Sal drove a gray two door '62 Studebaker Lark. He was in his early fifties (though he seemed older) when the car had been sold to him for a song in June of '70 by an appreciative friend: a handsomer, younger, more socially gifted and married man, a native of Alt' Italia who trained and developed boxing talent. Sal had always been interested in sports (baseball, football, basketball, horse racing as well as boxing) and many of his acquaintances included gamblers, sports columnists, bookmakers and coaches or trainers like his friend. Sal was a bachelor, lived alone and walked with a heavy limp. Though he shared his friend's ethnic heritage and love of the "manly art", he was a first generation native born American of southern Italian parentage, a New Yorker through and through, though he had none of the elan and cosmopolitan polish of his friend. He also had a sister who was an invalid in a nursing home about fifty miles away from his apartment. This was the reason he purchased the car.
Sal had maintained his license for decades but hadn't driven for those same many years. He owned and operated the Lark for about one week when one day its passenger side door, not fully closed, swung open on a sharp turn. He reached reflexively to grab the door's handle and the car meandered onto and over a curb and glanced off a tree. Sal was okay. The experience convinced him however, that he needed a chauffeur for his now somewhat battered little hardtop.
I was a twenty year old cipher, a drifting college sophomore, more than indifferent to my studies who loved to drive. In nearly ten years, Sal had become my father's best friend and I had grown used to seeing him, both as hanger-on at the fruit and produce store where Dad worked and more and more frequently as a dinner guest at our house. He had obtained World Series tickets for our family on at least four occasions through the years and had demonstrated his kindness in many other ways. Yet it was still tempting to take him for granted with his "Sad Sack" persona and unobtrusive ways. My immaturity failed to see the man inside the unfashionable and rumpled clothes with the uncomplaining visage behind the thick eyeglasses.
Sal was an intelligent though unschooled man. He immediately saw the mutual interest in selling the car to me. The price? A single piece of green paper with the image of the Father of Our Country on it was what he wanted. Oh, yes: whenever convenient, I would drive Sal to visit his sister. A deal! He had the car repaired and made road worthy. It was an agreeable arrangement and we visited his sister for about a half a dozen years, the only untoward event being an accident on a local street in Queens one summer's day. There were children playing ball not far from Sal's auto insurance broker's office from where we had just left. No doubt, as a young driver I did not adjust my speed under the circumstances: the narrow road and the darting kids. Thinking I had passed them all, one back pedaled just at the last second before my peripheral vision would have missed seeing him. Braking occurred, but it was too late to avoid clipping the youngster on his heel. He howled and I stopped almost instantaneously. I like to think that I would have handled the situation by myself exactly as we then did. I guess I'll never know for sure. In the event, Sal carefully questioned the boy about his condition and had made the decision to take him with us, if agreeable, to a nearby hospital when the child's grandmother appeared. She concurred with the proposal and we spent, what today would not probably be considered an extremely long time, waiting in the emergency room until the kid was examined. The wait then seemed interminable, as I sweated through the guilt and consequences (whatever they would be) that were dictated by taking responsibility for my actions as an adult. Sal, of course, stood by me, and with a clean bill of health (and bill paid by him) we returned the kid safely to the old woman.
Sal continued to help me in ways, not all of which I am probably even aware of to this day. He continued to be my Dad's best friend for the rest of his life and I was a bonus beneficiary of that relationship. In 1975, to be nearly precise: less than 30 minutes after the moment that began that then new year, I visited Sal. It was the only time that I really wanted to visit him and to just "hang out" with him. My motives were not pure. I wished him, of course, a happy new year and he was pleasantly surprised, but probably at least as much curious about the real reason for the very unexpected visit. He never intruded on a personal level, knowing that privacy was granted him "in spades" by others, though usually more out of indifference or neglect than a result of conscientious respect. He was always aware of the privacy of others however, and though very shy, it seemed that respect, not fear, was his primary motive in not prying. I wouldn't or couldn't tell him that I had tried to visit a new female acquaintance, uninvited, at her place in the waning last hour of 1974 not long before midnight. Her rejection of me (now quite understandable, viewed nearly forty years later) was expressed loudly and forcefully through her closed and locked apartment door and was a devastating blow to a relatively callow fellow's ego that long ago evening. I remember asking Sal for a cup of coffee and we must have exchanged banalities as perhaps he understood, even consciously, how much I needed a friend. No doubt, he could empathize, or at least I imagined that to be so having observed how he moved and comported himself in a cruel and heedless world. He was also "street smart" but he clearly knew right from wrong, as demonstrated by my accident with the kid. His idea of chicanery was encapsulated in his oft repeated advice to me: "Rus, you gotta beat the law within the law." Notwithstanding this remark, he was too decent a soul to ever be a politician or lawyer.
I honestly don't recall the exact trigger that led to the demise of the Studebaker, nor do I even remember the approximate date or the circumstances in any great detail. It must have happened in the late 1970's. And based on what I do remember: taking a very few parts from the vehicle with strong sentiments guiding my self-limiting choices, a junk dealer must have been contacted to tow it away. The pot metal letters across the vertical hang of the trunk's deck lid above the rear bumper and license plate that spelled out "S T U D E B A K E R " were plucked from the body, the AM radio was salvaged, also bearing the make's name, and the speedometer too was rescued. The dream was to carve a rough hewn, log cabin-like box for the radio and have it as a unique item for my night table. The need to obtain a transformer in order to convert it for A.C. current was and apparently is still conceived as too daunting a project. It sits, hopefully somewhere in one of my closets, awaiting ambition and motivation.
Sal continued being Sal and we became friendly with his brother as well. In 1979 I recall visiting Sal in his apartment and he didn't seem well. His face was flushed and he seemed to have some difficulty breathing. He said that he was okay, but we both knew he wasn't. I had taken a part time job late that year and had lost touch somewhat with him though my Dad had told me of Sal's occasional trips into and out of hospitals where I visited him several times. He died in June of 1980, never to know the joys and thankfully, any of the horrors of the world these past thirty plus years. He was a simple man, filled with the same humanity and decency of any Nobel prize winner or even the average, non-scandal plagued clergyman. My Dad recognized the goodness in this truly humble man and chose him for a friend because of his simplicity and faithfulness: some of the measures of character and true human wealth.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
Playing
Picked up a rubber ball today for the first time in nearly a year. Bounced it. Felt good. A fellow pilgrim who has known through the years, like me, the delight and comfort of social exercise through handball, paddleball and the like, agreed to toss the ol' rubber sphere around with me this morning and, despite a dew point as high as a great golf score, we played semi-competitively for more than a half hour. It does clear one's mind and the heart and lungs. All three seem to say: "Yeah! That's what we want! Shut down that P.C. and boob tube once in a while and start the engine of the 'machine' that was given to you at no charge."
With bodies that leave no doubt that the receding images in our respective metaphorical rearview mirrors were those of our youth, the memory and joy of telling the old "mortal coil" to perform a physical task and having it obey (somewhat) is the epitome of an opportunity for thanksgiving. Never a natural athlete, the good Lord has blessed me with good health and a normal, if not a superlative or especially attractive physicality that allows me to enjoy the gift of this life and the companionship of others through the natural stress and invigorating tension of scampering about a playground almost like an exuberant ten year old. My chatterboxing inclinations, and hopefully mirth giving remarks during playtime, are intensified as the mind and body are allowed to flourish, i.e. romp as any sentient being, biped, quadruped or millipied was meant to do, before sedentary mentation and other duties and confinements of civilization held sway over most of our lives (at least those of we so-called humans).
With the "Dog Days" nearly upon us, the realization that summer, like life itself, is finite and fleeting, concentrates the mind and invites the hesitant, like me, to get moving. Natation and angling, happy endeavors that I've always associated with the waning days of this season, because my Dad's one week vacations, taken just prior to Labor Day, always included these activities, are now, once again, subjects for anticipation and hopeful planning. To look forward to something, in addition to looking back and cherishing golden memories: that's a balanced goal worthy, I believe, of the effort to achieve it.
With bodies that leave no doubt that the receding images in our respective metaphorical rearview mirrors were those of our youth, the memory and joy of telling the old "mortal coil" to perform a physical task and having it obey (somewhat) is the epitome of an opportunity for thanksgiving. Never a natural athlete, the good Lord has blessed me with good health and a normal, if not a superlative or especially attractive physicality that allows me to enjoy the gift of this life and the companionship of others through the natural stress and invigorating tension of scampering about a playground almost like an exuberant ten year old. My chatterboxing inclinations, and hopefully mirth giving remarks during playtime, are intensified as the mind and body are allowed to flourish, i.e. romp as any sentient being, biped, quadruped or millipied was meant to do, before sedentary mentation and other duties and confinements of civilization held sway over most of our lives (at least those of we so-called humans).
With the "Dog Days" nearly upon us, the realization that summer, like life itself, is finite and fleeting, concentrates the mind and invites the hesitant, like me, to get moving. Natation and angling, happy endeavors that I've always associated with the waning days of this season, because my Dad's one week vacations, taken just prior to Labor Day, always included these activities, are now, once again, subjects for anticipation and hopeful planning. To look forward to something, in addition to looking back and cherishing golden memories: that's a balanced goal worthy, I believe, of the effort to achieve it.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Phorty-phourth: A Phony
The suit is a bespoke one. One would not expect anything less. The talent to speak fluently and attractively to many persons at once, both those for whom he was, at first, a "tabula rasa" as well as those who were predisposed to adore him, is nearly breathtaking. This facility was, and remains, not unlike the beauty of an Elizabeth Taylor, an Angelina Jolie or the kind of attention arresting, head swiveling of any unusually charismatic presence, one that is pansexual in its magnetism (remember a male commentator's "thrill going up my leg" remark?) and prone to enticing the listener's intellect to "hush now and go to sleep. All will be taken care of."
The hunger for leadership in the United States since the presidency of Ronald Reagan has, for some time now, shown signs of graduating into the first stages of psychic starvation. How else to explain the election of George W. Bush (though the term "Al Gore" may help in part to elucidate on this particular case), preceded by that of William J. Clinton and most recently, the elevation to the Oval Office of a "Community Organizer?" He is one with no executive experience and a background as rootless and as out of the American mainstream as that of a rail riding hobo: albeit a very intelligent vagabond, one who again, is blessed with exceptional speechmaking talents and skills and a seeming eloquence the potency of which has so far stretched its grasp sufficiently and adequately enough to satisfy enough empty souls in the body politic who can't or won't reflect on the coming abyss, its gaping maw rendered huger and huger thanks to the incompetence and/or malevolence of this current Salamander-in-Chief.
Pangs of hunger were appeased: first, most easily by a robust economy (thanks in no small measure to a balanced budget) at the turn of the century and a pre-9/11 mentality that could luxuriate in the Lewinsky scandal as a guilty pleasure and diversion, feeding both our devotion to our Puritan heritage and to the counter-culture jollies of our faded youth. The outrage over the leader of the Free World not checking his libido at the threshold of the Oval Office was blunted by our collective moral ambivalence and the old American quasi-religion of the strict bifurcation of a private life and a public one. We were too busy as we thought we were eating heartily and oh, so successfully: epicurean delights in the form of skyrocketing equities, ballooning bank accounts and ever more lucrative real estate deals. These "steaks", "lobsters" and "caviar" were proven to be not reliably nourishing over time and a small voice seemed to remind us that the issue of Character, however irritating and inconvenient, especially while we were accumulating small or large fortunes, perhaps now merited a reexamination.
The history of Clinton's successor included an undeniable bout with alcoholism. This was a new titillation, the news about which, many of us anticipated, with a strange hopefulness. Too soon for too many it was learned that this presidential candidate had struggled and had apparently overcome the problem. Whether a wife's ultimatum or an epiphany that resulted in a Born Again Christian's testimonial, the end of the story, of either motivation, was the same and was grudgingly accepted as real. Then the early radical re-characterization of his presidency as one primarily defined by foreign wars began to further strengthen our solidarity with him. A just cause (Afghanistan) to right the great wrong of September eleventh's infamy kept Bush in our prayers if not our hearts. But time and the slower and slower slog that the fight against Islamo-fascism was becoming helped to revive our always-near-the-surface anxiety, impatience and hypercriticism. Bush was likable, but he was hardly an especially articulate man. Why we fought seemed too simple to some. And of course, unlike our earlier conflicts, especially WWII, our highly professional and volunteer armed services, strangely, made us crankier and less inclined to tolerate the blood, gore and body bags (perhaps too many Nintendo-like images of targets being neatly zapped, dating back to the first Gulf war caused us to chafe without snappy results from supposed supermen). Iraq was also deemed by many as an elective venture (as if some Marquis de Queensberry rule dictated that we sustain another blow like Pear Harbor or 9/11 before proceeding). The Left's usual self-loathing that assumed villainy among oil men as trumping the evil of medieval misogynists, a Stalinist psychopath, and those enamored of beheadings and homicide/suicide bombings, began to be vomited out in a hopeless attempt at cleansing through logorrhea and the same old tired "peace protests", retreads of the masturbatory 1960's.
Bush had no aversion to spending money. This somehow did not endear him to so-called Progressives. He had had a lot of experience with a lot of money throughout his life. The projection of our own malaises onto this man was both predictable and inevitable. The Left's enormous distaste for Western armies defeating non-Western ones soon led to more and more criticism of the struggle against El Qaeda and the Taliban. The wars were enormously expensive and the nation's deficit expanded like a lonely housewife's waistline at an out of town MacDonald's after being jilted by her lover. Somehow and somewhere during his second term, our forty-third president permitted some strangely perverse behavior, anathema to any self-respecting banker. The kindest take on this situation: he did not have his eye on the ball in this world of financial institutions and real estate (Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae and the improprieties surrounding these and other entities). The notion that one could buy what one could not afford (nothing novel in Washington) had at last come to storm the ramparts of the holy doctrine of Higher Finance. Greed bent the rules and the promise of home ownership to anyone and everybody was now not a mere sentiment but a strategy of righteousness (always well within the comfort zone of Liberalism) that phased out fiduciary prudence and common sense.
We all know the history of the last three years: exhaustion and abhorrence with and of seven years of war, the near economic meltdown on the eve of the 2008 Presidential Election, and the subsequent hankering, rather again…a hunger for leadership and the change that could only, it seemed, be spelled "Barack Hussein Obama." Now we've got him. And he surely has us, not by the short hairs as much as by our severely shrunken collective testicles (matched no doubt by his own, if only someone would pull down the emperor's B.V.D.s for all the world to see). More than 4 BILLION DOLLARS PER DAY are spent by this current administration (on second thought, I guess that does take "cojones" of a gargantuan size or a kind of uber-chutzpah that is oblivious to the concept of shame). Can this "moolah" even be printed quickly enough (leave alone for a moment the issue of its looming worthlessness)? And many Americans still "like" him. What the (insert four letter Anglo-Saxon word here) does that mean and where does that get us? Ted Bundy was a very handsome and likable man. Hitler loved his dog. Women genuflected, lasciviously or not, before John Dillinger. The probable semi-good news: "Phorty-phour" is not an irresistible Leopold or Loeb of Politics, but likely just an exceptionally able Chicago-style politician (read: "unpleasant, but predictable crud").
Hell, let's go over a cliff on August 3rd or whatever day Chicken Little says the sky will fall. Maybe something will be learned and eventually accomplished as a result, and somnambulism will be jolted, replaced by a great awakening. Let's just "lock and load" (this metaphor hasn't been outlawed yet) and get this little Socialist turd out of the White House and on a permanent vacation back to Hawaii or whatever place else he flips a coin about and decides is his true home. And let's do it right in 2012: no divided government may actually mean no divided country. How 'bout even going for the "Hat Trick?" Harry Reid and his ilk also deserve well earned, unlimited rest complete with hammocks, mint juleps and the simple antidote to any possible insomnia (a result of guiltily, yet mercifully, being on the sidelines of history): a diatribe by Barry. After all, a fact slowly dawning on more and more Americans each day is that each subsequent mellifluous proclamation by our Dear Leader brings less enthrallment, more ennui and less confidence that his is not indeed a dark agenda of a rigid and frankly, a stupid ideology.
He came to bring us together? Are we not more torn asunder than ever by the notion that endless spending brings that Pot of Gold? Can we afford this charming android? His heart is in the right place, you say? With or without the Wizard of Oz's gift, I'll take the Tin Man and his ticker (or sincere desire for one) any day over Obama and his calculating reverse sump pump of destruction. Better to rust than to rot.
The hunger for leadership in the United States since the presidency of Ronald Reagan has, for some time now, shown signs of graduating into the first stages of psychic starvation. How else to explain the election of George W. Bush (though the term "Al Gore" may help in part to elucidate on this particular case), preceded by that of William J. Clinton and most recently, the elevation to the Oval Office of a "Community Organizer?" He is one with no executive experience and a background as rootless and as out of the American mainstream as that of a rail riding hobo: albeit a very intelligent vagabond, one who again, is blessed with exceptional speechmaking talents and skills and a seeming eloquence the potency of which has so far stretched its grasp sufficiently and adequately enough to satisfy enough empty souls in the body politic who can't or won't reflect on the coming abyss, its gaping maw rendered huger and huger thanks to the incompetence and/or malevolence of this current Salamander-in-Chief.
Pangs of hunger were appeased: first, most easily by a robust economy (thanks in no small measure to a balanced budget) at the turn of the century and a pre-9/11 mentality that could luxuriate in the Lewinsky scandal as a guilty pleasure and diversion, feeding both our devotion to our Puritan heritage and to the counter-culture jollies of our faded youth. The outrage over the leader of the Free World not checking his libido at the threshold of the Oval Office was blunted by our collective moral ambivalence and the old American quasi-religion of the strict bifurcation of a private life and a public one. We were too busy as we thought we were eating heartily and oh, so successfully: epicurean delights in the form of skyrocketing equities, ballooning bank accounts and ever more lucrative real estate deals. These "steaks", "lobsters" and "caviar" were proven to be not reliably nourishing over time and a small voice seemed to remind us that the issue of Character, however irritating and inconvenient, especially while we were accumulating small or large fortunes, perhaps now merited a reexamination.
The history of Clinton's successor included an undeniable bout with alcoholism. This was a new titillation, the news about which, many of us anticipated, with a strange hopefulness. Too soon for too many it was learned that this presidential candidate had struggled and had apparently overcome the problem. Whether a wife's ultimatum or an epiphany that resulted in a Born Again Christian's testimonial, the end of the story, of either motivation, was the same and was grudgingly accepted as real. Then the early radical re-characterization of his presidency as one primarily defined by foreign wars began to further strengthen our solidarity with him. A just cause (Afghanistan) to right the great wrong of September eleventh's infamy kept Bush in our prayers if not our hearts. But time and the slower and slower slog that the fight against Islamo-fascism was becoming helped to revive our always-near-the-surface anxiety, impatience and hypercriticism. Bush was likable, but he was hardly an especially articulate man. Why we fought seemed too simple to some. And of course, unlike our earlier conflicts, especially WWII, our highly professional and volunteer armed services, strangely, made us crankier and less inclined to tolerate the blood, gore and body bags (perhaps too many Nintendo-like images of targets being neatly zapped, dating back to the first Gulf war caused us to chafe without snappy results from supposed supermen). Iraq was also deemed by many as an elective venture (as if some Marquis de Queensberry rule dictated that we sustain another blow like Pear Harbor or 9/11 before proceeding). The Left's usual self-loathing that assumed villainy among oil men as trumping the evil of medieval misogynists, a Stalinist psychopath, and those enamored of beheadings and homicide/suicide bombings, began to be vomited out in a hopeless attempt at cleansing through logorrhea and the same old tired "peace protests", retreads of the masturbatory 1960's.
Bush had no aversion to spending money. This somehow did not endear him to so-called Progressives. He had had a lot of experience with a lot of money throughout his life. The projection of our own malaises onto this man was both predictable and inevitable. The Left's enormous distaste for Western armies defeating non-Western ones soon led to more and more criticism of the struggle against El Qaeda and the Taliban. The wars were enormously expensive and the nation's deficit expanded like a lonely housewife's waistline at an out of town MacDonald's after being jilted by her lover. Somehow and somewhere during his second term, our forty-third president permitted some strangely perverse behavior, anathema to any self-respecting banker. The kindest take on this situation: he did not have his eye on the ball in this world of financial institutions and real estate (Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae and the improprieties surrounding these and other entities). The notion that one could buy what one could not afford (nothing novel in Washington) had at last come to storm the ramparts of the holy doctrine of Higher Finance. Greed bent the rules and the promise of home ownership to anyone and everybody was now not a mere sentiment but a strategy of righteousness (always well within the comfort zone of Liberalism) that phased out fiduciary prudence and common sense.
We all know the history of the last three years: exhaustion and abhorrence with and of seven years of war, the near economic meltdown on the eve of the 2008 Presidential Election, and the subsequent hankering, rather again…a hunger for leadership and the change that could only, it seemed, be spelled "Barack Hussein Obama." Now we've got him. And he surely has us, not by the short hairs as much as by our severely shrunken collective testicles (matched no doubt by his own, if only someone would pull down the emperor's B.V.D.s for all the world to see). More than 4 BILLION DOLLARS PER DAY are spent by this current administration (on second thought, I guess that does take "cojones" of a gargantuan size or a kind of uber-chutzpah that is oblivious to the concept of shame). Can this "moolah" even be printed quickly enough (leave alone for a moment the issue of its looming worthlessness)? And many Americans still "like" him. What the (insert four letter Anglo-Saxon word here) does that mean and where does that get us? Ted Bundy was a very handsome and likable man. Hitler loved his dog. Women genuflected, lasciviously or not, before John Dillinger. The probable semi-good news: "Phorty-phour" is not an irresistible Leopold or Loeb of Politics, but likely just an exceptionally able Chicago-style politician (read: "unpleasant, but predictable crud").
Hell, let's go over a cliff on August 3rd or whatever day Chicken Little says the sky will fall. Maybe something will be learned and eventually accomplished as a result, and somnambulism will be jolted, replaced by a great awakening. Let's just "lock and load" (this metaphor hasn't been outlawed yet) and get this little Socialist turd out of the White House and on a permanent vacation back to Hawaii or whatever place else he flips a coin about and decides is his true home. And let's do it right in 2012: no divided government may actually mean no divided country. How 'bout even going for the "Hat Trick?" Harry Reid and his ilk also deserve well earned, unlimited rest complete with hammocks, mint juleps and the simple antidote to any possible insomnia (a result of guiltily, yet mercifully, being on the sidelines of history): a diatribe by Barry. After all, a fact slowly dawning on more and more Americans each day is that each subsequent mellifluous proclamation by our Dear Leader brings less enthrallment, more ennui and less confidence that his is not indeed a dark agenda of a rigid and frankly, a stupid ideology.
He came to bring us together? Are we not more torn asunder than ever by the notion that endless spending brings that Pot of Gold? Can we afford this charming android? His heart is in the right place, you say? With or without the Wizard of Oz's gift, I'll take the Tin Man and his ticker (or sincere desire for one) any day over Obama and his calculating reverse sump pump of destruction. Better to rust than to rot.
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