The Little Things

     

The farm from the back porch

There are a pair of mallard ducks cutting a wake across the pond. Mister T has just finished his bowl of milk on the porch and is cleaning his chops with the back of his front paw. Lil Buddy remains in the basement, always a late riser and Fig, with her molting coat of calico fur, stopped by yesterday afternoon for some Meow Mix but this morning is no where to be found.

Yesterday was gorgeous and I spent most of it outside.  First on the agenda was bleaching away the mold that was growing beneath the deck rail.  With that sunny south exposure, its amazing the railing provides enough shade to allow that green skuz to grow on the deck's painted wood surface.  Lesson:  it doesn't take a big difference to make a huge difference!

By noon, the sun was high and hot, drying puddles and coaxing the heads of daffodils and crocuses out from beneath their leafy winter blankets.  I opened the pole barn and got the Dodge going and then parked it below the stone steps along the path to the pond.  The ground was littered with branches, so I went to work piling them into the truck bed and then cleaned the remnants of last year's shade makers off the stonework.  I thought of my grandfather as I brushed away a pile of gnawed walnut casings left by a squirrel on one of the large capstones he'd placed on the wall.  With canvas glove, I traced the barely visible initials that my brother and I had chiseled into the stone back in 1965. 

Forty-eight years.  What a different world it was back then.  I think of my mom up at the house making lunch and my grandmother "yew-who-ing" for us boys to come up and wash our hands and get ready to eat.  When it wasn't raining, we always had breakfast and lunch outside on the broad wooden table under the walnut tree.  My grandpa had built it from oak boards recycled from their home in New Jersey.  Of course they really didn’t consider it recycling back then.  You just didn’t waste things.  So when they tore out the old breakfast nook to modernize their kitchen, he used the thick, tight grained boards to create a picnic table.  He built a big, wide seat bench as well.  I repaired that bench many times over the years.  I wanted to preserve it as long as possible because it carried so many memories.  Even now I can picture my mom in shorts, sitting on it under the tree, her long legs pulled up close to her chin and her bare feet hooked over the edge of the seat, talking to my grandpa about which birds were nesting where.  She knew all the birds and always told me I should learn more about them.  

After loading the truck as high as I could go, I drove the load down to the lane were I have been making firewood from the big maple tree that blew down last winter.  Hard maple is great burning, but if it is left outside it goes bad quickly.  Its almost like the wood is so sweet and tasty, that every microorganism in town wants to munch on a little sugar maple.  By season three, if isn’t stacked and stored, the wood will turn whitish yellow and go soft and punky.  Some of the pieces I split yesterday were already bad and I had to toss them on the burn pile where I had dumped the truck load of branches.  I ended up splitting another two cords to add to the three pallets worth I’d put up earlier in the week.  With the help of the skidsteer, it will all go in the pole barn for next winter.

The afternoon sun was nice and warm and I always sweat  a lot when I get to swinging a sledgehammer.  Fortunately I had remembered to bring along a thermos of cold water.  Nothing better than cold water when you've been working hard!  I changed T-shirts and sat on the front bench seat of the pick up while I took my break.  I had the front door open wide and the four o’clock sun danced on my closed eyelids as I sat there resting.  I thought of Bob Smith and how he and his wife Carol would have dropped by on a spring day like this.  You’d see his pick-up coming down the road slowly, then you’d spot that big grin and those rosy red Santa Claus cheeks of his.  He would roll to a stop at the end of the driveway and he’d yell out across the yard,   

"So nice out I said to Ma, "Let's take a ride up and see how the kids are doin’.'"   

It always took Bob a while to make it from the truck to the back stoop.  He liked to talk a lot and his feet were bad, and he made frequent stops to catch his breath.  He had black lung, which is similar to emphysema, only its from inhaling coal dust down in the mines. I don’t think he ever smoked, but he did ride a BSA motorcycle when he was a younger man.  He told me about a joke he and his buddy played on a couple girls that rode with them.  

It was fall and the air was chilly and the ladies were without gloves.  So in the bathroom of the roadhouse, both men cut the pockets out of their pants and took off their underwear.  When they climbed back on the bikes and started down the two-lane, they told the girls that it was okay to hang on and stay warm by sticking their hands into the guy’s trouser pockets. 

“Well, “ Bob said, his eyes squinting and his red cheeks glowing even brighter  “Those bikes made a Hell of a noise goin’ up that road, but it was nothing like the squeal that come out of those two girls when they went to get their hands warm!”

Bob had crushed both his feet in a logging accident.  He was riding home on the front of the skidder when the driver went to push a log out of the way with the plow.  Bob was perched on the safety cowling where he often  rode, his feet braced on the cross bar behind the blade.   When they hit the log, the hydraulics lost pressure, and the front blade sprung back, catching his feet in between and crushing both of them flat as a pancake.  They were way up in the woods and it was a haul back down the mountain.  Bob didn’t have any choice but to continue ro ride where he was on the front of skidder.  Had he lost consciousness, the driver would have had to have left him, in which case he probably would have bled to death.

“I never even tried to take my boots off,” he explained “ I figured they were holdin’ the blood in.  Beside, I was afraid my toes would have come off with them.”

When they reached the hospital, Bob was still awake. He remembered speaking to the doctor and begging him not to cut off his feet.  As it turned out, with bone grafts taken from his hips during  a series of operations over several months, the surgeon managed to reconstructed the old logger’s feet.  He could never again work in the woods and had to wear blocky black orthopedic shoes, but he could walk.  Had he not liked his wife's cooking so much, I think he might have been able to walk a lot faster.

Bob seldom ventured further than the back stoop, where he would sit and entertain us with stories about the old days.  He had spent the summers of his youth in the house down the road, working on Frank Shepardson’s farm for room and board.  It was Frank’s father William who had built our house back in 1867.  All that remains now of the house where Bob  stayed is a hand laid stone foundation full of popular trees and a few snap shots in a shoe box.  As was his habit when storytelling, Bob would stop in the middle of a sentence and say:

"Ron!  Listen!  What's that?" 

I'd listen a moment and say, "What 's what Bob?" 

"That." He'd repeat, cocking his head a little to one side or the other.  "Don't you hear it?" 

I knew what was coming next, because he would do this about every time he came to visit, but I'd play along anyway. 

"Hear what Bob?  I don't hear anything." 

"That's what I mean kiddo, nothing!   No noise, just quiet.  Now that's the way things ought-a be!"

So as I sat in the truck yesterday, the March sun warm and my body hot from splitting wood, I closed my eyes and just listened.  A crow cawed off in the distance and then the soft coos of a far off morning dove drifted down off the hill.  And in between?  Nothing.  Just a slight ringing in my own ears, something I seldom notice except at night when I sit up in bed reading.  Yeah, it’s quiet.  Really quiet.  The way things ought-a be. 

I felt just perfect sitting there, completely in the moment, on the same family property that I have know and loved all my life.  Now that's something rare in this day and age, something rare indeed.

Treasure the little things, is what Bob would always say.  Like the shade cast by the porch rail, they can make all the difference in the world.  It is the little things, the simple things, the things that don't cost a dime that will make you the happiest.  All you have to do is take a little thing called time to appreciate them.

(Written for my kids on Easter Sunday who are off with their mom visiting DisneyWorld in Orlando, Florida.) 

A Sparkling Drop of Retsyn

"A sparkling drop of retsyn."

The phrase comes from a television ad campaign that was airing in 1968, the year the Viet-Nam War was at its peek; the year of the Tet Offensive and our most concentrated attacks on infamous Ho Chi-Minh Trail. * 

I was in 7th grade at the time and watched enough television to have this marketing slogan pop into my head forty-five years later as I lay in bed before a open window enjoying the cool evening air and reflecting on the beauty of the Tasman Bridge, its illuminated arch etched gracefully behind the empty masts of anchored sailing ships asleep on the still waters of Lindisfarne Bay. 

Who can possibly under estimate the manipulative, mind-altering power of media and advertising? 

And who will try the first civil case for damages inflicted on unsuspecting workers repetitively exposed to a daily assault of commercials, jingles, and pop music raining down from ceiling sound systems in department stores across America?

Who will put the first dollar figure on the cost of psychotherapy and related treatments? The  value associated with lost productivity from lethargy, irritability and sick days that result from depression and anxiety exacerbated by this kind of unrelenting audio conditioning?  (See "High Fidelity" Nick Hornby Victor Gollancz LTD 1995.  Narrator attributes his teen depression to the pop music he listened to). 

Consider the long list of suicides and drug overdoses of rock circuit performers forced to play the same emotionally debilitating, mind numbing songs, night after night to audiences “programmed to receive.” (Name that tune!) Could these untimely deaths be rooted in chronic self-medication to escape the torment of the very music they promote?  And what of those who have survived?  Just look at Ozzy Osborne.  Do you think he was born that way?    

Anyway, in 1956 some ad agency suggested to the American Chicle Company that if they wanted to manufacture a breath mint that would really sell, they had to come up with something different, something special, something better than just a plain old mint.  It had to contain something powerful, something magical, something that no other mint could possibly recreate.  In other words, what they needed was a secret ingredient.

So down to the candy lab went the wise men of the board, and to their head candy cook they announced,

“We need something new.  Something powerful, something magical, something no other breath mint could possibly recreate and we need you to invent it for us now!”

The cook wiped his hands on his apron and said, “Sure, just give me a minute.” 

Down from the shelf he took a box of sugar, and into a bowl he spooned a bit.  Then from over by a big cast iron stove, loaded with bubbling pots of sweet smelling solutions, he grabbed a bottle of partially hydrogenated cotton seed oil, a staple in any candy maker’s kitchen.  Into the bowl went a healthy dash.  A few seasonings, perhaps used in the classic Chiclet or spicy stick of Dentyne may have been added.  After all, both were company owned brands.   But it wasn't until the head candy cook reached beneath the sink and pulled out a big jar of copper gluconate and shook a liberal dose of the blue crystals into the bowl, that the mysterious mixture became the sparkling drop that would be added to each and every Certs lozenge.

“Voila” said Brooklyn born cook in his best French accent, “ I geeve yew, RETSYN!”

It sounded almost space age.  Retsyn, like that family of cartoon astronauts that would soon come to TV called “The Jetsons."  Yeah, Certs caught on in a flash.  It was as the ad said, “two mints in one.”  It had twice the punch and double the value.   A breath sanitizer and sweet treat within one tightly rolled, twelve serving wrapper.  

Remember, this product came from a company once owned by a doctor who understood that medicine didn’t have to taste bad to be good.  His name was Dr. Edwin Beeman.  He was a research scientist who was in awe of the incredible variety of garbage his pet pigs could eat while displaying not the least bit of gastro intestinal discomfort.  So the doctor took to analyzing the stomach juices that aided his pigs’ superlative digestion. 

Low and behold, after months of late nights in sty and in lab, Dr. Beeman managed to isolate the enzyme pepsin, which in repeated tests, appeared to work wonders in relieving human indigestion.  Unfortunately, his attempt to market pepsin as Pepsin, a soothing elixir extracted from the stomach lining of hogs, just didn’t go over well with consumers.  Dumbfounded, he confided to young shop keeper his bewilderment with why such a worthy product was such a failure.  The clerk just smiled and said,

“I bet it would sell if it tasted like bubble gum.”

So Dr. Beeman invented Pepsin Chewing Gum for the bloated, overwrought belly and sell it did!  Before long, the product caught the attention of William White, owner of Wm. White & Son, the largest chewing gum manufacturer in the world.  He bought Beeman out, and by 1919 had constructed a two million dollar plant under the masthead of the American Chicle Company.  American Chicle was responsible for a lot of American chewing gum standards, Chiclets, Dentyne, Clorets to name only a few.

After Certs became America’s number one breath mint, Warner- Lambert Pharmaceutical Company, flush with cash from their ever expanding drug sales, added American Chicle to their acquisition list.  Accustom to shipping its pharmaceuticals worldwide, tariff fee, Warner- Lambert took the US Customs office to court for classifying Certs as candy and subjecting them to international shipping duties. Come-on guys, this was Certs, America’s very own “two mints in one”!  Each lozenge contains a single, sparkling drop of retsyn, odor eater and oral bacteria cleanser. Certs is breath medicine made to taste good.

Unfortunately, since most of what goes into Certs is simply refined sugar, the Customs people didn’t see it that way. But thank goodness for mom, apple pie and well-heeled lawyers.

Arguing that the chemicals in restyn stimulated the salivary glands, releasing heighten levels of this natural cleanser, the attorneys for Warner-Lambert convinced the appeals court to forget the sugar and focus on the medicinal values of retsyn.  In the end, the lower court’s decision was reversed, and Certs, the breath mint that contained no mint, became the equivalent of a true pharmaceutical, imported and exported without the burden of profit-sharing tariffs.

With tax encumbrances removed, Certs became an even more popular commodity.  Pfizer, a global leader in drug manufacturing and sales, appreciated what a sweet addition Certs would be to its nearly endless list of medicinal, mouth freshening products.  In June 2000, the deal was done and Warner Lambert and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals merged forces, creating the most valuable and fastest growing drug company in the world.

Ah, that sparkling drop of Retsyn!  It must really be magic!

The ad:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdWVZfbDdw8&feature=fvwp&NR=1

* On November 11, 1968, Operation Commando Hunt was initiated by the U.S. and its allies. The goal of the operation was to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail, through Laos into South Vietnam. By the end of the operation, three million tons of bombs were dropped on Laos, which slowed but did not consistently disrupt trail operations.

The North Vietnamese also used the Ho Chi Minh Trail to send soldiers to the south. At times, as many as 20,000 soldiers a month came from Hanoi by this way. In an attempt to stop this traffic, it was suggested that a barrier of barbed wire and minefields, called the McNamara Line, should be built. The plan was abandoned in 1967 after repeated attacks by the NLF on those involved in constructing the barrier.

He Earned It

President Barack Obama

Expressing my happiness concerning the President's re-election:

The system of meritocracy: to work hard, to do a good job, to be acknowledged and rewarded for your efforts. It has made this country great. It is the basis of our continuing freedom. 

Barack Obama's re-election says many things, but above all he speaks to "the better angels of our nature." He is to our times what Abraham Lincoln was to the 19th century, for surely we are at a similar crossroads in the history of mankind. Our nation has been chosen to carry liberty forward; this requires a clear eye, open mind and unflagging compassion for our fellows as well as all other species on planet Earth. 

Let us never forget the sentiment expressed in our 16th President's Inaugural Address as our fractured Union faced "the second American revolution." It is simple, beautiful and ageless. 

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Clarifications:

A job is a task undertaken with a desired result in mind.  It can be as simple as peeling an apple or as complex as directing the construction of a transportation network.  To "do a good job" is to be present in your work, engaged and respectful of the labor, the laborer and the environment in which it is done.  

Our nation has been chosen to carry liberty forward.     

England's Sir Winston Churchill is said to have had a gargantuan ego.   A story I read describes a tongue lashing given his long time butler Charles Rudd.  Lady Churchill, who witnessed the display, questioned how her husband could justify treating his dear and trusted family employee with such disrespect.  Churchill replied (and I paraphrase liberally) "I am a great man!  I am here to do great things.  At times Rudd forgets that."   

I think certain individuals are chosen for greatness.  They are born to a place and time, and then, as Malcolm Gladwell describes in "Outliers", develop into the individual the position requires. 

The United States has been referred to as a grand experiment.  The nation's abundant natural wealth and its unique political system have allowed an ever expanding citizen population to exercise individual autonomy.   We, as a nation, have carried this ideology forward.  Let us hope this mission is now insured another few years!

Big Birds & Bulls

Associated Press

HARFORD, Pa. — Officials say a rodeo bull at the Harford Fair in Pennsylvania got loose and ran wild around the grounds injuring several people before the animal was captured.

Fair officials say the bull got loose during loading Friday evening. The Binghamton, N.Y. Press & Sun Bulletin reports that hundreds of fairgoers dove into carnival game booths and fences to escape the animal (http://press.sn/NSrQXv ).

At least 10 people were reportedly injured, but fair and fire officials would not confirm the number of injuries and declined to answer questions on the incident, citing an ongoing investigation.

Nineteen-year-old Raymond Rose told the newspaper that people were screaming as the bull ran toward them. He says it had big horns and weighed probably 900 pounds.

The paper reported the fair reopened Saturday at 8 a.m.

If you ask me, Americans are turning into big fat wimps!  How can a domesticated farm animal strike this kind of terror in the hearts of thousands?  No wonder a Muslim brother with aviator shades and an odd shaped brief case can set off more alarms than a Kansas twister!!  I watched one of the videos posted on Youtube and the bull appeared to be barely trotting down the fairway. I'll bet he was just looking for the cattle trailer or maybe the beer tent.  (Whiskey for my men, beer for my bulls*)  The plump old lady in the wheel chair?  The one who had to be life-lined to Geisinger Medical after being flipped into the air and left semi-conscious with half a corn-dog protruding from her mouth?  Well geez... maybe  next time she won't play rodeo clown around Tim Toro the Texas Longhorn!  

Excluding headlines concerning the gas rich Marcellus shale, the last incident in this area to go National happened back in 1986 when Christopher Lake ( a.k.a. "Lakie") and his pregnant wife Nanette, caught up with a high school kid  who had slipped into their home and pinched some marijuana.  Lakie, an affable fellow when not high on Bud Light or methamphetamine, was a Harley-Davidson homie renown for being wound a tad too tight. Only a fool would have thought to steal from Lakie, let alone go after the man's personal stash.  But to brag about it afterward at a high school dance was nothing less than a death wish.  

There is honor among thieves; when crossed, retribution is swift and often lethal.  

Lakie had to set an example.  So he and his bride, along with a friend, Hank Peck, apprehended the young scoundrel and in a makeshift court set up among the socket sets and tire-irons of the family garage, tried and convicted the kid of rifling through the Lake's nightstand and slipping away with a bud or two of fine Jamaican weed.   As punishment, they stripped the teenager of his clothes, covered his trembling body with axle grease and then broke a couple of down pillows over his head.  With the high beams of the Chevy illuminating the way, the three vigilantes then forced their prisoner to walk the length of Main Street, New Milford, PA to atone for his crime.  The story made NBC's TODAY show.  I later heard the eye-witness testimony of an astounded local resident:

"I could hardly believe it.  There was all this honkin' and hollering and down the middle of Main Street comes this... this... thing.  Well I don't know, but it looked just like Big Bird! "

Lakie was convicted of aggravated assault, fined about a thousand dollars and given a suspended sentence.  Some days later a hand painted sign appeared in his front yard on Cobb Street.  Atop a black background in neat white stenciling the plaque read:   

  

                                                               May 6, 1986

                                Site of the last American Tar and Feathering
  

             

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drEGR-H92EU

The Whistle Blower

I used to play a lot of tether ball when I was in elementary school.  It was a simple game; a volley ball "tethered" by a thin rope to a tall steel pole.  The object?  Two players would face off against one another and try to clobber the ball in opposite directions.  The first to wrap the rope and ball completely around the post like the colors of barbershop pole, would win the game.  

The victor usually had a really strong arm or was just a tad taller than his opponent and was able to hit the ball high, foiling the defender's attempts to leap up and block its cork screwing flight.   When mismatched in height  the serve was of prime importance.   If the smaller kid had the serve, he could create sort of an angled, elliptical orbit by starting the ball low and sending it on a rising trajectory, sort of like an electron zipping around the nucleus.  If he smacked the ball right, the top of its arching flight would peek just above where the taller kid was positioned.  As it came round the pole again, it would dip low and the little red-faced server would smack it a second time, speeding it along the same out of reach path.  If the tall kid was lame and didn't move and he'd keep missing the ball until he lost.  I loved that game!

My other favorite game was a total guy thing with a modicum of violence and much battle field theatrics:  dodge ball.   Played in gym, with two teams on either side of the center line, and all you tried to do was hit each other with the volley ball.  If you could dodge the shot, you were still in the game, if not, out to the side lines you went.   The team with players left on the floor won.  Simple.  But my seventh grade gym teacher came up with a new version he called Combat Dodge Ball. Mr. Royer was a bald, squat, muscle bound, ex- Marine sergeant who made us line up in squads for roll call.  He would walk the lines of seventh and eight grade boys and with his index finger, stretch and release the elastic waist band of our jock straps.  A stinging zap made sure we had them on.  If not, back to the locker room we were sent.  Chas (his first name, uttered only behind his back) also checked our hair length to insure the bangs where no longer than the width of two fingers above our eyebrows and that no growth had touched the top of our ears.  If a kid was in non-compliance, Chas would let out a very pronounced nose grunt; a short nostril "HMMMFFFH" followed by the word "hairCUT!!"  He would then move on down the squad line, checking and rechecking his students.   

If your hair was too long (this was the 60's and every kid wanted long hair) you had until the next gym session to get to a barber (we had gym every other day) or he would send you to the assistant Principal's office for a talk with Mr. Fritz.  Fritz kept a file of index cards on which he recorded each student's disciplinary indiscretions.  I had a thick stack of cards (hyper-active kids usually did) that Mr. Fritz loved to thumb through as he interrogated me.  Earl Fritz was about 6' tall, had ink black hair cut in a squared flat top and always wore a white shirt and a black suit and tie.  He was intimidating and distributed detention liberally, but it was the principal... whose name I have blocked from my mind... who one time pulled me from a line for laughing and slammed me against the wall during a fall-out shelter drill.  He had sandy blond hair and a sort of pleasant demeanor.  Looks can be deceiving. 

Yeah, so combat dodge ball.  I assume Chas Royer invented it because no one had ever heard of it before playing it in his gym class.  Two big rule changes.  First, no player left the court during the game.  Instead they were forced to lay face down on the spot where they were hit. (the quick and the dead).  Second, we didn't use soft volley balls.  Nope, Chas' version of Combat D-Ball used rock hard basket balls.   Obviously the bigger boys had an advantage.  The basket balls required a big palm to handle and in comparison to a volley ball, were heavy.  Either you had a hard time throwing it, and missed a lot, or the ball worked fine for you and you could truly hurt your opponent.   And then there were Chas's disciples, the sadomasochists.   Big lads who were destine to be stars in high school football.  They loved to throw the ball at the dead and wounded, skinny little kids, pale and malnourished  symbolic of the world's underclasses, lying face down, heads covered with their frail arms, easy targets strewn across the maple floor of the gym.  No good moving target to throw at?  Slam a dead kid on the floor.  If they hit the cowering body just right, they could make the ball bounce back to them along with the moans of their victim.  That made Chas smile and his disciples loved to see him smile.

Its funny, those memories.  I am quite sure Chas Royer and Earl Fritz are dead by now, but they are quite alive in my mind, unaltered by time. 

Mr. Fritz and detention hall.  It was a small desk-chair unit placed in the corridor outside the main administrative office, the place everyone had to pas to come or go from the building.  If you were prone to shame, it was a horrible seat to occupy.  On the other hand, if you were slightly brazen, it could be a rather rewarding social experience.    My longest stint of after school incarceration was in punishment of good healthy capitalist spirit.  Something that should have won me praise from my elder educators.  It was 1968 and bird whistles were all the craze.  The whistles were tiny devices, made of a little piece of leather and a thin reed of clear plastic connected together by a U-shaped grommet.   This 1" long, 1/16th of an inch thick device was inserted behind the front teeth on the tip of the tongue.  Exhaling softly through the mouth caused the plastic reed to vibrate emitting an ear piercing screech with lips barely parted.  You could blow a bird whistle in a crowd, and no one could tell who had made the shrill noise.

So these little devices, which I imagine resulted in a good many deaths by suffocation when inhaled, were sold at the candy store across the street from Highland Junior High school.  There, along with sweettarts, jaw breakers, baseball cards, tootsie roll pops and a million other temptations were bird whistles, selling for a nickel a piece.  Unfortunately, we had two things going against us when it came to visiting Paisley's Candy Store.  Most kids attending the school (which was torn down some years ago and replaced with a mini market) rode the big yellow buses to and from home and lived miles from the town's sole source of bird whistles.  Second, we did not have what was called an "open campus".  That is, we were not allowed to cross the street to Paisley's or anywhere else not on the school grounds.  

Displaying the entrepreneurial genius of a young Bill Gates I sensed the potential popularity of the bird whistles. So, disregarding the distance, I mounted my bicycle one afternoon and rode the ten miles from my house to the store.  There I bought a big 40 cent bag of Cheetos and invested another buck sixty in bird whistles.  The next day I took them to school and began selling them for a dime a piece.  As my supply quickly dwindled, market pressure drove my price first to twenty and then twenty five cents a unit.   The profit was not only incredibly intoxicating, but with it came a new form of popularity; that of the "pusher-man."

Not more than two days passed and I was again aboard my Huffy one speed making another covert run to Paisley's Candy Store.   This time, with company profits, I bought five dollars worth of bird whistles.  Similar success was enjoyed at lunch hour the following afternoon. My pockets jingled with coins as the school came alive with the piercing call of unseen raptors.  But then the heavy hand of government, that hated thing called regulation, was placed upon my shoulder.   From the wall intercom came an announcement:  "Ronald Boyd, please report to the Administration Office.  Ronald Boyd, report to the office."  

There I sat in front of Mr. Fritz, a pile of discolored and misshapen bird whistles in a water glass beside him, my stack of index cards in his hand.  

"But what have I done wrong?"  I pleaded.  "I went after school to the store!  I'm not the one using the whistles during school hours.  How can I be held responsible for what other students do with a perfectly legal device?"

Had my case been heard before a jury, had I an attorney who could have expunged my prior school convictions from evidence, I believe I would have been vindicated.  But with Fritz manning the gavel of justice it was three weeks detention for possession with intent to distribute... BIRD WHISTLES.

I had a lot of problems with authority as a kid.  Real authority garners respect which must be earned.  Few of my disciplinarians in early childhood ever achieved anything close to my respect.  What they did instill was a healthy sense of how flawed most bureaucracies are and how corrupting even a small amount of power is.  

What can I say, once a whistle blower, always a whistle blower.

Madame Coo

Madame Coo

I remember the pigeons in Paris. During my second year there, I lived on Rue de Bois de Bologne in the 16th arrondissement.  I was a block or two from Avenue Foch, which if I recall correctly, radiates like an axle spoke from the traffic circle around the Arch de Triumph.  I don't have a great memory of how the streets of Paris were laid out, because I went everywhere on the Metro. 

Paris is divided into different neighborhoods or arrondissements and the 16th is pretty damn ritzy. Most of the buildings were constructed during the late nineteenth century as residential housing for the wealthy.  They were made of stone with beautiful metal work around the floor to ceiling balcony windows. All featured amazing main entrances; double swinging doors of impressive size made of naturally finished hardwoods designed to accommodate horse and carriage from which one disembarked in the building's central courtyard.  Each set of doors had a smaller pedestrian entrance built into it.  One announced themselves by pushing a buzzer on the outside wall.  The concierge,  who occupied the ground floor apartment beside the entrance, would peek out her window, determine your identity and either buzz you in or join you at the door to determine your business. In France, there is a certain formality even to the most mundane daily activity.

I rented a maid's chambre.  It cost about $100US a month.  It was tiny.  It had a small closet, a narrow cot-like bed, a sink and a bidet.  The communally-shared Turkish-style toilet was located down the hall.  My rental had two great features.  First, the building had an ancient, two person elevator that ran from the lobby to the sixth floor, leaving only one level of stairs to climb to reach the septieme etage, where I lived.  The year before I had not been so lucky. My place on Rue Marbeau had been accessed solely by a spiral staircase that connected the back doors of all the apartment kitchens.  That was the set-up in many buildings and it made for a real workout for the seventh floor tenants.  In my case, each trip up or down consisted of 126 small wooden steps, a sum I tallied unconsciously at least twice a day.  The second big plus of my new room were the windows. They were built like French doors, half the height but just as wide, and they overlooked the huge park on the city's western edge after which my street had been named. When they were open, the room felt like it belonged to the sky.

On my side of the building, the windows were built into the rise of the leaded Mansard-style roof-line.  Below the window sill was the wide curving lip that made a kind of eave over the building's edge.  It is there the pigeons liked to roost, particularly if one tossed a few bread crumbs their way.  Pigeon feeding was strictly forbidden and the city ordinance against it was posted on most buildings somewhere near the concierge's apartment.  The law existed because when pigeons take flight, like all birds, they lighten their load by pooping.  Concentrated feeding areas therefore result in high volume avian waste zones.  A "little pigeon shit"  is one thing, but when it rains down from a height of seventy or eighty feet and drenches your beautifully attired date as you embark for an evening stroll on the Champs Elysees, it's no laughing matter.

Paris, like any large city, shelters its share of lost and forgotten souls.  The little old lady who lived across the hall from me fit that description perfectly.  She had a face shriveled as a California raisin and wore layers of clothing from conflicting but equally desperate eras. She seldom was seen except from behind her cracked door, which she opened ever so slightly to spy on me  as I passed.  I always greeted her in French with a merry and bright,  'Bonjour Madame!" Just as predictably, she would grunt and jam her door shut.

I didn't know her name and since my French was pretty limited I never spoke to the concierge about her. Instead, I simply referred to her as Madame Coo, friend to the pigeons. Regardless of the anti-feeding ordinance  (which may have been left over from the German occupation of the 1940's) she derived great joy from scattering chunks of her left- over baguettes on her window sill for the birds. She would also put out plates of water and other culinary delectables, drawing huge flocks to the west side of our building. 

The sound of the pigeons as they gorged themselves on Madame Coo's handouts was incredibly disturbing, particularly on mornings after a late night with friends at the Mazet Cafe.  The flutterring of wings and the incessant scratching of clawed feet on the metal roof was bad enough, but that cooing!   My God, it had such a human quality, the tone and rhythm of muffled love making heard through walls too thin.  The ewes and coos of hundreds of arial rats pleasuring themselves was unnerving.    

What goes up must come down and what goes in must come out.  The mess below, as well as on the roof ledge, was a blight on the romantic backdrop of my otherwise museum quality neighborhood.  Madame Coo must have had a powerful nephew on the Paris Police Force, for I never heard anyone complain about her feeding the birds.  And the ordinance warning?  The official sign displayed seven stories directly below her window? It was almost illegible due to the Jackson Pollack size drips of grayish green goo smeared across the lettering.  

But it was okay.  The street cleaners, with their blue uniforms and long handled whisk brooms, would arrive in the morning and rinse down the sidewalk.  The sun would peak through the shimmering leaves of the sycamore trees and life in Paris would go on, carrying Madame Coo's pigeon pooh away on a curb-side stream of  non-portable l'eau.  As for me, during those far too frequent not so chipper early morning hours?  Well, I would roll my face to the wall, pull my pillow over my head and picture plump French girls romping about in Manet-like bliss until I drifted back off to sleep.

Lucky

Bottle-neck guitar

A working man's injury has a story to tell.  Accidents often happen when we are rushing, over-tired or pre-occupied. The scars we carry remind us of our history and help define who are. 

I caught the index finger of my left hand in a hydraulic wood splitter.   I had been working alone on the hill when it happened.  It was the autumn of the year my wife and I separated.  I cut a lot of wood that season, selling it to make up for the loss in family income.  My spouse had been the primary wage earner.  I worked as a stone mason, spent a lot of time with our children and took care of our large rural property. 

I got so I was pretty fast when it came to splitting wood.  I operated sort of on automatic pilot, my mind lost completely in the work.  I would stack three or four logs on the support deck,  
then one by one, roll each into place, pull and hold the lever that activated the hydraulic arm and then watch as the wedge pushed slowly and evenly into the butt end.  In seconds, the  sawed log would split down the length with the grain and I would release the lever and the wedge would reverse course.   I'd then toss the smaller pieces into the truck bed, roll another big chunk of wood into place and repeat the process.  The repetitive act of making firewood had a sort of dreamy, slow motion quality that I quite enjoyed.  With sixty or eighty chords to turn out, that was a good thing.

Anyway, I rolled on a heavy log that had a "Y" at the end.  I propped the thicker stub against the back plate but it rested awkwardly there, so I supported it with my left hand as I pulled the hydraulic lever with my right.   As the wedge pressed in against the log, the tension created caused wood to twist and the upper stem of the "Y" pulled down, somehow pinching my gloved hand between its sawed stump and the back plate.  It happened just that fast.   

I'm a musician.   I've played the guitar for more than thirty-five years.  It was my profession as well as my first love.  My band mates and my past writing partners were like family to me.  I was alway jamming with new people, composing tunes, learning songs and performing until the year I divorced.  It was an artistic discipline as well as my social life.   My left hand is what I fret the guitar neck with and the index finger is incredibly important.  All the bar cords require the first finger, its primary in every riff and scale progression I'd ever learned.  

So I'm up there on the mountain on a cloudy Sunday loading the truck with ash wood and suddenly everything changes.  As I release the hydraulic and am able to pull my hand away from the machine, I know what has happened is bad, really bad.  I'm afraid to remove the glove.  I am worried about the bleeding.  I'm a long way from the house.  

I don't remember doing it,  but I must have reached down with my good hand and shut the gas motor off.  Then I climbed in the truck and with one hand on the wheel, spun the truck around and barreled down hill to the house.  The kids were there.  I rushed in and yelled to my thirteen year old son.  "Sam,  get a bag of ice.  I crushed my finger!  Hurry!"  He jumped up from his chair and ran into the kitchen with me. 

"How'd you do it Pop?"  He asked as he searched under the counter for a plastic freezer bag.

"On that God damn splitter."  I mumbled.  I was leaning over the sink intent on inching off the glove.  I was praying my finger wasn't going to come off with it.  

It was a bloody mess, but still all in one piece.  I rinsed it with cold water.  The skin had burst from around the bone like the rhine on an over ripe tomato.   Sam was cracking trays of ice into the bag he'd found and his little sister Sarah was standing across the counter from me her eyes wide, not saying a word.  

"I'm okay baby,"  I said to her  "but you'd better run upstairs and get my wallet.  I'm going to have to go get some stitches "   

I was in shock I suppose.  Everything was just a numb throbbing all the way up my arm.  As I flushed the wound, I noticed a big wood sliver sticking out of the center of my finger print.  I tried a couple times to pull it out but it wouldn't budge.  Then I realized it wasn't a sliver.  It was a chord of white muscle tissue.

I could sense that Sam was afraid to look at the finger.   He handed me the bag of ice and stood behind my elbow.  I folded it gingerly around the dish towel I'd improvised as a bandage.  

"Guys, I think you had better stay here."  I said as I took my wallet from Sarah's outstretched hand.  My little girl looked so serious that after I'd slipped the billfold in my back pocket I gave her nose a tweak with my good hand  "Hey, I'm okay baby.   You and brother call mom and tell her I'm going to the hospital for a couple stitches. " 

I headed out the back door and as I stepped off the deck I saw our old Dodge Caravan coming down the dirt road.  Sarah's mom had arrived early to take her to soccer practice.   She pulled in and I told her what had happened and she insisted on driving me back into town.  So the kids climbed in the back and off we headed to Binghamton General Hospital's emergency room.  The ride took forty minutes and the whole time I'm thinking "what if I can't play guitar anymore?"  Then it dawned on me.  Maybe that's why the early blues men started playing bottle neck guitar.  Most of them had been farm laborers.  Farmers were always getting hurt, always lossing fingers. 

I thought of old Walter Pavelski who owned the farm next door to ours.  When we were kids, he used to play his  finger-up-the-nose trick.  He would say, "Hey, see if you can do this!"  When we would look up he would have all but the base of his index finger buried in his nose.  Walt had a pretty big nose and when he didn't have his dentures in it seemed even bigger.  It really wasn't hard to believed he'd shoved his whole finger up that nostril of his.  But then he'd pull his hand away and viola, nothing but a stub.  He'd lost the other two thirds to the gears of a corn blower.     

The country blues players.  If they lost a finger, they could always tune the guitar strings to a cord, find a glass bottle and slide it up and down the neck.   Every position is another cord, no problem.  With a little practice, soon they could slide between individual notes and play melody lines.  "Okay," I think , "If worse comes to worse I'll play bottle neck guitar for the rest of my life."

It was a long wait at the emergency room.   My ex is a bigwig in the hospital's marketing department, but that didn't get us a doctor any faster.  Fortunately the physician who finally worked on me was a surgeon.  I guess somewhere along the line one of the nurses must have given me a pain killer, because when he slipped my injured finger through the hole in the sterile operating bib, I laughed out loud.  Isolated from the rest of my hand, this swollen, fleshy appendage certainly didn't resemble my finger.   

"Well Doc,"  I teased  "You look like a rabbi preparing for a circumcision.

"Yes,"  he said with a twisted grin "but I intend on reattaching the skin, not removing it."

It was weird to feel the tug of the needle and thread as he pulled the wound back together.  He had injected me with Novocain or something, so I couldn't  really feel anything.  It was more like my hand was in the other room and my arm was a mile long.

"So what do you think," I said to the surgeon, "Will I still  be able to play my broken hearted love songs?"

My ex was sitting in the cloth walled cubicle with our two kids.  I looked over at them and  smiled.

"Oh I think you'll be able to play them just fine.  You'll need some PT of course, but the joint is undamaged."

"PT?"  I asked

"Yes, therapy. "

"Therapy?  Like post traumatic?  What?  Do you think my finger is going to go into shock every time it hears a two-stroke engine fire up? Maybe flip-out or something?" 

"Physical therapy." he said, glancing up with a no nonsense expression.  "A crush can be many times harder for the body to heal than a laceration.  You must work the finger to prevent scare tissue from developing that could restrict movement.  That is, if you want to be able to play that fiddle of yours again."

"Guitar."  I corrected  "And I'll do all the therapy you want as long as the little bugger works."

"It will work." he assured me.  "You were very lucky."

Indeed I was.  I can still play the guitar.  Maybe even a little better than before.  Like they say about trauma, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

In a lot of ways I am stronger now than I was that day up on the hill with the wood splitter.  And every time I look at my left hand I think just how lucky I am.