.
“Well.” After one more bounce, he stood free of the fence. “I suppose you have other….”
Both heads jerked around as a sound system in a passing car lost all control, volume shifting so suddenly that it apparently shocked even the young woman driving. The melody was heavy on drums, though the lyrics screamed that the singer lived to dance and danced to live and why not come dance while the music was still playing?
Lew snorted as the car passed by. “Still got your tap shoes, Charley? Or are you too young to have been there when we won the freshman talent show?”
Shirley rolled her eyes and urged Puget onward. “I decline to recall that much corn before breakfast.”
“Goes against the grain?” Lewis moved as Puget’s head swung down toward something invisible but obviously interesting. “But you do remember how Steve tried to be cool by switching his piano selection at the last minute and not only came in last and got himself suspended.”
This time Shirley had to tip her head back to roll her eyes as far as the memory required. “Little Richard he was not.” Her head came back down. “And he went to seminary. Where’d you go, Lew, after? You never sent much to the reunion booklets.”
She stole a glance: his head was up and square with his shoulders. “I did some time in the military.” His eyes met hers. “Intelligence, of course.”
Shirley didn’t see where of course came into this. “Washing secrets out of garbage cans?”
He shook a finger at her. “That was only the first six months. Then I moved up.”
Her chin came out. “Emptying garbage cans?”
“If you really want to know…..” He lowered his head and his voice, and looked up and down the sidewalk. “At the end I was pasting newspaper and magazine clippings into classified scrapbooks.”
Puget looked up in alarm as his mistress clapped her hands and cried, “Ooooh! A war hero!”
Lewis raised his nose. “Shows what civilians know. It took me two years working as a clipper before I moved up to paster.”
Her head swung back and forth now, as if her neck was loosening under the impact of these revelations. “Lew, whatever made them take you, with your record? And your beard?”
His lips pursed. “You laughed at it.”
She laughed now. “I think I have a picture of that yet. You looked like you dusted your chin with cocoa.”
Lew’s face stiffened. The memory was too intense for him to notice what sounded like four tiny tongues clicking in exasperation.
“You have that next to the picture from the Christmas concert?”
Mirth dropped from Shirley’s eyes. Her upper lip drew back to expose her teeth again. “Just that one of the black eye you had next day. What did you mean by stepping on the lead angel’s train?”
His nostrils flared. “How was I supposed to guess lead angels didn’t wear underwear?”
Her eyes jerked away from his; she snorted. “I was going to spring that on you later.”
His eyebrows came up. “Spring is exactly the word that came to mind as the angelic robe started down.”
She caught her underlip with her upper teeth. Charley had always done that: always. “I wish I had pictures,” he went on. “I didn’t have time to appreciate the full effect with you swinging at me.”
So no one had cured Lew of that superior nod; Shirley yanked Puget away from the fence and back to the sidewalk. “Well, it didn’t ruin my blossoming musical career. Would you believe I was asked to sing lead for Claudia and the Carhops?”
“Not for thirty seconds.”
She smiled. “You’re getting smarter, Lew. I taught you well.”
She turned away. Her plan was to continue right across the street and back to the hotel. While she was planning this, however, Puget decided to pursue a scent which took him to the wrong side of one of the big green garbage cans. By the time Shirley recognized this, the can was on its side, sending the night’s supply of chicken bones and pizza boxes onto the sidewalk, to Puget’s obvious delight. This quite ruined her exit.
“You, Puget,” she said, hauling on the leash and the rim of the can at the same time, “Are a dog.”
Lew squatted to gather in two straws and the box from a Booty Burger Berry Bomb. “Huh. Just like Campus Clean-Up Day.”
“Campus Clean-Up!” Shirley snatched a drumstick away from Puget’s opening outh. “We were always assigned to the woody end of campus. And you stole leaves from my pile.”
Lew frowned at a cigar butt before flicking it up into the can. “Did I? Doesn’t sound like me. You’d think I’d wait until you had them all raked up and then jump in.”
Shirley raised an eyebrow at a battered issue of Stripes Magazine before flinging it after the cigar butt. “There was a prize for the biggest pile of leaves. A Pogo book, usually, or Peanuts.” She reached down for some wing bones, looking up to make sure he recalled this.
“That’s right.” He delicately lifted a half-eaten chicken breast into a Booty Buddy Box. “I was also hot for literary adventure.” His drawl slipped a little as he went on, “I thought about carving our initials in a tree, but I didn’t know how. Anyway, our faculty advisor wouldn’t have appreciated the damage to campus infrastructure.”
This Ranch Wagon cup was already biodegrading. “Lew, you would never have stopped at initials. You were the epic poem type.”
Lew sat back on his haunches. “I was, wasn’t I? I think my favorite was the one that started ‘Oh, Tempting seductress!” He bounced a Chicken Smidgeon cup into the can. “Or was it “Oh, Seductive Temptress!’?
Shirley snagged two ribs from a broken umbrella and one from Barrett’s Ribs. “You wrote that you would remember you existed by thinking of me.”
Lew was studying a battered plastic bag. “Did I write that?”
She rose, tugging some of the wrinkles from her tidy suit. “Somebody did. If it wasn’t you, it should have been.”
With Lew still crouching in the scraggly glass, Shirley had an excellent view of his bald spot. When the can was blocking him from view (and with no mirror handy) she had begun to believe that she was what she had been. A wisp of lost future passed across her vision, and was gone.
She turned away with a little sigh. “And there was always a football game to follow Campus Clean-Up. And we always lost.”
“That’s why they stopped having Campus Clean-Up. It wasn’t complaints from the professors or the janitors: the coaches wanted to break the curse.” Lew rose from his crouch, refusing to grab the can for support no matter how much his knees complained. “You know, the college team here has a home game tonight if you’re staying that long. I could….”
Humans and dog cringed at the sudden blast of a whistle. “Car alarms!” snarled Shirley, looking up the street. “I’d better not. Nice seeing you, Lew.” She turned away in time to miss seeing a metal whistle fly through the air as if kicked. Then her head turned back over her shoulder. “Besides, I know what happens at those games.”
Lew raised an eyebrow. “I have no idea what you mean.”
She winked at him. “Casey Busso.”
“Casey!” He hadn’t thought of Casey in years, perhaps because laughing that hard was bad for his back. “That can’t happen here. I’m sure the world can’t afford teo casey Bussos in one century. If it could afford one.”
She turned around and came back, shaking a finger. “You put him up to that, you devil!”
“Now now.” He shook a finger right back at her. “The Student Government cleared us on inquiry.”
“Student Council.”
“Oh, to be sure.” He nodded, folding his hands together. “I always called it Student Government just to be difficult.”
Her lower lip stuck out to expel a long breath past her upper lip. “That was a lot of shouting over nothing.”
“Not exactly nothing, Charley. Pour dignity was involved.” He leaned against the fence again. “Student Councils were for immature little high school kids. There we were, savants of nineteen and twenty, worthy to be called a Student Government.”
“Everyone was so ferocious about it.” She shook her head. “It was silly.”
“That, too.” He looked off toward the track, but his eyes slid toward her. “Not if you read Vera veritas, of course.”
“Vera Veritas was silly, too. Half the newspaper staff suspended for refusing to say who was writing under that name.”
Lew nodded. “And new rules for the paper, too. Ten years later, there’d’ve been riots.”
Shirley moved the leash to her free hand again. “It made the administration as silly as the rest of us. After all, Vera Veritas was on THEIR side. That was what the article was really about: leave the name of the Student Council alone and work on the big issues, like who was the band going to be at the Snow Ball.”
“It was her style,” he said. “She could make you mad whichever side you were on.”
“That’s a writer with style.” Shirley studied a spot between Puget’s ears. “That line about the difference between good counsel and Student Council was nice. You steal it somewhere or think of it yourself?”
Lew pulled himself upright. “Me? I started the petition to rename it Student Government. Nearly got suspended myself. Again.” He wiggled his shoulders as if trying to work out a muscle cramp. “I always thought YOU wrote Vera Veritas, Charley.”
“Me?” Her head came up. “I was the one who kept demanding the Student Council investigate her!”
“I know. You brought me THAT petition.”
She frowned. “They never talked about suspending me. Maybe because I was on the Student Council. Huh!” Her eyes rose. “Who was it, then? John Memos? No, I bet it was Flo.”
“Flo?”
“Florence Shoe. You remember: red hair, so tall….” She started to put her hand out into the air, and dropped it to one hip instead. “Lew, are you really telling me it wasn’t you?”
He held up both hands. “I thought all along it was you, especially with what you…what Vera Veritas said about…. I thought you’d changed your mind about…the whole damn everything. I was…. Well, what about Bob Rivers?”
Shirley shook her head and kicked at a Chicken Smidgeon they’d missed, not noticing this put it closer to Puget’s ready jaws. “And I was positive it was you. I didn’t blame you for switching sides, because I knew if you thought of something really funny to say, you wouldn’t let principles get in the way. What about Gabriel printler?”
“Bob Rivers,” he said, with a definite nod. “Well, now, Gabriel might’ve….” His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t kid me at this point, Charley? Couple of those jokes had you written all over them.”
She stepped back to study his eyes. “And I thought it was YOUR delicate satiric sledgehammer. I did feel….” She blinked. “It doesn’t matter. I wonder what they DO call it now.”
Of course it hadn’t really mattered, Lewis supposed. He hadn’t ever really thought, in basic terms, “Well, if Shirley’s going to give me a petition to sign and then make me look like a fool in the newspaper, I don’t want to talk to her.” But it might’ve been in the back of his mind.
She broke into this reverie by moving down the sidewalk again. “I need to get Puget back.”
He nodded. “Where are you staying?”
“The Sun-Inn takes dogs.”
“Good for the Sun-Inn.” He came forward to pat the dog again. “How…long are you in town?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. What time’s the game?”
“One.” He came up alongside her. “How’d you come to land on this bump in the road anyhow?”
She ran a hand up her neck into her hair. “I sort of inherited a spot on the Board of Trustees of the Pont-a-Methon Museum when my husband died. I was going to be passing north of here, and I thought I might actually attend a meeting, and maybe see this park people keep writing letters about.”
Lew took hold of one of her elbows. “Let me tell you a few things about this park, Charley. I don’t know if you remember seeing a letter I wrote about it but….”
“Of course I remember you,” she said, frowning. “Whatever did you think?”
“No, I said remember a letter from me.” He took a deep breath. “I do like that perfume of yours.”
It didn’t seem quite right to be out here without her walker. They kept telling her not to go out without her walker. But Edith had no very clear idea where it was. Of course, That Christa would scold her again but there was no help for it. She just had no clue where the walker might be. At the moment, she actually had no clue where she was herself. Usually she DID know, though it was strange how many times she turned out to be wrong. But she almost always had an idea.
Not this time. This was not the Kitchen or the Dining Room or the Living Room. It was not even the Yard. It was a path, a dirt path. Edith had not walked on a dirt path since…whose garden was it? It was a friend of hers but…. Anyway, there was no Garden here; there was just a path. That Christa could probably tell her…and scold her for being here. Who did That Christa think she was? And who, exactly, was she?
Nice day, though: just enough sunshine and a little breeze. She put a frail hand up to brush back a wisp of white hair. She hoped That Christa wouldn’t find her too soon.
It would have been nice all the same had there been someone on the path to talk to, to ask where the path was, and where she was. All she could see on the path ahead was a dark spot. Aiming for this, she realized it too was moving. Edith walked faster. A squirrel or even a mouse would at least be company.
She should have fallen on her face without the walker and That Christa, but she didn’t. And in any case, it didn’t matter. That was a tail: a long black tail rising like a proud flag. A cat was on the road ahead!
Edith had always been a city kid. Cats weren’t supposed to be on the road by themselves: anything could happen. Her hurried shuffle became a near run. The cat, hearing her approach, turned to look over its shoulder.
“Don’t run!” she called. “It’s okay! I won’t hurt you, Mysterion!”
Mysterion? What kind of name was that, and why…. Of course! She nodded as she came up to the cat, which had sat down on the path. It looked her over with an air of amused contempt that reminded her of….
Mysterion! Of course! That’s who it was: she recognized the little white squiggle on his throat. “I thought That Christa told me you died. I was going to the kitchen to feed you but the kitchen was moved.” Edith could have snatched him up and hugged him, but of course Mysterion would never put up with that sort of thing.
“Where are we going?” There was no reply, of course. Edith hoped she wasn’t quite silly enough to expect that. Mysterion just walked on. He seemed to know where he was going. She had never heard of anyone finding their way home by following a cat but there was a first time for everything. And it was VERY nice to see Mysterion again, walking past the pink and white flowers blooming at the side of the path. Maybe they would find their way to That Christa, who would see that Mysterion was perfectly all right.
Edith took a deep breath of the cool air, and, looking down, found a second cat, black and white, was walking next to Mysterion. Mysterion always hissed at the neighbor’s cats, but acted as if he didn’t even see this one.
“Who’s your friend?”
The new cat looked back at her. It was Pull Socks, a rascal if ever there was one: fond of hiding stray laundry. But he had quietly sat with her all those long days between the death at the Home and Fritz’s funeral. Hadn’t Pull Socks died, too, though? Edith almost wished That Christa was there to ask.
Anyway, there he was. Edith wondered if it wasn’t just a little silly, a grown woman following two cats along the path. Pull Socks was stretching, enjoying the walk and the sunshine, with Mysterion just walking straight ahead, head high. Their shadows almost touched the toes of Edith’s slippers. She squinted into the sky. She should have worn her gardening hat and gloves. The spots on her hands…well, they seemed to be going away, actually. That HAD to be a sign of something terrible.
While she was checking the backs of her hands, a third cat had somehow come past her to join Mysterion and Pull Socks. Edith recognized him at once.
Paulie: oh, Paulie! She shook her head. She remembered tripping over Paulie. Not his fault: as she had told Fritz, she should have known he’d be there the second she stepped into the kitchen. But, oh, those weeks in the wheelchair. Her knees were never the same again: how could one person fall on her knees so often?
Paulie had always been a cuddling cat. Edith stepped a little faster, to catch him up, buy frowned. There was an orange tabby with them now, batting at Mysterion’s high tail. Mysterion would never have allowed this. But Mysterion never knew Maybe. Maybe was years ago, named by Willa from the way Edith kept telling him “No! No!”
“He doesn’t know no no; he’s just a maybe,” said Willa…no, Willa’s daughter, Clare. Willa had…three children now, all grown, and a round bulldog named Spencer. Edith shook her head, again. Darling dog, Spencer, but…a dog? Her daughter?
And now there were five. Edith immediately recognized Moo Ting, adopted from her oldest grandson when he got that job in…Guatemala. The boy called him Satan, but she didn’t want that name in her house, so she renamed him after her favorite button on the TV remote. Moo Ting loved to sleep on the old ironing board, because of the reflected heat from the cover. Fritz had given her that ironing board: her first Valentine’s Day after they were married. He hadn’t guessed at that point that it would be used years later by a cat. It had taken her a while to convert him to cats.
Edith never saw how Ine got up on the refrigerator, so she not surprised that she hadn’t seen him join the group. Ine, named from her grandkids’ attempt to imitate the sound he made when he saw them coming, was her only Siamese. Fritz, of all people, brought him home, having found the cat in an abandoned house. Edith knew very well that Ine was dead. It was cancer of the jaw, which never seemed to affect Ine especially. The lower jaw just gradually disappeared, and they’d had to….
The road ahead was becoming crowded with cats between the rows of peony bushes. (Willa loved peonies: roses on steroids, she called them.) There were Gravy and Dumpling, that crazy couple, who had snatched French Toast right from Willa’s plate. (Before she had syrup on it, thankfully.) Gravy had been very alpha, nipping hair from between Dumpling’s toes, to Dumpling’s squealed objections. AND he clawed that blue couch to smithereens. Fritz always talked about replacing it, but he never did, not until Dumpling and Gravy were both gone. He’d given it to Willa and her friends, for their clubhouse, and after that Jennifer from down the block had taken it. Jennifer had cats, so she broke in, she said.
Edith clapped her hands. And here was Stephen, with that catnip banana he always carried everywhere! Stephen loved dry cat food, but Mysterion and Gravy preferred the canned. Looking around the group, she could name the cat foods each liked best and the flavors. After flavors of cat food were invented, of course. Fritz went on refusing to breathe around the Tuna Specials, as he called them, long after… Oh, Gravy would have loved Mew Mousse, if it had existed. Maybe that’s why he wanted the French toast. And here came Pookie, with a little “Mau” as a greeting to the others. Where were they all coming from?
She realized she had known for some time where they were going. She realized she was correct when she saw the long line of people ahead of the ten…a dozen cats. Edith took her place at the end of the line.
Mysterion, however, marched past hem, with Gravy and Stephen and the others following. “Come back!” she called, in a loud whisper.
“Come back” she said again, now in that Mommy Voice which had always impressed Willa and never, never any of the cats. She’d have to go after them. “Sorry,” she said to the man ahead of her in line.
Her knees didn’t hurt, and she didn’t feel the least bit dizzy. Still, it was ridiculous to think she could catch them all.
She couldn’t catch ANY of them. She followed them right up to the front, until all at sat between her and that massive locked gate was a desk, behind which sat a huge stern man with a long beard and a massive ledger.
He was speaking in an earnest way to the woman at the front of the line. Edith froze, knowing she was intruding here.
“Come back!” she said again.
“Mau,” said Pookie.
This was not addressed to her. The big man raised his eyes from the ledger.
“Yes?”
The cats sat down on the path and LOOKED at him. Edith knew that Look: it called for an open door, a can of tuna, or the brush. This Look was not directed at her right now. It was a directed at the long-bearded man, who met the Look with raised his eyebrows.
I understand, honest I do. You spent a lot of time and money on your building. You’re proud of it. The architect promised this would be a building which would stand the test of time, and you want people to see it. By what right do I call the child of your corporate dreams “boring”?
Maybe I just rush to judgement. Maybe my untrained eye simply fails to see in the classic lines of your building the long meetings, the give and take of urban design, the effort and argument that went into the creation of a structure defined by its—how shall I put this—utter blandness.
So explain it all to me? Were you responding to a trend in building styles, or rebelling against them? What was the aesthetic principle which went into designing the three buildings we have looked at so far? What is it about these buildings which should have called to my eye and brain instead of what really happened, which was that I had to flip over the postcard to learn I had just looked at a bank, a restaurant, and a hospital, in that order?
The problem isn’t just with late mid-century architecture. Buildings from earlier in the century also call up a reaction of, “Oh. A building.” Instead of “Wow! What an interesting post office!”
Would “Well, THERE’S a pile of bricks!” be enough for you?
I suppose part of the reason for printing these postcards in the first place was just to let us know what your motel looked like, so we’d know it when we drove up. At some point in any road trip, the participants reach a point at which the availability of a shower and a freshly made bed are all that matter.
But do you HAVE to emphasize a building which would appeal ONLY to people who have been driving for fourteen hours?
Those of you who feel your building is not very interesting and instead show off the sign and the parking lot are not helping all that much.
Maybe if you just show us the entrance to your place we’ll be more engaged. AND maybe not.
Postcard publishers are not unaware of the various problems. The Teich Company was a pioneer in taking a picture of a building and then recoloring it to make it look the way it would at night. All those lighted windows were supposed to lend the view more excitement.
This technique was still considered viable a generation later, though here we have relied on straight photography (with the result that some windows are left dark.)
Other postcards, inspired by the building owner or the photographer, figured that if the building was not all that interesting, maybe showing off the pool would help. Another nice try.
This, by the way, also goes back to the 1930s. Even an art deco façade (and an art deco pool) could only go so far in calling to the viewer’s eye.
As the century went on, the double-image postcard became more popular, building both views to equal size, and treating the viewer to TWO tedious visions in place of just one.
The design, at least, is interesting. It does make us pause for a moment and marvel that somebody thought this was a really great image for a postcard.
The high point of this sort of design has to be the waterfront view, which shuts out excess appeal in favor if showing us the same building twice. At least the building management got its money’s worth on this one.
Sweet Pea was flinging flower petals which could be smelled but not seen by those outside the pastel world of the park phronik. Her partners danced a little mid-air dance, watching Arthur and Julia move slowly down the walk, occasionally brushing a little grass or dirt off each other, bumping shoulders now and again in lieu of holding hands, and discussing the Historiologic Theory courses.
Meadow Saffron sniffed at them. “Huh! I bet they think it’s THEIR idea!”
Unfirom’s upper eyelids came down a bit. “They think it’s their invention.”
Bluebell flew up to consider his eyelids and demand, “How many times have we done this now?”
The angel blinked. “I don’t count. It would be like numbering my headaches.”
Having run out of petals, Sweet Pea started to gather her hair up like a chocolate kiss on the top of her head. “Weren’t they darling when they were falling all over everything?”
“Thanks to us,” Bluebell agreed, juggling a couple of broken pencil tips.
Primrose sniffed. “Oh, they must’ve had some natural talent to be quite so lummoxy.”
“How come they all say that about ‘Remember me’?” Meadow Saffron shook her head, and then zipped over to Sweet Pea, quite unfairly poking the other phron in the stomach while Sweet Pea’s hands were up in the hair. “You almost messed it all up there at the end, when you had to go and poke her in the behind that way.”
Sweet Pea wiggled her hips, not releasing her grip on her hair. “We-ell, I thought she’d like it.” Her chin came up. “I believe she did.”
“You are so shallow,” snorted Meadow Saffron. “Love ain’t all pokes in the bottom. When would you eat?”
Sweet Pea snorted right back at her accuser. “Oh, you’re so deep I need my boots.”
Bluebell flew over to assist Meadow Saffron in jabbing Sweet Pea’s tummy. “Well, I need clothespins for my nose.”
“You’d look better,” Sweet Pea retorted, pooching out her stomach in defiance.
“Hold there.” Unfirom reached down to pull the phronik away from each other. “No more poking. “You each have your voice in the chorus, with your individual talents for this work.”
“And it is so much work,” put in Primrose, sticking her tongue out at her partners.
Unfirom nodded. “That’s why there are phronik in the parks. Sex is inevitable, but love takes work.”
Sweet Pea’s nod echoed that of the angel. “I saw a couple last night and they were doing a whole lot of work. He had her hang by her knees from the fence over there and….”
The gaze of the angel made her story trail away. Meadow Saffron shook four fingers at her. “You should have been making them fall in love!”
“They didn’t have time!” Sweet Pea stuck a thumb in her mouth and pulled back a ways from those fingers. “And neither did I.”
Unfirom sighed, and released his grip on the phronik. Bluebell flew straight at Sweet Pea, whispering, “You didn’t call me!”
“Well, well, you were so piggy about that Double Booty Burger you found,” retorted Sweet Pea, wiggling back some more.
“Hey!”
Unfirom stiffened as Meadow Saffron poked two fingers into his stomach. “What is it?” he inquired.
“Hey, are the people we go to all this work for going to be happier because of us? Or what?”
The angelic face was noncommittal. “Some of them.”
The phron took offense at this lack of commitment. “So why bother, hey?”
Bluebell zipped up to join her, also poking the angel’s stomach. “If it doesn’t make ‘em happier, we got all kinds of fries to eat!”
Unfirom nodded to Arthur and Julia, who had just reached the street, stepping out of the park. “Because you changed the nature of their meeting, their future has been changed. They will move in together at the end of their junior year, and get married the following summer. After five years of struggle, she will come into a great deal of money, which will enable them to complete their studies. They will become important scholars, she perhaps a bit more respected than he, but it is the money which will lead to a separation, reconciliation, divorce, remarriage, and, in general, a series of rifts and patches which will go on for the rest of their lives.”
He found himself the focus of eight enormous eyes.
“Will they be happier?”
He shrugged. “At times.”
Bluebell tossed her head. “Oh well. They’ll be tons more interesting.”
“I s’pose,” said Meadow Saffron, nodding slowly.
Sweet Pea, however, leapt straight up, high over the angel’s head. “Hey-hoop-dee-hah!” She kicked out her right foot to point, using her left hand to shade her eyes. “Lookit lookit lookit! He’s throwing away half of a perfectly good Booty Biscuit Basket.”
The phronik scattered in the direction she led. Typical, Unfirom knew; once the couple had left the park, they had no further interest in Arthur and Julia. And it would be wrong, of course, to get too personally involved with one couple with so many more to service. Angels with guardian assignments had a steadier line of work.
He turned and moved up the path and came upon them tearing into the leaden biscuits from some pedestrian’s discarded breakfast. He passed without comment; it was an added service of theirs, really. The thought of doing something to discourage litterers had crossed his mind more than once, but the thought of what he could actually do had never accompanied it. He would get no help from the phronik on such a crusade, as it would cut into their meal plans. They didn’t really need to eat at all, but, unlike Unfirom, they could. And they did, with gusto. Gusto was not in Unfirom’s nature. Litterbugs who had visited Booty Burger, the Ranch Wagon, Nathaniel’s Pizza, Big Boo’s Chicken, and smaller, similar establishments, provided the major part of a phron’s diet in Griese Park.
The powerhouse among these was Booty Burger, which was funding the fight against turning the location into a passive park. The other dining establishments, though generally opposed to the move, let Booty Burger do the battling. Museum management had hinted that some eatery not involved on the wrong side would get the café franchise inside the new building. Booty Burger declined to be swayed by such enticements, and carried on its battle without fear of reprisal. Booty Burger’s whole public image was, after all, based on fearlessness (or, some said, shamelessness.)
“We’ll turn our liabilities into assets,” their CEO had declared, back when Booty Burger was little more than three push pins and a handful of paper clips on a map of the state. “Everybody sees the health reports on Eyewitness News. What we can’t hide, we flaunt.”
So a line of popular and audacious commercials now filled the region, letting everyone know that Booty Burger would “Put Beef On Your Booty”, contrasting the pale, lifeless waifs who subsisted on kale with the curved and crooning sirens who dined on what the management had the audacity to call “real food”. Besides the Booty Burger (and its larger sibling, the Double Booty), there were Booty Shakes (the commercial for which had been banned), the Big Bundle, the Big Dog, and Mr. Greasy Fries. The design team had gone the distance in producing the most obnoxious packaging possible: the food came to the customer in burnt sienna boxes covered with big black splotches.
It seemed to the angel that almost all patrons of the nearest Booty Burger contributed to the advertising push by tossing their empties in the park. Stained baskets clustered like pimples on the pavement. In a graceful swoop, Unfirom caught up a large basket and tossed it at a larger metal basket near him. He did not miss, of course.
Not far away, a grumbling man did the same with a Booty Burger bag. Unfirom did not warm to his fellow caretaker. His eyes narrowed.
The man was a tall man, thoroughly and perfectly groomed. His collar button was undone, true, but the collar was open only to a degree which spoke of casual professionalism. His expression was pleasant without being warm, handsome but not offensively so. He was no stranger. Unfirom was used to seeing him in the park around dawn or at dusk, the rest of his hours being spent in conference with museum officials about details of the grand new building or the latest scheme for landscaping which would set off the magnificent new structure. When his eyes strayed toward the center of the ball diamond, Unfirom knew he was seeing a grand fountain which sprayed silvery water in a manner wholly new and beyond the scope of any other museum fountain in the state. His eyes, turning next toward the little playground littered with chicken wing boxes, saw instead a grand concrete terrace, as required by any good museum’s beauty. One did not need to be an angel to read his eyes when he turned his gaze up the street toward the nearest Booty Burger.
During the glance at the home of heretical hamburgers, Unfirom blinked himself into view. “Interesting use of space,” he noted, coming up next to the developer.
The man turned and looked up at Unfirom, apparently startled by the need to do so. He was not shorter than most people. The angel, appearing not to notice, said, gesturing to the cracked blacktop of the playground, “I understand that bit was built atop old sod houses.”
“That so?” The developer frowned. Such a thing might affect stability, but it would certainly bring hordes of preservationists into the discussion.
Unfirom’s right arm swung back and forth. “When a truck goes by, you can see the swings wobble.”
“You don’t say.” The developer’s eyes narrowed, but looking more narrowly at Unfirom’s face failed to divulge any Booty Burger guile.
“Some people blame the ghosts of the children who have played there over the last seventy years.” Unfirom took a deep breath, putting his shoulders back. “But it’s hard to believe in ghosts on a morning like this.”
The developer looked to the playground and then studied Unfirom again. “And the story about the sod houses….”
“I was involved in a county boundary project and did some research at the U.” He had, in a way, some eighty years back before the park was established or he was condemned to help phronik in it. “I wasn’t working on this part of town, but I saw some of the old maps which referred to ‘dugouts’ in this area.” He nodded to his listener, footnoting, “That’s what they would have called any cabin that was partially underground.”
“Mm…yes.” The developer’s eyes went up and down Unfirom, still trying to find the Booty Burger agent beneath the air of a man who had to share his research with everyone he meets.
“If it’s true,” Unfirom went on, looking at the playground again, “Then putting a playground here was an act of genius. Anything heavier would have sunk over the years.” Nodding to himself, he moved to the curb, as if planning to jaywalk across the street. Out of the corner of one eye, he watched the man stomp one foot on the ground, eyes on the swingsets. He nodded again. He had not changed the man’s mind, of course, but from one seed of doubt, much might come.
The angel vanished, his eyes suddenly on another tall man, who looked to be about sixty but was, in fact, seventy-three. This man was idly watching his track, his eyes having no reason to wander toward the sturdy white-haired woman coming up the sidewalk, a German shepherd ahead of her on a slack leash. For her part, she was paying no attention to the man.
Well, they WOULD pay attention to each other. Where were the phronik now? He strode through the grass, leaving no footprints. The people who came to the track to get in shape should have his job, he thought: the number of miles he covered every day just hunting for his crew would wear an elephant down to poodle dimensions.
The size and shade of the stains on the pizza box told him the crusts they were passing around the circle had been lying in the park since at least noon on the previous day. Well, it kept any dogs from eating the crusts and getting sick. The phronik sang as they passed each bit of crust around the circle, so no more than two mouths were full of food on any single note.
“John didn’t like the way his popcorn popped
So he built a new machine that had the poppers topped;
A drop of oil and it made corn that folks would crave
But then somebody came out with the microwave!
Percolator, coffeemaker
Subaru and Studebaker:
All ya got is all yer gonna get,
Waddya bet?”
Unfirom stepped up to the musical circle, taking inventory. “Where’s Primrose?”
They didn’t look at him. He was opening his mouth to repeat the question when a whistle blasted in his ear.
The phronik in general limited their musical accompaniment to blades of grass, which were excellent for a variety of rude noises. Unfirom swallowed before inquiring, his tone angelically gentle, “Where did you find that?”
Primrose pointed, her wrist the highest point on her arm, level with her forehead. “Next to the red horsey swing. I think Booty Burger is giving them away with the Chunky Chicken Chews. Don’t you think we could bake cookies with whistles inside?”
“No.” Now he pointed. “But that may come in handy while you’re dealing with these two.” Now he pointed.
All the phronik swooped up to viewing height. “Gosh!” cried Sweet Pea. “A puppy!”
“Sweet,” said meadow Saffron, not looking at the full-grown German shepherd. “Have they met yet?”
The angel nodded. “In college, they thought they were in love. The affair broke up after two years. They have not seen each other since a class reunion thirty years ago.”
Bluebell shrugged and kicked at a passing gnat. “Is that any of our business? They already….”
The angel looked over to the man, still oblivious to dog, woman, and the invisible conspiracy. “They do not, at the moment, even know they’re in the same part of the country. If they do not meet soon, they will meet again fifteen years from now, when he moves into the same senior facility where she is living. They will renew their acquaintance at dinner, and she will invite him to visit later. In the wee hours of the morning, he will slip into her room, and her bed, and remain there until morning, when he will finally realize she died shortly before he came into the room.”
Sweet Pea’s hands were over her mouth. “Oh, dear!” said Meadow Saffron
“The shock will cause a stroke which will leave him unable to speak until his own death two years later.” Unfirom nodded to the couple. “Shall we?”
Once upon a time, there existed a series of plain oblong volumes called “Boring Postcards”, in which the editors reprinted what they considered some of the blandest, least interesting postcards ever produced. They eventually begged for mercy and terminated the series, as the more postcards they showed off, the more people sent to them, and they were having trouble staying awake. I will not assume their mantel, but I thought we could look at a few contenders from my inventory.
Boring is, of course, in the eyes of the beholder. The advertising postcard at the top of this column might not interest SOME people, but as one who was once involved in the used book trade, I gazed on it with awe when first I saw it, exclaiming, “So THAT’S why we get so many copies of those two books!” The next postcard may seem perfectly reasonable to some folks, but I had a friend who would have passed it by with a yawn. Mountains, lakes, landscape…what did THEY ever do that was interesting? (AND, it must be admitted, as mountains go, Rib Mountain here is not so breathtaking.)
My friend’s attitude may explain some of the beautiful scenery shown by our ancestors, who were careful to make sure we could see the road going through it. After all, the hills and valleys had been there for years, but it took Modern Man to build a road.
In fact, not only does the road take up larger and larger portions of the picture, but we are also always given a good view of the posts alongside. “See our beautiful, safe road?” the cards say. “Use that and you can take your own pictures of those old green mountains.”
“In fact, LOTS of you can do it at the same time and (see our guard rails?) be perfectly secure on the highway!”
This card, you’ll note, claims to be a view of Shreveport. I’m glad they mentioned it.
After the money and manhours that went into building the highway, the viaduct, the bridge, the tunnel, you can’t blame people for being proud of it. They want to SHOW it to you. This does not mean that all that many of us will be thrilled to look at it.
The saga of forcing a way through the wilderness is an exciting one in its own right (and, after all, on occasion the wilderness won). Yet we are ungrateful. No matter what the story was, that stretch of pavement does not appeal to our pitiful imaginations. Yes, I know: if I were lost in the wilderness myself, a road would be the most beautiful thing ever, as that would lead me to the nearest Starbuck’s. And yet….
And, um, it must be admitted that there are parts of the country where the most boring of pavements is no more boring than the surrounding countryside. Maybe it’s a problem with my own mind. Maybe I am so twenty-first century that I need something to happen every few seconds to keep me entertained.
So for those like me, here’s this postcard view of one of the world’s great outdoor staircases. Ignore my yawns: I’m just impossible to please.
Once upon a time, Chicago decided to retool the Loop. State Street, in those days a bustling shopping district, was redesigned with bigger sidewalks and smaller streets. Motor vehicles were banned except for cabs and buses, and the whole area was renamed the “State Street That Great Street Mall”. Vast sidewalks would give people more room to walk, combining a stroll down the boulevard with leisurely shopping and lunching. Public sculptures were added to enhance the idea of a place to see and be seen, and enjoy an afternoon on the town.
The experiment went badly. Now, if you visit State Street, you will find little evidence of the mall ideal. Streets were widened again and sidewalks put back the way they were. One explanation for the failure was that it was the fault of an odd species known as “People”. People, it was said, find it hard to believe they’re enjoying themselves without a bit of bustle, a hint of inconvenience.
In short, said the Powers That Were, people won’t believe it’s exciting without a crowd. How do you know things are fun if you aren’t being elbowed by other people trying to have fun?
This could explain why so many postcards stress the crowded nature of the places they celebrate. Traffic is shown to be a sign that something fun is going on. Didn’t you ever get into a line without knowing what it was for, just because this many people had to know something you didn’t?
So postcards brag about traffic congestion, as if to call out “See how important and attractive we are? Better join the crowd or you’ll miss the big show!”
Oh sure. In the golden age of postcards, there was a hint about how much more interesting streets filled with cars are than the dirt roads in YOUR community, where you may see one horseless carriage a week. And yet, the aesthetic survived into an age during which a stream of cars bumper to bumper was no longer a novelty, and a vast parking lot more of an inconvenience than a celebration of the automotive industry and its production.
We reached a point at which the empty space in a mall parking lot was more exciting than a packed acre of pavement. (Yes, this is one of a series of postcards promoting the beauties of Northern Kentucky. Makes you want to jump in the car and rush right out.)
The phenomenon goes on without cars, of course. What fun is a quiet little beach where you just sit and look at the water and the sand and the sunlight? YOU want to know there’ll be masses of people visiting at the same time. A crowded beach MUST be a quality beach.
After all, this enhances the possibilities that you’ll see people who look worse in their bathing suits than YOU do. This is easily worth the minor inconvenience of having people trip over your beach blanket or spill their beer on your toes while you’re napping in the sun. (In fact, having people to block the sunshine will help prevent sunburn. So there’s that.)
If you don’t have to duck and sidle to get past a dozen different beachgoer encampments to see the water, if there’s no chance for your kids to get lost, why did you drive eight hours to get here?
Postcard companies knew you wanted to be able to tell people you were HERE, braving the crowds and finding the last eight inches of space unclaimed by other tourists. These scenes established your credentials as a vacationer ready to fight for fun.
A street market or street festival is hardly something to brag about if you could move at speeds of more than twenty feet per hour. Those authentic ceramics you brought home mean so much more to the people you show them to if they’ve already seen a postcard of the crowds you had to push through to find them. (Do NOT mention how long it took to get those Made In China stickers off your Mexican pottery.)
It just seems to be one of our criteria for a Real Experience. If a thousand or so people weren’t trying to occupy the same space and do the same things at the same time you were there, you didn’t have a good time.
Blogsy Babbles 