I Like

Am aware of a dearth of purely lighthearted blog entries from here at "The Palace" of late (perhaps, for some time now). As I seem to be the only blogger in residence for an even longer time (my compatriots have their reasons and I shall remain circumspect regarding their absence), the culpability, I confess, rests completely on my shoulders. In honor of leap year (and February 29th's special place in our folkways as a quirky, semi-rare date that involves, if I remember, a kind of Sadie Hawkins Day mindset: gals proposing to guys today or some such anomalous social behavior) and the desire to provide a reduction of a shortfall of goofiness, here are my offerings, both sweet and sour but hopefully all worthy nuggets of some degree of chuckle-osity or, admittedly, maybe just plain sentimentality on the subject of likability.

I like Ike. Or rather, I did like Ike when I was six years old and everybody else seemed to like him. He was the 34th President of these United States in case you just breezed in from Pluto or were born after 1980, which means most of you hairless and not so hairless apes out there in cyberland. Ike's smile was almost unavoidably endearing and we all seemed to want to like him even before we knew a lot about him (hey, he helped save Western civilization and speaking of hairless: wow…what a chrome dome), except certain "eggheads", shaggy or shorn, who remained cool to the five star general and just didn't catch the drift of what the 1950's were all about or rather, what they were not all about: self-criticism, navel gazing or ponderous intellectualism which were, you see, definitely "out".

I like Tom T. Hall (his big country/pop hit "I Love" is part of the reason). Seemingly simple guy talkng/singing about simple things in this world that he loves…not why he loves them, but just trusting that you'll concur by thinking about your own experiences of so many "little" things... animal, mineral or vegetable: an admirable and soothing valentine to life.

I like gals who dress with a certain sense for the masculine but are not themselves mannish; a certain independence is involved here but one imagines an undercurrent of irresistible feminine vulnerability and power conveyed by the person, and not just through her clothes. These ladies often seem to possess artistic hands; their bird-like flutterings of which, are liked as well.

I like to tell a story and to do the voices of the characters in the tale. I like to make a listener laugh as these characters, hopefully brought to life by my vocalizations can permit this mirth quicker than any dry punchline or cerebral presentation of incongruous facts.

I like to reflect on certain personal memories and how I felt, the smells involved, the sunlight or the shadows in a room: like the moving silhouettes of elevated subway cars on the walls and ceiling of my grandparents' apartment while trying to sleep in their sofa bed during weekend "adventures" as my Mom first described these sleepovers. I like thinking of the ineffable atmospherics of many a long gone time and place and the love that was shared. I like thinking of the immutability of these moments and how nothing can harm them.

I like remembering characters, usually customers of my Dad who gave color and warmth in exchange for Dad's abundance of the same: guys like "Eddie Underworld", his life's work perhaps or perhaps not involved with shady deals and shady persons. A chubby man, Eddie was swarthy and quite vertically challenged in his natty fedora and perhaps bespoke suit. He seemed more earnest than menacing as he explained his life's travails and triumphs patiently and in great detail to Dad. My father, amazingly and adroitly, always managed to reciprocate the patience despite multi-tasking in profusion while easing any cares of other customers waiting their turn.

I like ruminating upon so-and-so, his name lost in the mists of time but his image before me: big, tall and broad; he wore a light short sleeved white summer shirt and khaki shorts with knee length thick white socks and he cheerfully thanked Dad for his change after a purchase of fruits and vegetables. He then always proceeded to seem to mind his own business, going on his way while scratching his balding pate. In an instant his shorts had dropped to his ankles and he excused himself profusely as lady customers shrieked, children giggled, with Dad accepting, what for him was a now predictable phenomenon as much like a patron of his store who may have had an idiosyncratic twitch or a touch of Huntington's chorea. The man was, to be sure, a jokester, but it was an age in which no humorless cop would dutifully appear to run in this "Dropping Trou" "troublemaker" (an exceedingly popular word at mid century) who was just doing his "thing." No "flashing" occurred here, except the smiles of the local cognoscenti or of the startled newcomers who asked "Sally" (my Dad) to explain after the eccentric's departure. "That's just the way he is" Dad always simply replied.

I like remembering a tall raw boned German-American lady customer, her skin nearly the color of carrots, explaining every detail of her purchases to Dad and carting away shopping bags crammed with, unsurprisingly…. carrots, their green tops spilling out over the top edges of each sturdy brown paper bag. She had had a bad menopause it was explained to me years later, but I remember her with great curiosity and amusement, not fearful or aware of her emotional maladies.

I like "pictures of my friends" (to borrow from Mr. Hall's song) and of my family, old movies uninterrupted, the stillness after a rain, folks who are on time, the rare times when reckless drivers get their just desserts: a cop who actually appears when needed to issue a citation or make an arrest.

I like talking to men who have served their country and are willing to tell their experiences: pencil pushers as well as combat veterans. All of their stories interest me.

I like observing intelligent and well-behaved small children talking and interacting with each other. Listening to them gives comfort about the future.

I like people who can feign a buffoon's outrage or insanity. There's nothing so delightful as to witness a loving theatricality through the masquerade of a villain or a loon. Zero Mostel and my late Great (and great) Uncle Frank were masters of this comedic art. The former's "real" life scenes included his genius for delicious mischief on display one evening at a four star restaurant. Ensconced behind the whitest of tablecloths, immaculate linen napkins and elegant stemware, Zero ordered more butter for his bread with his usual zany impresario-like flair. Each time the waiter came into view (wherever he appeared in the room), or each time Mostel had finished buttering, he would thunder "more butter!" He buttered and he buttered. After all the breadsticks and the sliced bread, he buttered his own hand, then his shirt sleeve, next his suit's sleeve, his shoulder, his lapel, his tie…all the while demanding "MORE BUTTER!" Uncle Frank's talent, like all of ours, was God-given. His heart of pure gold came through especially when teased. One summer's day my fun-loving cousin Bob and I and our families came to visit Frank and his. Bob had purchased a small box of "loads." These were straight from a novelty store and they were tiny little white sticks that each contained a minute amount of gunpowder. Frank was fond of fragrant cigars that he smoked often and down to butts as short as he was able to handle. Bob, of course, wasted little time and secretly managed to insert a "load" into the last fresh stogie in Uncle Frank's pack. We waited for what seemed like an eternity for him to light up. At last, he did. The tension was intense. One puff, two, three…a pause..nothing happened. A big draw by Uncle Frank and then, like a misfired party favor, his olive drab cylinder of tobacco and nicotine expanded at its tip and it shredded weirdly without any noise or flash. He knew something had happened and he knew we had been up to no good. He wheeled toward us, his "tormentors" and was determined not to disappoint us. In his heavily accented Italo-Americano English he fumed "Whadda you do? Whadda you do? Amma gonna get youse guys!" Mock anger was never so light hearted and affectionate. His imminent "assault" culminated in hugs, tickles and playful wrestling and was one of the earliest of a lifetime of golden memories courtesy of one of the sweetest of hearts, unafraid of playing the fool.

I like old automobiles. I like an original vehicle, imperfections of age and its upholstery reeking of the admixture of various odors of its ancient interior with gasoline fumes seeping since Day One through the porosity of its perhaps now metal-fatigued chassis.

I like(d) "Smokey Stover", a comic strip of long ago that required time to read and enjoy. The eccentricities and artistic details of the drawn characters and their surroundings are special. Cartoonist Bill Holman's "Foo Fighters", endless puns (from the mouths of characters or from signs hanging on walls) and other weird visuals, including huge gloved hands serving as headrests or ashtrays, all made for a unique, unforgettable strip.

I like(d) "Crax and Jax" too. Howard Sparber, I believe, was the artist. Very hard to find (still looking on the internet). Remember the shortness (three or four panels) of the strip and the inevitable last scene in which Crax's wit (or was it Jax's?) is so potent that it causes the other character to be driven up and backwards into the air because of the force of the joke. That's the kind of world I wish to live in: merriment that allows a perhaps somewhat spiritually poor man to effect a sub par levitation: "Nearer my God to Thee", however humbly.

Who Are You?

You don't ring my bell. You walk past my door. Your pace is sure, your purpose unknown, your own business minded. Neither love nor hate is received or given. Yours is just a life like mine….we are ships passing one another, day or night. Sunshine makes no difference in this large frenetic city. This goes on and on until one and then both of us become ill and eventually cease living. There is no harm, no joy, no great understanding. We have our lives, presumably our own support systems of family and friends or at least "gemeinschaft" contacts that interrupt our isolation. What would an extended hand mean? Why bother someone who is a total stranger? Ancient ways of smiling courteously are not against any law. And yet we stay our hand, mute ourselves and avoid a gaze. There's much to recommend privacy. The inclination towards it is immediately sensed and respected. The gregarious ways can so often disappoint and breed, if not contempt, then a pleasantness that soon teaches that it has no future. Silence has a neutral charge, but it can go in either direction: to a self-absorbed world neither cruel nor Christian, or to one of days in a self-imposed hermitage where self-loathing proudly suffers its infliction of pain on no one else.

Who are you, really? I will never know because I have chosen the path of fear that somehow comforts. You may have wisdom to impart. My prejudices may be proven wrong. Certainly at least one pleasant surprise is possible from making your acquaintance. My other face appears on occasion. But trust and learning are not what I seek now. Too many years of railing and marking my territory like an old tiger who won't indulge an upstart former cub. Who are you? You are me and you will fulfill my expectations be they good or bad. You will behave according to my beliefs. The choice is mine if I wish to engage you. Aloneness is not loneliness of course. When the latter grows stronger than the former, my mind may create connections and bridges to you. And yet, Solitude is a friend already in my home, still golden, the other only potentially just silver. Does heaven have rooms where one may be alone and lock the door?

Bonita

She is seventy years old today. I only learned this fact recently, a result of employing the many engines of nosiness one finds on the worldwide web: enough snippets of information to ensure that this is the same lady and that the age old prerogative of lying about one's age was an opportunity not ignored when we first met three decades ago. There is little to say, except for the concision of this truth: "it was the best of times: it was the worst of times" and this woman, intentionally or not, as some kind of messenger from God or a darker angel from Below, taught me to grow up and to prepare to grow old. Hers was a stellar didacticism (or again, an infernal one). But learn, I did. There is no rainbow. There is no endless party and avoidance of service to someone or something. There are only choices: good ones and bad. Not choosing is a choice as well. Hank Williams, Sr. was right as rain: "I'll never get out of this world alive."

Aggrieved

I don't like reading my daily newspaper as much as I once did. A new kind of "typo" is here to stay, I am told (the result of the computerization of proofreading "efforts"). Sentences appear commonly now, not with misspelled words but with missing ones: articles, relative pronouns, an A.W.O.L. verb here….an escaped conjunction there. It now joins the ranks of old tried and true irritants like cub reporters who proclaim a mugging to have taken place in Woodside, when the address is clearly of a bar in Woodhaven or the misdirection of a "continued on page 34" advisory that rightly should have listed page 46 as the relative article's conclusion's correct location. The drip-drip-drip of life's inaccuracies, instances of carelessness and/or indifference to the everyday business of life in these United States, is hardly limited to the mediocre state of journalism in the post print culture of 21st century America. How few are the times that one hears today a telephone operator or business' receptionist respond to your request for someone or some service with the simple courtesy of "Thank you. One moment, please."? Harried switchboard operators in a 1940s film, answering seemingly, dozens of calls per minute, unfailingly utter these words each time, as they manically insert, pull out or re-insert plugs into and out of their board.

Today, the party, IF it answers promptly and is not heard sharing some banter with a fellow sluggard/receptionist before responding or has not dropped the receiver (not having found the juggling of a candy bar and his or her telecommunications equipment too daunting a task) will almost invariably respond to your detailed request for Mr. So-and-so at such and such an extension with a deafening silence that tells you absolutely nothing about several critical bits of information: answers to your questions that you need and are, in a reasonable world, perfectly and justifiably entitled to, such as, 1.did this customer "service" person hear my request?; 2.did this person understand my question?; and 3.is this person about to attempt to succeed in connecting me with the person I need and/or about to help provide the answer about the product or service I need? No, human communication is just too bothersome for these taciturn persons. It's enough apparently, for them (in their "minds") that they know what you said and the fact that they are (you hope) complying silently with your requests is all you can or need expect. Repeat of your words, i.e. the prudence of redundancy and the helpfulness and secure feeling that simple corroboration bestows on an anxious customer is part of a lost art of courtesy and a defunct social lubricative that limits stress and is a simple kindness that costs nothing, except the effort involved in thinking of another person.

What about punctuality? In recent years, it seems that the old fashioned champions of this virtue have actually made headway despite the generally strong headwinds of modernism that advise typically: "do your own thing." Self-interest and economic hard times have perhaps been the main reasons for not denigrating this ancient virtue of the world of etiquette. Advice columns and all kinds of literature have, then and now, always urged respect for the unassailable value of timeliness when interviewing for a job. It's not recognized however, as a hard and fast rule in all social situations. Amazingly, attendance at mass in Catholic churches, has, impressionistically for me, for quite a few years, not been part of this pro-punctuality way of doing things. I cannot remember, in the last seven or eight years since I returned to regular church attendance, a single occasion that did not feature at least a dozen or more individuals or even families entering pews as much as fifteen or twenty minutes after a mass has begun. Websites that I have read, by, for or about Catholics contained no heated discussions, at least that I could find, on the subject. One opinion seemed to chide those who took exception to those who did not favor impressing upon congregants the importance of punctuality. It seems that in many circles, gainful employment is more important than communing respectfully with one's Maker.

What else? Life's too short, but here's my list anyway of vexations to the spirit that begin to make one perhaps thankful that "all things pass away."

1.Drivers who fail to signal, especially when it affects your safety or ability to make a good judgment about a traffic situation;
2.Drivers who double park and sit in their cars on a narrow street until you begin to try to squeeze past them and they then begin to move forward (or backward!);
3.Persons who do not cover their mouths when coughing in a small public space, invariably, it seems, when I am in their line of fire;
4.Persons who enter their parked vehicles as you approach in yours and you indicate with your turn signal (or not: they simply are likely aware of your presence) that you are waiting to enter their space when they pull out AND THEY DO NOT PULL OUT FOR A VERY, VERY LONG TIME. I assumed that my grumpiness and impatience were factors that were making it only seem so, until I read a number of reports by psychologists on the subject of parking spaces, particularly in crowded urban centers. Folks, the social science experts tell us, don't wish to be rushed and the territory of their little, but priceless bit of occupied real estate is sovereign and theirs to relinquish, only when they're damned well good and ready to do so. It could be an unconscious behavior or not, but it is real with only slightly varying time frames: long, longer and interminable. Statistically, it has been shown that there is a significant increase in the time elapsed before departure if there's a waiting party compared to no one seeking the space. I guess regarding this one, it's too deep a phenomenon in the human psyche for me to kvetch about with any great hope of improvement;
5.Telephone calls that are not returned;
6.Persons who wear shorts in February in order that their tattooed calves may be viewed by an assumedly adoring public;
7.Deliverymen who deliver packages and have, with superhuman mercurial powers, managed to start their trucks' engines and to pull away as the last vibrations of my doorbell's chimes are still tickling my eardrums.
8.Entry no.7 is only trumped by this one: the nearly 100% rate of instances in which United Parcel Service drivers' deliveries are accompanied by no doorbell ringing, knocking, or even a shout out. Packages left outside both the main door and screen door is not a rarity either. Guess that the incidences of stolen parcels is infrequent enough to make the risk worth it relative to the time saved in delivering items to addressees with the speed of greased lightning.
9.Just having to interact with most brain dead individuals in most "gemeinschaft" situations. Sure, pumping gas or ringing up groceries might cause one's mind to wander, but this presumes that there's something between the ears of those who often return my change with barely extended hands, without any eye contact or even a grunt in response to my "thank you." On occasion I've yielded to the temptation to not extend my hand sufficiently to reach the cashier's: just to see how long it takes for the reverie (or coma) to abort itself and for the somnambulist in my midst to be jolted into wakefulness.
10.Still giving a damn and feeling the need to write these complaints down: I look forward to a day when I join the ranks of the great masses whose apathy and indifference frees them from these aggravations and psychic chafings. Ah, "to sleep, perchance to dream!" Nope. That might mean wishing, hoping, planning, praying…too much like life and rife for more disappointments. Much better: LIGHTS OUT!

Go Away

Decking halls and wrecking balls:
Creation and destruction meet
Where meaning ends and hope pretends
"Nothing to these gangrened feet!"

The tiring task, voice mailings' masque
Reminds us gun shy fools
That silence brings a zillion zings,
Save mopped up bloody pools.

The mess is yours to clean and bleach
At such an age what's left to teach?
Best to withdraw though gaping maw
Of dreamless zilch invites.
And keep it neat: your stoic feat
Of nestling with the mites.

Your tale is told
It's old not gold
That shall your portion be.

Cry not nor fear
The bier that's near
And know you'll soon be free.