Wednesday, January 7, 2009

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.