Run-Walk '98

Last weekend they held the annual Revlon Run-Walk fund raiser in Central Park; I didn't have to be there, but in years past it was part of my job to manage the public-relations aspects of the event for the medical center. I wrote a letter about the experience to my mother, who was hospitalized in Denver at the time, back in 1998...

May 5, 1998

Dear Mom,

Well, it was another uneventful week here in the big city, except for last Friday, when I had to go to the annual cold salmon, cold asparagus, cold string beans and cold boiled potato Brooklyn Diocese World Communication Day Luncheon, and then over to Central Park to set up our booth for the big Revlon Run-Walk fund-raising event on Saturday morning. The car was so loaded down with stuff for the booth that it scraped on the ground when I went into the parking lot at the luncheon, but I was in a really optimistic mood because all of the brochures had been printed on time and were delivered to me or ready for pickup, and the all the pieces of the big booth display unit were delivered on time, and I got out of the luncheon on time after a satisfying repast of a buttered dinner roll and two miniature Italian pastries, and the rain was holding off and predicted only for the overnight, not for my setup that afternoon or for the event the next morning, and the traffic into Manhattan was light.

I stopped at the ad agency to pick up the boxes of the new brochure, and their creative director, who had argued with me about every detail of the brochure, and told me that what I wanted certainly was not what I needed, and that he would agree to do it my way only if I admitted that I understood that what I was asking for was all wrong and would serve no useful purpose and that he was acting against his every professional instinct and all his years of experience and training to condescend to put this – forgive him – wrong-headed and misguided waste of paper and ink to press, came down to meet me and to ask me if I didn't think the final product was brilliant and if I could ever thank him enough. I said it was and I couldn't.

Then I went to pick up Mike Quon, the designer who had worked on the graphics for the booth display and who had offered to help me set it all up in the park. I found him in perfect time and we got to the park precisely to our allotted hour, and we were admitted past all the security and allowed to drive right around on the field and pull up on the grass exactly behind our assigned tent, and I turned to Mike and I said – and oh! How bitterly did I later regret saying these words! – “Wow! This is really working out great! Isn't it?”

And I smiled at him vacuously as the luck ran out of my day like warm milk dribbling from a sleepy baby’s mouth, and Fate rubbed its hands together in glee and prepared to spring its sinister trap.

We got out of the car and the first thing I noticed was that the large circus-style big-top tent with the cement floor that we had been told to expect had somehow become a row of small, one-booth-per-tent “little-tops” pitched on grass. Oh, well, not to worry. We dragged all the materials from the car and into the little tent. Because the car would be out of our sight when we began to work in the tent I carefully locked the doors. This may be a park, but it’s still New York, right?

The display had been delivered in two big 72-lb. rolling cases. We opened them and found a tiny little instruction book with incomprehensible drawings. We took out the pieces of the display itself, and discovered a heavy, dense nest of interlocking plastic rods that we proceeded to twist and pull and turn and yank until one of us got lucky, and it suddenly blossomed into spidery seven-feet-tall by ten-feet-wide curved wall with knobs and hubs that needed only to be snapped firmly together by people with three hands and no tendency to vertigo as it bounded and swayed above our heads. It didn’t seem to fit in our little tent.

“It doesn’t seem to fit in our little tent,” I said to Mike.

“Maybe when we get it all set up?” said Mike doubtfully.

We took it out onto the grass in front of the tent and started attaching various “rails” and “panels” and “headers” and “footers”. With all of these parts attached, the display looked very professional. It still would not fit into the little tent, however, and in the increasing wind on the lawn it displayed superior aerodynamic properties, and seemed perfectly capable of carrying us off toward the lake like a flying carpet.

Mike’s beeper went off. Emergency back at his office. “Use my phone,” I said, reaching into my empty pocket for the car keys. “It’s – uh...”

I searched all my pockets. I searched the ground at our feet. I searched in the little tent, and on the tables in the little tent.

“... it’s, uh, locked in the car. With our jackets. And the car keys.”

And as we stared at each other in the suddenly dark and empty and lonely East Meadow of Central Park, it began to rain.

It’s surprising how ill-suited a shirt and tie and dress slacks and dress shoes are to spending even a few minutes in a downpour in Central Park. Clothing that is perfectly appropriate for infighting in the corporate office is worse than useless for keeping off the rain. Within no time our ties were dragging soddenly and our pants were drooping heavily and the grass had sunk into a nasty mud that kept trying to suck our shoes off at every step. We decided that Mike would go for help or a wire coat hanger, whichever came first, and I would disassemble the display.

He disappeared quickly in the driving rain, especially since I had to take off my glasses to be able to see at all, and I discovered that taking the fiendishly clever display apart was not more than twice as difficult as putting it together. By the time I had finished, each individual piece of it was soaked through and coated with mud and sticky leaves of grass. It would not, not, not, no matter what I did or said to it – and as I recall I said plenty – fit back into its clever carrying cases. When Mike returned he found me standing disconsolately under the dubious shelter of our little tent, shivering like an old horse. He had found a wire hanger.

Unless you have ever tried to open a car door with a wire coat hanger, you will not appreciate the steely determination and dispassionate resolve with which I approached – and conquered – the challenge of that locked car. It’s an older Buick, one of the last cars ever made, probably, in which the wire hanger trick is even remotely possible. Its lock posts have just the slightest little bulge to them at the top, just enough to give the fingers a purchase – never enough, you would say, to grab with a loop of sproinging wire from an extreme angle at the front of the window, and CERTAINLY never enough to pull the post up and unlock the door.

But I did it.

Took me 45 minutes of intense, grim-lipped effort, minutes during which Mike looked on quietly, rain water running down his face, his own concentration willing the wire to catch the post...

But I did it.

We loaded the car and I drove Mike home. Along the way I panicked when I couldn’t find my glasses, until Mike gently pointed out that I was wearing them. He hopped out of the car pretty quickly when we got to his house. The next day I would show up early at the park with Ada and we would get the little tent decorated suitably, and no one except Mike and me would ever know how close we came that night... how thin is the line between civilization and nature... how yucky it feels when cold mud squeezes into your dress shoes.

I’m pretty sure that Mike will never ever go anywhere with me again.

Your loving son,

Steve

By the way, if you're interested in fine art and graphic design, visit Mike Quon's web site at http://www.quondesign.com/index.htm.

Remote Controlling

Word from Allan Janus, who has sommat to do with Panabasis, The Journal of the Janus Museum, which resides at http://www.janusmuseum.org/panabasis/main.htm, that he's trying out Orb, a service that allows one to access one's files remotely. Allan is using Orb successfully to share music files. This reminds me to mention that I use Logmein.com's remote-control and file-sharing software to remotely operate our computers and swap files around. Works like a charm, especially when I get to the office and find that I've left a crucial file on the home computer, or when Ada needs tech support. I pay a modest fee for the version installed on my computer to get added functionality, but use the free version on our other computers (and those of a few more-hapless-than-me friends who rely on me for help when they get into computer trouble). With Logmein, I can sit on the deck at Eagle Lake and connect to the computer at home to read e-mail, pay bills, and do work for clients. 'Tis a grand thing altogether... though it don't play music.