The Ash Creek Papers

So, here’s a clean joke I like (and one of the very few that I know.  Also, bear in mind… I could make it longer; but elaborate staging notes will have to suffice.)

{Setting: Two couples in their late 70s after dinner.  The wives have retreated to the kitchen to assemble the dessert & coffee.  The two husbands head to the den to lay claim to the most comfortable seating.}

Husband #1:  We went to a great place for dinner on Wednesday night.
Husband #2:  Oh? Where’d ya go?
Husband #1:  We drove down to New Haven.
Husband #2:  OK, New Haven. What’s the place?
Husband #1:  It was that place that was just written up in that, uhhhh, in… uhhhhh…NO! it was on that thing on cable.  You know… that program that features different places to eat in different towns.  You know… San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, New Haven.
Husband #2: OK, New Haven. What’s the name of the place?
Husband #1: The name? It’s, uhhhh {rolls his eyes}. Uhhhhh {shifts a bit in his chair}.  It was, uhhhh {gestures with his hands in a circular motion to indicate progressive thought and frustration}. It was… you know… {puts his hand to his forehead}!  *uch*  What’s the name of that flower that is red? But it could also be other colors!!  Come on… {gestures towards Husband #2 to supply the answer}.  You know… {gestures more emphatically and raises his voice considerably, displaying pique and irritation}. The flower that has long stems and all those thorns!!
Husband #2: A rose?
Husband #1: That’s it! {turns to the kitchen and shouts} Rose!!  What was the name of the restaurant we went to on Wednesday night?

I think it was Saul’s wife Kathy (Saul, being Sandy’s brother), who mentioned during brunch we shared at Mix Prime in Woodbury that nouns are the first to go. This observation was made when someone at the table (I don’t remember who) couldn’t retrieve a word from his or her vocab inventory.Then, the conversation thread came to a halt as the table engaged in a joint effort to tease out the missing word.

Sorta like the game of charades.  But in charades the person who holds the floor knows the answer, and everyone else in the room has to try to guess the answer.  But in this little variation, no one knows the answer.  Or more accurately, the person who knows the answer can’t remember it. (And this is why it’s good to go to places that serve unlimited Bloody Mary’s and Mimosa’s for brunch).

In the general scheme of things this “forgetting a word” is a mild symptom of aging.  And it is something to keep in mind when other more problematic physical issues begin to intrude in our lives.

Anyway, what’s the big deal if one day you can’t remember, for example, the term “beltway”?  What brought this to mind, I can’t say.   But I enlisted Sandy’s help to unearth the word to describe an Interstate road that is used to circuit around a major city to avoid the more congested route that goes thru the city.  I even had trouble articulating the purpose of this thing. I stumbled thru countless, “ya knows” and “come ons” (all accompanied with gestures added to help recover the word),and voiced in a crescendo of exasperation, and all to no avail. (SIDE NOTE: increased speaking volume is of no assistance).

At this point we can agree that “beltway” is not a particularly fancy word (what linguists would call an “inkhorn” term).  It’s easy to spell.  Easy to pronounce.  Once you understand the context, it’s easy to understand the meaning… and thoroughly maddening not to be able to put the word into play when I wanted to.  The word remained unreturned to me for over a week.  True.  That pesky word vexed my sleep for a week.  At least once a night, while trying to fall asleep, or in the middle of the night when I would get up to hit the loo (see above comment about physical issues of aging), there would be a void where “beltway” should be. Finally, there came the night when I got up from my sleep and announced to the ceiling fan, “beltway.”  I felt like T.E. Lawrence who against all odds crossed the Negev Desert!  I was a happy fellah.  I now “owned” the word… never to be forgotten!

Unrelated to interstates and beltways, more recently I had a “Yogi Berra Moment” (he, a distinguished American man of letters who once said, and I quote, “it was like déjà vu, all over again…”).  I was in conversation and lost the word to describe random violence, not against people, but against property.  Like in Disney’s  animated film Pinocchio when Pinocc and Lampwick are in Pleasure Island and the kids are running amuck throwing bricks at houses and dropping pianos from second floor windows.

It took another in-the-middle-of-the-night-epiphany for “vandalism” to be released from the netherworld of my mind.  I fashioned an association for the word to aid in its retention.  It was simple, the origin of the word traces back to the Vandals, one of the “barbarian” tribes that hassled the Roman Empire, and I’m a big fan of barbarians… Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Huns, Franks, Vandals… I like ‘em all! So I felt confident that I could put losing a troublesome word to rest!

But not so fast Kowalski… a few weeks later I was re-visiting my word dropping incidents to Sandy, and lo!  My re-acquisition of “beltway” proved fleeting!  So much for “owning” the word.  Thankfully I regained the noun without an extended lapse, and then to seal the deal, Sandy, being from Brooklyn, offered the “Belt Parkway” as an associated term.

Am I “safe”?  Not really.  This “noun loss” thing ain’t going away.  I’m grateful that my collection of adjectives and verbs appear unaffected by vocabulary displacement. Remembering people’s names can sometimes be a challenge.  And there is something else I wanted to add here in closing… but I forget what it is.  Shame, I’m sure that it was insightful, clever and pithy.

Let’s get this small detail out of the way.  I didn’t like school. {Well… thinking back on it, I was OK with recess, gym & art.}  From my earliest memory, anything remotely close to the academic side of school filled me with anxiety. Two examples:  I had trouble with cursive… particularly with the upper case letters.  And the times table terrified me.

As I ascended the ladder of education did I outgrow this revulsion to learning?  In a brief word.  No. More to the point, my anxiety – heaps of worry & fear of failure – would only be magnified and multiplied as I moved from the lower grades to high school.

{For years I have tried unsuccessfully to cast my school boy days in a positive light:  blue skies, puffy white clouds, humming birds speeding between hedges of honeysuckle, the smell of thick burgers with a decent fat content getting a good char on a grill…}

Sadly, I have been unable to escape the dread of school that grips my soul.  Why… why fifty years plus since I walked down the aisle to receive my diploma from Hamden Hall Country Day School in 1967, and then four years later my B.A. from Union, am I still haunted by horrific dreams (nay, nightmares) about school?

These are horrible, horrible night time visions.  I am in a classroom and I know that I am ill-prepared for the day’s class assignment, and I sit there scared shitless that I will be called on to answer a question.  OR, I’m late and heading for class and I forget which class I am supposed to go to, nor where the classroom is!  OR, I forget my combination to my school P.O. Box! OR, {and I’ve saved the best for last} I have blown off two of my three classes of the spring trimester at Union, and there is no way that I will be graduating with my class! What am I going to say to my parents?!

{Do you lose weight if you sweat profusely at night while sleeping?  Another brief word.  No.}

But there I am at 2:00am during a random night, bathed in sweat because my parents just learned that I wouldn’t be graduating with Union’s Class of ’71. First, I did graduate.  And, second, even if I hadn’t graduated without my parents knowing, and even if I had spent the night in perspiration, I could find joy in spending a brief interlude with my parents who watched this unfortunate tragedy from “above”.

In spite of my inherent distaste for any form of study, by my Senior year at Hamden Hall I discovered the writing of Damon Runyon (1880 – 1946).  I’m guessing my Dad introduced his short stories to me (he, who had also taught me how to play gin*).  There was a rustic authenticity to Runyon’s tales that were set in Prohibition New York City.  There were hilarious episodes with wonderful characters, and even more important, Runyon had a casual disregard for grammar.  Among his literary quirks, he shunned the use of contractions, he avoided past and future tenses using the present for both.  He also dodged using the conditional by replacing it with the future indicative, “Now most any doll on Broadway will be very glad indeed to have Handsome Jack Madigan give her a tumble.”

How could you not love stories populated by folks with the names like: Nathan Detroit, Sky Masterson, Nicely-Nicely, Harry the Horse, Benny Southstreet, Big Jule and Miss Adelaide.  And then the period, off-beat vocabulary: a handgun referred to as a “John Roscoe” or an “equalizer.”

And he was an expert in crafting the perfect, yet understated, punchline.  Here is some advice from Sky Masterson:

“One of these days in your travels, a guy shows you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken.  Then this guy offers to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you are ending up with an ear full of cider.”

These stories, frequented by con-artists, bootleggers, gamblers, mild thugs & ladies of questionable virtue, were so far removed from the 25 Alston Ave of my home in New Haven.  But these extraordinary short stories captured me.

I adored Runyon.  Miss Stewart, my English teacher in 12^th Grade, not so much.  But when the assignment to write a major paper on an American Author, I chose Damon Runyon.  And poor Miss Stewart of lace collar and cardigan sweater sensibility had to square Silas Marner,  Hester Prynne and Captain Ahab with Nathan Detroit?  What could I – interested in a solid grade – hope for? I must have been nuts! Runyon, a perfect mirror of time and place, possessing an astute ear for spoken texture and dialogue, and who routinely flushed syntax down the toilet?

Maybe Miss Stewart had to swallow hard to give me a decent grade on that paper.  Although I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that she had never read a word of Runyon before I put him before her.  Nor would she have been enamored of his writing as I was.  So be it.

I consider Damon Runyon a small light of happiness in an otherwise gloomy experience in High School English Lit.  Other than Runyon, I never read a single book of any stripe that wasn’t assigned in course work (and that included College).

After Union I would learn to love reading.  First, the 19^th Century Russian novelists that I took to reading during my days at Ft. Gordon, GA.  Then, on to the works of John Irving, Wm. Styron, Anthony Burgess and a superb collection of writers who contributed to the New Yorker.

But looking back, I have to peevishly giggle at the thought of Miss Stewart rolling her eyes as she read a selection of Runyon’s prose that I would have included in my paper: “I am not putting the knock on dolls.  It’s just that they are something to have around only when they come in handy.  Like cough drops.”

n.b. In my day we didn’t have “Language Arts” in school.  We had “English.”

* I passed on my gin playing skills to my Daughter Shaina when she attained the age of 10 (maybe less).  And I have just had the pleasure of teaching her Daughter Olivia (aged 10) the game during an extended family trip.  Instruction included seminars on “The Tactical Use of Knocking”, “The Defensive Hand”, and “The Essentials of Distracting Gab”.