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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

     After my family show one evening, there was a little girl, perhaps 6 or 7, who wanted to ask me something. She was having a terrible attack of shyness, and she couldn't get her word out; she was clinging to her mother with her face turned away and scrunched into the folds of her mother's dress.
     "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

    I once got busted by the Coast Guard. It was a proud moment.
    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.