Perhaps you’ve heard the old joke… <\/p>\n
“Mrs. Feinman, what a magnificent ring!”<\/p>\n
“Yes, and it’s a legendary diamond!”<\/p>\n
“Legendary?\u00a0 Do you mean that it has a curse?”<\/p>\n
“Of course it does… the curse is Mr. Feinman!”<\/p>\n
The story I am going to relate has nothing to do with rare gems.\u00a0 Nor with Mr. & Mrs. Feinman.\u00a0 Nor is it part of a punchline.\u00a0 Nor is it something that I have spun from the cobweb of my mind. No.\u00a0 This is about a specific curse and it’s unique nature.\u00a0 And unlike the imaginary curse of\u00a0the Feinman Diamond, it is very real.<\/p>\n
My familiarity with the details described here happened as a result of a chance occurrence while consuming a dram of whisky at the Ash Creek Saloon.\u00a0 The events took place on a recent Thursday evening\u00a0after I had concluded my labours of enlightening a few citizens about the brilliance of Chateauneuf du Pape 2007.<\/p>\n
I made my way to the far end of the bar, reaching my perch to coincide with the arrival of a Wild Turkey Rye on the rocks\u00a0and a\u00a0cheerful greeting as a chaser, “Hi Jim Grapes!”\u00a0 Once again proving that in this lifetime few things can surpass being recognized by capable bar staff.<\/p>\n
“Kerry… your timing is impeccable.”<\/p>\n
I think that it was somewhere between sip two and three when I took notice of the fellow sitting on the corner stool to my immediate right.\u00a0 He was tucking into a stack of buffalo\u00a0wings, which he washed down with a Sierra Nevada Ale.\u00a0 After each wing, he dipped his fingers in a glass of water, he then took a paper napkin and meticulously cleaned\u00a0his fingers.\u00a0 This activity produced a pile of spent chicken bones and bigger pile of crumpled barbecue sauce\u00a0stained\u00a0paper napkins.\u00a0 There was a surgical precision to his attack.\u00a0 He reserved the single bone “drumette” wings for last and he carefully alternated the celery and carrot sticks as the intermezzo <\/em>between each wing.<\/p>\n Having dispatched\u00a0his order of wings, he ordered a bowl of onion soup and another Sierra Nevada.\u00a0 While waiting the soup he proceeded to check his cuticles for offensive bits of sauce or chicken residue, wasting two more napkins in the process.<\/p>\n If I had any intentions of accomplishing something that evening besides reducing Ash Creek’s supply of Wild Turkey… doing some writing? Watching the Yankee game? Watching the NFL Draft?\u00a0It soon became evident that anything else would play a deep second violin to observing this guy.\u00a0 Geeze, if he was so fussy about cleanliness, why the hell did he order wings?<\/p>\n When his\u00a0crock of onion soup arrived he carefully inspected its appearance and sent it back,\u00a0telling Kerry to instruct the kitchen that he wanted the crock put back under the broiler to burn it’s crust of cheese black<\/em>, and he also needed some fresh parmesan on the side.<\/p>\n Dutifully done to his wishes and returned, he put some parmesan on the blackened crust of the soup and then dipped his spoon underneath the thick blanket of cheese and toast to the murky broth below.\u00a0\u00a0A slurp of soup. Then a sip of Ale…<\/p>\n If I thought I had escaped his<\/em> notice, I was wrong.\u00a0 He glimpsed the flat screen in back of me and asked, “Do you like football?”<\/p>\n Sounds like an innocuous question, no?\u00a0 NFL Draft on TV… what could be bad?\u00a0 After years of frequenting both sides of a bar, I have learned that there is no such thing as an innocuous question at a bar.\u00a0 Answer the question the <\/em>wrong way about the desirability of the Giants 1st Round Selection say, and three Sierra Nevada’s later a bar fight ensues.<\/em><\/p>\n Without waiting for my reply he offered, “My name is John Baffles.\u00a0 You look like a regular here.”<\/p>\n I nodded.<\/p>\n “I love football.”\u00a0 He paused to catch the Packers’ choice of Bryan Bulaga being discussed.\u00a0 “It all began with a train ride.\u00a0 In 1960 I was eight years old and my Father took me to watch Yale play Harvard in Cambridge.”<\/p>\n I put my drink down.\u00a0 Stopped writing. Stopped looking at the TV screens.<\/em><\/p>\n “We pulled out of Union Station.\u00a0 There were a whole bunch of people going to The Game.\u00a0 Students. Alums.\u00a0 And folks just like us.”<\/p>\n He got that right. I was one of those folks.\u00a0 I was on <\/em>that train.\u00a0 I was there with <\/em>my Dad.<\/em><\/p>\n “And my Father begins to tell me a story as we clattered along the Connecticut shore line, ‘Johnny, I was seventeen in 1929\u00a0when Army came to play Yale at the Bowl in New Haven.\u00a0 I can remember it like it was yesterday.\u00a0 It seemed like the entire Corps of Cadets must have detrained at Union Station.\u00a0 I can remember standing on the corner of the Boulevard and Chapel St. when they marched by.\u00a0 Rows of neat oxford grey uniforms trimmed in black… the black visors of their caps gleaming, the cadence call of the platoon leaders setting the pace of the march. I stood in amazement.\u00a0 What chance did Yale stand against this impressive display?\u00a0 The snap, snap, snap of a crisp\u00a0step.\u00a0 The precision.\u00a0 The previous year against Army,\u00a0Yale went down to defeat 18-6.’\u00a0 I loved my Father’s stories.\u00a0 There was a cadence <\/em>in his story telling.\u00a0 I watched Long Island Sound stream by in the window… but it was my Father’s words, his description… I could see <\/em>it.”<\/p>\n 1960. My, oh my.\u00a0 I remember that year well.\u00a0 In 1960 a quirk in scheduling had Yale playing home in\u00a0eight in\u00a0nine of its games.\u00a0 I saw each of those games.\u00a0 Most from General Admission seating in Portal 26.\u00a0 I was ten years old.\u00a0 My mother let me go by myself.\u00a0 I would walk the five blocks from our Alston Ave home with $5.\u00a0 $2 for the ticket. $1 for the program.\u00a0The remainder would cover two hotdogs, one Coke & a bag of peanuts (for my return trip).\u00a0 I would give Mom the change.<\/em><\/p>\n When my Dad and I boarded that train in New Haven, along with John Baffles and <\/em>his Father, and the rest of the Eli faithful, Yale was undefeated and untied.\u00a0 Only Harvard stood in their way to a perfect season.<\/em><\/p>\n John Baffles took a satisfying sip of his Sierra Nevada. “As I watched out the window, my\u00a0Father carried on, ‘The Bowl filled.\u00a0 This wasn’t Brown coming into New Haven!\u00a0 This was Army!\u00a0 A football power in those days!\u00a0 I hurried to my General Admission seating at Portal 25 on the Chapel\u00a0St. side. {How ’bout that! practically a neighbor separated by 31 years!} <\/em>What a game!\u00a0 Yale trailed 13 to nothing when a little scamp of a Yalie took hold of the game.\u00a0 No bigger than a flea… only 5’6” and tipping the scales under 145, Albie Booth, one of New Haven’s own, would go on to rush for 200+ yards, score two rushing touchdowns, add another in electrifying punt return of 65 yards, breaking tackles, dodging defenders and streaking his way to the end zone.\u00a0 He also kicked three extra points.\u00a0Score? Army 13, Albie Booth 21!!\u00a0Army upset by Yale!!\u00a0 Johnny I was there!'”<\/p>\n John took a\u00a0rest in his narrative to make note of the Cowboys\u00a0picking Dez Bryant with their\u00a01st Round Selection. “Figures.\u00a0 Jerry Jones jumped on a headliner<\/em>, and he got a “head case.”\u00a0 He just shook his head and returned to his\u00a0story.<\/p>\n “My Father kept on talking about the game.\u00a0 I didn’t say one word, not one word.\u00a0 Then my Father stopped, noticed my extended silence, looked at me and asked, ‘Say… you alright?’\u00a0 I was just staring into space picturing in my mind Albie Booth dodging his way thru the Army defenders, stiff arming one guy, faking another guy out of his jock, the hometown\u00a0crowd standing on the their feet shouting and cheering.\u00a0 I was seeing it all… hearing it all.\u00a0 I blinked, and said I was fine.\u00a0 My Father smiled, ruffled my hair and said knowingly, ‘I see… you just have the Curse of Toplitsky<\/em>!'”<\/p>\n I put my rye whisky down, “Curse of Toplitsky?”<\/p>\n “I guess you can call it the ability to visualize events\u00a0in exact detail … the sights, sounds, smells all carved in vivid relief.”<\/p>\n “Curse?\u00a0 Well, maybe it’s a gift<\/em> or a blessing<\/em>.”<\/p>\n “Blessing or a\u00a0gift?\u00a0 That’s a good thought.\u00a0\u00a0The happy and beautiful\u00a0things I see and feel are truly marvelous.\u00a0 Funny things are just… well, funnier<\/em>.\u00a0 Tell me a good joke and I can’t stop laughing.\u00a0 But it doesn’t stop there.\u00a0 You see, the sad things are just as intense.\u00a0 The things that hurt I will feel for days.\u00a0 I just haven’t figured out the way to put a mute<\/em> on those things that give pain.”<\/p>\n “And this Toplitsky?”<\/p>\n For the first time that evening I saw him break out into a broad grin, “Oh, I think that might have been just something that my Father made up… something to fit his own mind.\u00a0 He never really told me where it came from.”\u00a0 <\/p>\n He paused. Surveyed his\u00a0crumpled napkins, and just waited.\u00a0 And I knew that he was thinking of his Father.\u00a0 Bringing him into clear focus. He looked back in my direction, “Yeah, Toplitsky<\/em>… my Father had the curse, too.”<\/p>\n I bit my lip.\u00a0 That night I didn’t have the mental stamina to\u00a0share in\u00a0his recollections and observations. That I was from New Haven.\u00a0 That I had gone to the same Yale-Harvard game that he went to… and maybe other games, too?\u00a0 <\/p>\n But it was too easy to slip back to the memories of that\u00a0season, and my only visit to Harvard Stadium.\u00a0 A “horseshoe” stadium… a poor cousin to Yale Bowl.\u00a0 And what miserable seating… not the bench seats that the Bowl had… no, mere wooden planks on cement.\u00a0 Dad and I had seats fairly low and near the end zone.\u00a0 I can remember men wearing tweed jackets and the ladies wearing camel hair polo coats with blue mums pinned to their lapels.\u00a0 And most, I can remember the valor of Tom Singleton, Yale’s QB from New Trier High School… his number 10, in traveling white for this game, bringing a successful conclusion to Yale’s undefeated and untied season.<\/p>\n After the game Dad took me to this place that he knew would be fun for dinner.\u00a0 I could see that there were other folks who had been to the game, too.\u00a0 I gripped my Game Program knowing that I would be able to dissect its every word and photograph on the train ride home. The detail of the restaurant’s name is lost to me. Oh, well…<\/p>\n When I looked up from my day-dream, there I was, a half empty whisky glass in front of me.\u00a0 John Baffles was gone… Johnny “Clean Fingers”.\u00a0A\u00a0napkin or two\u00a0yet to be cleared served as\u00a0a reminder of his gustatory surgery.\u00a0 I looked into my glass, examined the melting ice.\u00a0 This business about the Curse of Toplitsky has got me thinking.\u00a0 Do you believe it?\u00a0 I do.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Perhaps you’ve heard the old joke… “Mrs. Feinman, what a magnificent ring!” “Yes, and it’s a legendary diamond!” “Legendary?\u00a0 Do you mean that it has a curse?” “Of course it does… the curse is Mr. Feinman!” The story I am … Continue reading