This is a snapshot of a young woman’s life in Baltimore during the nascent stages of the automobile age. The places she mentions are mostly in the immediate Baltimore area. I plucked the letter from a pile of discards and have faithfully transcribed it here. I am eternally grateful to its author, Catherine Hobbs.
To give some historical context, my house (which should be the subject of these writings) was built ten years after this letter was penned.
Baltimore, Md;
May 16, 1918.
My dear, dear Friends;-
You really dont know how glad I was, when I went home and found a letter there from you, it surley was good for sore eyes. Now of course I understand the circumstances that you were in. I was home two weeks ago this Friday night & I heard that your brother was dead, I knew him from seeing him up to your brothers so often the other summer. I thought he was a mighty fine little fellow I liked him so much he seemed to be so gentlemanly. Well I am working at the United States Fidelity & Guaranty Company. on Calvert & German Sts. It is awful nice down here. We have to be at work at 8-30 and guit at 5-10 P.M. on Saturdays we get, out at 1-15 P.M. Listen if you can get Harry and Lelia to bring you to Lisbon on Friday night the 31st. of May to the Strawberry Festival, I am coming home Friday evening, I dont know whether I will come home on the Bus of the 6-25 that leaves Campden at that time, as you know we don’t quit work until 5-10 ad and the bus leaves at promply 5 P.M.
I dont like to ask off in time to get the bus as they always let me off the half a day on Saturday and do not dock me. They surley are good to me. So you please try and come as I want to see you awfully bad. If you can please write and let me know
You dont know how much I missed your letters.
I went to the circus & believe me I had a gay time the crowd was something dreadful, when we were ready to come home we couldnt walk thats the truth & it was the funniest man behind me and saying the wittiest things and I got to laughing and couldnt stop and I had about a dozen people laughing at me
Well I am now typing & I love it, I have what you call a clerical position, it is filing and looking up cases and cards on all accidents. I am in the Elevatir inspection Department on the second floor. I will be here Six months the first of next month it doesnt seem as though it has been that long.
And you know I worked seven weeks at the Leaders, when I first came. So you can see how much of a City dick I am. I wish that you could come down, I would love to see your smiling face as it seems it has been so long since we have been with each other.
I went to an entertainment last night, had a big time, it was called Fascinating Fannie Brown, it was fine. The night before went to movies and Saturday night am invited to a Birthday party and expect a swell time, believe me.
The second Sunday in June am going to Camp Meade and the 10th of the same month am invited to another Birthday party. I guess that you heard about my Uncle being so bad, through Mr. Porter it makes me so sad when I go home as he likes me so much and he likes me to sit and hold his hand and goes on awful, It really gats on my nerves, and the last time I was home, he made me cry and when I got ready to go home he asked me when I was going back and I told and he said well before you go come and lets have another cry, and then he started to go on something awful, I went back to say goodbye but he did not know any one that was on Sunday eve. that I came back.
My Cousin is on from New Jersy, he is expecting to be called any time he is in the avation core/ he is the funniest thing you ever seen he would make a monkey laugh.
I want you and Mr. Porter and Lelia to come down and see me some time. When you see Harry ask him if he remembers the Picnic at Mt Airy that tiem that we seen the girl with a blue dress on and I wanted it and he and Charlie Pickett wanted to go and get it for me and I told him not this time, so you can tell him that I have one of my own so I dont want him to ask her for it this summer as I like mine just as well, ha, ha, ha, Aint I a bird with out feathers. I was awfully glad when I got mine as I have been wanting a Taffeta so bad, and they say the Lord will provide so he did, I think is I dont soon stop that you will loose a lot of time on your work. I have hosts of work to do wish you were here to help me.
I am going to the Lyric to hear Daniel Poling talk about the boys in France as he has been over for some time.
Well it is twenty after five and my Cousin will wander what has happened to me.
So will have to say goodbye, hoping to hear from you real soon, remember me to all of my friends will close for a short time excuse mistakes from a true and loving and affectionate friend
Catherine Hobbs
(Then, in postcript): Dont look at mistakes as the girls got me to laughing and I would make one thousand mistakes.
When you are in town stop at 1901 W. Mosher. Will tell you more later.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
http://gerrit-marks.blogspot.com/
http://gerrit-marks.blogspot.com/
This is the electronic signpost that leads to another set of writings that has nothing to do with home improvement--or, if it is ever mentioned, is purely incidental to the story. It's a third-person account of the adventures of a Parisian boy who is sent to live in the United States for a year--and who attends a Catholic school there.
As for the house project, the basement windows have been installed, and there are posted here photos of the project in two of its stages: Before and after installation. J.O. and Eduardo were instrumental in helping to see this phase to completion.
This is the electronic signpost that leads to another set of writings that has nothing to do with home improvement--or, if it is ever mentioned, is purely incidental to the story. It's a third-person account of the adventures of a Parisian boy who is sent to live in the United States for a year--and who attends a Catholic school there.
As for the house project, the basement windows have been installed, and there are posted here photos of the project in two of its stages: Before and after installation. J.O. and Eduardo were instrumental in helping to see this phase to completion.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Fifty Bucks
September 12, 2008
On one of those brilliant, picture-perfect days you only read about in books, a young firefighter came over and purchased the lawnmower I’d found on my bike ride. He’d just bought a house in the city, and was pleased with how the attractive machine worked, and how smartly it fired up when the rope starter was pulled. I ran it across the grass a few times, demonstrating its great mowing powers. It’s at times like this that I feel I have put on a fake moustache and dark, curly wig—have become the caricature of a foreign broker of used and discarded things, talking rapidly, moving closer to the unsuspecting purchaser, exuding a mélange of tobacco smoke, cheap cologne and some other, more mysterious odors—possibly of middle-eastern origin. I would say things like this:
“Sir! This machine—is it not attractive? Would you not look proudly over a lawn beclipped with this capable little chopper? In my country we are crazy about these things, it is all we talk about; and now you can have one for yourself!” I would give him a gentle push, “Go and try its magnificent power, you will want it immediately for your take-home!”
We loaded the little mower into the back of his economical Toyota, and I bade him good luck with the mowing and the new house.
With fifty dollars in my pocket, I was confident about the future. With fifty bucks, anything was possible. I could saunter into the local Rite-Aid, casually eye the display case of men’s fragrances, then say to the counter girl, “No, not today; I’ll have to think about it.” Reaching far into my pocket, I would reassure myself with the feel of the crisp bills I’d stowed away there. I would waste another minute or two, idling away the time, the stuff of life I’d never get back, look at the stacked cases of Coke, mentally figure how many I could buy with fifty dollars, and leave the store with the smug satisfaction of being a big-shot in this penny-ante little town. Glancing over at the bored cashier, chewing with disinterest on an open bag of Doritos, I would toss this over my shoulder: “See ya around, toots.” Fifty bucks can do that to you.
Then there were three of us, down on the kitchen floor, taking out nails one at a time from the ancient wood. The work of this day was mostly finished, but—as the boss—I had to think fast, had to come up with a project that could be accomplished in an hour or two, and that was of some importance to me. So I had my helpers clear the kitchen, get the scrap lumber and trash moved into another room in preparation for our work there. We were going to pull out the hundreds of staples that had fastened a floor to the old pine boards many years in the past, during the course of one of the several renovations the house had witnessed. I knew that the old pine underneath was attractive and could be brought back to life, could be stripped of the layers of add-ons that people—in their misguided quest for modernity—had applied.
We set to it, Big J.O., Eduardo, and I—with Latin music playing lively tempos from the bathroom, where Eduardo had recently installed big squares of ceramic tile around the tub and shower. Things were coming together, and he was showing his skill at the different home improvement trades. Our routine in the kitchen was fairly simple: Take a pair of pliers, grab at a protruding staple in the floor, and yank it out. Repeat as needed. I reflected on my usual way of doing jobs like this, which is to tackle them by myself. I was more than grateful to have the company, as the job progressed at least three times as fast as if I’d done it on my own—and probably much faster, since I am nothing if not slow. So I used my position as supervisor and employer to impose some conversation on our little band, to set the tone. I didn’t want to be seen as just a source of never-ending drudgery, the person to go to if you want to be assigned yet another thankless job. I wanted to be a swell guy, to instill some bonhomie into our kneeling trio.
So I spoke of the most inane things imaginable: How I’d seen a big tractor at the salvage yard toss whole cars around like they were toys, turning them over and stabbing at their underbellies to skewer the gasoline tanks and eviscerate them of the potentially explosive parts. The cars could not go into the crusher like that, I explained. They needed to be freed of their fuel tanks. The man at the controls of the enormous tractor would toss the cars into the air, and let them smash to the ground, which I found enjoyable to watch. On that occasion, I was there to drop off yet more of the metal that the house was giving up in the course of its current transformation. Eduardo, whose English is just short of excellent, showed some interest in this, asked where I’d witnessed this thing. He uses American idioms confidently, and there is little he cannot express outside his native language of Peru. So we talked of salvage yards, of the music that played on his Spanish-speaking station, and other home improvement projects he’d worked on. He said that one lady was having a large addition put on the house, and that she had a pool where the workers were invited to swim at the end of the workday. I felt that a pool was something that I might enjoy having sometime in my life, but that I would not have it here, would want to be in another place before I had the pool. Everyone agreed that having a pool in another place would be better. “Not here,” Big J.O. said; “Some other place.”
With the very last staple extracted from the old wooden floor, it was exactly quitting time. I’d not looked at the clock until now, and was surprised at how well-timed the whole business was, and how painless it had been with the three of us working away at it. I congratulated myself, reached into my pocket to feel again for the fifty dollars, and was immediately reassured. I fingered the money, was lost momentarily in a reverie of self-importance and a vague feeling of goodwill towards all men. I paid my helpers and was finished for the day.
On one of those brilliant, picture-perfect days you only read about in books, a young firefighter came over and purchased the lawnmower I’d found on my bike ride. He’d just bought a house in the city, and was pleased with how the attractive machine worked, and how smartly it fired up when the rope starter was pulled. I ran it across the grass a few times, demonstrating its great mowing powers. It’s at times like this that I feel I have put on a fake moustache and dark, curly wig—have become the caricature of a foreign broker of used and discarded things, talking rapidly, moving closer to the unsuspecting purchaser, exuding a mélange of tobacco smoke, cheap cologne and some other, more mysterious odors—possibly of middle-eastern origin. I would say things like this:
“Sir! This machine—is it not attractive? Would you not look proudly over a lawn beclipped with this capable little chopper? In my country we are crazy about these things, it is all we talk about; and now you can have one for yourself!” I would give him a gentle push, “Go and try its magnificent power, you will want it immediately for your take-home!”
We loaded the little mower into the back of his economical Toyota, and I bade him good luck with the mowing and the new house.
With fifty dollars in my pocket, I was confident about the future. With fifty bucks, anything was possible. I could saunter into the local Rite-Aid, casually eye the display case of men’s fragrances, then say to the counter girl, “No, not today; I’ll have to think about it.” Reaching far into my pocket, I would reassure myself with the feel of the crisp bills I’d stowed away there. I would waste another minute or two, idling away the time, the stuff of life I’d never get back, look at the stacked cases of Coke, mentally figure how many I could buy with fifty dollars, and leave the store with the smug satisfaction of being a big-shot in this penny-ante little town. Glancing over at the bored cashier, chewing with disinterest on an open bag of Doritos, I would toss this over my shoulder: “See ya around, toots.” Fifty bucks can do that to you.
Then there were three of us, down on the kitchen floor, taking out nails one at a time from the ancient wood. The work of this day was mostly finished, but—as the boss—I had to think fast, had to come up with a project that could be accomplished in an hour or two, and that was of some importance to me. So I had my helpers clear the kitchen, get the scrap lumber and trash moved into another room in preparation for our work there. We were going to pull out the hundreds of staples that had fastened a floor to the old pine boards many years in the past, during the course of one of the several renovations the house had witnessed. I knew that the old pine underneath was attractive and could be brought back to life, could be stripped of the layers of add-ons that people—in their misguided quest for modernity—had applied.
We set to it, Big J.O., Eduardo, and I—with Latin music playing lively tempos from the bathroom, where Eduardo had recently installed big squares of ceramic tile around the tub and shower. Things were coming together, and he was showing his skill at the different home improvement trades. Our routine in the kitchen was fairly simple: Take a pair of pliers, grab at a protruding staple in the floor, and yank it out. Repeat as needed. I reflected on my usual way of doing jobs like this, which is to tackle them by myself. I was more than grateful to have the company, as the job progressed at least three times as fast as if I’d done it on my own—and probably much faster, since I am nothing if not slow. So I used my position as supervisor and employer to impose some conversation on our little band, to set the tone. I didn’t want to be seen as just a source of never-ending drudgery, the person to go to if you want to be assigned yet another thankless job. I wanted to be a swell guy, to instill some bonhomie into our kneeling trio.
So I spoke of the most inane things imaginable: How I’d seen a big tractor at the salvage yard toss whole cars around like they were toys, turning them over and stabbing at their underbellies to skewer the gasoline tanks and eviscerate them of the potentially explosive parts. The cars could not go into the crusher like that, I explained. They needed to be freed of their fuel tanks. The man at the controls of the enormous tractor would toss the cars into the air, and let them smash to the ground, which I found enjoyable to watch. On that occasion, I was there to drop off yet more of the metal that the house was giving up in the course of its current transformation. Eduardo, whose English is just short of excellent, showed some interest in this, asked where I’d witnessed this thing. He uses American idioms confidently, and there is little he cannot express outside his native language of Peru. So we talked of salvage yards, of the music that played on his Spanish-speaking station, and other home improvement projects he’d worked on. He said that one lady was having a large addition put on the house, and that she had a pool where the workers were invited to swim at the end of the workday. I felt that a pool was something that I might enjoy having sometime in my life, but that I would not have it here, would want to be in another place before I had the pool. Everyone agreed that having a pool in another place would be better. “Not here,” Big J.O. said; “Some other place.”
With the very last staple extracted from the old wooden floor, it was exactly quitting time. I’d not looked at the clock until now, and was surprised at how well-timed the whole business was, and how painless it had been with the three of us working away at it. I congratulated myself, reached into my pocket to feel again for the fifty dollars, and was immediately reassured. I fingered the money, was lost momentarily in a reverie of self-importance and a vague feeling of goodwill towards all men. I paid my helpers and was finished for the day.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
"Ill take you and you."
September 2, 2008
“I’ll take you and you,” I said, pointing to two Peruvians outside the convenience store. I chose them based on the fact that one was short and the other was of average height. The short one would be working under the deck, digging out the remainder of the patio area. The other one would scrape and paint the exterior trim that would never get painted if things were left to me.
Immediately upon making my request, the two men got into the car, wisely knowing what was to come next. A crowd suddenly materialized as if out of nowhere, surrounding the car, so that all I saw was anxious faces pressed against the windows. A city man, quick in his voice and eyes, made as if to evict the two Peruvians.
“Tell them to take off. We got you covered,” said the city man.
His quick speech and flitting eyes betrayed at once a lifetime of indolence and mendacity, that only the poorest of the poor unknowing fools would not have recognized. I hit the gas, and the crowd scattered. Suddenly I was a farm boss in the terrible saga described by Steinbeck, calling the workers together with the promise of jobs in some distant place, roughly pushing away those in need because I had not nearly the amount of work I’d promised. Some of those receding in the mirror were deserving, others were not. The city man was not. For him I had no regret. He could have said, “I will take all your money and you will curse the day you met me,” and it would be the truest thing he’d ever uttered.
My two workers were well-chosen, through no fault of mine. Eduardo was almost fluent in English--an incredible bonus when it comes to getting across instructions about work and materials and tools and so on. Manuel was not proficient at all, but worked like a horse, digging out the area that needed expanding under the deck. I set them to work at two different areas of the house, and set out two radios, which Manuel tuned into a Spanish-speaking station, and Eduardo set to classic rock. At the local Rite-Aid, they had bottled water on sale—a twenty-four pack for less than four bucks. I picked up a case of it and headed back home, with the two already embarking on their tasks for the day. For working outdoors, it was a sparkling clear day, with warm but not terribly hot temperatures. They’d sized up the house, received a few instructions from me, and had set to work.
I’d once enjoyed this, the kind of stuff that was to occupy their day. The mindless quality of it all, the meaningless repetition, resulting in some tangible end result that not many people really cared about particularly, but that—in the aggregate—contributed to an overall pleasing effect. Scraping paint, for example. This is as good a place as any to start. I’d tried it yesterday, and after about five minutes realized that I would quickly go insane, would probably run around the yard, shedding my clothes, and yelling things until the police were summoned. I put my paint scraper away. Eduardo took the same tools and patiently removed layer after layer of paint, with painstaking thoroughness. It was not a fast job, but taking off years of paint never is. The stuff that was applied on a summer or fall day maybe thirty years ago or more, would be reluctant to give up its spot after so much time. I came back after about an hour and marveled at how complete the job was, and how little he’d done. At that moment, I knew I’d made the right choice: I had not the patience or discipline to stick to something so mind-numbingly boring; would rather have done just about anything else than that.
Out back Manuel was making great headway with the excavation, gulping the bottled water and blaring lively Latin tunes from the little clock radio. Thankfully, he was mostly in the shade, as he worked under the deck to further the headroom for people enjoying the future patio down there. The deeper he went, the more space there would be up above. It was tiring work, but he kept at it, until it was mostly a finished thing by the end of the day.
During this time I was free to get some other housekeeping projects hammered out. The lawn and hedges had grown tall and weedy very quickly—more quickly than at any time I can remember. I got the hedge trimmer plugged in, did a quick trim of both hedges, then fired up a lawnmower I’d recently come home with. It’s not as if I’m lacking for lawnmowers, but this one was a recent arrival, and I simply must tell all about it.
Just yesterday—on Labor Day—I’d taken the bicycle out for a ride around town. A few miles from home I spied a perfectly nice lawnmower set out with the trash in front of a neat and tidy little house. The man there said to take it, and that the motor ran fine. It had a broken handle, he said. I completed my ride in record time, fired up the little station wagon, and drove back to the man’s house. I quickly loaded the mower into the back, drove back home, and got the handle repaired in a little less than an hour. I drilled two new holes, put bolts through both of them, and secured the two broken pieces of handle together in a tight, permanent fix. Then I started the mower, saw that it ran smoothly and without any harsh noises, and proceeded to cut the grass with it. It is my policy to mow the lawn at least once with any orphaned mower that comes into my possession. After that I pass it along to the next owner, for a usual price of around fifty bucks. This seems reasonable for a smooth-running mower.
So today I was using the hunter green mower offered by Sears and found discarded nearby. It has the mulching blade, which I apply liberally to any clippings I think should disappear with the least amount of effort on my part. I simply run over the hedge cuttings, small branches and twigs, and let the mulching mower grind it all away and spit it out onto the lawn—where you really can’t tell what it was any more. It all kind of blends in.
September 4, 2008
I was selling things in the blazing heat of a Baltimore morning, presiding over my little operation that I set up with my helper. Things were going well, with a modest bit of commerce playing out there in the closed-off street. People came out to fetch a loaf of bread or a pastry, and I was happy to help them with their mission. As happy as one can be with this kind of work, anyway. The woman from the local department of health and hygiene made her appearance, clipboard in hand, and a young apprentice at her side. She meant business, wanted to shut me down, in fact. I told her that I was trying to comply with the rules set forth by her office, did a little shuffle, tipped my hat, ran back and forth a few times, said “yowza” at least once, then groveled.
“Ma’am, I said, clutching my poor and worn cap in my hands, and wringing the fabric nervously—twisting it this way and that, “My wife’s abed, see, and the baby’s sickly. Her ma has done caught the train from Oklahoma on account of she was worried with our situation, but I think something’s happened to the train. Leastaways, we ain’t had word from her goin’ on four days now, and the station man says ain’t no trains been lost. So you see, ma’am, we’re in a bad way here, and the little I bring home from sellin these crusts of bread is all goin’ to the doctors, and they cain’t rightly say if it’s a nervous condition or exactly what.” I wiped my worried and furrowed brow, put the large kerchief back in my faded trousers. I waited expectantly.
I had in my possession, however, a document that would further my cause, and I produced it there in that closed-off street on that Baltimore morning. She offered me a reprieve on the spot, told me to go immediately to the office that issues permits for operations such as mine, and request one by filling out the application and necessary paperwork.
“You have one hour,” she said.
Her young apprentice nodded, said in his youthful but suddenly stern voice, which he would have to practice a little: “One hour.”
I told my helper to take over the operation, not a terrible burden since we are usually not overly taxed in our efforts there. If three people come by in the space of five minutes, we might actually break into a small sweat. The county government building was within walking distance, a fact that I see as just a convenient piece of a storyline. The whole episode was so predictable, like some movie that is supposed to be cleverly told, but that you actually know in advance the events before they unfold. Increasingly, this is how I view my life—in cinematic terms. Lacking a compelling plot, the story just drones on interminably, with the same scenes played out again and again. It is not very good viewing.
So I walked over to the county building, which also houses the many courtrooms for civil and criminal cases. The armed police at the entrance told me to put my cell phone into the basket for the metal detector, and waved me through.
“Fourth floor,” said the officer, lazing back in his chair, with not many people entering the building at that particular hour. I took the elevator up to the fourth floor, was swept into the mood of the new scene I’d entered, for the simple reason that the building was ultra-cooled, with the air conditioning giving not a hint of the ninety-degree temperature outside. Talk about cinematic: It even FELT like a movie theatre. With a hard cut, I’d been transplanted from the gritty and homegrown atmosphere of the outdoor market, to the quiet and cool halls of the county government and courthouse building. I was in the county seat, in fact, of one of the most thriving and prosperous counties in Maryland. I knew that people with horses lived in this county and, that to have a horse, you had to have a lot of money to keep it fed and properly cared for. As far as I know, the offices I now visited did not oversee the care and feeding of horses, but it is quite possible that, somewhere, in some corner office out of the way, with photocopiers and business machines lining the hallway, a county inspector was picking up the phone, dialing a number.
“Hello? Yes, this is inspector Duggins, calling as a follow up to my visit on September 2.
So…how is the horse?”
I filled out the application, a process that would have to be repeated for every week I participated in the market. The woman there was exceedingly helpful, understood that I was in the middle of an emergency, as I’d put it to her in that language, but could not really get emotionally worked up over it. Like the terrible movie that I’ve described, I already knew the outcome. Getting all worked up over the minor plot twists might add some comic relief, but I didn’t feel up to it. I sat and waited, got called to follow someone out into the hall, paid my fee, and walked away with a permit valid for one day, for which I paid twenty-five dollars. Not only is the movie a bad one, it is getting pretty darned expensive.
My helper had to depart early, but insisted that I buy a soda before she left. For some reason she always wants me to make the soda run, even though I’d be happy to give her a break. I bought her a medium coke, which in fact is quite large, and some new punch drink that comes in a bottle for myself. I taped the permit to the truck’s window, and pointed it out to the young apprentice when he came back to visit. With his youth and look of a first job clearly portrayed on his smooth, unlined face, I wanted to pull him aside, tell him to get away from the inspector lady, run far, far from this place, go to the most unlicensed and unregulated restaurants and order a big slice of meatloaf and a burger, take his girlfriend to the boardwalk and buy cotton candy from a vendor with vague credentials, eat a corn dog that may or may not have been properly refrigerated while waiting its turn in the deep fryer.
“Drive fast!” I would yell, the intensity and fervor bulging from my reddened, hot face, which I would move uncomfortably close to his. Then—at a loss for anything original—would offer these banalities, hackneyed bits of talking: “Live on the edge! Go for broke! A rolling stone gathers no moss!” Not really sure that the last one applied, he would nevertheless not care, would only want to get away from the crazed food vendor, the terrible and scarlet visage, sputtering nonsense with a religious zeal, which obscured completely any message I might have wanted to impart.
The woman with the clipboard came by a few minutes later, asked about her young charge.
“He was here not five minutes ago,” I told her.
“I’ll find him,” she said, setting off with a determined step and a look of purpose. He was doomed.
Back home I was eager to see the progress of my two helpers. I’d set them to work on a fairly ambitious project: Erecting a little retaining wall to hem in the patio area at the project house. This, our third day of working together, and we were still feeling each other out. It is common to have casual help tell you that they are capable of all kinds of work and craftsmanship, but really know only about as much as you do—or even less. For their part, it is a great leap of faith to put in a day’s worth of often backbreaking work, and wonder if the stranger who’d hired them is going to actually pay. The work that I saw was not bad; not perfect, but it would do. With some reinforcing, the walls would hold well, and would add a great deal aesthetically to the back area of the house. They’d managed to dig out completely the area under the deck, smooth it out so that it was fairly level, and fully put in place one wall—the most important one, in fact. They’d partly erected the other walls, until they’d run out of materials. Talking to Eduardo on the way home from work, I’d instructed him and Manuel to start again on the painting that needed to be done. This they were doing when I finally returned in the heat of the late afternoon. I told them I was pleased with the wall, as I knew they would be looking for some sign from me that their work was okay. I was really dreading having to tell them that it was terrible, and had to be torn down. It was far from terrible, and could remain in place, becoming over the years a permanent part of the house and its surroundings, until one day many years in the future, someone decided to remake everything or tear the house down completely. I didn’t go into all this with Eduardo and Manuel, as I knew that it would just be depressing, and would only add to their view of me as an eccentric and unbalanced boss.
So far away, a life was unfolding without event. Along highway 20, in the town of Ainsworth, Nebraska, Harold and Irma Collins were settling into that stretch of life nearing the horizon. Harold had spent his years just out of high school working on the phone lines that were strung along the poles out in the vast landscape of that country. He did not wax poetic about it, did not indulge in great excursions into that land of introspective ruminations, did not see himself as a giant among men, felt that he was no better nor worse than any he’d met, in fact. There was no pretense about him whatsoever; he mostly stuck to the script, saw no reason to improvise with his life. He saw his opportunity to work as a blessing and often was thankful as he sat in the couple’s regular pew with the rest of the congregation. He could have romanticized his career, as those outside the realm of hard work so often do. He could have spoken of the clear blue days high over the Nebraska roads, with the silence broken only by the buzzing of the high-voltage power lines that were strung way up there, high above the phone lines that were the stuff of his work. The power lines were someone else’s business entirely, and he never wanted to do anything but repair broken telephone lines, something that changed in fact with the advent of the cell phone technology. Nevertheless, Nebraska was never entirely without the black cables hung over the flat landscape, and so Harold was always needed.
From their brick rancher with a single, detached garage over at the end of the driveway, they’d raised two children—a girl and a boy. Their son was at the University in Lincoln, had graduated from college out east and was now teaching English to the undergraduates. It was often with great pride that Harold would field questions about “The Prof,” as the many close friends in the little town often referred to the grown son. If he went into the hardware for a bag of nails or some grass seed, more likely than not the store man—who’d once employed Harold’s son for summer work—would ask:
“And how’s the big university professor, old man?”
Their daughter, although she loved Harold and her mother dearly, had no qualms about leaving Ainsworth and Nebraska entirely, saw the small town as a place that she needed to put behind her as quickly as possible. With her college years spent in the Northeast as a gifted athlete and even more gifted student, she furthered her schooling abroad and finally made her home in New York City, where she often invited her Nebraska parents to visit. Harold and Irma would look at the photos, see their happy daughter and hear about her work at one of the big law firms on the Avenue of the Americas, and watch the news on television, marveling that their little girl lived in such a place. Their small development of neat little houses was old now, had settled into the landscape, and the people there had settled into the houses. The couple would sit at the kitchen table, with the sounds of early morning spring just outside the window, and never say one way or the other if they wanted to go to New York City. But they never went. Tricia, her college basketball days some years in the past, would come back from time to time, usually at Christmas, bring along a fellow from the big city that she was seeing, and the next time it would be someone else. This all seemed confusing to her parents, who thought that maybe life in the huge metropolis just kind of played out like that for everyone. They didn’t quite know what to make of it. If this is what New York was like, they thought, they’d seen quite enough.
September 6, 2008
Meanwhile, back in Baltimore, I was putting into place preparations to do battle with Hurricane Hanna. Our band of market vendors being a fairly stalwart group, we were committed to pulling into our designated spaces and sticking it out, no matter what. It was a drenching affair, with the tents keeping the steady rains mostly at bay, and my custom-made cases protecting my delicate baked goods from the weather. It is not something you would normally think of as a typical human endeavor: Packing up a truckload of fresh-baked breads and pastries, and driving to a spot out of doors in the face of an impending hurricane. At least, the effects we were feeling were those of the hurricane—if not the middle of the storm itself. We were probably on one of the spiraling outward arms, at the edge of the hurricane galaxy. In any event, I was sold out of every last stick of bread and sweet breakfast things by eleven o’clock, and the wind started to blow in earnest. A man had approached just a few minutes earlier, eyed the beautiful long loaf that I’ve dubbed a “ciabatta table bread.” It sounds good, anyway.
“What kind of deal can you give me on the last loaf here?” he asked, improbably enough.
“It’s going to sell,” I replied, looking at the clock. “We have another hour—someone will buy it.” I couldn’t very well back out of my space in the middle of the market, so it made no sense to offer discounts on anything. I would stick it out. He paid the full price, which was already a bargain, as I don’t gouge my customers.
My young helper and I got everything packed up, managed to take down the tents before the wind carried them off or damaged them. I was thoroughly soaked, but would get a little wetter as I decided to help my neighbor and his crew tear down their stand. Personally, I would have gotten things underway around eleven, when I saw the winds picking up and the threat of serious weather a more immediate concern. Instead, he waited until the gusts started to blow in earnest, and this made everything more difficult for him and his help. Being not much of a team player, it was with some reluctance that I got out of my truck—already wet—and waded into the storm to help get his stuff loaded up.
During the market, a few people asked about the sandwiches, which I am trying to promote every week. I imagine if—even on a day with such abysmal weather—people are making inquiries about the prepared sandwiches, then I should expect even better results on the nice days. Hopefully next Saturday will be such a day. I should note that I was woefully short on breakfast pastries on this day; another baker decided not to show up, and I’d already cut back significantly due to the threat of even worse weather than we actually experienced. I trusted the forecast, which seemed to change from hour to hour, but which was certain about this: Heavy rains and flash-flooding, accompanied by heavy winds. I was familiar with these conditions, didn’t relish packing up a lot of delicate breads in howling winds and driving rains, so decided to bring what I thought I could sell.
I was exhausted for some reason, returned home and went to bed—setting my alarm for a few hours’ nap. With daylight outside the window, and the storm somewhat abated, my phone rang. I jumped up from a deep sleep, didn’t know what day it was, saw that my Sunday helper was calling, and panicked. I ran to the dresser and hurriedly threw on a pair of jeans. I tried to answer the phone, but could only make out the caller ID. She was already leaving a message. In my disoriented way, I thought it was Sunday morning, that I’d slept all night, and now it was late—I’d missed my delivery, had missed the start of the market. The whole morning, the whole day would be a mess of apologies and excuses and lost money. I frantically tried to orient myself, looking stupidly at the clock and not understanding the time. I’d slept for about an hour; it was still Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning was about twelve hours distant. I felt not so much relief as a feeling of anger and frustration about not knowing what was going on. Maybe this is the onset of dementia, of that affliction of people of later years, giving me a sneak preview of what it was going to be like. God, I hope not.
With the late afternoon sky clearing, the storm clouds hurried off quickly across the horizon, their path purposeful against the newly-cleansed sky. And, as those who have seen such skies know, the effect was brilliant and beautiful. Ten thousand burdens were lifted, the weight of lifetimes of misery were cleansed away, those who beheld the clearing heavens were transported. It was suddenly a picnic of their youth, a particularly happy event, or their first kiss all over again. Or the feeling that the despair they’d suffered would lift, even if just for a little while. It was the furthering of happiness of those already fulfilled, the icing on the cake, a hand-in-hand walk on the beach. When the earth was new, the landscape untrod by humans, those primordial beasts that occupy our imaginations beheld such a sky, looked up after the storm, with perhaps a bit of fern tree dangling from a chewing mouth high over the wondrous and verdant landscape, and glanced briefly at the new glow coming strangely from the sky, the clouds that skittered—dark and light ones—the air suddenly reinvigorated. Something large and winged would glide across on a tremendous span, relishing the clear sailing, the unstormed skies. The sounds, the random utterances of the forest, were the sounds of the planet coming alive. It was like that.
“I’ll take you and you,” I said, pointing to two Peruvians outside the convenience store. I chose them based on the fact that one was short and the other was of average height. The short one would be working under the deck, digging out the remainder of the patio area. The other one would scrape and paint the exterior trim that would never get painted if things were left to me.
Immediately upon making my request, the two men got into the car, wisely knowing what was to come next. A crowd suddenly materialized as if out of nowhere, surrounding the car, so that all I saw was anxious faces pressed against the windows. A city man, quick in his voice and eyes, made as if to evict the two Peruvians.
“Tell them to take off. We got you covered,” said the city man.
His quick speech and flitting eyes betrayed at once a lifetime of indolence and mendacity, that only the poorest of the poor unknowing fools would not have recognized. I hit the gas, and the crowd scattered. Suddenly I was a farm boss in the terrible saga described by Steinbeck, calling the workers together with the promise of jobs in some distant place, roughly pushing away those in need because I had not nearly the amount of work I’d promised. Some of those receding in the mirror were deserving, others were not. The city man was not. For him I had no regret. He could have said, “I will take all your money and you will curse the day you met me,” and it would be the truest thing he’d ever uttered.
My two workers were well-chosen, through no fault of mine. Eduardo was almost fluent in English--an incredible bonus when it comes to getting across instructions about work and materials and tools and so on. Manuel was not proficient at all, but worked like a horse, digging out the area that needed expanding under the deck. I set them to work at two different areas of the house, and set out two radios, which Manuel tuned into a Spanish-speaking station, and Eduardo set to classic rock. At the local Rite-Aid, they had bottled water on sale—a twenty-four pack for less than four bucks. I picked up a case of it and headed back home, with the two already embarking on their tasks for the day. For working outdoors, it was a sparkling clear day, with warm but not terribly hot temperatures. They’d sized up the house, received a few instructions from me, and had set to work.
I’d once enjoyed this, the kind of stuff that was to occupy their day. The mindless quality of it all, the meaningless repetition, resulting in some tangible end result that not many people really cared about particularly, but that—in the aggregate—contributed to an overall pleasing effect. Scraping paint, for example. This is as good a place as any to start. I’d tried it yesterday, and after about five minutes realized that I would quickly go insane, would probably run around the yard, shedding my clothes, and yelling things until the police were summoned. I put my paint scraper away. Eduardo took the same tools and patiently removed layer after layer of paint, with painstaking thoroughness. It was not a fast job, but taking off years of paint never is. The stuff that was applied on a summer or fall day maybe thirty years ago or more, would be reluctant to give up its spot after so much time. I came back after about an hour and marveled at how complete the job was, and how little he’d done. At that moment, I knew I’d made the right choice: I had not the patience or discipline to stick to something so mind-numbingly boring; would rather have done just about anything else than that.
Out back Manuel was making great headway with the excavation, gulping the bottled water and blaring lively Latin tunes from the little clock radio. Thankfully, he was mostly in the shade, as he worked under the deck to further the headroom for people enjoying the future patio down there. The deeper he went, the more space there would be up above. It was tiring work, but he kept at it, until it was mostly a finished thing by the end of the day.
During this time I was free to get some other housekeeping projects hammered out. The lawn and hedges had grown tall and weedy very quickly—more quickly than at any time I can remember. I got the hedge trimmer plugged in, did a quick trim of both hedges, then fired up a lawnmower I’d recently come home with. It’s not as if I’m lacking for lawnmowers, but this one was a recent arrival, and I simply must tell all about it.
Just yesterday—on Labor Day—I’d taken the bicycle out for a ride around town. A few miles from home I spied a perfectly nice lawnmower set out with the trash in front of a neat and tidy little house. The man there said to take it, and that the motor ran fine. It had a broken handle, he said. I completed my ride in record time, fired up the little station wagon, and drove back to the man’s house. I quickly loaded the mower into the back, drove back home, and got the handle repaired in a little less than an hour. I drilled two new holes, put bolts through both of them, and secured the two broken pieces of handle together in a tight, permanent fix. Then I started the mower, saw that it ran smoothly and without any harsh noises, and proceeded to cut the grass with it. It is my policy to mow the lawn at least once with any orphaned mower that comes into my possession. After that I pass it along to the next owner, for a usual price of around fifty bucks. This seems reasonable for a smooth-running mower.
So today I was using the hunter green mower offered by Sears and found discarded nearby. It has the mulching blade, which I apply liberally to any clippings I think should disappear with the least amount of effort on my part. I simply run over the hedge cuttings, small branches and twigs, and let the mulching mower grind it all away and spit it out onto the lawn—where you really can’t tell what it was any more. It all kind of blends in.
September 4, 2008
I was selling things in the blazing heat of a Baltimore morning, presiding over my little operation that I set up with my helper. Things were going well, with a modest bit of commerce playing out there in the closed-off street. People came out to fetch a loaf of bread or a pastry, and I was happy to help them with their mission. As happy as one can be with this kind of work, anyway. The woman from the local department of health and hygiene made her appearance, clipboard in hand, and a young apprentice at her side. She meant business, wanted to shut me down, in fact. I told her that I was trying to comply with the rules set forth by her office, did a little shuffle, tipped my hat, ran back and forth a few times, said “yowza” at least once, then groveled.
“Ma’am, I said, clutching my poor and worn cap in my hands, and wringing the fabric nervously—twisting it this way and that, “My wife’s abed, see, and the baby’s sickly. Her ma has done caught the train from Oklahoma on account of she was worried with our situation, but I think something’s happened to the train. Leastaways, we ain’t had word from her goin’ on four days now, and the station man says ain’t no trains been lost. So you see, ma’am, we’re in a bad way here, and the little I bring home from sellin these crusts of bread is all goin’ to the doctors, and they cain’t rightly say if it’s a nervous condition or exactly what.” I wiped my worried and furrowed brow, put the large kerchief back in my faded trousers. I waited expectantly.
I had in my possession, however, a document that would further my cause, and I produced it there in that closed-off street on that Baltimore morning. She offered me a reprieve on the spot, told me to go immediately to the office that issues permits for operations such as mine, and request one by filling out the application and necessary paperwork.
“You have one hour,” she said.
Her young apprentice nodded, said in his youthful but suddenly stern voice, which he would have to practice a little: “One hour.”
I told my helper to take over the operation, not a terrible burden since we are usually not overly taxed in our efforts there. If three people come by in the space of five minutes, we might actually break into a small sweat. The county government building was within walking distance, a fact that I see as just a convenient piece of a storyline. The whole episode was so predictable, like some movie that is supposed to be cleverly told, but that you actually know in advance the events before they unfold. Increasingly, this is how I view my life—in cinematic terms. Lacking a compelling plot, the story just drones on interminably, with the same scenes played out again and again. It is not very good viewing.
So I walked over to the county building, which also houses the many courtrooms for civil and criminal cases. The armed police at the entrance told me to put my cell phone into the basket for the metal detector, and waved me through.
“Fourth floor,” said the officer, lazing back in his chair, with not many people entering the building at that particular hour. I took the elevator up to the fourth floor, was swept into the mood of the new scene I’d entered, for the simple reason that the building was ultra-cooled, with the air conditioning giving not a hint of the ninety-degree temperature outside. Talk about cinematic: It even FELT like a movie theatre. With a hard cut, I’d been transplanted from the gritty and homegrown atmosphere of the outdoor market, to the quiet and cool halls of the county government and courthouse building. I was in the county seat, in fact, of one of the most thriving and prosperous counties in Maryland. I knew that people with horses lived in this county and, that to have a horse, you had to have a lot of money to keep it fed and properly cared for. As far as I know, the offices I now visited did not oversee the care and feeding of horses, but it is quite possible that, somewhere, in some corner office out of the way, with photocopiers and business machines lining the hallway, a county inspector was picking up the phone, dialing a number.
“Hello? Yes, this is inspector Duggins, calling as a follow up to my visit on September 2.
So…how is the horse?”
I filled out the application, a process that would have to be repeated for every week I participated in the market. The woman there was exceedingly helpful, understood that I was in the middle of an emergency, as I’d put it to her in that language, but could not really get emotionally worked up over it. Like the terrible movie that I’ve described, I already knew the outcome. Getting all worked up over the minor plot twists might add some comic relief, but I didn’t feel up to it. I sat and waited, got called to follow someone out into the hall, paid my fee, and walked away with a permit valid for one day, for which I paid twenty-five dollars. Not only is the movie a bad one, it is getting pretty darned expensive.
My helper had to depart early, but insisted that I buy a soda before she left. For some reason she always wants me to make the soda run, even though I’d be happy to give her a break. I bought her a medium coke, which in fact is quite large, and some new punch drink that comes in a bottle for myself. I taped the permit to the truck’s window, and pointed it out to the young apprentice when he came back to visit. With his youth and look of a first job clearly portrayed on his smooth, unlined face, I wanted to pull him aside, tell him to get away from the inspector lady, run far, far from this place, go to the most unlicensed and unregulated restaurants and order a big slice of meatloaf and a burger, take his girlfriend to the boardwalk and buy cotton candy from a vendor with vague credentials, eat a corn dog that may or may not have been properly refrigerated while waiting its turn in the deep fryer.
“Drive fast!” I would yell, the intensity and fervor bulging from my reddened, hot face, which I would move uncomfortably close to his. Then—at a loss for anything original—would offer these banalities, hackneyed bits of talking: “Live on the edge! Go for broke! A rolling stone gathers no moss!” Not really sure that the last one applied, he would nevertheless not care, would only want to get away from the crazed food vendor, the terrible and scarlet visage, sputtering nonsense with a religious zeal, which obscured completely any message I might have wanted to impart.
The woman with the clipboard came by a few minutes later, asked about her young charge.
“He was here not five minutes ago,” I told her.
“I’ll find him,” she said, setting off with a determined step and a look of purpose. He was doomed.
Back home I was eager to see the progress of my two helpers. I’d set them to work on a fairly ambitious project: Erecting a little retaining wall to hem in the patio area at the project house. This, our third day of working together, and we were still feeling each other out. It is common to have casual help tell you that they are capable of all kinds of work and craftsmanship, but really know only about as much as you do—or even less. For their part, it is a great leap of faith to put in a day’s worth of often backbreaking work, and wonder if the stranger who’d hired them is going to actually pay. The work that I saw was not bad; not perfect, but it would do. With some reinforcing, the walls would hold well, and would add a great deal aesthetically to the back area of the house. They’d managed to dig out completely the area under the deck, smooth it out so that it was fairly level, and fully put in place one wall—the most important one, in fact. They’d partly erected the other walls, until they’d run out of materials. Talking to Eduardo on the way home from work, I’d instructed him and Manuel to start again on the painting that needed to be done. This they were doing when I finally returned in the heat of the late afternoon. I told them I was pleased with the wall, as I knew they would be looking for some sign from me that their work was okay. I was really dreading having to tell them that it was terrible, and had to be torn down. It was far from terrible, and could remain in place, becoming over the years a permanent part of the house and its surroundings, until one day many years in the future, someone decided to remake everything or tear the house down completely. I didn’t go into all this with Eduardo and Manuel, as I knew that it would just be depressing, and would only add to their view of me as an eccentric and unbalanced boss.
So far away, a life was unfolding without event. Along highway 20, in the town of Ainsworth, Nebraska, Harold and Irma Collins were settling into that stretch of life nearing the horizon. Harold had spent his years just out of high school working on the phone lines that were strung along the poles out in the vast landscape of that country. He did not wax poetic about it, did not indulge in great excursions into that land of introspective ruminations, did not see himself as a giant among men, felt that he was no better nor worse than any he’d met, in fact. There was no pretense about him whatsoever; he mostly stuck to the script, saw no reason to improvise with his life. He saw his opportunity to work as a blessing and often was thankful as he sat in the couple’s regular pew with the rest of the congregation. He could have romanticized his career, as those outside the realm of hard work so often do. He could have spoken of the clear blue days high over the Nebraska roads, with the silence broken only by the buzzing of the high-voltage power lines that were strung way up there, high above the phone lines that were the stuff of his work. The power lines were someone else’s business entirely, and he never wanted to do anything but repair broken telephone lines, something that changed in fact with the advent of the cell phone technology. Nevertheless, Nebraska was never entirely without the black cables hung over the flat landscape, and so Harold was always needed.
From their brick rancher with a single, detached garage over at the end of the driveway, they’d raised two children—a girl and a boy. Their son was at the University in Lincoln, had graduated from college out east and was now teaching English to the undergraduates. It was often with great pride that Harold would field questions about “The Prof,” as the many close friends in the little town often referred to the grown son. If he went into the hardware for a bag of nails or some grass seed, more likely than not the store man—who’d once employed Harold’s son for summer work—would ask:
“And how’s the big university professor, old man?”
Their daughter, although she loved Harold and her mother dearly, had no qualms about leaving Ainsworth and Nebraska entirely, saw the small town as a place that she needed to put behind her as quickly as possible. With her college years spent in the Northeast as a gifted athlete and even more gifted student, she furthered her schooling abroad and finally made her home in New York City, where she often invited her Nebraska parents to visit. Harold and Irma would look at the photos, see their happy daughter and hear about her work at one of the big law firms on the Avenue of the Americas, and watch the news on television, marveling that their little girl lived in such a place. Their small development of neat little houses was old now, had settled into the landscape, and the people there had settled into the houses. The couple would sit at the kitchen table, with the sounds of early morning spring just outside the window, and never say one way or the other if they wanted to go to New York City. But they never went. Tricia, her college basketball days some years in the past, would come back from time to time, usually at Christmas, bring along a fellow from the big city that she was seeing, and the next time it would be someone else. This all seemed confusing to her parents, who thought that maybe life in the huge metropolis just kind of played out like that for everyone. They didn’t quite know what to make of it. If this is what New York was like, they thought, they’d seen quite enough.
September 6, 2008
Meanwhile, back in Baltimore, I was putting into place preparations to do battle with Hurricane Hanna. Our band of market vendors being a fairly stalwart group, we were committed to pulling into our designated spaces and sticking it out, no matter what. It was a drenching affair, with the tents keeping the steady rains mostly at bay, and my custom-made cases protecting my delicate baked goods from the weather. It is not something you would normally think of as a typical human endeavor: Packing up a truckload of fresh-baked breads and pastries, and driving to a spot out of doors in the face of an impending hurricane. At least, the effects we were feeling were those of the hurricane—if not the middle of the storm itself. We were probably on one of the spiraling outward arms, at the edge of the hurricane galaxy. In any event, I was sold out of every last stick of bread and sweet breakfast things by eleven o’clock, and the wind started to blow in earnest. A man had approached just a few minutes earlier, eyed the beautiful long loaf that I’ve dubbed a “ciabatta table bread.” It sounds good, anyway.
“What kind of deal can you give me on the last loaf here?” he asked, improbably enough.
“It’s going to sell,” I replied, looking at the clock. “We have another hour—someone will buy it.” I couldn’t very well back out of my space in the middle of the market, so it made no sense to offer discounts on anything. I would stick it out. He paid the full price, which was already a bargain, as I don’t gouge my customers.
My young helper and I got everything packed up, managed to take down the tents before the wind carried them off or damaged them. I was thoroughly soaked, but would get a little wetter as I decided to help my neighbor and his crew tear down their stand. Personally, I would have gotten things underway around eleven, when I saw the winds picking up and the threat of serious weather a more immediate concern. Instead, he waited until the gusts started to blow in earnest, and this made everything more difficult for him and his help. Being not much of a team player, it was with some reluctance that I got out of my truck—already wet—and waded into the storm to help get his stuff loaded up.
During the market, a few people asked about the sandwiches, which I am trying to promote every week. I imagine if—even on a day with such abysmal weather—people are making inquiries about the prepared sandwiches, then I should expect even better results on the nice days. Hopefully next Saturday will be such a day. I should note that I was woefully short on breakfast pastries on this day; another baker decided not to show up, and I’d already cut back significantly due to the threat of even worse weather than we actually experienced. I trusted the forecast, which seemed to change from hour to hour, but which was certain about this: Heavy rains and flash-flooding, accompanied by heavy winds. I was familiar with these conditions, didn’t relish packing up a lot of delicate breads in howling winds and driving rains, so decided to bring what I thought I could sell.
I was exhausted for some reason, returned home and went to bed—setting my alarm for a few hours’ nap. With daylight outside the window, and the storm somewhat abated, my phone rang. I jumped up from a deep sleep, didn’t know what day it was, saw that my Sunday helper was calling, and panicked. I ran to the dresser and hurriedly threw on a pair of jeans. I tried to answer the phone, but could only make out the caller ID. She was already leaving a message. In my disoriented way, I thought it was Sunday morning, that I’d slept all night, and now it was late—I’d missed my delivery, had missed the start of the market. The whole morning, the whole day would be a mess of apologies and excuses and lost money. I frantically tried to orient myself, looking stupidly at the clock and not understanding the time. I’d slept for about an hour; it was still Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning was about twelve hours distant. I felt not so much relief as a feeling of anger and frustration about not knowing what was going on. Maybe this is the onset of dementia, of that affliction of people of later years, giving me a sneak preview of what it was going to be like. God, I hope not.
With the late afternoon sky clearing, the storm clouds hurried off quickly across the horizon, their path purposeful against the newly-cleansed sky. And, as those who have seen such skies know, the effect was brilliant and beautiful. Ten thousand burdens were lifted, the weight of lifetimes of misery were cleansed away, those who beheld the clearing heavens were transported. It was suddenly a picnic of their youth, a particularly happy event, or their first kiss all over again. Or the feeling that the despair they’d suffered would lift, even if just for a little while. It was the furthering of happiness of those already fulfilled, the icing on the cake, a hand-in-hand walk on the beach. When the earth was new, the landscape untrod by humans, those primordial beasts that occupy our imaginations beheld such a sky, looked up after the storm, with perhaps a bit of fern tree dangling from a chewing mouth high over the wondrous and verdant landscape, and glanced briefly at the new glow coming strangely from the sky, the clouds that skittered—dark and light ones—the air suddenly reinvigorated. Something large and winged would glide across on a tremendous span, relishing the clear sailing, the unstormed skies. The sounds, the random utterances of the forest, were the sounds of the planet coming alive. It was like that.
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