The Locksmith

The Locksmith
© Stephen E. Phelps, Jr. 2009

This story may not seem at first like it has anything to do with Christmas, but read on...


I don’t think I ever told you this, but once upon a time there was a man who loved to eat fish of every kind, and he never tired of sampling new kinds and varieties of fish, or new recipes for preparing fish, or new variations on those recipes. And so one day it came to pass that he found that he had sampled every kind and variety of fish that his native land had to offer, and every method of preparation also had he tried, until the fish markets and chefs and short-order cooks and indeed the housewives (and even those amiable sluts who hired out to cook) of his native land could dream up no new kind or variety or method of preparation of fish that he had not yet tried. Yet his appetite for new fish-eating experiences was not satisfied, and while he never minded repeating the joys of eating his favorite fish dishes, he longed for something more. And so it further came to pass that one day he made up his mind to travel to another country that he had heard of from a traveler, a country where, it was said (though the traveler, being a lapsed Catholic and having sworn a vow never to eat another bite of seafood because his mother had made the Fridays of his youth a living hell by forcing him to eat the slimy creatures, much against his will, could not attest to this of personal knowledge, and yet as to its veracity he believed it to be true) where it was said, as I say, that there were to be found still newer and more wonderful kinds and varieties of fish, and in addition cooks and chefs by the dozen and the score and the hundred and even the thousand of whom it was also said that they could prepare these kinds and varieties of fish in ways wonderful to behold, and exquisite to the taste, and novel to the palate, however jaded. And so the man who loved to eat fish traveled to this land, not forgetting not to leave home without his American Express card, and began to sample with renewed joy and vigor the new and wondrous kinds and varieties of fishes and methods of preparation of fishes that were to be found in that place, and for many and many an hour and day and week and month and year, just a really goddam long-assed extended period of time, let me tell you, he was happy in his heart, and his mouth watered and was fulfilled, watered and was fulfilled, watered and was fulfilled, over and over, time after time, and he knew bliss. Temporarily. Because eventually there came a day, that fateful day, rue the day, baby, when he had exhausted all the fishy culinary pleasures of that place, and he wiped his mouth and took a deep breath and belched a good long smelly one and looked about himself and said to himself, OK, self, don’t panic, just decide – where to now? And in that manner, restlessly, and questing, ever questing, for the ensuing main span of the prime of his life he traveled the wide world over, circling the globe, traveling by sea and land and over mountain and desert and through forest and jungle and across field and stream, real ones, not the magazine, from land to land did he roam, ever seeking new experiences in the eating-fish line, and finding and trying thousands upon thousands upon thousands of fishes big and small, short and tall, happy and sad, good and bad, until he had worked his way up and down the taxonomy, I mean the phyla, or phydra, or whatever you call it, shut up, that’s not the point of the story, what is the point of the story is that he tried like a real lot of freaking fish, just about every kind you can think of and a lot you probably can’t, just ever so much fish. Ever so much. Strangely, though, in all his travels through all these lands, through all the restaurants and kitchens and fish fries and barbecues and clam bakes and picnics and delicatessens with appetizing, the man had never once been offered to eat of lox. You are amazed, I know, but this is true. Never once any lox. Now stranger things have happened – admit it – impossible things, things almost incapable of being imagined, horrible things, like for example, I mean, well... two words: Sarah Palin. Enough said? You have to admit of the possibility of the unimaginable, and of coincidence, and I’m telling you the son of a bitch never had any goddam lox. But then one day in his fiftieth year this all changed, all changed, and it’s hard to say if the change was for the better or if it was for the worse, you’ll have to decide for yourself when you hear the rest of the story, because on account of on that day for the first time in his life someone set a plate of lox in front of the man, and he picked up his fork – and thinking to himself, what’s this, I wonder? – he brought a forkful of the lox to his mouth and closed his lips behind it and as it dissolved on his tongue and its essence filled his being and its bouquet filled his mind he stood up from his chair so quickly that it overset but never did he notice because he was in ecstasy, pure and simple ecstasy, it was the crowning moment of his life, I swear to God, he found that he could smile and laugh and blaze with joy all without opening his mouth or losing a millisecond of the transcendent experience of his first mouthful of lox. Glorious lox. And ultimately he swallowed it, and he felt it renew his soul and strengthen his bones and galvanize his sinews, and he planted his feet wide on the good earth and he threw back his head and extended his arms to embrace the whole world and he said, wow, this shit is REALLY good. What is it? And when they told him lox, it’s lox, ain’t you never had lox before, and he said, no, never, and they went through the whole thing again about them not believing him and him saying it must have been a coincidence and them scoffing until it occurred to him to mention Sarah Palin, like I did a few minutes ago to you, and then they settled down and said okay, we’ll buy that maybe it’s just barely possible that you’ve never had lox before, and he said well, there you are, and by the way – is this the only KIND of lox? There was a long pause while they looked at him, blank-faced and suspicious that he might, after all, be having them on, but his obvious shining happiness and eminently apparent good will convinced them that he was indeed an innocent, and then they looked at each other, and all unaware of what they were about to touch off, what they were on the verge of causing, of what they were on the cusp of loosing upon the world, they said, well no, of course it’s not the only kind. There’s LOTS of other kinds. Lots. And the man got a faraway look in his eye and became very still. Bring ’em on, he said. Bring ’em on. And so they did. Every manner and kind and variety of lox from seas near and far did they bring, the lox importers were like freaking NUTS calling their suppliers around the world and tracking down loxes that nobody from there had even HEARD of before, and the man ate on, greedily, implacably, glazed of eye and even drooling a little sometimes if he forgot himself, and becoming happier and happier in his heart while he neglected his personal hygiene and forgot to shave and frankly, I think, made, and I hate to say it, but I think he made a bit of a pig of himself with the goddam lox, but that’s me, forget I said it, I’m not here to judge anyway, never judge someone until you walk a mile in his shoes I always say. (Although even his shoes were filthy, but no, forget I said that, too, I’m wasting time and there’s a story to tell here.) Anyway – and I’m sure you know what I’m going to tell you next, don’t you? Yes, that’s right – next the thing is what happened is that there came an end to it. Nobody could find the man any more new kinds of lox anywhere in the whole world, and he was reduced to marking time with encore appearances of loxes he had known and loved, to idling along in neutral, as it were, new-lox-wise, humming to himself and basically happy – you know? – but no longer as who should say TRANSFIGURED, as he had been when they had been able to keep the new loxes coming. In heaven, he was, it was true. In heaven – but no longer touching the face of God. He grew restive. And, as so often happens when one grows restive, an idea came to him. Hey, he said one day to no one in particular, is there anyone who could be considered The World’s Leading Authority on Lox? Well, the question went around and around, and a few days later, an answer came back: yes, there was someone who could be considered The World’s Leading Authority on Lox. Why do you ask? (One should never ask a question of no one in particular, for this is exactly what you get, some idiot answers you and you have to be nice but isn’t it a pain in the ass trying to get any real information out of the moron while being polite when you want to take him by the throat and say BECAUSE I WANT TO MEET HIM AND ASK HIM ABOUT LOX YOU BUTT-HOLE and throttle him until his ears collide, but you can’t, because he’s the one who knows who The World’s Leading Authority on Lox is.) So, anyway, eventually the man learned the identity and whereabouts of The World’s Leading Authority on Lox, which were respectively, “Some Guy Named Murray”, and “354 Bay View Terrace, Boca Raton, Florida.” So the man traveled to Boca Raton, Florida, a fearsome and perilous journey, and met Murray, and sat him down with him and sayeth, hey, Murray, I have here a list of all the loxes that I have eaten, and I am as you may surmise a real lover of lox, however late in life I came to it, can’t get enough, and I would like to be sure – sure, d’y’hear me? – absolutely sure that I have sampled every kind of lox there is in this wide earth’s noble seas. And Murray studied the list a time and whistled, and said, you have gone about this with great application, my boy, with admirable perspicacity, if I may say so. As I look over this list I don’t see... hmmm, perha- ...ah, no, here ’tis, many would have overlooked this variety, it’s very rare, but not you old boy, not you, you are a dilly, you are a hum-dinger of a lox sampler, and I, Murray, am impressed. See, I scan the list again, I look most carefully to be sure nothing is overlooked, no elision to spoil your quest, I peer most assiduously, I tick it with my pencil here... nope. It is complete. You have eaten of absolutely every lox available. There is no available lox of which you have not eaten. You have surpassed even me myself, and you should be content, for you have done all that a reasonable man could possibly do, and there is no available lox that you have missed. And the man said, Murray, while I appreciate your congratulations, and believe me they mean a lot coming from a man such as yourself, for whom I have the deepest and most abiding respect, even though we’ve only known each other these, what, ten minutes or so, but yet and still I cannot be content in my soul with this outcome, for it is not my goal to have eaten every available lox, but rather to keep finding and eating new loxes, so that ever may my joy and pleasure increase, if you dig where I’m coming from. And Murray glanced down and to one side with a deprecating smile, but said no more. So, and heavily the man did rise and make to leave that place, that 354 Bay View Terrace, Boca Raton, Florida, and it was not until he was in the rental car on his way to the airport and stuck in traffic with a balky air conditioner and a radio that could only seem to tune in to Christian music stations that something, something made him replay Murray’s words to him in his mind, and he heard Murray say, you have eaten of absolutely every lox available, there is no available lox that you have missed, you have done all that a reasonable man could possibly do. Available lox? AVAILABLE? And a REASONABLE man? The man was back at Murray’s before you could say and-then-it-came-to-pass-my-ass, and with great intensity and a feeling of immense intellectual power and moral authority he pinned Murray with his gaze and said, okay, buster, what do you know that you ain’t telling me. And I mean spill it. And Murray said, I wondered how long it would take you, and Murray then said, come here and sit down. I’ll tell you – but you’re not gonna like it. And so Murray told him that there had for many years been stories, whispered in back alleys and murmured even in far finer venues, of a lox so exquisite, so rarefied, so fine, so sublime, that every last source of it, and the processes used to nourish and harvest and deliver it to table, had been bought up by a greedy syndicate of wealthy men and women, who kept it in a secret location somewhere in the world, no one knew where, though Murray had his suspicions, and kept it all to themselves so that once a year they could gather in clandestine splendor and eat it and say things like, wow, it’s cool to be so rich that we’re the only persons who can ever, ever eat this magnificent lox, and will you have a trifle more, thank you I believe I will, and laugh and laugh in hugely grating and despicable self-satisfaction. But lately, Murray said, lately there have been darker rumors, far darker indeed – rumors that I wish I did not credit, but which cannot be ignored because of their source and because of certain corroborating signs that only someone like The World’s Leading Authority on Lox, which is me, could have the wit and savvy to put together and to interpret and from which to draw certain inescapable conclusions, which, though speculative in the sense that they are unproved, empirically like, are nevertheless, probably, gospel. And what would they be, the man asked Murray, and Murray told him that the rumors were that the source of this finest lox in the known universe had, despite the enormous care and expenditures of the rich bastards, in fact been wholly depleted through depredation or disease, and that there existed only enough of the fabled lox to feed one more sitting of that ignoble group, which seating, due to understandable difficulties of preservation and the like, was now scheduled for early next year somewhere in the Yukon Territory, weather permitting. You mean there’s still a Yukon Territory, the man asked, but Murray didn’t answer because he had one more bit of news to impart, and it was a beaut. But wait, said Murray, I didn’t tell you the beauty part, which is that I know where that supply of the last of the lox is being kept. And the man said Murray if you do not want me to take you by the throat and throttle you until your ears collide, would you kindly tell me where this lox is being kept, and I mean spill it? And Murray said I’ll tell you – but you’re not gonna like it. And so Murray told him that the last untasted lox in the whole wide world (untasted by the man, anyway) was being kept at a certain place, which he told the man how to find, it doesn’t matter where it is – what, you’re going to go there? Keep your mind on the story, and remember who’s telling and who’s listening, all right? – and also that it didn’t matter if the man went there, though, because the lox was being kept in a safe that was impenetrable, was guaranteed to be impervious to any substance or physical force known to man, and had a combination that was so fiendishly clever, and a locking mechanism that was so incredibly state-of-the-art, all the bells and whistles, I mean a spare-no-expense locking mechanism you’d be proud to own and treasure in your family for generations to come, that no expert on the planet would even bother to take up the challenge of breaking into it, no, they would laugh at you if you asked them to do it, they would say, pah, and, feh, and, go along with ye now, and things like that, and after you were gone they would talk about you and say, did you get a load of that jerk? So, Murray said, now that you know everything that I know, you’re in the same boat as I am. You know everything, but there isn’t diddly squat you can do about it. And that, said the man to Murray, that is where you’re wrong. And so he went him out into the world again, saying, I have but less than a year to go to the place where the lox is being kept – look, I’m not going to tell you where it is, it’s no good you asking over and over, you’ll just piss me off and I won’t finish the story, so knock it off – to go to THAT PLACE, as I say, the man continued to himself after being so rudely interrupted, and to break into that safe, and taste that lox. And as for getting away afterward... well, that didn’t seem so important to him then, especially if there would be no more new lox to experience afterwards. Me myself personally, I think the man was somewhat of a depressive personality, because who thinks like that? That life might not be worth living if there’s no more new lox. But who am I, I’m not a doctor, leave that to the doctors, they’re the ones who know these things. Supposedly. And so the man set off to make a great study, and he visited major centers of learning throughout the world, and consulted with physical gentlemen and ladies in many branches of the sciences, and he made himself an expert on explosives and corrosives and metallurgy and thaumaturgy, and he came to the conclusion that not even a freaking miracle was going to get him into that safe unless he could get through its locking mechanism. So he changed course and he went to the major safe fabricators of the world, and he consulted with experts on both sides of the law on every kind and variety of locking mechanism, and on every kind and variety of skill and technology for defeating those locking mechanisms, and once in a while he’d take a break and sample some new type or kind of fish dish, if one presented itself, but from lox he abstained completely, for as there was nothing new to be had, he was saving himself for the One True Lox, as he had come to think of it, but mostly he just applied himself with dreadful intensity to the task of becoming the safe cracker of the world, and soon he outstripped those who had taught him, and word about him began to spread in the criminal underworld and then into the world of law enforcement, where all eyes watched him so very carefully to see what was the object of his knowledge quest, for it was obvious to them all that he had to be up to something. But they never caught on. And then came the day when he knew that he could do no more to improve himself. He had established to his own satisfaction that he was capable of breaking into any safe ever known to have been invented, even the computer-designed behemoths that guarded the world’s gold reserves in Zurich, and if the safe he was going up against turned out to be unknown, he would just have to pit his wits against its makers and let the devil take the hindmost. He was ready. He made his deliberate way to the secret place – did you say something? I thought not. – and in the dark of a deep night he let himself in, defeating least, then lesser, then great, then incredible security systems, working calmly and steadily and evenly, not even working up a sweat, but careful not to grow overconfident, and after many patient hours he stood in front of the safe of his quest. And then the safe did something that surprised him so he nearly raised an eyebrow. It spoke to him. “Locksmith,” he heard it say, “if you have come this far you are talented indeed.” And then it paused, as if waiting for an answer. I am, he said at last. “You are,” said the voice of the machine. It was deep and loud and might have filled a lesser man with awe. “And yet, Locksmith,” the safe continued, “there is something you do not know.” There are many things I do not know, the man answered. “No need to be pedantic,” the machine advised him, “it’s lost on me – I’m a machine.” Oh, the man said, Okay. Sorry. “Harrumph,” the safe said. “Locksmith, the specific thing about this situation that you do not understand is that there is a fifty-fifty chance that the lox you seek is only a fable, a cruel hoax invented by some guy named Murray who is tired of schmucks interrupting his retirement and asking him stupid questions about lox.” The man thought this over. Ah, he said, but that means there’s a fifty percent chance that you DO harbor the One True Lox. “Admittedly,” answered the safe. “But I must warn you now that if you choose to go on, and if you do defeat my mechanisms, which are not chopped liver and I gotta tell you your easy confidence is woefully misplaced, but that’s your problem, so if you choose to go on, and if you defeat me, and if I do not contain the fabled lox, you will then be faced with your tormentor.” And? Asked the man. “And, Locksmith,” said the machine, “a guy like you with depressive tendencies coming face to face with not only crushing disappointment but also with an oppressor of such obviously overwhelming intellectual parts...” The man had the feeling that the safe would have shrugged, if safes could shrug. He said to the safe, you let me worry about my tendencies and my parts. “Your funeral, Locksmith,” said the safe. “I say no more.” And it fell silent, and, after a decent interval, the man set to work. It was a titanic struggle. It went all through the rest of that night and all through the following day, though the man did not realize it because he was so wrapped up in what he was doing, I’m sure you’ve experienced that, you’re so intent on something you lose all sense of time and everything? But it was a titanic struggle – I said that, didn’t I? Sorry. – and the man knew early on that he was up against a true genius, and that his only chance of winning was to keep his cool and remember everything he had learned and to keep his eyes on the prize and his shoulder to the wheel and his feet on the ground and his nose to the grindstone and go ahead and just, you know, root, hog, or die. And above all else not screw up. Because if he screwed up, it’d be bad, I mean, really freaking bad, a darn shame, an awful pity, a lousy break, a rotten turn of events, just really, really, well – how can I say this nicely? – shitty. It’d suck the big one. You can see that, can’t you? No need to belabor the obvious. Like every titanic struggle, however, this one reached its inevitable conclusion or climax. With a final flourish and a shout of pure triumph, the man grasped the safe’s handle firmly, turned it clockwise through forty-five degrees – and opened the safe!

Only to have his triumph turn to ashes in his mouth as he realized that the safe contained no lox, no lox at all. Only a mirror from which his own haggard self looked back at him. Then the voice of the machine spoke up again. “Do you see your tormentor, Locksmith? Do you know what has victimized you?” Slowly the realization spread over him, cold and pitiless as death. I do, he said, I do. Oh, God help me now! For I do look in the mirror and I do see that I have been tormented by – the Lox Myth.

And so – when you think about it, dear reader – have you.

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No, yeah, okay, you’re right, this has had nothing to do with Christmas. But tell the truth, now – did you really want to read another family Christmas letter?

You’re welcome.
Merry Christmas!
Ada & Steve

Cancer for Christmas - Recommended

Posted this to FaceBook today: Been derelict in my duty to highly recommend friend Casey Quinlan's book, Cancer for Christmas. Casey has a lot to say about an important subject -- and boy, can she write! Don't miss it.

Edward R. Murrow is rolling in his grave.

I wrote this to CBS News this morning. "In your story on religion this morning you presented the despicable charlatan John Edward wholly uncritically, giving him a platform for his continued larceny as if he is an authority of some kind -- instead of a lying, thieving fraud who preys on others' grief. No rational, critical mind could fail to see his obvious "cold reading" (and probable warm reading) in his performance, yet you don't even mention the evidence that has been amassed against him. This is "news"? No. It's an embarrassing dereliction of duty on your part. Shame on you." See, for example, http://www.csicop.org/si/show/john_edward_hustling_the_bereaved/ and http://www.re-quest.net/entertainment/movies-and-tv/tv/john-edward/

The Cell Phone Wars, Part One: Mai Ling and the Ice Cube

So I'm on the train this one morning and as we pull in to Hoboken, last stop, the aisle is crowded with tense commuters waiting to get off, and an attractive young woman in a business suit is standing with her back to the door, facing the crowd. She says in a conversational tone, "Good morning, everyone, this is Mai Ling from the New York office, and I'll be chairing the meeting this morning. Can we start by introducing ourselves?" The rest of us exchange glances, but then we realize that she's not looking at any of us, and she’s wearing a Bluetooth earpiece – she’s chairing a teleconference.

The train bumps to a stop and she staggers but she doesn’t miss a beat in conducting her meeting. Her eyes still unfocused, she says, "Good morning, Fred, and thanks for joining us so early from Dallas." The guy standing immediately in front of her – dungarees, hard hat, metal lunch box – has had enough. He leans down into her face. "Open the goddam door, willya, lady, fer Chrissakes?" he says loudly. Startled, she spins in place, pushes the door button, scoots out onto the platform and is gone, jabbering and gesticulating her way toward the ferry dock.

It was only afterward that it came to me – the opportunity that I had missed. If I had been quicker on the uptake, I could have leaned in close to her Bluetooth ear and said, "Come back to bed, Mai Ling, please? I want to try that thing with the ice cube again."

Probably would have gotten me clobbered, but it would have been worth it.

Belated Easter Greetings

Daughter Laura reminded me last night of my favorite Easter story, which I wish I had posted yesterday, but what the heck, here goes...

When I was a teenager I knew a man who was then in his 80s, name of Reginald Thayer. He had once been the chief engineer of the City of New York, and owned more fascinating conversation, and could tell more wonderful tales, than anyone I've ever met. He was a dignified, imposing, intelligent man – not large, but handsome, with a full white beard cut in the sharp Victorian manner, great bushy white eyebrows, and a full head of white hair. So self-possessed, so bright of eye, and so ready of wit was he that even as froward and bumptious teenagers we were respectful of him and sought out his company whenever we could. He was the patriarch of an extended family household that was one of the joys of my youth and the source of much of my education, a welcoming family with characters galore, not to mention three very attractive granddaughters of around my age, with each of whom I seem to recall being in tragic, unrequited love at one time or another... but I digress.

Reggie was, among many other things, a devout atheist, and had resisted decades of effort on the part of his wife and daughters to civilize and make a proper Christian of him. He steadfastly refused to go to church under any circumstances – a source of great embarrassment to the ladies, who were members, like generations before them, of the congregation of St. John's Episcopal Church in Getty Square in Yonkers. Once – just once – they had prevailed upon him to join them. No one was quite sure why, but one Easter Sunday, one year when his daughters (the mother and aunts of the girls I grew up with) were all teenagers, he agreed to accompany them to church. This would have been in 1939 or 1940, I think.

The girls and their mother were extremely nervous, and begged him not to say anything to disgrace them, and especially not to get into any arguments about – or even comment on – theology, religion, beliefs, or anything else that he might consider situation-appropriate. Please, Papa, if you love us, please don't embarrass us. Reggie merely looked at them, and did not answer.

But at the church itself things seemed to go well. Reggie smiled politely, murmured appropriate greetings when introduced, and seemed serenely indifferent to the mild stir of surprise his presence caused. He stood when the others stood and sat when the others sat, and, if he didn't give the responses or join in the hymns, he held his book like everyone else and made a decent show of paying attention. It was with a certain feeling of relief that the ladies preceded him in the line of worshipers leaving the church.

As was customary, the pastor stood on the steps of the church just outside the large double doors, and shook the hand of each congregant leaving. "Christ is risen!" he greeted them, and each answered in turn, "Christ is risen indeed!" before releasing his hand and making way for the next in line.

This was the last hurdle, then – but the girls' mother knew that it was the most perilous. She watched Reggie anxiously to see his reaction as the girls each gave their answer to the reverend, curtsied prettily, and stood aside. Reggie seemed detached; had an almost dreamy look on his face that she very much feared did not bode well. Then it was her turn, and if her voice cracked a little with the tension that good man of God appeared not to notice. But as she let go of the minister's hand, instead of walking down the steps, she stood rooted there – and her daughters rooted beside her – to watch Mr. Thayer meet the minister.

"Christ is risen!" said the pastor enthusiastically, gripping Reggie's hand in fellowship. There was a long silence as Reggie seemed to come into the present. He looked down at their two clasped hands, then looked back up at the other man. He tilted his head to one side and raised his great eyebrows in polite surprise.

"Indeed?" he said.

And, gathering up his brood, he led them away.

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo

Cold but severe clear weather today here at the lake. Our journey and arrival were not without excitement, of course, me being me, and having the famous Phelps luck. After we loaded the Tahoe to the point of suspension-creak, we started it up and got a light on the dash that said the transfer case was in Neutral. I pushed the button to put it back in 2-WD. No joy. Pulled out the operator's manual. Transfer case not in index, but for transmission see p. 2-26. There it said not to put the transfer case in Neutral unless the parking brake is engaged because Park won't work if transfer case in Neutral. Fair enough. See page 3-32 for how to put transfer case in Neutral. Presumably this would give the lay reader an indication of how to take it out of Neutral, too. Page 3-32 explained that R stands for Reverse, and should be used when backing up the vehicle is desired. It went on to explain the uses of the other gears, and what 2WD, and HI, LO and On-Demand 4WD were good for, and said that for information on putting the transfer case in Neutral, see, you guessed it, page 2-26. Drove to All-Trans transmission, where they put it on the computer and the lift and discovered that there's a slightly leaky seal on the back of the transfer case; they didn't have and couldn't find a new seal, but filled the fluid back up and blessed our trip up here and back, and said they'd fix it on Tuesday. By now it was 11:30 a.m., not the 8:00 a.m. start we'd planned, but what the hell. With stops for supplies and such we got here at around 4:30 p.m.

I scouted for mice -- dead or alive, mice must removed from any premises to be occupied by The Lovely Former Ada Santiago of Ponce, Puerto Rico, so it shall be written, so it shall be done. No mice. Turned on the heat, the refrigerator; closed the faucets and the petcock on the water heater, and flipped the circuit breaker for the water pump, which fired up nicely and all hell broke loose. With a loud bang gallons of very cold lake water began spraying all over the basement through the very suddenly separated joint where the in-flow pipe meets the overhead water filter. Frantic expletives ensued, but I got the breaker open again. I am no kind of plumber. I got out my pipe wrenches and vise-grips and such and determined that even with all that weaponry, there was no effing way I was going to do anything about this. Called a local licensed plumbing and heating purveyor. Contract killers work cheaper than these guys, but they are very pleasant, very efficient, very professional, very effective, and very willing to work on Good Friday evening (for overtime rates, they cautioned) -- unlike any of the three jack-leg plumbers I know up here, who work very cheap, but none of whom was to be found.

Plumber Pat asked my permission to finish his dinner before driving up the mountain to us, which I very magnanimously granted. I mean, what the hell. That's me all over, magnanimous. When he came he showed me the flaw in the installation that had led to this catastrophic failure (too much tension on the joint); he added a new section, using the new plastic pipe that apparently installs with a butter knife and seals with a cheerful thought (I have GOT to learn how to use that stuff), and we turned on the system. "I hear water," said Pat, and it was true. Pressure had blown yet another joint, this one at the back of the basement, but thankfully just this side of where the pipes enter the crawlspace under the kitchen, said crawlspace being not much more than 18 inches of almost inaccessible dismal, dark, and filth. This new break needed to be re-soldered, but Pat made short work of it, and left whistling. The office will send me a bill, which is probably a much safer system for the on-site mechanics, who might be in danger from suddenly penniless customers presented with bills, and therefore with nothing left to lose.

Anyway, as I say, today is beautiful, though chilly. Ada forgot her camera at home but I used the Flip Mino to document the ice remaining at the edges in our little inlet. Only random minor piles of snow are left in the woods, in shady spots. Otherwise we're right on the verge of Mud, which is the season that passes for Spring up here. Soon it will be black-fly time, and warm enough to get back to work screening in the porch against the black flies, who will probably be more vicious than ever this year because they'll sense that the screening-in in progress is directed against them, and they will be hurt, and feel the need to lash out. In the meantime I just saw a couple of little patches of ice being blown down the lake by today's brisk t'gallants'l breezes, and I shouted, "Icebergs!" and ran out to FlipMino them, much to Ada's startlement, and now I'm back inside writing to you, Dear Reader, while continuing to murder, by hand-held vacuum cleaner, the spontaneously regenerating lady bugs who are popping into existence at the rate of approximately 8.4 per hour at the sunny window next to my computer. I expect that the pain in my wounded shoulder, which pain has been exacerbated by earlier today moving the canoe and kayaks off the shelter of the porch, where they had spent the winter, will abate with the liberal application of Labatt's Blue, which commences now. Stand clear of that refrigerator. I have just decided to take my retirement in installments, a day at a time whenever the opportunity arises, like Travis McGee, in case these are the only retirement days I ever get, and so for the rest of today, I am retired. Bottoms up.

Pepper and Me, 1947

Pepper was my first best friend. He would once in a while of an evening sneak out an open apartment window and go about the neighborhood raising hell with the lady dogs, then -- these being the days just after the war when many delivery wagons were still drawn by real horse power -- roll in some nice fragrant horseshit on his way home, and crawl back into the crib with me to sleep in the early dawn, before he might be missed, but much to my mother's loud and very active agitation when she would come in later to wake us up. Good old Pepper. To this day, I do enjoy the sweet smell of horseshit.

New York City Street Scenes, 1980s, 1990s

1980s: On East 11th off Second one day, I'm sitting in the car waiting for a friend who's gone into the Russian luncheonette -- doubt it's there anymore -- for finest-kind potato soup. Up the street from behind me comes a gigantic black guy with a huge salt-and-pepper beard, wearing a colorful dashiki and a matching kofia hat, both looking a bit bedraggled, his black rubber boots flopping open, their metal clasps clattering with each step. In his his massive hands he holds a pair of tiny white rubber little-girl boots. "Freshly stolen boots for sale," he's bellowing. A young white female cop approaches from the other direction, and he breaks off. "Hello, Helen," he says. "Hiya, George, howareya?" she replies. They pass each other, keep walking. "Freshly stolen boots for sale!" he roars. "Freshly stolen just this morning! Get 'em while they're hot, ha ha ha!"

1990s: Across from Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica one day I see two old alkies. They're carefully inspecting a little diamond-shaped black-on-yellow plastic sign that's dangling on the inside of the back passenger window of a huge gleaming black Mercedes. MD plates. One of them looks up at me with rheumy, bloodshot eyes. "Poor basset," he says, gesturing at the Mercedes, "Can't even 'ford a goddam radio."

Driving Mrs. Schtipke

Ed McDevitt (again; he's like totally my muse or something) posted on Facebook about 68-year-old Cha, a South Korean woman who "this week signed up to take her driving test once again – after failing to earn a license the first 771 times." Cha reminded me of Mrs. Schtipke, and I'll tell you why. You see, I was the last driving teacher ever to try to teach Mrs. Schtipke – yes, the legendary Mrs. Gertrude Penska Schtipke of Yonkers, New York – how to drive, thus earning myself at least a footnote in the annals of Yonkers driving-instruction history. The Man Who Retired Mrs. Schtipke. You may wonder how the callow youth that I was at that time could ever have stumbled upon such distinction.

I was a part-timer at Bronx-Yonkers Auto School, a college student finishing up some credits so that I could graduate, having handily lost a battle of wills with the administration of Manhattan College, who would NOT give me my diploma unless and until I completed their goddam theology credits. Papist fanatics, of course, with no sympathy for my nascent agnostic leanings.

Bronx-Yonkers Auto School was owned by Bill Hudson, a guy of forty or so who was generally acknowledged to be the best driving instructor in the city. He was patient, and smiled easily, and had a generous way about him that put people at ease. He was also a trove of technical skill and advice; I found that he always had what he called a “trick” to suggest when I needed to help a student get past some driving hangup. And the Bill Hudson parallel-parking method, absolutely foolproof if the car you were driving was roughly the same size as the car you wanted to park behind, as was almost always the case in 1969, was a signature of his students, and known and admired – even recommended! – by DMV examiners throughout the region.

Bill and I got along pretty well. I respected him, and he came to trust me as a promising protégée, I think, because I shared his enjoyment of teaching, and because I was a willing learner myself, never afraid to seek his advice. It helped that Trudy, the self-described Office Gal, liked me, too. Trudy was in her fifties, a plain woman with a whiskey voice and a cigarette perpetually hanging from the corner of her mouth. She had a ready sense of humor and a big laugh, and she kept the office and lesson schedules so well organized that it’s only now, looking back on it, that I truly appreciate how competent she was. If Trudy didn’t like you, you were meat. Your lessons, always fifteen minutes apart, would be at opposite sides of town; you would have no lunch break but long down times in mid-afternoon or mid-morning, and your students – well, let’s just say that you wouldn’t be teaching many pretty young girls. But Trudy liked me.

Mrs. Schtipke was a late-sixty-ish widow with a pleasant but caved-in face and the absolutely worst-fitting dentures seen in Yonkers since Washington slept at Phillipse Manor during the late unpleasantness with the British. Everything she said was accompanied by a sibilant whistle and a loud clack. I'm not kidding. Strange dogs would stop what they were doing and look up to see what she wanted. Slight of stature and cadaverously thin, she was always bundled up in a cloth coat, a scarf, and a hat, carried a huge purse, and wore sensible shoes with laces and clunky heels that today's teenagers would love but in those days – 1969, remember – only added to the impression of her as a woman who had stopped noticing fashion some time before World War II. It turned out that she had one leg shorter than the other, her right, so the sole and heel of her right shoe were built up by maybe an inch and a half. This may have accounted for the style of the shoes she wore, but I don’t think so. I think she would have worn that style anyway. Neither did this disparity add to her apparent equilibrium; the facts that the shoes seemed just a little too big for her, and that her ankles were thin and weak, made her feet wobble treacherously when she did certain things – like step on the pedals of a car. She smelled of lavender and moth balls.

Trudy communicated with the instructors by leaving messages for us with our upcoming students. One day I got a message to come into the office during my next free slot, because Bill had a new student he wanted to introduce to me. This was odd, since we were usually just dispatched out to a new student’s home, and we introduced ourselves. I was curious but not apprehensive. Nothing could have prepared me for Mrs. Schtipke, anyway.

She was seated in front of Trudy’s desk when I came in, clutching her large purse to herself with what looked like desperation, and Bill was half-sitting on the front edge of his own desk. Trudy wore the kind of fixed, unfocused smile that people fall into when they know that soon they will be tempted to laugh, but must not. Bill was his own genial self. Mrs. Schtipke clacked and whistled that it was a pleasure to meet me.

Bill was blunt. He told us that Mrs. Schtipke had had lessons from every instructor who had ever worked at the school, including himself, but had never succeeded in passing her road test. He said that she had then gone on to seek lessons at every other school in the area, but had continued to fail the road test – how many times was it, now, Mrs. Schtipke? – seven times, yes. He said that she had begged him to give her one more chance, she was sure that she had been improving, and that the last thing she had promised her beloved Mr. Schtipke before his untimely demise was that she would get her license and be that much more self-sufficient. She had not wanted him to worry about her.

So Bill had agreed to give her this one more chance. She would take a course of lessons from me, and then try the road test again. If she passed, well and good. If she failed, she in her turn had to promise that she would give up the quest. Bill promised her that Mr. Schtipke would understand that she had tried her best. Was this clear to everyone? We all solemnly agreed that it was, Trudy only nodding slowly once in a kind of formal way, her smile rigid on her face and a slight twitch appearing beside one eye.

So Bill wished us godspeed and sent us on our way for Mrs. Schtipke’s first lesson. As she preceded me out the door he took my arm and held me back for a moment. “Give it your best shot,” he said, looking directly into my eyes, “but she will never learn to drive. Just be nice to her, and for God’s sake – be careful.” He waited until I nodded understanding before he released my arm.

In the pitiful arrogance of my youth I felt obscurely that what was set before me was a challenge. Without forming the idea into words, even in my own mind, I realized that if I succeeded with this woman where all others had failed – even Bill! – well, I would be something, now, wouldn’t I? In the few moments between the office and the car, I resolved myself that Mrs. Schtipke was going to learn to drive at last.

I decided to start from scratch, as though she was a perfect beginner who had never sat in the driver’s seat before. I took her to a quiet, one-way street and parked and we exchanged places and then we went through the checklist Bill had taught me to use. We determined that she knew where the steering wheel was, what each pedal was for, what each gear did, where the ignition key was, how to adjust her mirrors, what steps to take to start the car (parking brake on, transmission in park, move foot from accelerator to brake as soon as engine starts and before releasing parking brake or shifting into Drive), what to look for before pulling away from the curb, what to look at while motoring along – everything. And she knew it all.

“Not that it’s ever done me much good before, (whistle) sad to (whistle) say (clack),” she muttered to herself, reaching to turn the key.

The problem immediately became apparent. Mrs. Schtipke could identify exactly what she should do at any given moment in any given situation. But she couldn’t, somehow, make her body actually do any of it. She got the car started, got it into gear with parking brake off and her foot on the brake pedal, she checked her mirrors and then spun around to give a quick visual check that nothing was coming – and froze in that position. As her pressure on the brake gradually faded, and the car began to roll slowly out into the street, I had to tell her to turn around to face front again. She nodded agreement, but she didn’t actually turn until I tapped her shoulder. That released a spring somewhere inside her, and she snapped back to the front. Now it was time to straighten the wheel, I reminded her, and again she agreed, but we were facing the opposite curb square on when I finally reached across and straightened it myself.

“Okay, Mrs. Schtipke, it’s natural to be little nervous the first time out with a new instructor,” I said. “As soon as you’re able to relax a little bit, we’ll be fine. Now remember, keep your eyes on the center of the street, and look as far down the street as you can, and the car will just naturally go where you want. Remember, the car goes where you look – so always look where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go.” We were coming up on a parked car, on the right, the only one on the block. Mrs. Schtipke stared at it like a rabbit at a snake, and drove slowly, inexorably toward it.

The car was equipped with an instructor’s brake pedal that allowed me to stop it when necessary. Since Mrs. Schtipke had a death grip on the wheel and I judged that I couldn’t at that time steer the car straight without flipping her out the window, the brake was necessary.

The brake was often necessary in the days that followed. Mrs. Schtipke did seem to relax a trifle, and was eventually able to drive down an empty one-way street without mishap, but she continued to tend to stare at things and freeze in place – trees, traffic signals, oncoming traffic, and the like – and my confidence wavered.

It was with Mrs. Schtipke at the wheel that I invented one of my best ice breakers, a “trick” of my own that I was to use to great effect to defuse the nervousness of subsequent students. We had stopped at a stop sign, but Mrs. Schtipke betrayed no notion of ever starting up again. “Okay,” I said to her. “When the stop sign turns green, you can go.” Whereas others would process this for a few seconds, then laugh and begin to relax, Mrs. Schtipke nodded in grim determination and stared at that sign until I thought it might melt. I finally said, “Okay, Mrs. Schtipke, you can go, now,” and she did. I never tried my patented gentle ironic humor on her again.

And it was with Mrs. Schtipke at the wheel, on what was scheduled to be her last lesson before the road test, that I had the single most terrifying experience of my instructing career. We were proceeding slowly along a quiet, tree-lined street that ended in a T-intersection. At the capital of the T was a grammar school. On the sidewalk in front of the school was a gathering of young matrons, most with toddlers or baby carriages or both in tow, waiting to pick up their kindergartners after the morning session.

“I really don’t like it when there are people,” Mrs. Schtipke said apprehensively.

“No problem,” I said. “Just ease off the accelerator and slowly press down on the brake, same as you’ve been doing...”

She yanked her foot abruptly off the gas pedal, and stretched out spasmodically with her leg to jam on the brake. Her wobbly, built-up shoe turned under her foot, slipped off the brake, and mashed the accelerator to the firewall.

The cars we used were full-sized, four-door Dodge sedans, but they had the old straight-six Chrysler engines and I had often bemoaned, when driving them myself, their insipid performance. Not this day, however. That little six-cylinder plant under Mrs. Schtipke’s urging began to run up a full head of steam, and we took off with great enthusiasm, heading straight for the mothers and children. Over the sound of the engine, my foot hovering over my brake, I said calmly, “No, Mrs. Schtipke, that’s the gas pedal. Lift your foot and the car will slow down, and then we can try for the brake again.” She turned slightly toward me and gave me a wild look, her one visible eye rolling like that of a panicked horse. She pushed down even harder on the accelerator. Some of the women on the sidewalk seemed to become aware of our approach. I put some pressure on my brake, and kept my voice calm as I repeated my instructions. No effect. Mrs. Schtipke was now staring in open-mouthed horror at the little crowd of innocents. I couldn’t seem to slow the car. The engine roared. The women began to shout to each other and grab for their children. I got both feet on the brake pedal and put some leg muscle into it. Mrs. Schtipke was white-knuckled, rigid, her eyes bulging. The women in front of us had gathered up their kids and carriages and begun to scatter, but it would be too late for some of them. I stood on the brake pedal and felt it bend and give. My God, I thought, what if it breaks? The engine was screaming now but the brakes began to take hold. We slowed in fits and starts, rear tires screeching and whirling intermittently, then grabbing again, front tires scraping smoking rubber along the street. When our forward movement halted we were halfway across the top of the T, ten feet or so from the desperately scrambling mothers, the car bellowing and straining like a live thing under us, straining up, up and forward, seeming eager to launch itself again, to crush our victims against the white iron spikes of the fence. I reached across and banged the gear shift lever up into neutral, and, as the engine’s note cycled up to an unbearable pitch, I managed to get hold of the key and shut it down. It dieseled on for a few seconds, snorting and beginning to miss, then it backfired loudly twice, emitted a vast belch of black smoke, and died.

In the sudden silence Mrs. Schtipke sat unmoving, hands still gripping the wheel, foot still pressed to the accelerator.

“Oh, heavens (whistle-clack),” she said.

That car was never much good after that.

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I was not inclined to let her take the road test, nor was Bill when I told him what had happened. But she begged us, said she had paid for it already, we had had a deal, she would never have another chance, please, please let her try. In the end it was easier to let her try, though I drove all the way to the test site, unwilling to be her passenger again under any circumstances. And the examiners knew her, we told ourselves, and would be careful.

She failed the test, of course. She stopped and then froze in the middle of the first intersection she came to. Waiting there at the test line, I heard horns blowing in the distance and guessed what had happened, even before I saw the car coming back with the examiner driving and Mrs. Schtipke in the passenger seat, looking small and defeated. And that was that. I took her home and we said goodbye and she thanked me for giving her one last chance. I felt terrible; not, I am glad to say, because I had failed the challenge of teaching Mrs. Schtipke to drive, but because I had failed poor, plucky Mrs. Schtipke herself. I had come to really like her.

There is a postscript to the story, though. Mrs. Schtipke’s once-a-week grocery shopping always took her past the office, and often she would stop in to rest and pass a few minutes with Trudy. One day she brought up the subject of her failure to learn to drive. She had come to terms with it, she said, and she hoped her husband, rest his soul, would forgive her. But she would never understand why it had been so difficult for her. She had done simply everything she could think of to succeed.

Why, when she realized after her very first lesson so long ago that driving made her so terribly nervous, she decided that she had to do something to help calm herself down. So from that day forward she had made it a habit never to go driving without first drinking at least four small glasses of vodka.

Vodka. You know – so her breath wouldn’t give her away, and no one would know how nervous she really was.

Cussing and Swearing Up a Blue Streak

In a Facebook exchange this week, friend Ed McDevitt (http://www.edmcdevitt.com/ ) and his daughter had a back-and-forth about cursing, and I got to remembering that...

One of my father's best friends was Artie Getzler; they met at work and really hit it off. The old man was still driving gasoline delivery trucks for Gulf Oil, and Art -- powerfully built, rugged-looking, square-faced and sandy-haired, with big, hard, freckled hands -- worked, inconguously, as an accountant. Getzler was the kind of guy who was smart and competent and well read and witty, and interested in everything; a good man, and a good friend.

He and his wife Ann vacationed with our family many summers at Lake George; they had no kids in those days, and seemed to enjoy being with my brothers and me almost as much as with our parents. One day Art and my father were working on one of the cars in the driveway of the summer place, and Art accidentally touched the battery with his ring, which formed a circuit to the frame through his watch and gave him a shock and two nasty burns. "SON of a bitch bastard," he said, shaking the hand and hop-stepping in a circle, "Son of a BITCH bastard. Son of a bitch BASTARD."

He went inside to wash and ice the burns. As he stood at the sink, my mother was sitting at the kitchen table with the Reader's Digest. She looked up at him owlishly over the tops of her reading glasses. "It says here that, 'profanity is the last refuge of the inarticulate and weak minded; it is the unimaginative use of rote language to mask an incapacity for true creative expression.' " Art shut off the water and stared at her for a few beats.

"Bullshit," he said, and walked back outside, whistling.

But Art had a bad ticker, and when a heart attack sidelined him at 40-something, he was advised to get a hobby to help him relax as he recuperated. He decided to take up woodworking, and after a few early successes, he launched on an ambitious project to build a new set of kitchen cabinets. He measured and planned and measured again; he bought expensive hardwood and cut it with precision; he prepped and stained and varnished the pieces preparatory to assembly. My father and I arrived early on installation Saturday to be his helpers. Annie answered the door with an uncharacteristically grave expression that -- also uncharacteristically -- did not respond to my father's cheerful greeting. He asked, "Uh, where's Art?" In the brief silence that followed, we heard a repeated crack-splintering noise from not too far away.

"He's in the back yard," she said, and stood aside to usher us through. We passed through the bare-walled kitchen and out onto the raised back deck. Below us we could see Art swinging his axe, getting his back and shoulders into it and with a good rhythm going. He was breaking up the pieces of the new cabinet with application and precision, reducing each to flinders before moving on to the next. My father called down to him, "Art?" Art didn't answer, didn't turn around, didn't pause in his efforts. We looked at Annie.

"When he went to assemble them last night," she said, "he realized that he had made everything sort of, well, inside out. The finish and the detail work was all on the inside. The rough wood and the framing and everything were all on the outside. He hasn't said a word since. He just went to bed, and then he got up early this morning and... " She trailed off and gestured to the yard. "I'm worried about his heart," she said at length.

But Artie didn't seem to be in any danger. He was not sweating, not red in the face; he was breathing easily. We watched him work for a while, and then we went back into the kitchen for coffee. After what seemed like a long time, the chopping stopped, and then we heard Art in the basement, and my father went downstairs. Annie and I could hear them talking calmly, but not what they said. My father came back up. "He's going to start over," he said. "He won't need our help today."

As we left, we heard the sound of the radial arm saw biting into hard wood. "He'll be okay," my father told Annie. "Stop worrying." And he was okay, too, for a few more years anyway, until lung cancer took him away too soon at 49.

Submitted without Comment

From an e-mail I received today from Dish Network:

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Dear DISH Network Customer:

The national digital transition on February 17, 2009 is fastly approaching but as a DISH Network customer we have you covered.

California Dreaming on Such a Winter's Day

Frozen in this morning so working from home. Got an e-mail from a San Diego friend who's on a road trip to Santa Monica; along the way they had lunch at Langers' (pastrami on rye, mmm) and found a watchmaker's shop on Montana Avenue. Wish I could find a clock repair shop around here. I have a 1930s-or 1940s-vintage electric desk clock -- probably worth nothing, since the one repair shop in pretentious Nyack turned up its proprietary nose and sent me packing with the insincerest hint of a smile -- that stopped running a decade or more ago. I got it when I was a kid in grade school, down at The Plant, the Gulf Oil terminus on the Hudson at Yonkers where me old Da then labored, discarded for scavenge when they were re-doing their offices. I still have the ugly little wooden desk and, somewhere I think, I gigantic old steel and green-pebbly-upholstery rolling desk chair, that I got in that same haul. Somewhere along the way I lost the gigantic old steel and gray-rubber-topped double-pedestal desk that matched the chair; it was probably just too goddammed heavy to move one more time, and so fell victim to the opinions of Mrs. Out-with-the-Old-in-with-the-New, who has never appreciated my junk, never.