The Ash Creek Papers

I just shake my head and laugh when I learn about stuff… simple stuff that other folks have known all along that some how had eluded my understanding…

Take that common instruction that Doctors give to us boys to “turn you head and cough”. For the ladies in the audience who are not in the know, this command is given while the Doctor places his fingers near our “pride and joy” and is meant to be a test for a hernia… well, that’s what they tell us anyway.

Now the coughing part I can sort of understand. The act of coughing can put a strain on your lower abdomen as muscles constrict. OK. It was the “turn your head” part that I could never figure out.

I guess I just attributed it to one of the mysteries of medicine. You know… the act of pivoting your head 90 degrees created a change in the vertical column of your spine which had an impact on the pelvis and the housing for our genitalia. It was the key feature in determining if we had a hernia or were prone to one.

So I thought…

I guess I was nearing 50 years of age when the mystery of this curious medical test was finally unwrapped. I forgot how I learned it… or who told me. The “turn your head” part was merely meant to have you not cough in the Doctor’s face.

Geeze… you gotta giggle.

Or an earlier revelation… there is a Jewish delicacy called gefilte fish. I will spare you the details on how this “delicacy” is made… suffice it to say that for practical purposes it is a “fish meatball” comprised of pike, carp & white fish. It is a popular dish to serve at Passover in the spring and on Rosh Hashanah in the fall. If the idea of this dish doesn’t sound appetizing, let me assure you the sight of it is worse. And if truth be told, I think that 75% of the Jews hate the dish.

Be that as it may, my Grandmother Mommie Soph made a superior gefilte fish (by the by, for those of us who love this dish we all have Mothers or Grandmothers who made the best… something that put us immediately at odds with our spouses and any other pretenders to the cooking craft).

Twice a year Mommie Soph would labor at producing an adequate quantity of gefilte fish to supply our extended family and then some. I am first to admit that there couldn’t have been a more finicky eater than me. The fact that I adored Mommie Soph’s gefilte fish is well known. Paul also rightly observed that the typical use of beet horseradish as a condiment was completely unnecessary for Mommie Soph’s fish… she peppered it so, that a simple bite would bring tears to your eyes and clear your sinuses.

I would look into the kitchen as she made jars of fish for this and that relative. To me it was like she was depleting the reserves of Fort Knox. And then there was the jar she was sending to the Povermans.

The Povermans?

How the hell do they rate? OK. The Povermans were long time friends of our family. They lived around the corner on McKinley St. David was a Doctor, married to Helen… two children, Judy who went to school with Lynn (and who I think had a crush on Paul at one point) and Buzzie who went to Hopkins with Paul and Alan. The Povermans were also sailors… they had a boat that slept 6 or 8… and it was on that boat that Paul would crush his leg just before graduating from Union College.

OK… back to the fish. Now, fine… the Povermans are dear friends, they lived around the corner, and all… but still it amazed me that they wanted Mommie Soph’s gefilte fish… I mean most Jews are repelled by it… but for someone who was gentile to actually like it demonstrated conclusively to me how excellent Mommie Soph’s version was… you know Q.E.D.

One day I was talking to Bessie about Mommie Soph’s gefilte fish, I guess I must have been 30 something when this conversation took place… how great it was… Bessie in fact took a stab at it one year; but let’s not kid around, it was good; but a shadow of what Mommie Soph made. And then I said… “look Bessie, if non-Jews like the Povermans could like Mommie Soph’s fish… then that had to say something.”

Then she looked at me and said, “What are you talking about?”

And I repeated… “If the Povermans, and there can’t be anyone more Episcopalian than them, liked gefilte fish…”

“Episcopalian? Are you nuts? They’re Jewish!”

I nearly fainted. I thought Bessie had to be pulling my leg. Even after both Paul and Lynn confirmed to me that they were Jewish… I thought that they were pulling my leg, too. It was a conspiracy. I had known the Povermans all my life… I knew better.

Man, you gotta giggle.

Other folks can giggle, too. Take the car I drive on most days. It is a red Chevy Sprint of indeterminate age. I acquired the car from Lynn and Alan when Zack reached driving age and would need a car for work. And as things turn and twist, the car that was meant for his use was turned over to me, and he got the better car (the safer car, as Ellen pointed out), and the car that was easier to drive (Zack not skilled in the stick shift arts).

Some 8 years later I am still driving the Sprint. It is being held together by bailing wire and glue. Suzy drives my “new” car… for somewhat the same reasons that Zack did.

For years I have referred to this car as my mercedes… (and in print mercedes is always with a lower case “m”). I tell folks that I got a great price on it because it didn’t have the hood ornament. It is my ambition to one day have a real Mercedes and have a bumper sticker made that says my other car is a Chevy Sprint.

Well… the rest of the world can laugh… I think there are more Dusenburgs on the road than Chevy Sprints!

Nevertheless, I have been the brunt of many a joke with regards to the mercedes. Folks at work always make light of it… But there are new folks that get “layered” into work here at Grapes, and who will get stories mid-stream so to speak.

And so it was Donna, who kept on hearing about the mercedes… and clearly she saw a beat up Chevy Sprint sitting in the parking lot of Grapes and simply thought that I left the Mercedes at home… and only used it for special occasions. We had been working together for several months… and it was no big deal… it’s not like we dwell on cars… so the incidental references to the mercedes caused no ruffles.

Then there is the day that Sandy makes light of the mercedes… and she knew the car… and when Donna finally learns about the true nature of the car they share a good laugh.

And when Sandy tells me that Donna thought that I really had a Mercedes I had a good laugh, too.

So armed with this amusing tale of “mistaken identity”, I decide to share my laugh with Barbara… a woman who I have worked with for five years…

I lay out the story… how Donna actually thought I had a Mercedes… and Barbara turns red in the face, gets this wonderful sheepish smile… and she says that this was news to her, too… that she thought I had a Mercedes, too and just kept it parked at home.

Oh well… I just gotta giggle.

Maybe it’s a sign of age? I think of myself sitting in a solarium, the sun streaming into the room, in a rocking chair, a blanket on my lap, maybe I just peed in my PJs… but somehow enjoying the simplicity of a good giggle… remembering what it was like to laugh at something that had an unexpected truth.

I like collecting this stuff… and I know that this can get out of hand… and perhaps this isn’t as amusing to you as it is to me.

But if you see me one day dribbling oat meal from the corners of my mouth… and if I have some stupid shit eating grin on my face… you’ll have an idea what I’m thinking about…

And it’s all good.

Look around… who can you trust with your ills? It ain’t your Doctor… that’s purely medical… and that’s not what I’m talking about. No.

And sometimes you can’t talk to your “significant other” either. Maybe that part pinches a bit… you know, you would think we could talk to someone who we are intimately connected to… but no, not always. We conceal our ills from those who we are closest to… maybe it hurts more to reveal a vulnerability? (it’s not their fault… it’s just the way it is).

So where is it safe? Where is it comfortable? Where can you go to be whole? Man, there are oodles of corner joints… places where there is a chair for us, faces familiar & lights low enough to obscure our presence and preserve our anonymity.

It is there, on this night, that Mr. Billy reigns supreme. On other nights it could have been Sean or Kelly patrolling the business side of the bar at Ash Creek Saloon.

One time I got to thinking, “Does Billy own a pair of pants?” I don’t think I have ever seen him working the bar, regardless of the season, in anything other than shorts. No matter. Billy is always there with a word, a smile, a thrust of a welcoming hand, a “howya doin’?”… and he is lightening quick to refill your glass with some of Kentucky’s finest.

To be there seems to be enough… a scritch and rub to your soul.

Trade places? I have been on Billy’s side. Many years. I like it better on this side. But I confess that sometimes I itch to go behind the bar again. To draw a beer, mix a Madras, chill the glasses for a perfectly built Martini… Oh yes, a brilliant Martini. Moving from one citizen to another, administering an elixir, providing a word or two, helping the wait staff, settling checks… not dropping a beat.

I do appreciate Billy’s work. I recognize his skill and “charm”. And more than anything else, I thank Billy for the respect and kindness he favours each of us, some in more need than others, and in particular I thank him for his smile and a wink to those who are suffering the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”… for it is the knowing smile and a wink that is infinitely more valuable than anything found in a glass.

I guess you could say that I work in a “mixed neighborhood”. In this case it means a couple of things. It is a neighborhood of small businesses that line the Boston Post Road… a transmission place (two in fact), auto glass, two body shops, a cemetery monument place (every now and then I go and check out the new models), Cablevision, Ash Creek Saloon (known by all as my second “Office”), the Exxon gas station where the courtly Maheesh presides in its “mini-mart”.

Then into this blend of commercial enterprises are the residential homes, or maybe better put “living units”. There are a few houses, always large and somewhat in disrepair… and invariably home to a cluster of people. We can assume that they are of the same family, or in someway connected by kinship, or maybe they just came from the same village.

We also have a small apartment complex that sits on the other side of the transmission place. I guess it would be called “low income housing”. I have an acquaintance that lives there and he pays $1000. a month (I think I am going to have to move to Kentucky). Regardless of the rent, families share flats there as well. Except Howard, now divorced, who lives in a flat by himself.

The other part of our “mixed” neighborhood is the varied cultural background of the inhabitants. Mostly we see South American Hispanics (gee, I hope that word is “politically” correct), some Central American Hispanics, Blacks, Island Blacks & Howard the Jew.

I get to work usually at 7:00AM and I am there ’til 9:00PM on most days… and in that time I get to see the faces & hear the voices. I will see them at “Chez Maheesh” when I go to grab a cup of Joe or a Diet Coke… I will see them when I put out my sand chair and grab some 5:00PM sun in our parking lot (known affectionately as my Lido). I am a marginal presence in their life, as they are in mine… we just happen to be sharing the same place at the same time.

Yesterday brought me out of my desk at a different time… it was only 8:00AM & usually I don’t go out for my first fix of “dark roast” ’til 9:30AM… but yesterday was a beautiful spring morning & I needed to take it in, it was the type of day that makes you feel good to be alive: the sky blue, the air slightly warmer than cool, buds on the trees beginning to show…

I look left and right, taking everything in. I see her approaching from the right… maybe she lives in the apartments down the street. She has red-ish coloured hair, flat and below her shoulders and in her arms she is carrying her daughter. At first glance I thought that, “my that’s a big kid to have to carry around…” But as she approached I could see that the woman was on the petite side, and her daughter only appeared big by contrast… the little girl was actually quite young. The little girl had dark hair and wore a dress, white ankle socks turned down and sneakers. There was a serious expression on the Mother’s face, whereas the child had this marvelous look of comfort… sort of the way a “Joey” looks inside Mama’s pouch, except this “Joey” had her hands intertwined around Mama’s neck.

There was firmness to the Mother’s step, no sense of effort or burden. She merely continued up the sidewalk not troubled by anything and never once having to re-position her bundle.

Some forty yards behind came another woman… a young Black woman… and she is also carrying her daughter in her arms. Maybe they live in the apartments, too. The little girl is sporting several tight braids each decorated with a colourful doo-dad and as her Mother strides up the walk; the girl looks up at the trees and absentmindedly fidgets with her braids.

And like the Mother in front of her, this Mother had no need to shift the weight of her daughter to lessen the load. Each step is followed by another.

Tracy Elementary School is a third of a mile away (maybe a half mile?). And both of these little girls (they have to be in Kindergarten) simply hitched a ride with their Moms.

I am too old to remember being carried by my Mother… I certainly have memories of seeing my kids being carried by Ellen… I loved carrying them, too… and maybe it’s why I love seeing Mothers with children in their arms. Can there be a better feeling than holding a child close to your breast, to feel its rhythm and warmth?

I love watching nature shows… mother lions carrying their cubs in their mouths, mother gorillas tenderly cuddling their babies… there’s something compelling there… something comforting… something that seems to be at the base of life, something that we all need.

And I look again as the two Mothers make their way to Tracy School. I smile. Did the kids really need the “ride”, or did the Mothers really need the press of their daughters’ bodies to theirs?

Maybe this all seems fitting… it’s spring and we celebrate the rejuvenation of life, Mother’s Day is around the corner & we celebrate our Mothers… but more important… it’s just a day and every day is a day to celebrate the love of a child to a Mother & a Mother to a child.

SAUL BELLOW

Saul Bellow passed away yesterday. I read several of his books, and while he will not replace John Iriving as my favorite writer… he still was an extraordinarily gifted author and winning the Noble Prize for Literature is no mean feat.

I have a favorite line from his book Humboldt’s Gift (the novel written in the year before winning his Laureate). The protaganist Charlie Citrine intones, “Martinis are like ladies’ breasts… one is not enough and three are too many”.

Well… if you heard me use that line… and if you didn’t know the source, now you do…

The Times had a terrific obit today… and there was a wonderful line there that is simply terrific. Bellow had been asked why he had returned to teaching (at Boston University)

“Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath.”

Man, do I love that line…