October 31, 2008
I opened the paper at the local diner, turned to the Style section. There—jumping from the page--was a brilliant photograph capturing a scene in the West, with a man and his pickup truck and his dog. In the background was a weathered and splintering old building set against the vast Montana landscape. The scene imparted an emotional impact that went beyond the simple images contained on the page, and it is for that reason that I first thought the work was that of a painter—someone who’d colored the scene through their own eyes and views of the world. I dwelt on the truck, a Ford from the nineteen-sixties—the same model I’d owned several times over the years as a casual collector and admirer of the style. Then I traveled back over the roads, to a scene played out along old Route 66 somewhere in Oklahoma, where a man had talked to me about his old truck, in pristine condition, parked there in his driveway along the remnants of the old road. As the Oklahoma afternoon’s light gave way to the softened hues of a late summer evening, he spoke of the differences in the trucks, the way you could tell one from the other—stuff that only a person who’d spent his life around hard work and pickup trucks would know. He pointed to the front bumper, explained that the number of bolts holding the thing onto the truck was different from 1964 to 1965. I listened with half an ear, was really taken with how his old Ford, which he’d owned since new, looked as though it had just rolled away from the dealership on its very first day on the road.
Then, traveling back to the diner, with my waffle and order of bacon and iced tea—a thousand miles and more from that driveway out west along an iconic highway--I looked again at the front of the truck in the photograph, counted the bolts attaching the bumper to the front. It was a 1965.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
God's Little Chirrens
October 27, 2008
“Yore gone get yore car stolt you leavin’ them windows open.” The half-wit’s hose dangled at her side, splashing water onto the ground, with drops of spray on the gleaming white Ford she was always hosing down.
I hoisted up my soiled and stained overalls, hopped on one foot, and scratched deep in the seat of the dirty denim.
“If’n the good LORD sees as I shouldn’t have no car, HE will take it from me,” I said, pointing at the sky. “There’s no arguin’ with the big guy—I learnt that first day at Miss Rebecca’s Sunday school when I weren’t no bigger’n that stump-topper.” I indicated a flower pot set atop an old tree stump—the last vestige of a mighty oak that had once stood in the yard.
Her garden hose drooped some in wonderment and confusion, its gurgling output not so proud as once it had been. I stopped my hopping, which had continued throughout our interactions in the driveway.
“Problem as I see it,” I said, “You ain’t got no faith in all his little chirrens what run ‘roun here and ain’t nearly so bad as those who don’t believe says they is.” I pointed to the flower pot again, said, “Over by that stump-topper I seen one an’ I said ‘Boy if’n I were to leave this car wifout so much as a closed window an’ mebbe one night even forgotten to put my keys down there in my pants like I mostly always do, what’n you expect I see nex morning---er, mebbe don’ see?’” And then I told her the boy, with half-trousers and a red bandanna, and one shining gold tooth, jumped three times over the stump-topper, and said sure as he was one of God’s chirrens he would lay awake all the night long and listen for the first birds speaking of the glory of the mornin’ and then only then would he steal away to bed, shore that my old car, which surely ain’t worth more’n three sacks of coffee, was still there.
The hose gurgled and splashed on the ground, and the half-wit drooped with sagging confusion, a heavy load of misunderstanding that weighed on her every movement, making navigation through the most trivial of chores accomplished as if by a dumb beast of burden.
“They’s gone done stolt a wickety-wack what belong to Zach an’ he cried sump’n awful carried on like I don’ know what all.”
I then recited a poem I’d composed on the spot:
“Wickety-Wack
What belonged to Zack
Done stolt
And ain’t comin’ back
The hose gurgled, the most eloquent thing there, and it spoke of unending confusion, universes of highways that ran counter to reason, to the furthering of understanding. I wasn’t helping things much.
“Madame,” I said, hitching up my stained overalls. “I am a poet.” Then paused for emphasis, and said importantly: “I wrote to the daily papers once.”
Later I spied her coming around the house, hailed her in mock indignation, of the kind I’d heard uttered when two idiots are addressing each other, their thoughts and speech colliding in idiotic orbits. Here is what I said:
“Whyn’t you tolt me you had them heavy bags to tote out’n the road?” She had two trash bags she was hauling to the roadside for tomorrow’s pickup. I got the right affectation down, sounded almost convincing: “I woulda toted them bags out’n the road if’n you coulda tolt somebody leastaways ain’t no call fer you be carryin’ them heavy bags an the whole time I was standin’ right over there doin’ nuthin’ more’n pickin’ at that ol’ rag, and couldn’a been more’n three peg-legs right from where you is standin’ right now this very time.” I put my hands on my waist, as if she’d committed the most frightful affront, the most egregious infraction against my honor, my esteem. “I swear some folks be totin’ things an’ all the while they’s help right where they kin plain sees em’ ain’t like they blind.”
“I carries ‘em all the time at work,” she said, “And them’s at work mostly more heavy’n what-all I got right now.” I still sputtered in indignation, her comments only adding to my idiotic ire, which had now veered off into lunacy and the insistence on knowing why they made her tote such heavy bags at work, and couldn’t someone young and vibrant be set to the task?
“Everyone’s gots they own job,” she shrugged.
It is the only way I can make sense of the interactions that must inevitably occur between me and the slow-chewing woman, her jaw working insistently at something always in her mouth. As usual, I view the scene in cinematic terms, recognizing at once the jarring collision of her speech and mine, see no way to reconcile the horrible and grating disconnect, the leaping back and forth between two worlds, two irreconcilable cultures—with all communication turned haywire and upside down and backwards—with a good deal of static thrown in to boot. I simply throw my whole being into it, am immersed in the idea that I will be an idiot for a little while, for it makes some kind of order out of the exchange. To a great extent, it is actually quite liberating; once I’ve made the conscious decision that adhering to any semblance of reason is not an option, it is almost a pleasure to carry on a discourse with her.
October 28, 2008
Up in the north part of the county I stopped at a mall, decided to see what it had to offer. It was a low-lying affair, with one level only, and a Sears at one end. At least they would have the lawn and garden equipment I love to look at.
Also in the mall was a Friendly’s ice cream parlor, and I decided to stop and have a combination of breakfast and lunch. For my meal I chose a cup of the clam chowder, which was actually quite good, and a bacon cheeseburger that came on toasted white bread, which I found appealing. The main course was ok, but as usual it came with too many French fries, which I always feel bad about not finishing. I can only eat so many of the damned things and, besides, the cheeseburger was substantial. However, for dessert I ordered one of their good sundaes, with two scoops of ice cream and caramel syrup that was very good. They had a special deal whereby you could get a few things and finish with a sundae and it would run only ten bucks. I hadn’t thought ahead to take advantage of this offer, but the server told me she could change it to make it work. The only thing that cost extra was the soup.
As I sat and ate, with no newspaper because I’d forgotten to bring one in, and the car was too far away to go get it, I read more of their menu offerings. Under the appetizers section was a thing listed as a “chicken slider.” Thoroughly revolted, I read on. Now there were “cheeseburger sliders” as well. I know there are people who are fluent with this terminology, are conversant with the different appetizers offered by the bland chains of family restaurants that don’t do much more than fill up their customers with doses of fat and carbs, but I found the names disgusting. I imagined myself in an empty cafeteria at an airport in between the busy times, with a lone, aproned worker wiping at the dull stainless steel countertops in a desultory kind of way, and occasionally glancing over at me to see what I was doing there exactly. With food maybe an afterthought, I would ask about anything left to eat in that place.
“All’s we got right now is them chicken sliders,” she would say, not bothering to look up, and we would both know—from the way she said it—that she didn’t invite further discussion of the topic. But I would pursue it.
“Chicken sliders?”
“Huh….?” Not looking up again.
“I guess I’ll have an order of chicken sliders,” I’d say. And we would both know, as she wearily put down her washrag and labored over the simple task of loading up some of whatever this food item might have been, putting the pieces into a little cardboard container, that I’d made possibly the worst decision of my life.
Later this week I’ll have Del and Ryan over to continue working on the project house. This name, “project house,” now applies to both places, since I am in the process of readying my own house for the addition of a new bathroom and completely renovated kitchen—in addition to other extensive projects that I don’t even want to think about. But I mostly refer to the place next door in these writings, and will try to distinguish between the two to eliminate any confusion. This will no doubt be a relief to the masses of people tuning in for regular progress reports. Since I am relatively new to the world of online blogging, I was happy to check my visitor count and learn that it was around five hundred people. Then I checked a random blog—something about a woman and her prize roses, I think—and saw that it had a tally of maybe fifteen thousand and counting. Oh, okay—never mind.
Out back there is a monstrous amount of work to be done, and I plug away at it in a fairly halfhearted way. Usually the cats will come around to see what I’m doing, and then the work stops—as I roll them in the tall grass and watch as they graze the sharp blades which they later spew out onto the floor inside. Then it’s back to work. At the moment I am putting some finishing touches on the low walls surrounding the patio area, which is just under the new deck. The end result will be more or less pleasing, and it makes no difference if no one actually uses it as a patio: The fact that it makes the back of the house more appealing is enough. The place needs all the help it can get.
When Del and Ryan pull up in their big work truck, they quickly get to it, don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. This is in direct contrast to my approach, where approximately seventy-five percent of the time is spent wondering how I’m going to do a particular job, and the remainder is spent either doing it or chasing the cats around the yard—or a combination of the two. I need to work on my time management a bit. I told them that I would demolish two more walls—one of the things I’ve become rather adept at—in an effort to open up the area between the kitchen and the small dining room, and the dining room and the back of the house—where there is now a long and rather narrow utility room with a washer and dryer. I plan to move those appliances down into the basement, or perhaps upstairs into the new bathroom area if possible. In any case, the absence of these two walls will give an impression of more space and openness in the layout of the house. When I told Del of my plan, he agreed that it was a good idea. I will also delete a window that is facing my house, which will free up more wall space for counters and cabinets and the like. The main work area in the kitchen will face the back of the house, so that someone doing the dishes or cooking will have a nice view of the backyard, which really is quite pleasant. Before I started tearing the kitchen apart, the sink and only counters and cabinets in the room were mounted against the wall that separates the kitchen from the bathroom. This layout will be much more to my liking.
Down the road is a pile of dirt that I’ve been eyeing. It is advertised free for the taking, and is the result of a large dig-out of a basement in the building nearby. This is the same idea I’ve had for my own house: To dig down an additional foot or so, pour a concrete floor and then finish off the basement as additional living space. It may give me a fighting chance when it comes time to sell the place, since it is a house that the years have passed by, with not much in the way of major improvements. When it is time for me to move, it will have all the things I might have enjoyed while living there—two bathrooms, three full bedrooms, a large, eat-in kitchen, finished basement and possibly some additional landscaping out back. I may have to stick around for just a little while longer to see what it’s actually like to live in a nice house. One of the first steps is to find a structural engineer who can tell me how safe it is to dig down further in the basement, and what precautions I need to take to shore up the walls. I don’t want the whole house to come tumbling down. One nice thing is that I can use all of the dirt from the dig-out to add to the backyard—which is extraordinarily lumpy and irregular. It will help smooth things out.
“Yore gone get yore car stolt you leavin’ them windows open.” The half-wit’s hose dangled at her side, splashing water onto the ground, with drops of spray on the gleaming white Ford she was always hosing down.
I hoisted up my soiled and stained overalls, hopped on one foot, and scratched deep in the seat of the dirty denim.
“If’n the good LORD sees as I shouldn’t have no car, HE will take it from me,” I said, pointing at the sky. “There’s no arguin’ with the big guy—I learnt that first day at Miss Rebecca’s Sunday school when I weren’t no bigger’n that stump-topper.” I indicated a flower pot set atop an old tree stump—the last vestige of a mighty oak that had once stood in the yard.
Her garden hose drooped some in wonderment and confusion, its gurgling output not so proud as once it had been. I stopped my hopping, which had continued throughout our interactions in the driveway.
“Problem as I see it,” I said, “You ain’t got no faith in all his little chirrens what run ‘roun here and ain’t nearly so bad as those who don’t believe says they is.” I pointed to the flower pot again, said, “Over by that stump-topper I seen one an’ I said ‘Boy if’n I were to leave this car wifout so much as a closed window an’ mebbe one night even forgotten to put my keys down there in my pants like I mostly always do, what’n you expect I see nex morning---er, mebbe don’ see?’” And then I told her the boy, with half-trousers and a red bandanna, and one shining gold tooth, jumped three times over the stump-topper, and said sure as he was one of God’s chirrens he would lay awake all the night long and listen for the first birds speaking of the glory of the mornin’ and then only then would he steal away to bed, shore that my old car, which surely ain’t worth more’n three sacks of coffee, was still there.
The hose gurgled and splashed on the ground, and the half-wit drooped with sagging confusion, a heavy load of misunderstanding that weighed on her every movement, making navigation through the most trivial of chores accomplished as if by a dumb beast of burden.
“They’s gone done stolt a wickety-wack what belong to Zach an’ he cried sump’n awful carried on like I don’ know what all.”
I then recited a poem I’d composed on the spot:
“Wickety-Wack
What belonged to Zack
Done stolt
And ain’t comin’ back
The hose gurgled, the most eloquent thing there, and it spoke of unending confusion, universes of highways that ran counter to reason, to the furthering of understanding. I wasn’t helping things much.
“Madame,” I said, hitching up my stained overalls. “I am a poet.” Then paused for emphasis, and said importantly: “I wrote to the daily papers once.”
Later I spied her coming around the house, hailed her in mock indignation, of the kind I’d heard uttered when two idiots are addressing each other, their thoughts and speech colliding in idiotic orbits. Here is what I said:
“Whyn’t you tolt me you had them heavy bags to tote out’n the road?” She had two trash bags she was hauling to the roadside for tomorrow’s pickup. I got the right affectation down, sounded almost convincing: “I woulda toted them bags out’n the road if’n you coulda tolt somebody leastaways ain’t no call fer you be carryin’ them heavy bags an the whole time I was standin’ right over there doin’ nuthin’ more’n pickin’ at that ol’ rag, and couldn’a been more’n three peg-legs right from where you is standin’ right now this very time.” I put my hands on my waist, as if she’d committed the most frightful affront, the most egregious infraction against my honor, my esteem. “I swear some folks be totin’ things an’ all the while they’s help right where they kin plain sees em’ ain’t like they blind.”
“I carries ‘em all the time at work,” she said, “And them’s at work mostly more heavy’n what-all I got right now.” I still sputtered in indignation, her comments only adding to my idiotic ire, which had now veered off into lunacy and the insistence on knowing why they made her tote such heavy bags at work, and couldn’t someone young and vibrant be set to the task?
“Everyone’s gots they own job,” she shrugged.
It is the only way I can make sense of the interactions that must inevitably occur between me and the slow-chewing woman, her jaw working insistently at something always in her mouth. As usual, I view the scene in cinematic terms, recognizing at once the jarring collision of her speech and mine, see no way to reconcile the horrible and grating disconnect, the leaping back and forth between two worlds, two irreconcilable cultures—with all communication turned haywire and upside down and backwards—with a good deal of static thrown in to boot. I simply throw my whole being into it, am immersed in the idea that I will be an idiot for a little while, for it makes some kind of order out of the exchange. To a great extent, it is actually quite liberating; once I’ve made the conscious decision that adhering to any semblance of reason is not an option, it is almost a pleasure to carry on a discourse with her.
October 28, 2008
Up in the north part of the county I stopped at a mall, decided to see what it had to offer. It was a low-lying affair, with one level only, and a Sears at one end. At least they would have the lawn and garden equipment I love to look at.
Also in the mall was a Friendly’s ice cream parlor, and I decided to stop and have a combination of breakfast and lunch. For my meal I chose a cup of the clam chowder, which was actually quite good, and a bacon cheeseburger that came on toasted white bread, which I found appealing. The main course was ok, but as usual it came with too many French fries, which I always feel bad about not finishing. I can only eat so many of the damned things and, besides, the cheeseburger was substantial. However, for dessert I ordered one of their good sundaes, with two scoops of ice cream and caramel syrup that was very good. They had a special deal whereby you could get a few things and finish with a sundae and it would run only ten bucks. I hadn’t thought ahead to take advantage of this offer, but the server told me she could change it to make it work. The only thing that cost extra was the soup.
As I sat and ate, with no newspaper because I’d forgotten to bring one in, and the car was too far away to go get it, I read more of their menu offerings. Under the appetizers section was a thing listed as a “chicken slider.” Thoroughly revolted, I read on. Now there were “cheeseburger sliders” as well. I know there are people who are fluent with this terminology, are conversant with the different appetizers offered by the bland chains of family restaurants that don’t do much more than fill up their customers with doses of fat and carbs, but I found the names disgusting. I imagined myself in an empty cafeteria at an airport in between the busy times, with a lone, aproned worker wiping at the dull stainless steel countertops in a desultory kind of way, and occasionally glancing over at me to see what I was doing there exactly. With food maybe an afterthought, I would ask about anything left to eat in that place.
“All’s we got right now is them chicken sliders,” she would say, not bothering to look up, and we would both know—from the way she said it—that she didn’t invite further discussion of the topic. But I would pursue it.
“Chicken sliders?”
“Huh….?” Not looking up again.
“I guess I’ll have an order of chicken sliders,” I’d say. And we would both know, as she wearily put down her washrag and labored over the simple task of loading up some of whatever this food item might have been, putting the pieces into a little cardboard container, that I’d made possibly the worst decision of my life.
Later this week I’ll have Del and Ryan over to continue working on the project house. This name, “project house,” now applies to both places, since I am in the process of readying my own house for the addition of a new bathroom and completely renovated kitchen—in addition to other extensive projects that I don’t even want to think about. But I mostly refer to the place next door in these writings, and will try to distinguish between the two to eliminate any confusion. This will no doubt be a relief to the masses of people tuning in for regular progress reports. Since I am relatively new to the world of online blogging, I was happy to check my visitor count and learn that it was around five hundred people. Then I checked a random blog—something about a woman and her prize roses, I think—and saw that it had a tally of maybe fifteen thousand and counting. Oh, okay—never mind.
Out back there is a monstrous amount of work to be done, and I plug away at it in a fairly halfhearted way. Usually the cats will come around to see what I’m doing, and then the work stops—as I roll them in the tall grass and watch as they graze the sharp blades which they later spew out onto the floor inside. Then it’s back to work. At the moment I am putting some finishing touches on the low walls surrounding the patio area, which is just under the new deck. The end result will be more or less pleasing, and it makes no difference if no one actually uses it as a patio: The fact that it makes the back of the house more appealing is enough. The place needs all the help it can get.
When Del and Ryan pull up in their big work truck, they quickly get to it, don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. This is in direct contrast to my approach, where approximately seventy-five percent of the time is spent wondering how I’m going to do a particular job, and the remainder is spent either doing it or chasing the cats around the yard—or a combination of the two. I need to work on my time management a bit. I told them that I would demolish two more walls—one of the things I’ve become rather adept at—in an effort to open up the area between the kitchen and the small dining room, and the dining room and the back of the house—where there is now a long and rather narrow utility room with a washer and dryer. I plan to move those appliances down into the basement, or perhaps upstairs into the new bathroom area if possible. In any case, the absence of these two walls will give an impression of more space and openness in the layout of the house. When I told Del of my plan, he agreed that it was a good idea. I will also delete a window that is facing my house, which will free up more wall space for counters and cabinets and the like. The main work area in the kitchen will face the back of the house, so that someone doing the dishes or cooking will have a nice view of the backyard, which really is quite pleasant. Before I started tearing the kitchen apart, the sink and only counters and cabinets in the room were mounted against the wall that separates the kitchen from the bathroom. This layout will be much more to my liking.
Down the road is a pile of dirt that I’ve been eyeing. It is advertised free for the taking, and is the result of a large dig-out of a basement in the building nearby. This is the same idea I’ve had for my own house: To dig down an additional foot or so, pour a concrete floor and then finish off the basement as additional living space. It may give me a fighting chance when it comes time to sell the place, since it is a house that the years have passed by, with not much in the way of major improvements. When it is time for me to move, it will have all the things I might have enjoyed while living there—two bathrooms, three full bedrooms, a large, eat-in kitchen, finished basement and possibly some additional landscaping out back. I may have to stick around for just a little while longer to see what it’s actually like to live in a nice house. One of the first steps is to find a structural engineer who can tell me how safe it is to dig down further in the basement, and what precautions I need to take to shore up the walls. I don’t want the whole house to come tumbling down. One nice thing is that I can use all of the dirt from the dig-out to add to the backyard—which is extraordinarily lumpy and irregular. It will help smooth things out.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
West Texas Radio
Ok--this should probably be in some other collection of writings, but this is where I've decided to put it, so we'll all just have to do the best we can with that.
WEST TEXAS RADIO
West Texas Radio
It is not scintillating
It is not a tea-time
Chat
No night
at the opera
Ballet
It is not
It is hard-baked;
The dirt dried
On a tractor
Wheel
A ’76 Caprice Classic
The paint
Sun-Blasted
Off the hood
The searing heat
From the relentless
Sky
And the motor below
Etch the weariness
On the fatigued
Finish
So brilliant once
Now submissive
As are those
Whose lives
Are etched there
As if into the dirt
Itself
Citizens
Of the vastness
They get the worst
West Texas
The sun saves them
For last
And they avoid
Looking at
The sky
For their gaze
Will not be
Forgiven
Or rewarded
With rain
“Get in real soon,
You better
Jump on this
Deal
Else yore gonna
Be sorry
Seeds for plantin’
Early-season special
All this week
Tractor tires
Half-price on
Selected sizes
Tell Bill or Erma
You heard it on
West Texas
KAWW—Farm Country”
And I cry
Blinded by
The emotion
The other-worldly
Voices
That I cannot
Belong to
Not from
The same planet
A drive-through
Visitor
Alone
“Crop report next,
Right after this
Message
From Dale’s
West Texas Farm
Supply and Feeds
Where you
Always have a friend.”
WEST TEXAS RADIO
West Texas Radio
It is not scintillating
It is not a tea-time
Chat
No night
at the opera
Ballet
It is not
It is hard-baked;
The dirt dried
On a tractor
Wheel
A ’76 Caprice Classic
The paint
Sun-Blasted
Off the hood
The searing heat
From the relentless
Sky
And the motor below
Etch the weariness
On the fatigued
Finish
So brilliant once
Now submissive
As are those
Whose lives
Are etched there
As if into the dirt
Itself
Citizens
Of the vastness
They get the worst
West Texas
The sun saves them
For last
And they avoid
Looking at
The sky
For their gaze
Will not be
Forgiven
Or rewarded
With rain
“Get in real soon,
You better
Jump on this
Deal
Else yore gonna
Be sorry
Seeds for plantin’
Early-season special
All this week
Tractor tires
Half-price on
Selected sizes
Tell Bill or Erma
You heard it on
West Texas
KAWW—Farm Country”
And I cry
Blinded by
The emotion
The other-worldly
Voices
That I cannot
Belong to
Not from
The same planet
A drive-through
Visitor
Alone
“Crop report next,
Right after this
Message
From Dale’s
West Texas Farm
Supply and Feeds
Where you
Always have a friend.”
Thursday, October 9, 2008
"A lot of people want that soda"
I asked the cashier about the sign posted there at the checkout. “How do you feel about that?” I said.
“Not on my watch,” she instantly replied.
Here is the gist of it: If the cashier doesn’t circle a little item at the bottom of the receipt and inform you of an online contest that the company is promoting, then you are entitled to a free soda. Simple as that. This cashier was confident that no one would get a free soda while she was on duty, because she always fulfilled that obligation—another part of her tedious job. The customer was instructed to inform a manager in order to receive the free drink.
I tried to get to the heart of the matter, wanted to expose the indignity of having customers rat out the employee with the promise of a free beverage. This of course would have a detrimental effect on that employee, who would now be subject to sanctions and probably receive less than favorable performance evaluations. The whole enterprise was so distasteful on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. This cashier, who has been with the company for a long time, summed it up quickly:
“A lot of people want that soda.”
Across town in a high-security building, men and women wearing white lab coats were discussing things in a gleaming steel building. They were focused on the latent rage that bubbled like molten rock, just below the surface of the general population. Where was it all coming from, they wanted to know? Outside, tight-fisted motorists were using their cars like battering rams to plow their way through the thick and sticky tension that enveloped everything, made the very air vibrate with hostility. Store clerks were throwing their change in the general direction of customers, watching with disinterest as it scattered across the floor. Bank clerks were once again incapable of counting money—even the smallest amounts, and wore sullen expressions of superiority when a customer happened to point out that he’d like the correct amount of money, please.
Inside the complex of laboratories, computers flashed endless calculations, bright lights encircled the cavernous research facility, whirring sounds came from expensive machines that helped them with their puzzle, signs flashed on and off: “Restricted Area: Authorized Personnel Only.” More figures were fed into the calculating machines, more results, more incertitude about the source of all the rage.
“Look at this spike,” Elder Hoffsgrauten, a prominent Swedish statistician said, pointing to a jagged peak on a graph. “It is significant, no?”
The others bunched together, murmured unintelligible noises of acquiescence or dissent, then dispersed to the activity room for their afternoon ping-pong game.
Not knowing the extent of their research, I might nonetheless offer this: Suggest to the managers of those large companies that employ thousands of people to stop enticing their customers with the promise of a soda in the hope that they’ll serve as an informal and rag-tag group of spies for the people in charge. I’ll bet the significant peak in Dr. Hoffsgrauten’s graph would diminish substantially by the time their next ping-pong game rolled around.
“Not on my watch,” she instantly replied.
Here is the gist of it: If the cashier doesn’t circle a little item at the bottom of the receipt and inform you of an online contest that the company is promoting, then you are entitled to a free soda. Simple as that. This cashier was confident that no one would get a free soda while she was on duty, because she always fulfilled that obligation—another part of her tedious job. The customer was instructed to inform a manager in order to receive the free drink.
I tried to get to the heart of the matter, wanted to expose the indignity of having customers rat out the employee with the promise of a free beverage. This of course would have a detrimental effect on that employee, who would now be subject to sanctions and probably receive less than favorable performance evaluations. The whole enterprise was so distasteful on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. This cashier, who has been with the company for a long time, summed it up quickly:
“A lot of people want that soda.”
Across town in a high-security building, men and women wearing white lab coats were discussing things in a gleaming steel building. They were focused on the latent rage that bubbled like molten rock, just below the surface of the general population. Where was it all coming from, they wanted to know? Outside, tight-fisted motorists were using their cars like battering rams to plow their way through the thick and sticky tension that enveloped everything, made the very air vibrate with hostility. Store clerks were throwing their change in the general direction of customers, watching with disinterest as it scattered across the floor. Bank clerks were once again incapable of counting money—even the smallest amounts, and wore sullen expressions of superiority when a customer happened to point out that he’d like the correct amount of money, please.
Inside the complex of laboratories, computers flashed endless calculations, bright lights encircled the cavernous research facility, whirring sounds came from expensive machines that helped them with their puzzle, signs flashed on and off: “Restricted Area: Authorized Personnel Only.” More figures were fed into the calculating machines, more results, more incertitude about the source of all the rage.
“Look at this spike,” Elder Hoffsgrauten, a prominent Swedish statistician said, pointing to a jagged peak on a graph. “It is significant, no?”
The others bunched together, murmured unintelligible noises of acquiescence or dissent, then dispersed to the activity room for their afternoon ping-pong game.
Not knowing the extent of their research, I might nonetheless offer this: Suggest to the managers of those large companies that employ thousands of people to stop enticing their customers with the promise of a soda in the hope that they’ll serve as an informal and rag-tag group of spies for the people in charge. I’ll bet the significant peak in Dr. Hoffsgrauten’s graph would diminish substantially by the time their next ping-pong game rolled around.
Monday, October 6, 2008
It's the Law
So the American economy has been brought to its knees. And—by all appearances—it can’t get up without help. We’re a nation of laws, so many laws. Laws that protect us from being stupid, laws that say we have to know what the law is, laws about writing new laws. We love our laws. So, while the mortgage lenders were busy writing worthless loans, hoodwinking people into thinking they could afford a house of their own, then ruining those very people with financial disaster, where were our precious laws? Am I to understand that—as the lenders chipped away at the country’s financial footing—first with a chisel and hammer and then with great blows from a humongous sledgehammer, after the greed had set in for good, that NO ONE knew what was going on? Granted, we have the dimmest president in the history of the civilized world, but it wasn’t his job to oversee these kinds of activities. He gets a pass on this one. His financial advisers, however, shouldn’t have been so insulated from the machinations of the mortgage industry—one of the most high profile and closely watched businesses in the financial world. What exactly were they doing while the lenders were going for broke—writing new laws?
On the plus side, there is an unexpected benefit to bankrupting the country: When I go to the Colosso-Box home improvement center I can walk the aisles unmolested by other customers: The place is empty.
On the plus side, there is an unexpected benefit to bankrupting the country: When I go to the Colosso-Box home improvement center I can walk the aisles unmolested by other customers: The place is empty.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
"Can I have them?"
October 2, 2008
And then back to the muck of my life. I got together some things that I thought might be useful for someone else, but that I no longer wanted or needed. This is in preparation for a complete renovation of my kitchen—which looks much as it did in the nineteen-forties. Maybe worse. Anyway, I am currently not so averse to throwing things away, as it is in fact the most expeditious way of getting rid of them. However, the guilt sets in, and I find myself making an effort to get the unwanted items to a new home. So I photographed the little basket of miscellaneous things—most of them new—and put an ad on the forum that people in the computer world use. That very evening I got a response for the giveaways, and this is what it said:
That's so wonderful of you. I love being a "Catonsville" person. It's so perfect in every way imaginable. Hope this sells for you!
I immediately felt sickened beyond belief, fought back a wave of nausea. It was as if the cat had slurped up an entire can of creamed corn and spewed it all over the floor; then, in a midnight run to the fridge, I'd trod barefoot through the unexpected mess. A short time later, the only other response to the advertisement:
“Can I have them?”
That’s all it said, and I loved that person more than all the boulders in Iceland, more than the great, gulping waterfalls that swallowed rivers and dumped them explosively hundreds of feet into the rocky moraine below. I wanted to bring that person to Paris, show him or her the arc de triomphe, the place where I went to school, walk to the little firecracker shop that sold magicians’ tricks to the professionals who made their life that way. Excitedly look upon Notre Dame de Paris as if it were the first time, give the respondent to the ad a backstairs tour of the tower, where you could climb and climb and finally have a magnificent view of the city. I would lead that person, who’d humbly asked, “Can I have them?” around to the little-known corners of the vibrant city, would encourage him to keep up the pace, as he slogged along in large shoes and pants, wondering at the strange sights, asking about this and that, and if they had a McDonald’s around someplace—and if they did, was it the same stuff you could get back home or different? And by the way, what language do they speak here anyway? I wanted to say, “You may have the basket and its contents—the ink pens, the chalk and baking chocolate and marmalade and staples and tin can and other things, but you must come with me on a journey first. It will be fun.”
Instead, this is what I wrote: “I’ll leave the things on the porch. Pick up anytime.”
And then back to the muck of my life. I got together some things that I thought might be useful for someone else, but that I no longer wanted or needed. This is in preparation for a complete renovation of my kitchen—which looks much as it did in the nineteen-forties. Maybe worse. Anyway, I am currently not so averse to throwing things away, as it is in fact the most expeditious way of getting rid of them. However, the guilt sets in, and I find myself making an effort to get the unwanted items to a new home. So I photographed the little basket of miscellaneous things—most of them new—and put an ad on the forum that people in the computer world use. That very evening I got a response for the giveaways, and this is what it said:
That's so wonderful of you. I love being a "Catonsville" person. It's so perfect in every way imaginable. Hope this sells for you!
I immediately felt sickened beyond belief, fought back a wave of nausea. It was as if the cat had slurped up an entire can of creamed corn and spewed it all over the floor; then, in a midnight run to the fridge, I'd trod barefoot through the unexpected mess. A short time later, the only other response to the advertisement:
“Can I have them?”
That’s all it said, and I loved that person more than all the boulders in Iceland, more than the great, gulping waterfalls that swallowed rivers and dumped them explosively hundreds of feet into the rocky moraine below. I wanted to bring that person to Paris, show him or her the arc de triomphe, the place where I went to school, walk to the little firecracker shop that sold magicians’ tricks to the professionals who made their life that way. Excitedly look upon Notre Dame de Paris as if it were the first time, give the respondent to the ad a backstairs tour of the tower, where you could climb and climb and finally have a magnificent view of the city. I would lead that person, who’d humbly asked, “Can I have them?” around to the little-known corners of the vibrant city, would encourage him to keep up the pace, as he slogged along in large shoes and pants, wondering at the strange sights, asking about this and that, and if they had a McDonald’s around someplace—and if they did, was it the same stuff you could get back home or different? And by the way, what language do they speak here anyway? I wanted to say, “You may have the basket and its contents—the ink pens, the chalk and baking chocolate and marmalade and staples and tin can and other things, but you must come with me on a journey first. It will be fun.”
Instead, this is what I wrote: “I’ll leave the things on the porch. Pick up anytime.”
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Vision Tarp Part II
I entered the store with my pair of glasses, so new a few months ago—but now utterly ruined. They had scratches, abrasions, looked like the ice after an especially brutal hockey game. Sitting at the fitting table in the optometrist’s shop was the rotund little woman I’d spoken to last week. I’d held up the glasses on that day, asked her to look at them, told her I needed new lenses. She took the glasses, turned them this way and that, said that they were “a little scratched,” and that she could do nothing for me. With her pursed lips and distrusting eyes—close-set in her chubby face-- she regarded me as if I were Osama Bin Laden, come into her store to spread terrorism and ask for free lenses. Her expression was unchanged, regardless of the situation: A customer could come in and buy five hundred dollars worth of eyewear, or present a defective pair of eyeglasses—it was all the same to her. The customers who wandered into her shop were simply a moving and noisy nuisance that she needed to be rid of as quickly as possible. For those idle times when people were not bothering her with their unreasonable requests, she considered Dorito possibilities or maybe how long it would take to eat a whole package of fig newtons, if she found herself alone in those enviable circumstances. I told her evenly that she could have helped me if she’d wanted to, and left the shop—where she was alone with absolutely no one else to occupy her.
But on this day, things turned in my favor. I approached the kindly-looking woman who was not the rotund one, said I’d spoken to that other last week, and that I really needed some help with these glasses—for which I’d paid a premium price. She took them from me, said immediately, “Let’s get you some new lenses.” The squat little woman looked up from her work-station, was not pleased to have to oblige this demanding and nuisance customer with his terrible demands. But on this day I had the DISTRICT MANAGER on my side--the woman whose job it was to oversee the operations of all the stores. She set the other woman to work on my order, getting the necessary paperwork filed so that my new lenses could be sent out as quickly as possible. I was not obnoxious, as I am right now and most of the time, actually; I was simply grateful to finally get some help with this issue, didn’t even mind that it had required two trips to resolve the matter.
“You ordered the top-of-the-line lenses,” the district manager said. “They’re made by Nikon.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought,” I told her, which—I added—was all the more surprising that they’d only lasted a few months.
“It happens,” she said. “Sometimes you get a defective pair.”
This woman knew EVERYTHING about eyewear, how the sunglasses worked and which colors were best for different kinds of conditions. I mentioned that I was looking for a pair of sunglasses to be made with my prescription, and she showed me the frames that would work, and that didn’t cost too much. I ordered a pair of them, recognizing the thirty years of experience the woman brought to our interactions was probably the best I could hope for in my quest for eyewear. I looked forward to the last days of warm weather, with the top of the sports car slid back, letting in the autumn sky and the stray colored leaf brushing past me, and my new glasses keeping the glare and insistent stares of bystanders at bay. You see, when I'm at the wheel of the little car—and it is often—I am suddenly successful, somebody to be reckoned with. I’ve promoted a concert for Edith Piaf in her early years in Paris, where she triumphed over a packed crowd that knew not what to expect, and she and I embraced—the confusion of her success still not quite sinking in—and unspoken were the conquests that awaited, and the terrible times we both knew lay ahead, but were drunk now on that potent mixture of lights and cigarette smoke and wild applause and brilliant music. Outside, with the late-night Parisians still gathering at nearby hot-spots, we sat, tete-a-tete, at a café’s table. Out on the sidewalk played an accordionist, with the tottering revelers throwing a few francs his way.
It’s a wonder I can keep the car going straight.
But on this day, things turned in my favor. I approached the kindly-looking woman who was not the rotund one, said I’d spoken to that other last week, and that I really needed some help with these glasses—for which I’d paid a premium price. She took them from me, said immediately, “Let’s get you some new lenses.” The squat little woman looked up from her work-station, was not pleased to have to oblige this demanding and nuisance customer with his terrible demands. But on this day I had the DISTRICT MANAGER on my side--the woman whose job it was to oversee the operations of all the stores. She set the other woman to work on my order, getting the necessary paperwork filed so that my new lenses could be sent out as quickly as possible. I was not obnoxious, as I am right now and most of the time, actually; I was simply grateful to finally get some help with this issue, didn’t even mind that it had required two trips to resolve the matter.
“You ordered the top-of-the-line lenses,” the district manager said. “They’re made by Nikon.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought,” I told her, which—I added—was all the more surprising that they’d only lasted a few months.
“It happens,” she said. “Sometimes you get a defective pair.”
This woman knew EVERYTHING about eyewear, how the sunglasses worked and which colors were best for different kinds of conditions. I mentioned that I was looking for a pair of sunglasses to be made with my prescription, and she showed me the frames that would work, and that didn’t cost too much. I ordered a pair of them, recognizing the thirty years of experience the woman brought to our interactions was probably the best I could hope for in my quest for eyewear. I looked forward to the last days of warm weather, with the top of the sports car slid back, letting in the autumn sky and the stray colored leaf brushing past me, and my new glasses keeping the glare and insistent stares of bystanders at bay. You see, when I'm at the wheel of the little car—and it is often—I am suddenly successful, somebody to be reckoned with. I’ve promoted a concert for Edith Piaf in her early years in Paris, where she triumphed over a packed crowd that knew not what to expect, and she and I embraced—the confusion of her success still not quite sinking in—and unspoken were the conquests that awaited, and the terrible times we both knew lay ahead, but were drunk now on that potent mixture of lights and cigarette smoke and wild applause and brilliant music. Outside, with the late-night Parisians still gathering at nearby hot-spots, we sat, tete-a-tete, at a café’s table. Out on the sidewalk played an accordionist, with the tottering revelers throwing a few francs his way.
It’s a wonder I can keep the car going straight.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
