On a recent visit to Venice, I was moving through a crowd in a tourist area, admiring the sunset over the beautiful ancient city, from a bridge over the Grand Canal. I came upon a cup-and-ball hustler; he was on his knees on a mat, working his little paper boxes rapidly back and forth, and haranguing the crowd with a stream of patter in Italian. We saw him drop the little pea-sized white ball under one of the boxes, then shuffle the boxes rapidly back and forth. It wasn't very hard to follow where the ball would be, and on top of that, at the end he slightly fumbled a box with his finger, so one could briefly catch a glimpse of the ball underneath. A man in the crowd put the toe of his shoe on the wrong box (!), and dropped a €50 bill down on the mat, next to the operator's 50. Of course he lost, and there was a visible reaction through the crowd, as the operator scooped up the bill and rapidly began the game again, haranguing us in his rapid Italian to watch closely and put down our money. I was impressed at how cleverly he once more "accidentally” tipped the box up at the end of his rapid shuffling, to give us just the briefest glance of the ball’s location. Of course I was aware that the “loser” was the man's accomplice. I was a street performer for many years, and I've seen every variation of this game; I knew very well that you are guaranteed to lose if you put down any money, no matter how sure you are which box the ball is under. At this point a man next to me leaned over very friendly, and asked, “Italiano?”
I answered, “No, Americano.”
“Oh, I love Americanos!” He put his arm around me and began showering me with blandishments in English, while the game proceeded and another man had just lost his money on an obviously wrong guess. Another accomplice. My new friend was remarking how foolish the man was; didn't he see it? “We could see the whole thing, eh?”
I was highly amused at this point, and I was also tightly clutching my shoulder bag against my body, aware that pickpockets were a serious problem in this area. With the other hand I was holding my beer bottle, which I had bought from a street vendor, and which had no doubt marked me as the patsy for this round. Noticing my hesitation to hazard my own money in the game, the operator on the mat paused and looked up at me with a conspiratorial smile, and handed me a €50 note, practically touching me with it. I backed off a step, careful not to bump anybody behind me, and my new friend said, “Take it! Just for the show; for the show!” I adamantly refused, and the game proceeded rapidly; again the slight "accidental” tip-up of the box, revealing the ball’s location. Again, I was handed the €50 note. “Come on!” my friend wheedled, ”Take it, take it! Just for the show, eh? For the show!” Clutching my shoulder bag even tighter against my body, I held up the beer bottle between me and the note, and shook my head. I was extremely curious to know how they would have played it, but I knew enough not to touch their money. And the last thing you want to do in that crowd, is reveal where you keep your own valuables; certainly many sharp eyes will be upon you.
At that point the operator suddenly swept up his rig, folding it up in the mat with one quick movement, and the whole group rapidly melted away into the crowd. Before he disappeared, I called out after my new friend, “Good luck!” He paused long enough to look back over his shoulder at me, and with an angry snarl he growled, “Good luck.”
My wife had been standing a little apart, and had seen that I was inside a tight crowd, but she didn't know what was happening. I told her the whole story and she remarked, “Oh boy. They had no idea who they were picking.”
Hustler
I Don't do B and E's - Chasing down a Midnight Burglar
Hold-Up Man
I really don't like to bother anybody, let alone to hold up an entire train. But here we were, immobile for two hours so far. The mood of the passengers had gone from simple curiosity,
to an agitated buzz like a hive of angry bees.
"Why are we not moving?" the people were asking, but no one knew. If someone did know, they weren't saying. I circulated among them, going from dining car to coach, and back to my cabin, nodding to everybody and listening to their excited murmurings, but I kept mum.
No, I hadn't pulled the emergency brake or something stupid like that. I was having a problem, and I was as concerned as everybody else, but for a completely different reason.
I was a passenger on that train, returning to Boston from performing a show in Chicago. Thanks to my gracious sponsor, I was traveling in a first-class cabin, and I had been enjoying the restful luxury of it on the return trip. The ride had been like a dream, gazing out the window at the endless miles of factories in the outskirts of Chicago, rolling along under a fantastic sunset.
The next day, for some reason we had stopped at an unscheduled station in NY state. I had just been thinking of settling down for a nap after lunch, and I was taking off my shoes when I looked out the window onto the platform. There, gray in the drizzling rain, I saw a baggage cart came wheeling by my window, heading towards the front of the train. The baggage cart was piled with luggage, including some very large cases. Those were my cases, containing all my hand-made instruments. This was a very bad sign.
My cabin was in the first car of the train, right behind the locomotive. Back at the rear of the train was the baggage car, in which all my instruments had been carefully stowed. So why is my stuff now being pushed forward on a cart, through the rain, at this unscheduled stop?
All thoughts of napping were now banished as I feverishly put my shoes back on. I ran out of the cabin and dashed down the aisle to the end of the car, unhooked a chain and made an unauthorized exit out the door onto the platform.
I ran up to the retreating cart, now heading forward past the locomotive. "Where are you taking this?" I panted. "This baggage is supposed to be on the train."
"We're losing our baggage car here. These will have to be transferred."
"These cases contain my homemade instruments. It was clearly stated in my contract that these were to arrive in Boston along with me. I made sure of it."
"Don't worry. These will go out with the next train that comes along."
What next train? "No." I said, "That won't be acceptable." I had already engaged a van to meet me when the train arrived in Boston, to bring all my stuff home from the city. This sudden development wasn't just an inconvenience; it might be a disaster. It brought up a vivid memory of a previous trip, in which one of my cases had been misplaced and had been lost for three days. I was never going to risk having that happen again. Plus, it was raining, and I was quite concerned that everything was getting wet; it was all just sitting out in the open. It's a lucky thing that I had looked out the window when I had!
Meanwhile, the conductor had come out into the rain to inform me, "Sir, no passengers are allowed on the platform."
"These cases have to come back aboard with me."
"There is no place to put them."
"My contract says they have a place. That's what we arranged. Why are we losing our baggage car?"
By this time, more men had congregated in our little group, and anxious conversations were being conducted into big wireless devices that looked like walkie-talkies from a World War II movie. I suggested that we could bring my instruments into our cabin car; there was plenty of room. The suggestion was not considered. Soon we were told that another baggage car could be switched to our train from a yard only about a mile away.
"Sir," the conductor insisted, "you'll have to re-board the train while we wait."
"Can you please put my instruments under cover? These cases are not waterproof."
That would never have occurred to them! One man pushed the cart down the platform and under a very scant overhang in a baggage area, while I reluctantly allowed myself to be ushered back onto the train. From there, I uneasily peered back through a window towards my precious cargo, which was only partially protected by the overhang, and still getting rained on. We waited.
After a while, I sought out the conductor, and asked for a progress report. "We're working on it." he told me. Then again, somewhat later, "It looks like we won't be able to get that baggage car."
"We have to find a place on this train," I told him. "My instruments are getting damaged out there. What will we do?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
Meanwhile, I had been trying, in my anxiety, to get back out of the train to go over to the rain-blown cart with my instruments on it, to try to move it to a dryer place. But now I discovered that all the doors to the outside had been locked. I had gone up and down the whole train trying doors; seven or eight long cars with a door at each end. It was in my progress through the train that I had heard the people voicing their curiosity and concern at our delay. None of the officials had told the passengers anything about the reason we weren't moving, and that's all everybody was talking about: trying to figure out what was going on. As I mentioned, I certainly wasn't going to tell them.
I could see men moving along the platform outside, talking into their walkie-talkies. I had made the conductor swear several times that he would not let the train leave the station until we had this sorted out. Everyone was in a fine buzz.
At last, what they decided to do, was to bring my large cases into the passenger car where my cabin was. That's what I had suggested in the first place; but they had said it wouldn't do. Now they decided it would do; although it did mean stowing them in the aisle itself, partially obstructing it. At this point, we had been at this station for over two hours; two hours behind schedule.
The passengers, seeing these wet cases coming in to our cabin car, were naturally curious. So was the steward who served my cabin, and whom I had gotten to know a bit. Now he was surprised to notice that as the cases were coming aboard, I was helping to handle them myself.
"You seem to have some direct knowledge of what this delay has been all about." he ventured.
"Yes, I do," I told him, as I wiped down the outside of a case with a towel. I felt a bit awkward, but I was greatly relieved to get my instruments out of the rain and safely aboard again.
"Yes I do; it was all about me."
Escarpment
Visiting Niagara Falls one time, I stood by the thundering torrent on a foggy misty morning, and watched the dawn slowly lightening over the chasm. Presently, a shirtless jogger appeared, and he stopped alone on the edge of the precipice, and roared out into the abyss, his arms outstretched over the void. Then he looked around at me and smiled, laughed, and trotted off. Later, when the observation deck on the tower opened (American side), I spent a few hours there, watching the clear sunshiny day unfold over the gorge, the swift current churning away far below. Waves of tourists would roll out onto the deck, pose prettily and take pictures, and roll away back to their bus, leaving the tower quiet again. Then the next wave would roll in, they would take pictures and then roll away, chattering happily. I felt like I was in a film noir, where time was standing still for me, while everything around me was moving at unnatural speed.
The Saddest Day
From the perspective of a little boy, sometimes a reprimand can be like a random lightning bolt, seemingly without rhyme or reason.
I remember sitting in my crib, barely three years old, back when we lived in the house where the dinosaurs were. I could reach over to my bedside table on which there were books and stuff, and I took down one of my favorite picture books and a pencil. I had a good idea: I would play "Dugan's".
Dugan's was the baked goods company which would deliver our bread several times a week. The man would park the van in our driveway, and one time, while he was carrying our bread into the house, my brother and I sneaked into the delivery van and "helped", by selecting certain pies and cakes that the man seemed to have overlooked. He was talking to my mother in the kitchen and making the marks in his little book, when my brother and I marched into the room carrying a couple of pies and stuff. My mother was shocked and annoyed when we did this, but the Dugan man was very good natured about it. He gently guided us little boys back into the truck and showed us where to put the things back on the shelves.
I liked the Dugan man, but he, too, had to obey my mother.
Anyway, so one day I was in my crib for my afternoon nap, and I couldn't sleep, so I decided I would play Dugan's. I took down a picture book from the table, and a pencil, and I began "writing" down the orders in the book, just like the Dugan man does. I held the pencil in my fist and inscribed loops round and round across the page. It looked very official, I thought.
But later, when my mother saw how I had defaced the book, there occurred one of those sudden shocking bolts out of the blue. Much later, I understood that I shouldn't have marked up the book, but at the time of discovery, my mother's reaction seemed much warmer than necessary. My tears weren't so much from the pain of the spanking she gave me, as for innocence lost: now I was a bad boy, who did bad things.
Another time, maybe a year later when I was four, I discovered a can of my dad's shaving cream. I had never seen anything so amazing; when you pushed the button, all this lovely foam came gooshing out.
So I pushed the button and drew a nice line of foam across the floor, up the side of the couch and across the back, down the other side of the couch and across the pillows. This was the most magical thing I had ever seen, and when the foam ran out I was disappointed. The magic was all gone.
Well, needless to say, when my mother found this latest example of my handiwork, you can imagine what happened. When I was doing it, it had all just seemed so amazing and mysterious. But when she saw what I had done, I experienced another one of those blinding thunderbolts out of the blue. I never saw it coming.
Now I am grown up, and I have children of my own. I have all my childhood memories as a valuable guidepost to help me understand my own children, to help me not repeat the mistakes my parents might have made.
But sometimes it seems as if experience is useless, after all.
When my firstborn Mathew was little, we would spend all our days together. Being a father, taking care of my little boy, taught me for the first time what true love really is. All I wanted was for him to be happy.
But of course, kids do things that can be annoying, sometimes disturbing, and a parent can lose his temper. In spite of how much I love my boy, I had been getting angry with him a lot lately; I was stressed and tired.
He did something on this one day, which doesn't seem like anything much now. We had been having a sweet day together, enjoying our time, and laughing so much. But then he jumped into a bed with his play clothes on, which were covered with grit from playing outside in the dirt. He jumped into the clean bed, and smiled up at me mischievously, not thinking any great harm. He was only three years old, and he was just teasing me. But I lost my temper. The bedclothes were freshly laundered, his play clothes were heavily soiled, and it triggered me. I shouted at him bitterly. That's all I did, but it was far too much. As I say, I had been losing my temper too much lately, and now, again, out of a clear sky of blue comes a lashing storm of anger. Then I froze with shock when I saw the look on my son's face, and then he ran out of the room.
With a feeling of dread, I followed him into the kitchen, and I found him crouched under the chair by the kitchen table, just huddled there in pain and confusion. My little three-year-old baby boy.
He couldn't understand where the sudden storm had come from, the bitterness. I would have given anything to have taken it back, but how can you?
I sat down next to him on the floor, hugging my knees. I realized that there was so much anger and frustration in my own life, from things in my past that had nothing to do with him; things which he could never, and should never, have to account for. Neither of us spoke or moved for a long time; we just sat there in wretched silence, on that saddest day.
The Inspector
I don't remember how this myth originated, but when my boys were very young and they were acting up, I would caution them sternly that I hoped they would not make me call the Inspector! I believe I said it with humorous intent the first time, and to my surprise, the ominous threat terrified them into obedience. After that, I used the concept very sparingly, and only as a last resort; it always worked like a charm, to make them calm down and be more attentive to me.
So one time, when the boys were about 3 and 6 respectively, we were walking through the shopping mall on some errand, and we passed an office window in a corner of the mall. Through the window under a light, we could see a man sitting at a desk, in an olive green uniform, with an officer's hat bearing some sort of insignia. He was concentrating on something at the desk, and he looked serious. The two wide-eyed boys looked at each other with a significant glance, and looked at me. I nodded, without saying a word, and we kept walking. Our cheerful mood soon returned, and I silently congratulated myself on my ability to keep a straight face.
Be Careful; That's Electric!
My cousin David has an unusual profession; he is a lawyer/handyman. His clientele is mostly the local people in his Brooklyn neighborhood, where he makes his rounds revising wills, consulting on petty disputes, and fixing broken lamps.
I was privileged one evening to accompany Dave on one of his professional visits, as an assistant handyman. We brought David's legal briefcase, and a big box of tools. When we arrived at the first house, Dave sat at the table and opened his briefcase, while I was provided with a list of the various mechanical problems that needed attention, mostly minor repairs to furniture. But the first item was different, it was high priority.
The lady of the house showed me to the spot; standing at a safe distance, she pointed to a faulty electrical outlet. No one knew what was wrong with it, just that there was something wrong, but she couldn't tell me anything specific. It was as if a myth had grown up in the house that surrounded that spot with danger; no one ever dared to go near it.
I walked over to look at the outlet, the lady waiting a few paces behind me, obviously quite nervous. The first thing I found was that the cover plate on the outlet was loose, and was hanging askew. I reached for an insulated screwdriver to remove the plate. As I was about to apply the screwdriver to the little screw, a small sound from the lady drew my attention. "Be careful," she choked out. "That's electric!" Her face was literally white with fear.
I've heard of that happening, but I had never actually seen it before. I put down the screwdriver, and in my best professional manner I assured the woman that I had experience with this sort of thing. My calm manner didn't impress her much; I think she interpreted it as a sort of insane recklessness.
But having done my best, I just went back to work, and let the lady take care of herself. I removed the plate, and visually inspected the wiring inside. I shined my flashlight in; all seemed intact. I wiggled the socket, I probed the connections with a well insulated tool; everything was solidly screwed down; there were no burn marks, no short circuits. I brought over a lamp and plugged it in, to see if the socket was live; the lamp lit. Apparently there was nothing wrong; the only thing was that the cover plate had been loose, and was hanging crooked. So, after a final look around inside, I unplugged the lamp and put back the cover plate. I made sure the screw on the cover was firmly snugged down, because I am nothing, if not professional! "It's all set," I told the woman. "It shouldn't be a problem now."
The woman's relief and gratitude were palpable. Her whole attitude toward me changed. She didn't know how I knew what I knew, but now she believed in me: The Man is Here, and he Knows What He's Doing.
In a much calmer frame of mind now, the woman showed me to the rest of the things on the list. It was all pretty routine, like the electric socket, just without that element of danger. Item: the bureau in the bedroom had a loose piece of molding. I smeared a little glue into the seam with a pallet knife, and tapped the nails tight again. Item: a corner of wallpaper in the kitchen was peeling off; I glued it down. Everything was like that. I had never seen a whole houseful of people so deep in the grip of cluelessness about mechanical things. Who can't tap in a nail? But it was wonderful how grateful they were.
Meanwhile, Dave had finished up with his paperwork (I could only imagine what sort of fantastic legal problems these people were having), and together we finished off the last few items, handing each other tools and working together in an easy camaraderie. In no time at all, it was job done. Sometimes, it's not what you do specifically, it's just the feeling of being useful to someone, that really matters.
Shy Girl
"What did you want to say to Mr. Solomon?" her mother asked encouragingly, at which the girl gave me a fearful glance and scrunched even tighter into the dress. The mother looked at me apologetically.
I addressed the girl, and said, "Did you want to ask me a question? What can I do for you?" She only clung tighter to her mother, and wouldn't look at me. Then I said, "If you want to ask me will I marry you, I'm very sorry to say that I can't, because I'm already married."
The little girl immediately unwound from her mother, and rounded on me fiercely. "I WASN'T going to ask you to marry me!" Then she handed me a piece of paper. "Will you sign this please?"
I would be very happy to, I told her.
Voyager
We lived near the Toms River, where it widens out into Barnegat Bay. My friend Danny had a 16' wooden sloop, and his "ship's boat" was a tiny little coracle made from a blue plastic sandbox, shaped like a boat. He made a plywood floor to strengthen it, so the little boat could be sat in and paddled, using a ping-pong paddle in each hand. Danny would use the little blue boat to paddle out from the bulkhead, to get to his sailboat moored to a buoy out in the cove.
The lawn behind Danny's house sloped down to the wooden bulkhead, smelling deliciously of creosote, and beyond that you would be in two or five feet of water, depending on the tide. The river is more than half a mile wide there, as it opens out into the bay. You would throw the little blue boat in, and step off the bulkhead down into it, balancing to get seated without tipping into the drink. You had to learn the trick, like riding a bicycle, but once learned it was easy. I used to love paddling around the cove in that little toy boat. Your wrists would get tired quickly, using the ping-pong paddles, so I tried paddling with a short canoe paddle, but that was not so easy because the little tub liked to spin around like a teetotum. So I built a wooden rudder that hooked over the transom, and the rudder made a big difference keeping her going straight.
Sometimes I would paddle out into the middle of the wide river, out into the chops of the channel. Heaving up and down into the swell of the incoming tide, the shore small and away, with the sun setting across the water behind you, you get closer to that feeling of flying than you ordinarily do.
So one summer evening I was bobbing in the tiny boat, far out in the middle of the dark expanse of water (my wrists were tired, yes), and I was having that feeling; I felt that if I just kept up my steady rhythm of paddling, with the stars wheeling overhead and the hypnotic pitching of the deck beneath me, I might just get as far away as the moon.
But now I was conscious of the deep throb of a motor; it was coming closer, with lights. Then I was blinded in the face by a searchlight, and a megaphoned voice out of the blackness, squawking: "Ahoy, the boat!"
It was a Coast Guard cutter patrolling the river; of course they were concerned to discover me out there in an active boating lane on a dark night, with no running lights; no lights at all. I hailed back, with a brief account of myself.
"You shouldn't be out here on the river in a little dinghy like that, without a light." There was kindness in the squawking voice, as well as unassailable authority. "I'll have to ask you to put back in to shore immediately." squawked the voice.
They were right of course. I couldn't show a light, so I acknowledged and put about, though perhaps a bit grudgingly; the spell was broken and I was back in the world. I applied myself to the paddles, my wrists complaining, as I shaped my course back to Danny's dock.
There was a long reach of water ahead of me, maybe three quarters of a mile; all of it wet, and all of it weary. But I smiled with exultation: they had called my boat a "dinghy"; it was real!
Klauser's Ampoules
Back in the 70's, I worked full-time playing in a bar band out of Pocatello, Idaho. We four band-mates lived in a rented house together, under the gravelly slopes of Scout Mountain rising behind the town. This was my home base for the several years that I had the interesting job of playing country-rock guitar, four or five nights a week in shabby clubs for hard drinkers, dancers, and fist fighters.
There was a raggedy man who would occasionally come over to the house, and hang out while the band practiced. His name was Klauser, and we would give him a beer or two, or whatever was going. One time, it was a bowl of vegetable soup from the large pot that I had just made. Klauser took his bowl with a sort of reverence, and spooned it up with a look of rapture on his face. He said he hadn't eaten something like that, since his Mama used to make it for him.
On another day, Klauser showed up with a small stout case, which contained several hundred little glass ampoules of morphine. He had lifted it somehow from a hospital, and he brought it over to share. Each ampoule was fitted with a needle, and was intended as a disposable cartridge to fit into a hypodermic fixture. He didn't have the fixture, but he would insert a small screw into the end of the cartridge, and use that to push down the plunger inside. Klauser asked us if we would like some. I don't remember why the others declined, but no one took up the offer, which seems strange, now. Drugs weren’t unheard of in our old house in that mountain town; neighborhood folks were always dropping over with assorted offerings, hanging out for the music, drinking beer and what not, wandering off again. I myself declined Klauser's offer, because of my dislike of needles; especially when administered by an unsteady, somewhat poxed and raggedy man, however kindly intentioned.
So Klauser indulged in the morphine by himself, and relaxed in a chair while we rehearsed. Presently, he shot up another, and he got all dreamy; his lumpy red face a little redder, his thin straggly hair a little stragglier; the case of little glass capsules tucked comfortably next to him in the big chair. For old Klauser, life was very good, and would remain so for a certain stretch of days ahead.
And the band played on.
Maker
Jeeves's Prank
Grubby
Somewhere out in the Midwest, we woke up one morning to see a number of small grubs crawling on the walls of the van, and hanging from silk threads above our faces. We jumped out of our bedroll, and began sweeping the wriggling critters off the walls into a pan, and throwing them outside. We spent a fair part of the morning doing a thorough cleaning of the van, the bedding, and all our things.
The next morning, the grubs were back, and they were far more numerous; there were hundreds of them. They were hanging in the air all around us, all over the walls and all over us. Being the fastidious hippies that we were, we were naturally horrified. Once again we jumped out of bed in great agitation, and began a very thorough cleaning of our living quarters. We shook out the bedding, spread it outside, and took everything out of the van that was movable, going through it all. Then we gave the inside of the van a very good scrubbing from top to bottom. We didn't find anything, which made me uneasy.
The next morning, the grubs were back, worse than ever. They were slowly undulating in their multitudes across every surface, and hanging on strands from the ceiling. We didn't quite freak out, but we liked to almost did. That morning we went to a hardware store, and bought sulfur candles to fumigate the van. Once again, we took everything out, checking and cleaning each thing; then with all the windows closed we lit the sulfur candles. We had to stay out of the van for several hours during the fumigation process, and afterwards there was a hideous acrid smell clinging to everything inside. We aired out the van, put everything back together, and that night we went to sleep in some uneasiness, what with the lingering sulfurous odors, and wondering what we might wake up to in the morning.
Next morning, we did find one or two crawling grubs, but only a few, and they seemed dispirited. However, on the morning following that, they had reappeared; not in their previous numbers, but it was enough. This time we did freak out.
We began to systematically strip the van of everything that could be removed or unscrewed, including the wooden wall panels. In the back of the van, behind one of these panels, we found a small bundle of cattails that one of us had collected from a marsh, a few months previously. The bundle of cattails had slipped down behind a wall panel in the back corner of the van, and there had been forgotten. The whole mass was festooned with webs, and feebly-wriggling grubs. Most of them were dead, having been much reduced during the fumigation ordeal, but an obstinate number of them clung to life. So there it was.
We took that bundle of infested cattails outside, and pitched it far out into the woods, giving it such a heave that I think it probably sailed halfway to China.
Old Unfaithful
Surprise! is a pale way to describe my reaction; I instantly dashed down to the basement to shut off the house water, coming back up to a dripping steaming mess. Then I poured myself a cuppa hot coffee (thoughtfully provided by Lauren before she left), and I contemplated my next move. I won't get to practice music this morning apparently, but on the bright side, it had actually been quite a lovely sight; like suddenly being transported on vacation to Yellowstone Park.
Aren’t I glad that I was home when it happened? Yeah, it would have been a shame to miss it.
Runyu's Concert
The next day, I got a follow-up email from her, that confirmed my first impression; something about it didn't quite make sense. So I wrote a polite letter of refusal. But I didn't send it. The idea did seem interesting; it was just that she didn't seem to have a clear idea of what she was doing, organizing and producing a concert.
But I thought about it for a day, and I changed my mind; I decided to do it. For one thing, I wanted to hear her "Chinese cultural music," and for another, there was something indefinable about the whole thing that intrigued me. But there were a few details that needed tweaking.
Runyu, the girl, must have thought that the Callioforte was a traditional American instrument, because after all, it was right there on the street in America. She knew she had never seen one in China. But I didn't think her audience would be of the same opinion, because, in fact, the instrument is a homemade little pipe organ, a gizmo I made from plumbing parts and coat-hanger wire. So I made the executive decision to bring my guitar for the first set, which was fine with Runyu. (She's never even heard me play that! I was thinking.)
The mystery finally got explained just before the concert, and when I learned the whole story, I was very happy that I had decided to do it. An older woman, a teacher, showed up and performed the introduction for the concert, which is when I found out that the girl, Runyu, is just turning 15; she is a high school student from China on a trip to the US, with her music camp group. She had been assigned a daunting project: to present a concert for the people of Cambridge, and she had had only minimal help organizing it. Because of her youth, and her imperfect English, she hadn't made any of this clear to me, and her confident demeanor had made her seem much older.
So I was still in the dark about these details, on the day of the concert when I arrived early to the small art gallery in Cambridge. Runyu was there, all stressed; there were still a lot of things to do. I helped her and her assistant, to set up the room. Then she changed into an elegant red gown and high heels, put on a little makeup, and there she was, transformed into a beautiful elegant lady. The small house filled up; maybe 50-60 people, some of them her friends and group members, and the rest of them, people from the community that had seen the flyers.
Runyu was very good, she played piano and sang Chinese songs, and there was also a violin player and another pianist, and me. I did two short sets: some old-timey American folk songs with my guitar (she had taken it on faith that I could do that), and some rags and Russian folk music on the Callioforte. Runyu had performed some Italian opera in her set, so I decided I could take some liberties with mine.
The concert ended up being a great success, and I felt honored and pleased to be a part of it; to help a visiting student get through a challenging project, and to leave her with a positive experience for her big trip. Runyu was practically crying as she was thanking the audience after the performance. Afterwards, I asked her how she knew I would be able to do what she wanted, and she said, "When I first heard you, I knew."
After the concert, one of the community people who had showed up, asked me if I was getting paid for this. I said no. She said, well then, here's my contribution, and she slipped me a $20. Since I wasn't expecting anything, the gesture made me very happy.
So, despite my misgivings in the beginning, it was a great experience.
Click below to leave a comment. ⬇ Thanks.
Chaos Theory
A person was asking me how the key of the bellowphone is determined. He noted that it seems to be happiest in D, which is correct, except it is actually a few cents shy of D: flat, you know, not the other thing. The bellowphone can also play in A to some extent, and by dint of extreme coercion and contortions, it can be made to play in F# and others. This is entirely due to the chaotic arrangement of the pipes, which were added as required for specific pieces, not from any coherent plan. As the repertoire grew, I would either add notes, or just try to work with what was there.
The kazoo has nothing to do with determining the key of the music, as my friend erroneously suggested; the kazoo is limited only by my singing ability. With my voice alone, I can theoretically sing in Harry Partch's 43 tone scale. In fact, I usually do sing that way, although not on purpose, I can assure you.
So the theory of the Bellowphone, is in fact, lack of a theory.
Click below to leave a comment. ⬇
Not Everyone gets a Trophy
I said, "That's a good guess; you were very close: it's actually… lower."
Some of the teachers thought this was funny, but a very annoyed 3rd grader, goaded beyond civility, piped up, "She wasn't close! She was wrong!"
I admired his sense of justice, but he should have raised his hand.
Arc
I was in my jeans and flannel shirt, looking around, confused; "Me?"
A group of people on the platform looked over, and began gesturing and whispering: "Look; he's Someone. I think he's Someone."
So, there was my 15 minutes of fame. Literally, as it turns out, because my 15 minute set was featured on national TV. For a short period of time after that, I would get recognized in unexpected places, but it didn't last, of course. A few weeks later, I was back to performing at backyard barbecues and church suppers for 15 people.
But getting back to that limo ride; there might have been champagne in the limo's bar, but I have no idea. Since there were no groupies, I didn't feel like rolling around by myself in all that empty space, so I asked the driver if I could just ride up front with him.
"Whatever you want, sir." he intoned. (I wanted groupies, but, whatever.) So we rode along to the hotel, with the cavernous pleasure-dome of extravagance, following hollow and vacant behind us.
There's glory for you.
Another Skeptic
"So what? You just cut the knot off."
The boy's mother, who herself had been baffled by the illusion, tried to explain to her boy what made the trick astonishing, but he was too young and literal-minded to be properly impressed. So I had to sac my rope just to prove a point. I let the kid take the scissors and cut the rope in half. I helped him tie it back together, and then I let him "just cut the knot off." Which he did, whereupon, of course the rope fell into two pieces.
The boy's response was, "Well, you were just more agile than me." That was a pretty good word, since the boy was only 6 or 7.
Pound Sand
The problem was, I didn't get paid. Of course, once they've used the video, it's easy enough for a big company in London to forget about a small operator like me; the money I was owed wasn't enough to warrant my bothering with legal proceedings, so there wasn't really anything I could do but write it off. With, of course, a few I-told-you-so's from my friends.
Even so, I would periodically email my contact person a polite reminder that they still hadn't paid me, and I would always get back a graciously-worded apology, with assurances that it was an unintentional oversight, and that the matter would be speedily resolved. I would usually wait for a month to go by, and then I would send them the next polite reminder. Then I would get another gracious apology, accompanied by a brief explanation of what had gone awry in the accounting department, which had now been resolved, and I would be hearing back from them shortly.
After many months of this, I waited a little longer than usual to send my polite reminder, and to my dismay, the email got bounced back: addressee unknown. Such a shame to lose my contact, after the lovely correspondence we had been having. Well, it was time to move on, I had to admit. But as a last-ditch attempt, I found an address for general inquiries, on the company's website. I wrote To Whom it May Concern, and I briefly explained the problem, and outlined the general details. Against all expectations, I actually got a reply from a staff person: the usual graciously-worded apology, with explanations and assurances. So we were back in business. I was content.
I waited another month, and by now I was persuaded that they had never intended to pay me in the first place, so I thought I would at least have a little fun with it. Writing to my new contact, I fired my best shot:
-------------------
Re: Payment for my video -
Hi Laura.
The Mill of Destiny grinds slowly, but exceedingly fine. Your account team has done a great job so far, unraveling the labyrinthine coils of our stalled business arrangement, concerning the use of my video Hungarian Dance #5 which aired on your TV show [blank blank] in November 2014.
But in fact, I still have not received as much as a ha'penny, nor a copper farthing nor even a clipped brass groat, of the payment specified in our contract. Please inform the powers that be, that I am confidently expecting a satisfactory conclusion to our contractual agreement of ₤200 for their use of said video. The principle of the matter would suggest that this obligation should be honored without further delay.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Best regards,
Len Solomon
---------------------
I didn't hear anything back from them for many days, so I figured that my sarcasm had made them mad. No more polite apologies would be forthcoming. But then, to my astonishment, I received this:
-----------------
Hi Len
I do apologize again that this still has not been paid out to you. We are currently checking with accounts as to if a cheque was sent out but it did not reach you. Can you just confirm your correct address, and also give me the following account information and we can get the payment to you the quickest way:
Account Name
Bank Name
Bank Account Number
Bank Address
Swift Code
Sort Code (if applicable)
Iban number/Routing Number (if applicable)
Kind regards
Laura
-----------------
Now, for the first time, I was angry. This is the exact sort of thing that the Nigerian Prince always asks you for, when he wants to give you 7.5 million dollars because you are the only one he can trust out of all the others. I was honestly puzzled. The film production company had seemed like a real company. And why had they waited all this time to try to spring a scam on me? I wanted to just stop wasting time trying to figure it out, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. Several angry responses occurred to me, then some humorous ones; finally I just decided to give them the benefit of the doubt one more time. Figuring that even if I was being made a fool of, one can never go wrong being a gentleman. So once again, I thanked them kindly for pursuing this matter, told them they had my address correct, but I regretted that I could not provide them with the additional information they requested; a cheque in the mail would be perfectly acceptable.
Wonder of wonders, 2 weeks later I received a check in the mail! Mailbox money! I treasure it, as if it were a fortune presented to me by the Royal Exchequer of the Crown.
Cabin Fever
When I would visit my Mom down in New Jersey in her latter days, or when my brother and sister would, we would need to find places to stay in Toms River. It's a weird feeling having to stay in a hotel, in a town where you grew up. One place that I had always noticed, was The Cedars motel on Rt. 9; the place had always looked picturesque to me; charming little cabins nestled under the trees, each with its softly glimmering porch light. So I decided I would give it a try on this trip. When I pulled up in the evening, there was a No Vacancy sign lit up in red neon, which was discouraging; so I stayed at the usual bland Holiday Inn that night. I phoned the place the next morning, and I got the welcome news that a cabin would be available that night. I made a reservation without delay.
The Cedars Motel, Toms River, around 2000-
The door is stuck. I'm jiggling the key, twisting the door knob, and finally I lean in with my shoulder and give a powerful shove; the door bursts open. It is a bare, shabby room before me; not even an end table by the bed or a chair to put my clothes on. The paint is fresh, though, which is why the door was sticking, and why a powerful smell of turpentine is mixed with the strong odor of disinfectant and decay that greets me.
I am surprised at how sparse the room is. The only furnishing besides the sagging bed is a rickety dresser with a broken TV on it. The TV is not plugged in, and there are a few of its parts lying on top. No phone, either, which is inconvenient, as I don't have a cell phone. I get some tissues from the bathroom, and ball them up to wipe off the top of the dresser, so I can put down my suitcase. The dresser is strangely grimy, and the balled up tissue comes up black. I have to throw the used tissues in the corner, because there is no trash basket, not even in the bathroom. (Actually, it's toilet paper I'm using; there are no tissues.)
I remove two drawers from the dresser, and turn them on end to place by the bed. This makes a cozy little end table, so I have a place to put down my watch and clothes, and a book. That's convenient.
Curiously enough, the bathroom amenities, besides soap, include a new comb, toothbrush, and razor. I would rather they had given me a bath mat, though; the linoleum tiles are warped, with their corners sticking up, which is uncomfortable underfoot. It doesn't matter, because I have to leave my shoes on anyway; the carpet around the bed is wet. It seems that they had been trying to clean the carpet, but there are still grimy tracks through it, and a powerful musty smell like an old dog. The carpet is too wet for walking on in socks.
You might say, why didn't I just leave at that point? Well it was late when I finally checked in that evening, and I didn't feel like going to find another place to stay; I was just going to make the best of it for one night.
Earlier in the day, when I had called about the room, the man had quoted me $55. for the night, but later when I arrived, he informed me that he had forgotten that the summer rates were in effect; it was going to be $75. He was very apologetic; he would let me have it for $65.
Then I took out my wallet to pay, and the man informed me that he can't take credit cards: the machine is busted. He showed it to me. Then he also told me he can't take a personal check either; it's cash only. I finally realized that the usual clientele of this establishment consists of indigents, who are provided with a State Welfare check. Those are good. The man told me that when the credit card machine broke years ago, they just left it like that, since they pretty much never used it anymore.
I did have cash on me, but just a few dollars more than 65. The man generously agreed to waive the sales tax, and make the price 65 even, so I wouldn't be flat busted. What a great deal. He seemed like a nice guy, but I could tell he was wondering, what in the world was I was doing in this place?
So finally I got checked in, and now I find myself lying on the hard bed, in the glare from the naked ceiling bulb. Over my head, the broken smoke alarm is dangling by one wire, and through the thin wall I can hear a man shouting at someone in the next cabin. He sounds drunk and furious. That's surprising, in a nice place like this.
It is late. Eventually, I will have to put on my shoes, so I can get out of bed without getting my feet wet. I'll walk across the sodden carpet to switch off the light. Then I will lie back on the sagging bed, in the glare of red neon gleaming through the thin curtains, and the rumbling of trucks down Rt. 9 will eventually rock me to sleep.
------------------------------
I emailed this story to my brother, right after I wrote it. He had also seen this motel many times, and he had thought it looked interesting too. He emailed back and said, "Thanks a lot for letting my wife see this story. She saw it up on the screen, and she read it. Now she'll NEVER agree to let us stay there!"
Skeptic
It was nestled in a jar among some old pens, pliers, and odd junk in my mother's collections. I held it up: a real test tube; such a treasure! The sight of it conjured up exciting thoughts of scientific experiments, danger, and unknown worlds. I considered the object for a few moments, and then I put it carefully back where I'd found it.
Later that day, my friend Corky wandered over from next door, and we were playing in the yard when I remembered my discovery. I told Corky, "Wait here. I want to show you something," and I went into the house.
I retrieved the test tube from the back room, took it into the kitchen, and put some water into it. Then I pushed a chair over to the cabinet and got down the little bottles of food coloring, and I put a drop of yellow into the tube, then a drop of red. The test tube now contained a fine and rare-looking orange liquid, which I thought looked rather impressive. This was going to show my friend that I was not to be trifled with, and I carried it outside to the yard where he was waiting.
"Corky, this is a chemical!" I told him ominously, holding the test tube up for him to see.
"No it isn't. You just put some coloring into some water," he said, narrowing his eyes at me in his annoyingly skeptical way. I was astonished at his ignorance.
"It's a chemical," I repeated, a bit weakly.
"No, it isn't."
I withdrew back into the house, stung at Corky's lack of appreciation, and dismayed that he didn't believe me. I was lying, but so? Couldn't he see that this was a real test tube? I poured the useless orange water down the drain.
Click below to leave a comment. ⬇
Occult Knowledge
The native knew what the rifle could do; he had seen it work, and now he was trying everything in his power to make it do that thing. He carefully twisted wads of grass, cuts of bark, and stuffed them into the chamber. He tried using stones, earth, a burning ember; he used incantations and interpretive dance; he prayed; he anointed the rifle with sacred dust, purified oil.
The native spared no effort or ingenuity, but it was all in vain; nothing would induce the rifle to utter its terrifying thunder and lightening: the deadly magic which could slay from a distance and cause his enemies to flee in terror, or provide meat for his lodge.
The native's experience of the world was not sufficient to unlock this particular secret, even if he spent his life studying the workings of that rifle. The simple mystery of gunpowder would forever be concealed from him, in a parallel reality he would never know.
This scenario is from a story I read many years ago. I sometimes feel that it is a metaphor for my own life, as I stumble forward in darkness.
 | |
|
I Said, Beer!
Apparently, he liked it. A few days later, our family was eating in a restaurant, and I ordered a beer with my dinner. When it came, my little son asked if he could have some, and I told him I didn't think it was a good idea this time. To my astonishment, he began reaching over the table, and calling loudly, "Beeyoo, beeyoo!' in his piping little voice. Many heads in the restaurant turned to see what was happening.
My son is a good, biddable lad, and this outburst took us all by surprise; it was quickly quelled by a stern word or two by myself and my wife, but not before I was mortified to notice the expressions on the faces that had turned towards our table: "Just look at that little boy having a tantrum; calling for beer!" they were frowning sternly; "Now, that must be a nice house."
Requiem for a Rat
I had the mournful task today of cleaning up and putting away all of Peter's things: the kibbles, the hay, the wood shavings, the cage itself; all the reminders of the life of the family guinea pig. For seven years the "little rat" had been with us, with his charming little ways.
The impatient rodent had a way of yanking rhythmically at his hay hopper (it sounded like someone was knocking at the door), if someone had the discourtesy to begin making coffee in the morning before attending to him: a little orchard grass, a piece of carrot, a few scratches behind the ears. He would purr like a cat when you would stroke his soft furry head.
At dinnertime, as soon as someone would open the vegetable drawer in the fridge to get something, Peter would again begin chewing and yanking on the metal bars of his cage. Watching him with amusement, I would comment, "He has very well developed nose parts" (from all that energetic yanking). I would wait just an extra minute before giving him the carrot, or broccoli trimmings.
"He loves those metal bars," I would tease. "The metal must be really good for him."
Or, "He's trying to tell us something! What is it, boy?" He would chew and yank with renewed frustration. Then I would hand him his treat, and he would make a soft murmur of satisfaction as he took it.
But, you know, if I ever offered him my finger to bite, he would only nibble it very gently. He was a generous and sweet-natured creature, in spite of all my teasing. There's a lesson.
He lived a long time for a guinea pig: seven years. For the last few years he was with us, every time I would buy a big bag of wood shavings, or kibbles, or hay, I would think to myself, I wonder if most of this is going to end up not getting used? Well, that's just another thing that I found strangely moving at the end: there wasn't much left over in any of the bags; we had used up pretty much all the current supplies.
When we first got Peter, we couldn't agree on what to call him: Jaw Pickle, Poop Kitty, Stoopid;
we got him for our young boys, and to begin with, I resented having one more thing in the house that I would have to take care of. Well, if I did, it's a burden that I will miss. I keep thinking I hear knocking, and I reflexively look over to where his cage had been. I thought it was going to be a luxury to not have to do anything; but then why do I feel a pang when I look over and see no cage, no little animal that needs my attention?
Well, Peter is with his ancestors now, in that great meadow-grass place in the sky, where no hawks are. He crossed the bridge peacefully in the night, after a brief illness in which he stopped eating. For two days, he just muttered to himself once in awhile, and whimpered occasionally, and refused even his beloved carrots. But even right before the end, I could just hear him purring softly when I stroked his little head.
"Never give your heart," sadly advised Kipling, "to a dog to tear."
Who knew a little rat could do it?
Hugging the Bowl
Let's say your toilet was leaking underneath; it was dripping through the floor and making a puddle in your basement, and you wanted to fix it. You would have to disconnect things, take off the tank, unbolt the contraption from the floor, and at some point you would have to lift it up to move it off the spot. Have you ever tried to lift a toilet bowl? It's damned awkward, actually: you have to sort of hug it. Now you're getting the idea.
When you're putting it back again, having settled it carefully on its wax seal after getting the wobbling bolts to go through their little holes without falling over underneath, you also don't want to over-tighten the nuts because the porcelain is very brittle. I knew this, but even so, as I was carefully snugging down the nuts the first time, I felt a sickening feeling as I turned the wrench; a sudden slackness. It wasn't the porcelain cracking: it was the flange on the ancient cast iron pipe underneath, crumbling away. The bolt was free as a bird.
I was strangely calm. Well, I did swear a blue streak, with a rising note of hysteria in my voice that was a little frightening, but if there's no one there to hear you, did you actually make a sound? But then I thought, I can take a piece of steel bar stock, and with a hacksaw and files, I can make a flange to fit under what's left of the broken cast iron rim of the pipe. So that's what I did, and it worked; it took me about 2 hours. But I must mention: in the meanwhile, since you've lifted and moved the toilet away from its place, there is the dreadful menacing 4 inch hole in the floor; the pipe that goes straight down into the netherworld of the septic tank far below. This hole was just inviting me, for instance, to fumble and drop a tool down it; never to be seen again, or something worse. Your instinct bids you to cover that hole, so I did; I cut a plastic cover out of an old piece of tupperware, and I used it to seal the hideous hole while I was working on the broken flange.
Now, before I relate how I came to install the toilet bowl not one more time, but two more times, I will mention another good reason for keeping the pipe covered while you are working: septage flies. These interesting creatures actually live in the fetid subterranean darkness of the septic tank, flying around above the liquid in the underground chamber, and communicating with the outside world via the vent pipe on the house roof. And you thought you had a bad job. Perhaps you can understand that I didn't want any of these little denizens of the dark to visit me in my world. And in fact, as I worked, I would occasionally see one of these small flies flying around under the cover for a few moments, perhaps contemplating the wondrous light that he could see through the translucent plastic.
When I was done making the new flange, I reformed the squashed wax seal around the hole in the bottom of the toilet, buttering it around with a putty knife, like frosting a cake. When I was satisfied that the wax ring was well formed and would seat properly, I carefully lowered the toilet bowl down over the hole for the second time, getting the bolts to go through their holes without knocking them over. It took a couple of tries, but I got it done, and I felt the satisfying "give" of the wax spreading out and sealing the joint. A perfect job, and I would be very careful tightening down the nuts this time. But something was nagging at the back of my mind. Think carefully, I told myself; is everything shipshape? It ought to be, but think...
NO! That's right; maybe you guessed it: the tupperware cover was still in its place down under there! Not as perfect a job as I could have wished. One more time, I get to bend my back to this fascinating job, and hug the toilet bowl. Off it comes again, and although it's too late now to make a long story short, I finally made an end of it, and as of this writing, there's no more puddle under the pipes in the basement.
Click below to leave a comment. ⬇
Grammar Test
- Correct the error(s) in the following sentence -
"Jack seen Fred fix them cars hisself."
I would always think, who could ever get these questions wrong? Everyone knows where Fred ain't smart enough to fix no car by hisself!
Mystery Fish
I was living in a house with a group of people, and we shared a communal pantry. A lot of people came and went in that house, and it wasn't always clear who bought what.
One day, a great stash of sardines appeared in the food closet; there were about 20 cans of them. Nobody claimed responsibility for having bought them, and it was strange to see so many. I shrugged my shoulders along with everyone else.
So a couple of cans of the fish were sampled by several people. My friend Gene was the first. His nose wrinkled as he opened the can; he had a doubtful look on his face as he peered at the contents, but he cautiously tried a bite.
"These sardines are spoiled!" he pronounced, and he just left the remainder on the table for someone else to deal with.
Another person tried opening a new can, with much the same results. It soon became clear that none of the cans were any better; the fish was unpalatable. So the several opened cans got discarded; a stinking mess in the garbage can.
But in the pantry, there remained the large and mysterious stacks of unopened cans. About 20 of them sat around on the shelf for a few weeks. In spite of all the hungry mouths around that house, no one had anything further to do with those sardines.
The question eventually arose of what to do with the stacks of cans; nobody seemed to own them and certainly no one wanted them. I hate to see food get wasted, but we finally agreed that they would just have to be thrown out. This was done with little fanfare, and the mystery was soon forgotten.
But a few days later, what a commotion ensued when an even greater mountain of cans of the same dismal stuff appeared back in the cabinet! Everyone became greatly excited, and questions were flying back and forth.
"Who is bringing this stuff? Was it a friend of yours?"
"Is it a well-wisher, or an evil doer?"
"Can we just waste this food?"
"Even the cat won't eat it. I tried giving him some."
Without much more discussion, the pile of cans went out in the garbage a second time; this time I watched it go. I even saw when the garbage truck came and picked it up. As I watched the truck trundling off, I was grinning a secret smile that nobody noticed.
Several days after this, the mystery took on sinister proportions, when, incredibly, there was a third appearance of Manna from Hell in our food pantry; the biggest pile of cans so far: about 50 of them.
This was truly a profound study in human perplexity. The people were buzzing around like a hive of stirred-up bees.
"They're here again! This is incredibly strange!"
"This is freaking me out."
"We should start locking the front door."
The only problem this time was, as hard as I tried, I couldn't keep a straight face. I was cracking up, and suddenly all eyes were on me.
"Solomon, what do you know about this?!"
The high drama was completely spoiled; I had cracked under the pressure. Yes, I was the culprit;
I myself had been the unwilling recipient of a "gift" of several cases of very old sardines, which had been purchased by a traveling friend from a cannery several years previously. As the aging fish were becoming inedible, she had begged me to take it all, in hopes I would find some use for it.
Well, I had told her, I'd see what I could do.
More Allen Stuff
When we were 9 or 10 years old, our family was over at his family's house for dinner. Just as Allen was sitting down at the table, his younger brother Gene pulled his chair away, and Allen landed with a thump on the floor. He immediately flew into a shouting rage, sitting there on the linoleum, and his mother Charlotte drew him up onto his feet and gave Gene a sharp reprimand. Then she tried to soothe Allen. He was raving in anger, and nothing she could do would stop him, so she finally just grabbed a dishtowel, balled it up and stuffed it into his mouth. She pointed, "Go to your room!"
Without a pause, Allen continued to shout a fluent stream of invective at Gene and the world in general, but now his raving was in a strangely muffled howl through the dishrag. He toddled angrily but obediently out the door and down the hall, still flailing his arms and shouting through the gag. I thought it was very peculiar that it didn't occur to him to pull the rag out of his mouth.
The noise receded and abruptly stopped, with the slamming of his door. Charlotte shook her head with a helpless but amused grin, "That's my boy!"
On the kitchen wall, there was an office phone for the family's landscaping business. This phone was right next to the house phone, and the two looked identical, but their rings were different, to distinguish incoming calls. It occurred to my wicked mind one time to switch the receivers on their hooks. The switch wasn't obvious to look at, because the long cords hung down side by side. It seemed like a harmless prank, and then I forgot about it. A few days later I was there again, and I noticed that the receivers had been put right, so I switched them again.
A few minutes later, I was in the next room and I heard a phone ringing. Allen picked up, and I could hear him saying, "Hello… hello…?" Then, to my mortification, he became furious, and began swearing. "The #&*#-ing phone is &#%-ed up AGAIN!! NOTHING ever works around here!!" He slammed down the phone in a fury.
There was another person in the kitchen with Allen, and I could hear him trying to calm things down. "It's all right," the friend was saying. "The phone's not broken. See? Someone just switched the receivers here."
"Is that all it was?!" Allen shouted, cursing some more. "What kind of IDIOT would keep switching the receivers?! How can we run a *#%-ing business?!"
I slunk away, quite abashed. Of course, the business caller on the line would have been able to hear Allen cursing and shouting, because before Allen hung up again, the live receiver was sitting right there on the other phone's hook. I'll be tortured in hell for this stunt, or sooner, if Allen ever reads this.
Allen nourishes a myth about me, that I will eat anything. This is actually not true at all; I'm very particular about what I eat. The myth began because of an event one day when he came over with our friend Brady, to visit me in my workshop. Earlier that day, I had been eating a peanut butter sandwich, and I had put the half eaten sandwich on a plate near the table saw. Then I did some cutting with the saw, which of course throws up some dust.
When the guys came to my shop a little later, I spied the half-eaten sandwich on the plate. I picked it up, blew off the harmless sawdust and resumed eating it. Then I noticed Brady's reaction; he was green with disgust. His impression was that I had found some ancient moldy food in a corner and had begun carelessly devouring it, after having blown off the accumulated filth. The next day, Brady and Allen excitedly related this story to others, with some interesting embellishments, and thus the myth was born. Whenever Allen would introduce me to someone, he would be sure to tell them, "Solomon will eat anything!" So I would encourage him, saying, it's no big deal.
Allen conceived of a dare; he thought he could stump me by proposing that I eat a tuna fish ice-cream sundae. If I ate it, he would pay for it. That didn't sound so bad to me; it was really no challenge to say, "Sure!"
Accordingly, we went out with some friends to an ice-cream parlor. When the waitress asked me for my order, I said, "I'll have a chocolate banana split, with a scoop of raspberry, a scoop of tuna fish salad, and a scoop of... um..."
The waitress interrupted me, before I could say, "vanilla"; she completely ruined my comic timing.
"Tuna fish?!" she frowned at me.
"Yes. Tuna fish, and... um... a scoop of vanilla."
"You're not serious!?"
"Yes, I am."
The waitress refused to go along with it, and after a little more discussion, she ended up bringing over the manager. The manager listened to the case, and finally responded by saying,
"If she brings it, you're going to have to eat it!"
"No he won't." Allen broke in, excitedly. "No he won't. He'll just have to pay for it."
So the manager gave the nod, and the waitress clamped her mouth tight, and wrote down the order, obscurely annoyed.
Everyone was eagerly watching as the tuna fish sundae was brought out and set before me. By this time, the entire restaurant was alerted, and watching me with rapt attention. I had made sure that I was good and hungry before we went out, and to tell the truth, the sundae didn't taste bad. I've tasted better combinations, but there was nothing disgusting about it, and I ate it up.
But somehow, to Allen this was all very remarkable, and he gladly paid for the sundae. This event gave them all something to talk about for a while, and the myth remained intact, with no very great effort on my part.
Allen's wife affectionately refers to him by the title I gave him once: the "Waddling Encyclopedia".
In some ways Allen is a lot smarter than me, but, as with all enduring friendships, there's a balance there. To my way of thinking, he can be really simple at times.
Primitive Powder
I made a very exciting discovery while poking around in the basement of an abandoned house. The house was an antique colonial from around 1810; it was nominally owned by the Park Service, but in fact it had been unoccupied and unattended for many years. The ancient place was in a state of disrepair; and the fieldstone foundation had a crumbling hole on one side. I felt it was only my civic duty to make a tour of inspection of the historic building, and so I contorted my way through the badger-hole in the foundation wall, and I entered the dank earthy basement. What I found among the rough stones of the inside wall, gave me a shiver of excitement.
No, it wasn't a brittle leather sack stuffed with gold coins, that gleamed when you rubbed them with your sleeve. That's what I was hoping to find, of course, but it must have been too cleverly hidden. Also, I didn't even find an alcove that held a moldering oaken chest, bound with iron bands and a hand-forged padlock, filled with minted silver.
None of that, but what I did find, in the cracks between the stones, was an encrustation of powdery grayish-white material; with here and there some translucent brownish crystals. I found it more where there was mortar between the stones, and not as much where the stones had been laid dry. Examining the powdery deposits in the beam of my pocket-light, I thought, "Can this stuff be saltpeter?"
I had some sketchy notions of how saltpeter had been obtained in colonial days, for its use in the manufacture of gunpowder; the king's men would periodically rove through the countryside, breaking open stone walls to collect the saltpeter that accumulates inside them. I also remembered Poe's story, "A Cask of Amontillado," in which two men are deep within the catacombs of an old European city, and one man mentions the white webwork of "nitre" which they could see encrusting the damp stone walls. Nitre is the ancient name for saltpeter, or potassium nitrate. I thought it was a pretty good possibility that that's what I had just found. Gold would have been better, but this was interesting too.
So, I crawled back out of the hole, and I returned with some jars for collecting samples. I collected about 1/2 cup of the crystalline powder from between the stones, and then I headed back to my lab for some experiments.
To refine the samples, I put a stainless steel pot on the stove with about a quart of water, and added the powdery material. I boiled and stirred for a few minutes to dissolve out the soluble salts, let the sediment settle, and then filtered the liquid through a coffee filter. Then I put the clear liquid back into the pot, and boiled it away, which took about fifteen minutes. I was left with a brownish white crystalline residue in the bottom of the pot. This would be the saltpeter, if that's what it was. I scraped the stuff out of the pot with a wooden spatula, and I ended up with about a teaspoonful of the brownish powder.
The easiest way I had to find out if the material was in fact saltpeter, was to go ahead and try to make gunpowder with it. If the material was something else, the worst that would happen is, I'd waste my time making mixed dirt.
First I made some charcoal. Using a propane burner, I heated chunks of willow wood in a covered clay crucible, monitoring the crucible until it stopped off-gassing, then keeping it sealed until everything cooled. The third ingredient of gunpowder is sulfur, and for this I had to cheat and use store-bought from a lab supply, because I don't know of any natural deposits of sulfur in my location.
After grinding the ingredients separately in a mortar and pestle, I weighed them out in the correct proportions, mixed in a few drops of water, and ground the resulting paste in the mortar. Then I spread the black paste on a sheet of glass and left it to dry in the sun for a few hours. When the paste was dry, I lightly crunched it up into granules, about the consistency of very coarse salt. I ended up with about 6 1/2 grams of finished powder. This is about one hundred grains, in firearm parlance; enough for a musket-load, with some left over for priming.
Now came the moment of truth. I put a small amount of this stuff on a metal dish, applied a flame, and Foomph! It flashed up! It wasn't as fast as commercial power, but it actually worked!
In commercial production, the ingredients of gunpowder are milled together for several hours, always being kept moistened to prevent accidental ignition. I milled my batch for only a few minutes, but it performed well enough for proof-of-concept. The samples I had collected in the old basement probably contained a combination of sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate, because my powder burned with a softer, yellower flame than ordinary powder: a sign of sodium.
For my final experiment I wanted to load up my big .68 caliber flintlock pistol to try out the powder, but I didn't have enough powder left for a proper load in that. So I used a .45 cal. caplock pistol, which would work better with a smaller charge, although I would have preferred the flint ignition. I loaded the pistol with about 25 grains, a little under 2 grams, of my concoction, (most of what I had left), then wrapped a .44 lead ball in a greased cotton patch, rammed it down over the charge, and placed a percussion cap onto the nipple.
With the loaded pistol on half-cock, I carried a couple of phone books outside, and propped them against a stump. Then I presented the piece, brought the hammer to full cock, and squeezed the trigger. When I felt that pistol kick and heard the boom, I was quite pleased; I had made functional gunpowder from found materials! I felt I was one step closer in kinship to the ancient ways of our colonial forbears, whose self-sufficiency and resourcefulness I have always admired.
Click below to leave a comment. ⬇