Halloween November 2, 2010
Posted by Matthew in Biography, Fort Wayne.add a comment
Apparently, our little four block square of streets is famous throughout Fort Wayne as being THE place in town to go trick or treating. That’s “THE” as in “THE ONE AND ONLY”. Hundreds came, from all over town, and from all backgrounds: rich, poor, white, black, Latino, cartoons, undead, Hogwart students. You name it, we saw it.
I sat on the front stoop playing fiddle, the weather just cold enough to make my fingers work up a sweat to keep warm, uncomfortable but not painful. My fiddling must have worked because children came rushing to the door, but the parents lingered in the relatively safe zone of the sidewalk. Surprisingly, more children wanted the Silly Bandz than the candy. Also surprisingly most children were polite and only took one or two or asked first how many they might take. Unsurprisingly, the worst miscreants were the three and four-year-olds who took fist fulls and pretended not to hear you say “Put that back you little spawn of hell! Please take only one so there is enough for others.”
The parents were pretty creative too. One young grandma in a tight black leather witch costume with cape, full makeup, and four-inch stiletto heels wobbled up the the two steps with her two-year-old vampire grandson. I stared at her boots for what I hope was not an inappropriate amount of time, and said, “Your know, your feet are gonna be killing you in a couple of hours.” She rolled her eyes and answered in a thick Latino accent, “I will soak them in the tub.”
Dawn (Ma Ingalls) took Rose (Cleopatra) and Sam (Percy Jackson) out at 5:00 PM. I didn’t think they’d last long, but they stayed out two hours, returning twice to fix Percy’s cardboard shield when he tripped on steps, finally returning at 7:00 PM with Sam barreling home to pee. As we divvied the candy in the den, carefully separating nut-free from nut-infested, Rose told me about the impostor Cleopatra she met and how they played silent Mirror Mirror with each other.
Incognito
Moving again September 28, 2010
Posted by Matthew in Biography, Fort Wayne.add a comment
We are buying a house in Fort Wayne this Thursday, God willing (note to self: prepare unblemished calf for sin offering).
The house is located in an historic neighborhood. Since nothing historic has ever happened there, this is just a fancy way of say old neighborhood. And, I suppose, it is an old way of saying fancy neighborhood. Large brick homes line the street behind towering oak trees at parade rest. Neatly hedged flower gardens vie for attention as one strolls along the root-heaved sidewalk. The multi-story homes have porches and turrets and other architectural accessories from the days when brick and mortar were a medium for art, and yet these homes are modest in comparison to the monstrous, hundred year-old mansions a block further south.
The house we are buying has no such pretensions. In this neighborhood, it is something of a batty old lady with fifty-three cats. It is a large, four bedroom, Art Deco box, which fills most of its tiny, sadly neglected lot and has probably done so since its construction in 1937. Sometime not very long after I graduated high school, the entire facade was wrapped in gray vinyl siding. The siding matches the Art Deco interior. Somewhat. Unlike brick and mortar, there are limitations to what one can convincing pull off with vinyl siding, even if the front door is painted a rich plum.
There is a basement, three fireplaces (two wood, one gas), a formal dining room with French doors leading to a deck, a Jack’n'Jill bathroom for the children to fight over, a laundry shoot for dropping small toy soldiers with parachutes, remnants of knob and tube wiring to scare the inspector, a built-in clock in the hallway, a set of liquor and glass cabinets over a counter, and a hot tub. Dawn intends to requisition the liquor cabinet for fiber storage. She also intends convert the hot tub to a mikveh as soon as she can figure out how to redirect the drain pipes.
One of the bedrooms, the smallest at 8×10 feet, will become my office. I had been trying to figure out why it has a sink in it, but Dawn knew right away. The upstairs bathrooms are only accessible from the other three bedrooms, and not the hallway. So this is the mother-in-law room, the room for your unwanted visitors, where they can brush their teeth, but if they need to pee, they have to go downstairs.
As with previous house buying escapades, this one comes complete with seven phone calls a day, half of which involve spending money. Today I arranged house cleaners and carpet cleaners. I also tried to rent a washing machine and dryer (we have ordered a high-efficiency, low-water, made in the You-Ess-Ay washer from Staber that will take six weeks to deliver). Our real estate agent called looking for the mortgage agent. The mortgage agent called asking for the insurance paperwork. The insurance agent returned my call to say she gave the paperwork to his assistant a week ago. I spoke with someone at my bank about advance instructions for wire transfer of the down payment, not so much to ensure a successful transfer of funds, but rather to make sure that if it fails, it will fail in some spectacular and unforeseeable fashion worth writing about. (Note to self: add two unblemished, male pigeons for guilt offering).
In other news, did I mention my computer died last weekend? Well, not so much “died” as “dying.” Persistently, agonizingly, dramatically dying. It moved snail-like from task to task, like my children getting ready for bed. Also the CD drive suddenly became blind, or at least illiterate. And constantly whining and kvetching. Why was nobody helping it? Didn’t we care? We never loved it, not really. We were all just spiteful, selfish humans who couldn’t wait to cannibalize it’s parts for … for … whatever they use two year old computer parts for. Probably modern art.
So I gave it a lobotomy. And then I reprogrammed its personality. It now thinks it is a young lamb, kicking its heels in the sunshine. It boots up and shuts down with the agility of a three-year old.
when suddenly … nothing happened. June 24, 2010
Posted by Matthew in Biography, Wolcottville.add a comment
They have closed Bixler Lake because E. Coli from migratory fowl droppings is blooming in the warmth and wet. It is June, and already the humidity of summer is miserable. When I step outside, the air is dense, heavy, thick, hard to breathe. By ten in the morning the birds are quiet and exhausted. Even the willow by the lake sags.
Inside my house, I closed the window blinds to shut out the glare, and I set the thermostat to 75, the tipping point. Below 75, I feel too much guilt for wasting polluting, coal-fired electricity. Above 75, and I may as well open the windows and sweat on the computer keyboard. It is unusual when a moral dilemma like this can be reduced to a measurable statistic, but there it is. Seventy-five.
In my little environment-controlled bubble, I sat working at the computer, when suddenly my insides turned wobbly, that odd sensation one gets while giving blood just before you pass out. Perhaps 75 was not low enough. Perhaps too much Father’s Day cake or not enough sleep. I felt alert. My eyes were focused. And soon it passed, forgotten.
Dawn called that morning on the cell phone. Looking out my sunny window, I heard rain storm on the phone twenty miles to the south. Not so unusual. Pretty Big Long Lake often defies the local weather patterns. Dawn had barely started talking to me when suddenly she screamed and laughed. I briefly heard the voice of her friend, another parent who volunteered to help her at the school garden. I listened to their garbled voices, and then Dawn remembered me, said she’ll call later, and hung up.
Later at dinner, she explained that a summer rain shower snuck up on them. She had called me from the shelter of the car when her friend unexpectedly yanked open the passenger door and jumped in, soaking wet. Gravity pulled at the smile lines around her eyes as she told the story; she was as tired and as sleep-deprived as I was. More so, because she works in the sun and humidity all day. I sent her to bed after dinner, and she gratefully agreed.
I read books to the children, brushed their distracted teeth, and sang them to sleep in their beds. For a moment, I had the house to myself, quiet, no obligations, and decided to do so research on the internet when suddenly the doorbell rang. My next door neighbor stood there with a deep furrow between her eyes. She lives alone with a cat and a weather alert radio. The lights in her house are often burning long after we go to bed, for she doesn’t sleep well. I let her in, signaling to talk quietly since everyone was asleep, but her news spilled out before her foot was in the door.
A big storm was coming. Hail. Flood. Winds over 90 miles per hour. Goshen had been hit badly by winds. Lots of damage. The storm was moving east at 55 miles per hour. She didn’t say tornado. She didn’t have to. We knew the possibility, even though we didn’t like to admit it. No one on the lake has a basement. She started to tell me about using one of the garages as a shelter, but I was calculating and didn’t listen.
I can drive to Goshen in one hour. My average speed is just about 55 mph. And the storm had already left Goshen.
I stepped outside to smell the sky, and the back of my throat glazed with burnt ozone and fear. It was 9:00 PM, not quite sundown, but from horizon to horizon the sky was a glowing, metallic color, like a television screen the moment after it is turned off and the electricity is still draining out of it. The humidity was no longer pressing on my body, but rather pulling on it. The hairs on my arms stood out.
My mantra for such moments, which I do not often get to practice, is “Strive to be the calmest person in the room.” I wanted information, but we have no television, so I headed to the computer. The internet was down. Not a good sign. I turned on the radio and instantly heard the irritating buzz of the emergency broadcast system warning. A line of squalls with hail, flash flooding, and possible tornadoes was bearing down from the west. The announcer read the list of counties: St. Joseph, Marshall, Elkhart, Kosciusko, Lagrange…
Lagrange. Our county. I got moving. The announcer continued into Michigan and Ohio, but I was already preparing the emergency kit I should always have on hand. The little hater in my head, the useless, uninvited voice started screaming, “Idiot! You should always have an emergency kit on hand.”
“Shut Up!” I told myself and start putting things in bags.
Water. Apples. Crackers.
“Please take shelter. The best place is in a basement under a workbench or sturdy table.”
Shoes. Car keys. Flashlights.
“If you have no basement, head to an interior room away from windows.”
Clothing. Swiss Army Knife. Batteries. Transistor radio.
“Do not go out to watch the storm.”
The wind picked up and the lights flickered but didn’t go out. Regretfully, I woke Dawn and let her know what was happening. We would need to move the children, but without waking them. They were nervous enough in ordinary storms, and they would have panicked to hear the word “tornado” in earnest. Dawn collected pillows and blankets and made little nests on the bathroom floor for them, and we carried them in and lay them still asleep in corners.
Dawn found the first aid kits, extra clothes, candles, books, knitting. The bathtub started to fill up with anything we could think we might need for the next few days or could not live without.
I began opening windows. During a tornado, tremendous low pressure builds up outside. If your house is sealed, it can literally burst like an overinflated balloon, usually through the doors, windows, and roof. It is better to open your windows and let the winds trash your furniture and books than to scatter broken glass and splinters everywhere.
When everything we could think to do was done, we headed to the bathroom to wait. The lights were still on. Dawn crocheted by the door, her legs mingled with the children’s. I sat on the closed toilet seat and fiddled with my old Peace Corps transistor AM/FM/shortwave radio. I used earphones, so as not wake the children, and relayed information to Dawn.
A tornado warning for our county for another 45 minutes. The storm had not arrived yet, but it was moving so fast that, whatever was going to happen, it was going to start and end in the next 45 minutes. Stay tuned for updates.
Then music. Country music. A song by Blake Shelton.
“Yeah, tomorrow can wait ’til tomorrow, it’s all about tonight.”
My local DJ had a twisted sense of humor.
Ten minutes later, the wind arrived in earnest. At first nothing and then a sucking rush, followed by a rattling, and then lightning and rain on the roof, all within ten seconds. But muted. Not scary. Not worse than a regular summer thunderstorm. The bathroom was in the very center of the house and several walls separated us from the noise in every direction. The lights flickered again and went out for just two seconds before returning. Dawntook a breath, pulled her crochet hook out, and captured a loose thread.
Reports came in on the radio. A tractor trailer overturned by winds in Fort Wayne. Funnel clouds sited in Allen county. A barn destroyed in Goshen. I did not repeat all this. Instead, Dawn and I chatted about summer vacation plans, as blithely as though we were at a station waiting for a train to arrive. And in a way, we were. We had half an ear cocked for that tell-tale train noise everyone says they hear just before a tornado strikes. And then suddenly …
Nothing happened.
In about twenty minutes, what little noise we could hear died down. No more hail or lightning. The wind and rain were barely noticeable. On the radio, the warnings moved east into Ohio. I didn’t hear Lagrange county anymore on the reports. Magical Pretty Big Long Lake had been spared. About then Rose woke up.
She looked around, squinting and disoriented. “Mama,” she asked, “What am I doing in the bathroom?”
We bundled the children back in bed, leaving the pillows and paraphernalia in the bathroom. They scarcely noticed the interruption and were soon sleeping. Dawn went to bed too, but I grabbed an umbrella to check on our insomniac neighbor.
Her door was open, a light and the glow of the television within. She jumped at the sound of me stubbing my toe on her step in the dark. But soon I was seated by her muted television, amiably chatting about the averted disaster while the rain fell outside. From my seat, I could see her bathroom contained a similar, hastily-prepared pile of things. She began to tell me how it was never like this before. Never. Maybe a high wind once in summer, but not this kind of thing. It was odd. A wind storm last week knocked out a tree and some people lost power, and now this. And did you know there was a earthquake in Canada today? They said they felt it in Fort Wayne.
No, I hadn’t heard, I said. But I smiled. I had felt it too.
Bird nest after storm
My Debut May 12, 2010
Posted by Matthew in Biography, Music, Wolcottville.2 comments
The truncated name on the caller ID belonged to my children’s music teacher. Who is also my wife’s coworker in the gardens at school. Who is also our landlady.
It’s an interesting thing I’ve learned about life in rural America. A sparser population means that people take several roles in each other’s lives. It is a bit like a community theatre production. The man playing Polonius also plays Osric and a banner-holding soldier and either Rosancrantz or Guildenstern – either will do in a pinch. And if two of these characters have a scene together, then some of his lines get cut and he deals with it, preferably with grace. Mere civility is not enough to soothe the inevitable ruffled feathers. People here are cheerful and friendly because they are bred that way through ruthless social selection.
I answered the phone. Cheerfully.
“Hey,” she said, “sorry to bother you, but didn’t you tell me at the school hoedown that you knew some dance callers?”
“Sure,” I replied confidently. Although really, in this part of country, they are as rare as Florida snowflakes. But they do exist. And I know him.
“The art festival is holding a private party for their volunteers, and their caller canceled at the last minute. Do you think you could call the art teacher and give her your information?”
Fort Wayne holds an annual festival focusing on Art and Music in education. It is held downtown at the convention center and several schools, including my childrens’ school, participate. A week earlier, on a cold, windy Saturday, we had infiltrated the glass fishbowl of the downtown convention center to wander through the water color paintings, found art collages, and tin foil sculptures and to listen to local school bands and watch their folk dance ensembles. Foreign guests are invited as well, and we listened to a Japanese Kamishibai storyteller, overheard a German trio singing hippie folksongs, and watched a troupe of teenage professional dancers from Poland in colorful green, red, and white costumes with ribbons flailing as they spun.
A week later, to thank all these people and countless volunteers, the organizers wanted to host a private party. And as a treat, there would be real American folk dancing.
I learned this after two hours of tracing back the path of phone requests, speaking with various artists, organizers, and volunteers, leaving messages and answering calls. I might have given up, except that, along the way, I learned that there was no band either, and a thought grew in my head.
This might be my chance to debut as a dance fiddler. The venue seemed safe. An audience of polite foreigners who would not know what Old Time music was supposed to sound like. If I screwed up, what were the odds I‘d ever be in Poland to see any of them again?
When I found the person who was organizing the party, she sounded surprised to hear from me. She had given up hope days ago of finding anyone, and had let the matter drop. But I was not about to let her give up, and my enthusiasm was infectious.
“Now, I have to be honest with you,” she said. “We are a volunteer arts organization, and we can’t pay you anything.”
“I understand. That’s OK with me, but I will have to check with the other band members.”
“Sure, of course. We will certainly feed you dinner.”
My banjo player, Donald, said he would do it. He likes getting paid, but he’ll bite like a young fish at any excuse to play Old Time music. My guitar player, Jake was a preacher, and would do it for friendship, not money. Only he could not arrive until after work, which, given his ministry duties, might mean midnight. And my caller, Bruce, said he had already been asked a week ago by the same organizers to do this gig. At the time, he had turned them down because he doesn’t work with recorded music. Now, with a live band in the offing, he agreed.
We all coalesced the following night at a church off Coldwater Road. The social hall was half filled with long tables covered in plastic table cloths and laden with pulled pork and salad and something potato saladish. They soon filled with young Polish teenagers, older Asian couples, American volunteers and others. Bruce immediately sat in a far corner and began flipping through dance cards. Donald hung close to me, not so much from an unwillingness to socialize with foreign strangers, as an unwillingness to socialize with anyone who did not speak Old Time music. The organizers, seeing us wallflowers, took us in hand, thanking us profusely, and made sure we got something to eat. They sat us next to a trio of German gentleman who could have passed for Peter, Paul, and Mary if they had not all been men. One had a gray beard and gray chest hairs escaping over the top of a patchwork vest. The second had a pony tail to his waist. And the last, clean-shaven and balding, covered his delicate neck with a checkered bandanna. I introduced myself to the first, and asked how they were connected to the FAME festival, but he was not the English speaker. The checkered bandanna informed me that they were musicians from Germany.
Ah! The trio I saw at the festival. I remembered them. And then I began to perspire. It’s one thing to debut as a dance fiddler for dancers. It’s another thing to do so for professional musicians.
“Oh, really?” I said. “Well, perhaps you gentlemen might care to join us later when we play for the dance?”
They nodded and smiled in an uncommitted fashion that was either polite demure or mere incomprehension. Donald, seeing my discomfort, rushed to the rescue and took the opportunity to orate on the history and geography of Old Time music in America, his favorite topic. This generated more of the same polite nodding from the trio which I joined in. Later, when they had left to get dessert, Donald snorted and said, “They look like old rock n roll stars!” He was not whispering.
At the end of the hall, in what I suppose was the original nave of the church, three folding metal chairs had been set up for us, and a young Polish teenager was setting up sound equipment. As we tuned up our instruments, he chattered and laughed with his friends, until we asked him a question, and then he looked sullenly deferential. Typical teenager.
We sat. We waited. This was a party, not just a dance, and the verbal socializing wasn’t over. There was no schedule, no script. While Bruce shuffled through his dance cards for the fourth time, we watched from across the room as the dessert and coffee gave way to announcements – the tedious thanking of all the volunteers and the good will orations between the “the nations of Germany, Japan, and Poland.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Donald suddenly, who had been uncharacteristically silent up to this point. “It’s the Axis powers!”
Fortunately, we were separated from the crowd by at least 30 feet.
Finally, they announced us, the evening’s entertainment – traditional American folk dancing, led by a traditional American caller with a traditional American band. Made up, they neglected to mention, of a traditional American professor of mechanical engineering, a traditional American computer programmer, and a traditional American business development executive. Our preacher had not yet arrived.
Bruce managed to entice a crowd on to the floor, mostly the Polish teenagers, who, as typical teenagers I suppose, weren’t going pass up an opportunity to licitly touch each other in public. Bruce politely declined the help of a translator that had been foisted upon him and began walking them through the figures.
“Hold hands in a ring… A ring … A circle. Like that, yes. Now, everyone take four steps into the middle.”
No one moved. Puzzled looks and stifled giggles. Bruce interposed himself between two people and, grabbing their hands, carried them along with him to the center, saying, “Four steps! One! Two! Three! Four!”
Thirty light bulbs went off over thirty heads. The crowd aaahed and began to surge forward. “Wan! Too! Tuh-ree! Foor!” they chorused.
Stamp, Stamp, Stamp, Stamp echoed their feet on the linoleum. The dance came together, one figure at a time. They had never danced this kind of dance before, but they were professionals and they picked it up very quickly. A second walk-through (“Wan! Too! Tuh-ree! Foor!”), and they had it. Then Bruce turned to me with a smile and said, “And now, we’ll dance it with music.”
All eyes on me, and for a moment, I blanked. Donald, fingers poised for plucking, looked at me. “What are we playing?” he asked.
“Um. What key are you in?” I stalled.
“A or D, take your pick.”
Something easy. Something I had down cold. Something I could play in my sleep. Something I could play unconscious. Not an unlikely possibility.
“OK. Angeline the Baker. I guess they haven’t heard it a billion times yet.”
Four little potatoes and off I went. I hadn’t stopped to position the fiddle properly and ended up grinding my teeth and jaw into the chin rest for ten minutes to hold it in place, but other than that it went fine. The dancers were a little too new and self-conscious to whoop and holler, but they yelled “Wan! Too! Tuh-ree! Foor!” with enthusiasm, and laughed at their own mistakes. When it was over, no one walked off the floor.
“Find another partner,” Bruce called, and they did.
Lucky for me, Bruce is very good at what he does, and then Jake showed up for the next tune. As soon as we started playing the second dance, I realized it was going to be OK. I had needed that guitar. Mind you, I love a good banjo player, and there are some tunes that a guitar should gracefully bow out of. But really, for a hollering good dance, you need a guitar. Or a bass.
The crowd was warming up, chattering, laughing. For the third dance, the Germans took up my invitation – two more guitars and a plugged-in acoustic bass gently feeling out the chords before playing full throttle. The church throbbed with rhythm. The dancers loved it.
During the third dance, the strings on my bow slackened in the new warmth and humidity of the room, and I tightened them afterward. After the fourth dance, the dancers were ready for a break. Half of them disappeared out of a side door as though going to smoke cigarettes, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It had been thoroughly enjoyable and hideously stressful, and I wanted a break too. Bruce began to rifle through his cards again, while I chatted with Jake. We had just decided to quietly run through our next tune for after the break, when the German with the kerchief round his neck came up. His English tingled with Commonwealth precision.
“If you don’t mind,” he smiled, “we were thinking of playing a song or two for everyone after the break.”
It wasn’t really a request, but it was politely communicated. We weren’t going to obstruct. It wasn’t our party. “Please do,” I said. Cheerfully.
Then the young dancers came back and upstaged both us and the Germans by starting a Polish party dance. They sang a little six-bar ditty (“la-la-lalalala”), and then the leader grabbed another person who held onto his waist. They sang again while these two marched about, and then they added a third dancer. And so on until the whole room was dancing an Eastern European conga line. Then they sang a rowdy song. Then they lined up in rows, chorale fashion, and sang a traditional anthem to their mothers.
Bruce watched with a nervous smile. You could tell he was enjoying the performance, and yet wasn’t sure if he was supposed to intervene or not. But as it turned out, the decision was taken away from him. The Germans figured they had waited long enough, and one of them leaped in to give a grand speech about friendship between their cultures and then led everyone in a German folk song that no one knew the words to. They followed this up with a second song. And a third song, switching to English.
“Valdereee! Valderaaaah! Valdereeeee! Valdera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha….”
At this point, Donald’s impatience broke through. He yelled in my ear over the noise, “Are we gonna get to play anymore?”
I shrugged. Threading my way around the Germans and their knapsacks on their backs, I found the organizer chatting with some of the volunteers. When I caught her attention, she glanced at the singing Germans, and her smile folded into a curve of embarrassment and apology. She didn’t actually know if we were going to play anymore. She guessed the artists had taken over their own party; they had been touring together for a couple of weeks. But she was very grateful that we came.
I found Bruce by one of the speakers in the corner. He knew the score. His cards were already packed up, and he watched the performance with a serendipitous smile.
“Bruce,” I said. “It looks like the dance is over for the evening. I’m sorry. That was a lot of your time for just four dances.”
Bruce didn’t take his eyes off the musicians, who had now coaxed some dancers onto the floor. A background cacophony of Polish and German voices filled the room, and Bruce gently raised his voice loud enough for me to hear him. He spoke in short phrases, mesmerized by the bizarre non-sequitor he was witnessing. “It’s … not a problem… This is truly … amazing… I hope they … bring us back next year.”
Jake had already packed up too, and I made the same apology. He protested that it was not a problem and he thanked me for letting him play, and though I knew he meant it, he was a preacher. In good conscience, what else could he have said?
Donald, however, was still sitting with his banjo in his lap and a look of sour chewing tobacco. When I broke the news to him, his thoughts were plain on his face – Three hours without pay for four measly tunes. But then he smiled grimly, and with good-natured stoicism, he reassured me it wasn’t a problem.
“You know how it is,” he told me. “Give the Germans an inch, and they’ll take a country.”
Irony February 18, 2010
Posted by Matthew in Biography, Wolcottville.add a comment
Last weekend was the Ohio Environmental Food and Farm annual conference in Granville, Ohio, a liberal arts college town of fewer than 3000 souls. Nola was attending talks by radical, organic farmers, spouting such polemics as, “Why does the government think a Hostess Twinkee is safer for our children to eat than fresh milk from a cow?”. They were sharing secrets to skirting the draconian laws against transporting raw milk across state lines. Did you know that you cannot sell raw milk products in this country as food? However you can sell it as fish bait by the pound (Fish Bait Colby anyone?).
It was Valentine’s weekend, so I drove down the next day, Saturday, with the children, and we stayed at an very nice and expensive inn and had a very tasty and expensive meal with our very tired and bored children. Then on Sunday, while Nola was learning how to make 6 figures raising organic, market gardens, I was somewhere down the highway in Columbus with the children, searching for a toy train expo I vaguely remembered reading about on the internet before I left Indiana. I did not know where to find it. For the sake of $20/month, my cell phone could access the internet, but I’m too cheap for a service I would use twice a year. Instead, I was relying on vague memory and the kindness of strangers. We did not have much success.
And then we passed a sign for a Tim Horton’s.
Which was Very Exciting for a Canadaphile such as myself.
Tim Horton’s is a chain of doughnut shops (and field police stations) all across Canada that I had read about. I did not know they had expanded to the United States. Being a connoisseur of homemade cake doughnuts, I had always wanted to try one, and there it was with time to spare. For the full experience, we ignored the drive-through and parked in the empty lot. The children crunched the dessicated piles of snow in the parking lot under foot, and I ushered them through the glass doors.
How sad, then, to find the meager, synthetic, doughnut-like objects in the display case . My romantic idea that doughnuts from Canada would be hearty, over-sized fuel for surviving frigid winters evaporated in the plastic shiny glare of pastries designed by a corporate efficiency expert. Oh Canada! Are you so insecure that you must copy your southern neighbor in this too?
Rose and Samuel went straight for the frosted ones with neon green and pink sprinkles. The counter help waited patiently with smiles, and having taken their time, I was too embarrassed to back out (see? wouldn’t I make a good Canadian?). I got the children what they wanted and ordered a plain cake doughnut for myself. On a whim, I mentioned our train expo dilemma, and the woman behind the counter was kind enough to look up the event on the internet for me.
Later, sitting at the Formica tables, I watched my children press a spilled, green sprinkle on each finger tip and lick them off one by one. I thought of Dawn, half an hour away, surrounded by a few hundred organic farmers, all plotting the demise of the very genetically modified organisms I was eating, and how very much more she would have enjoyed rubbing the sweet, drywall-texture crumbs off her teeth with her tongue.
Solomon February 10, 2010
Posted by Matthew in Biography, Wolcottville.add a comment
I woke this morning to the sound of my younger child crying – the loud, indignant cry of justice deferred. The sun was up, had been long up, somewhere behind the aluminum foil clouds. Six inches of snow down, six more to go sometime today, and they called us last night to say school would be closed. With no particular haste, I rose and put on my robe and headed out to play Solomon.
There were already several shrines of plastic toys set up about the house, including an interesting collection of hair accessories on the bathroom floor. I found both children in the lake room. Having heard the creaking of the carpeted floor boards, they had not moved or made a sound but waited for me to arrive. Each was clutching a handful of pickup sticks. The stubborn, angry expressions on their faces betrayed occasional slips of fear, and I could see the thoughts in their head as clearly as cartoon bubbles – will my case be strong enough to support my righteous anger in the court of Papa?
Fortunately for them, I was already awake, and Dawn had remained asleep. I can play Solomon as well as any dad, but if either of our sleep has been interrupted, the baby would really be cut in two.
Patiently I listened to each tell me their side of the story.
“He tried to grab the pickup sticks from me and when I wouldn’t give them, he kicked me and tried to bite me….”
“They were MY pickup sticks and when I tried to get them back, she made an angry, scary face at me…”
A woeful tale of property rights, assault, and battery. Neither showed any marks other than the lines of indignation on their brows. One story was much longer than the other, and neither agreed on any point of fact other than the involvement of pickup sticks.
Thus spake Solomon, “One or both of my offspring is prevaricating. Thou shalt remain in thy separate chairs, neither speaking, nor reading, nor diverting thy attention. Thou shalt not look to the right, neither to the left, until that thy separate histories shall concur with one another, verily, unto the meanest detail.”
Then I went to the bathroom to start my day.
Five minutes later I was back, and my children were still in their seats, though now draped across them like discard clothing, but quiet and bored rather than fighting.
“Would anyone like to alter or improve their story?” I asked.
Rose, my delightful motor mouth, can’t resist the opportunity to tell a story. “Papa, I’m going to tell you the WHOLE story this time. Samuel and I were playing Wallace and Gromit, and I was knitting the afghan with the pickup sticks like Gromit, and …” The convoluted story unfolded and it became clear that Rose had been on her way to put the sticks away when Sam decided he wanted them and the ruckus ensued. When she finished, Sam agreed with everything Rose said, so we discussed what should have been said or done instead and then gave apologies all around.
“Now,” I continued, “I’m going out to shovel the driveway. Would you like to go play in the snow while I do that?”
“YES! YES! But … Papa, can we have breakfast first?”
Toothpaste as art October 9, 2009
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This morning before school I left Rose in the bathroom to brush her teeth and get a bath while I went to do piano practice with Sam. After a few minutes of quiet from the bathroom, I yelled to Rose , “Are you brushing your teeth?” and she answered, very clearly and with the kind of proper enunciation one cannot achieve with a toothbrush in one’s mouth, “YES!” and then I immediately heard her electric toothbrush turn on.
Later, I came in to find her lying in a bathtub with the water running and filled up to about twice the normal height. I turned off the tub, finished her up, and got her out to dry off, but she said she had to pee. So she sat on the toilet, dripping onto the floor, while I turned to get the Aveeno lotion from the counter.
That’s when I saw a gel-like substance smeared all over the outside of the plastic drinking cup.
“Rose , what is this?” I asked. She stared at me with a scared, busted look on her face.
Repeat those last two sentences five times, because that’s what happened. Finally, she bowed her head, hid behind her hair, and said in a meek voice “toothpaste.”
Not even HER toothpaste. MY toothpaste! She had been painting with MY toothpaste all over the cup, the soap, and the sink, leaving a token deposit in the tube.
I did not find it particularly funny (as no doubt you do), but neither did I lose my temper. I told her to clean it up, which she did promptly and without complaint, and I let the matter drop. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
A Whole Yot September 26, 2009
Posted by Matthew in Biography, Wolcottville.1 comment so far
” I want a yot,” said my yittle boy. His four year old body has shed nearly every vestige of babyhood, but the y-l lisp still comes out now and then.
“A lot of what?” I asked him.
“No, a yot!”
“Yes, I heard you. A lot of what?”
“No, not a LOT.A YOT. A really big boat.”
“Oh! You mean a yacht!”
“Yes, I want a yot for my birthday… Or a dinghy.”
Selling the House – Chapter 5 January 18, 2009
Posted by Matthew in Biography, Montpelier.Tags: closing, house sale
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We conclude the story…
We were the first to arrive at the bank, a little early perhaps, and our inquiring looks as we scanned the tellers and patrons went unreturned. No one in the small lobby was expecting us. The two bank officials important enough to have offices, but not trustworthy enough to have something more opaque than smoked glass for walls, sat behind desks in earnest conversation with suited clients. We deduced that the location had been chosen for the convenience of the buyer’s lawyer, and we would just have to await his arrival. So we sat and tried, unsuccessfully, to find diverting reading material. In comparison to the dog-eared, glossy magazines of a doctor’s office, the pamphlets on mortgages, money market accounts, and interest-free checking were rather dry.
I let Dawn have the only chair in the place while I chivalrously stood nearby, a hovering protecting spirit. As no good deed goes unpunished, it wasn’t long before she said, “Harry, go ask that teller if they have any more of those piggy banks. You know, the one Samuel dropped on Fourth of July?”
I knew. This was a small town that still held a rousing Fourth of July parade that drew an audience large than the town’s population. The bank had given out soft piggy banks, which Sam had loved and then subsequently dropped as Dawn carried him back to the car after dark, asleep on her shoulder.
I also knew my wife. She delights in asking me to do small favors she can do perfectly well herself. True, I was already standing and she was sitting, and it would have churlish to expect her to vacate the seat I had just insisted she take. But the truth is, she is shy of both phones and strangers, so the choice was between futile, boorish nagging or getting it done.
A coiffed tween behind the counter invited me forward from the line. “Oh, the piggy banks? Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said with a sad look, as if I just told her my dog had died. Her patronizing tone slid up and down by perfect fourths and bounced off the walls of the small lobby. “They were none left. We gave them all away during the parade. I mean, I could go look in the back, but I’m fairly sure their all gone.”
“No, don’t bother. Thank you anyway.” I scuttled through a gauntlet of indulgent smiles back to our neutral corner and, crouching by the chair, murmured to Dawn, “They’re all out.”
“So I heard,” she murmured back.
Our lawyer arrived, in a soft brown business suit adorned with reading glasses on a necklace of polished river stones. She ushered us into an unoccupied conference room with the same floor-to-ceiling, fish-bowl windows. The table was ample enough for a formal dinner party, but we all huddled together along one side, politely relinquishing the “seats of honor” at each end. Though the chairs seemed more “dutiful” than “honorable”. These were modern New England business chairs, deeply rooted in Puritan virtues of fortitude and stamina. No executive springs or wheels, no imitation leather or bulging lumbar support. A simple, square metal frame barely disguised by insufficient padding and gray fabric upholstery, with four no-frills, stainless steel legs, thick as rebar, that speared the carpet below. Such a chair did not turn or waver. Such a chair forced ethical choices. Sit up straight, keep all your feet on the floor, and decide once and for all which direction you were going to face.
There was nothing extraordinary about the business we were going to conduct, but our lawyer beamed quietly. And why shouldn’t she beam. She was a grandmother, with a distinguished local career, a large house with a paid mortgage, and a grown-up child in the family business. She handed us papers – legal documents, her final bill, disclaimers and declarations. We sauntered through the pile, signing our names and chattering in undertones like school children in the back pew at church.
The buyer soon entered, slender and ethereal and out of place. She looked around the room with a shy smile. She seemed embarrassed by how much space she took up, and she tried to shrink her five foot ten frame. She wished us a drawling Good Morning. This was the first time she had ever bought a house on her own. Her nose positively twitched her desire for acceptance and her shoulders shrugged disbelief. She sat across the table from us, oozing quiet enthusiasm and nervousness.
At last Finn, her lawyer, arrived, a clean-shaven, suited fellow, with a sufficient amount of gray hair and an ample chin and paunch reflecting his distinguished position as a pillar of the legal bar. He assumed the role of master-of-ceremonies and dispelled the archival hush with a endless flow of dry, cynical, good-natured talk. He began to go through papers with his client, much as we were doing, while asking questions, swapping stories, and reminiscing.
“Did you give her the lead paint disclosure?”
“Yes, here it is,” we answered. “We really have no knowledge of lead paint, but all the interior walls were repainted in the last five years.”
“What is this?” the buyer asked.
“A useless piece of paper that you are legally entitled to read and recycle.”
“Finn, did you hear about the new bill before the legislature? Introduced by our friend Mrs. C?” our lawyer asked.
“Oh God. What now?”
“Aside from lead, it would require all sellers to provide buyers with a complete disclosure of a dozen other substances, along with pamphlets describing in detail the various health and safety hazards associated with it.”
From their mutual noises of disgust, they clearly thought this a terrible idea, but as a layman and a consumer I could not understand why? This must have shown on my face. “It would triple the amount of paper work,” she added, turning to me and holding up the half inch stack we had already worked through, “most of which will end up unread, recycled or in the landfill.”
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” said Finn. “You know, when I was a kid, my dad use to keep a old jam jar full of mercury, and sometimes he’d give it to us to play with, just to get us kids out his hair.”
The buyer blinked, and then added, not without a self-mocking sense of caveat emptor, “Well, I guess that explains a lot about you.”
Having started earlier, we finished our pile of papers sooner and sat back to enjoy the show. Finn and the buyer worked their way through their stack, occasionally passing a document to us to countersign. Finn would explain a document’s purpose in clear prose, discuss the nitty gritty with our lawyer in their legal argot, and then entertain us with some histoire while the buyer signed. Not a bad way to make a living. When the next paper was revealed, he held onto it and switched to a more formal tone than before.
“OK, before you sign this, I have to ask this officially. And you have to say ‘yes’ to make this legal and official, you understand?”
She swallowed whatever witty statement was at the end of her tongue as she realized his tone was, if not serious, then at least not as careless as before.
“Do you sign this document of your own free will?”
Good God? Was he really allowed to ask her this at this late stage in the game? We had cancelled our insurance policy. We had given up our children’s slot at the Montessori school. We had missed the deadline for pre-buying heating fuel for the winter. This was not time for cold feet. Fortunately, I hardly had time to hold my breath, before she answered, “Yes.”
I blew out my breath. “Finn,” I said, “At this point in the process … I mean …does anyone ever say no?”
Finn slid his reading glasses to a well-worn slot on the end of his nose and turned to face me – not an easy trick in those particular chairs. But the twinkle in his eye told me the serious part was over.
“You know, about once every five years, someone does say No.”
He leaned back in his chair, and held up a finger. “I remember this one couple I was helping through the process, and there hadn’t been any indication of a problem or hitch the whole time, a very routine sale, until I said, ‘Do you sign this document of your own free will?’ And she yelled, ‘NO!’ and pointed at her husband with her thumb,” and he demonstrated with his own thumb.
At this point Finn mimicked an angry and bitter woman defaming her spouse. “‘We wouldn’t be here if Mr. Awnt-er-pen-ure here hadn’t had his great, never-fail business idea. And what you think that might be? Come on. Guess. No, don’t guess. You’ll never guess. A tire center! In Vermont! Isn’t that brilliant. Who would ever think to put up a tire center in Vermont! Would you think of that? Of course, you would. How many tire centers are there within twenty miles of here? Lots! But Noooo! Come on, honey, it’s a sure bet. He insisted. We’ll make a ton of money. We can’t lose. Argh! We owned that beautiful house outright and now we have to take out a mortgage just to pay off the losses. I could just SCREAM every time I think of it. And if you think you can…’
“On and on and on she went, while her husband sank in his seat and turned an odd shade of pale gray. I thought she wasn’t ever going to finish. I must have waited ten minutes for her to calm down, until finally she huffed in disgust, ‘Yes, I sign this document of my own free will.’ and then immediately turned to her husband and said, ‘I am NEVER going to let you live this down!’”
The paperwork was completed, and as we shook hands all round, Finn handed us the largest check I ever expect to see in my life. Outside the building, the buyer hugged us, thanked us, and wished us well, and we sincerely returned her emotions. In a couple of months, she would be sending us increasingly anxious and frustrated emails when the basement flooded in one of the wettest summers the state had seen in living memory. But at that moment, we were all pleased with the transaction and relieved it had come off smoothly. She walked off in high spirits, a great burden off her shoulders.
We were now legally homeless, and our future had enough uncertainty that we weren’t completely care-free, but it’s hard to be anxious with a five-digit check for in your hand. Or rather, it’s a different kind of anxiety.
“We need to deposit this RIGHT AWAY!” I insisted.
“OK gang. Let’s go!” Dawn said, in her best up-and-at-’em voice.
“Should we walk or take the car? It’s kind of a far walk, but we have a free parking spot right now.”
“Harry, look at the dollar amount on that check you are holding in your hand. And you’re trying to save yourself twenty-five cents in the parking meter?”
“I am my Mother’s son, but you’re right. Let’s drive.”
In retrospect, it’s embarassing to admit when you have lived a cliche, but at the time we laughed all the way to the bank.
Spit Goes Clink January 16, 2009
Posted by Matthew in Biography, Wolcottville.Tags: electricity, emergency, power outage
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We lost power last night, from about 1:30 in the morning until 7:30.
Without electricity we have no lights, no heat (gas furnace controlled by electric thermostat), and no water (well pump is electric). I am writing this at 10:00 AM,and it is -14 Fahrenheit outdoors (yes, that says negative fourteen, or as Rose says, “megative fourteen” because it is worse than negative), so I don’t know how cold it was outside in the middle of the night. I shudder to think of it. Or maybe shiver. The house isn’t quite back up to operating temperature. We still have condensation frost on the inside of the windows.
I got up, found a flashlight, and called the power company. I left a message on their automated system and waited. I lit a few candles and read for a while, but after an hour, the temperature was noticeably dropping in the house. Samuel had a cold and woke easily, and so he ended up in bed with us, ensuring that neither Dawn nor I would get any sleep. I was up and down a number of times, unable to sleep but too tired and, increasingly, too cold to want to get up. We piled fleece blankets on the children and ourselves. Rose grunted when I asked if she was OK, but her head and hands feet felt warm.
And then I realized that if the house froze, there would be burst water pipes to deal with.
It was 4:00 in the morning. I called our landlady, but she didn’t know how to drain the water out of the pipes. She would try to find out and call me back.
“Meanwhile, can you leave some water running to keep the pipes from freezing?” she asked.
“No, the well pump is electric.”
“Oh… Yeah… Darn.”
I called the electric company and heard the reassuring recorded message that said there was a power outage in our area (and six other places) and crews were dealing with it. Later, I would feel very, very bad for those crews. But not right at that moment. At that moment, I wanted to urge them on with a cat-o-nine tails.
I also wanted to know how dire the situation was. At first I thought to get some water from the water cooler and stick an instant read thermometer in it. But then a few sluggish neurons woke up enough to say, “Hey stupid. Get the flashlight and look at the thermostat,” before rolling over back to sleep.
The thermostat read 60 degrees. 60 degrees? But it felt so cold in the house!
We decided to get ready to evacuate anyway, which raised another problem. The car was 75 yards away in a locked, detached garage. The garage door opener was electric and could not be opened from the outside. We would have to get inside the garage and manually open it, but the man door was locked and we didn’t know if we had a key. I put on fleece pants, a silk turtleneck, snow pants, fleece sweater, winter coat, a neck gaiter, Sorrell snow boots, a fleece touque (as our neighbors to the north say), and a down winter coat, and I walked outside with all the keys we could find in the house.
It occurred to me that this might be my first chance to have my spit freeze in mid-air, but I was too chicken to find out. I didn’t want my lips to freeze together.
We live on a “vacation” lake, so only a couple of house on our block still have people living in them at this time of year. However two doors down, I saw a station wagon with its lights on and my neighbor moving in and out. I went over to talk to him and found out that he was going to drive seven miles to town and look for a generator. His wife was leaving in their other car to drive to Fort Wayne and go to work three hours early. He asked if I had a cell phone, and I said yes, but it got no signal at the lake. Too bad, he said. He wanted to call ahead and see if anyplace was open. Why don’t you use your regular phone I said? He looked puzzled and then realized what I meant.
“All my phones are cordless and they need to be plugged into a socket to work.” I offered my phone but he decided to just go. But he did help me get my car out first. Turns out I did have a key to open the man door, and fortunately he was there to help because to open the garage door, we had to pull on two separate metal flaps, one on each end of the garage door.
So the car was available for a quick get away, if need be. I came inside, and was about to crawl back in bed when the landlady called back. She had not found out how to drain the water, but she was going out to buy a portable generator. I told her that the house was now at 55 degrees so there wasn’t any immediate danger.
I crawled into bed. Even Samuel’s involuntary spasms and twitches and kicks couldn’t keep me awake. But at 6:30 he woke up, as he does every morning, and wanted to get up and play. We said no about as firmly as we say No about anything, but he kept pleading until finally I said, “Sam, come with me.”
We had already covered him in fleece and warm layers, so I walked him into the room where all his toys were. It was very, very dark.
“Sam, the electricity is out. There is no power in the house. Do you think you can play out here in the dark?”
No answer. We went back to bed until the power came on at 7:30 in the morning. We gave a feeble cheer, and then I took Samuel to the playroom and fell asleep on the couch, wrapped in blankets.
An hour later, Rose woke up. She had no idea what had happened during the night, but she was pleased to hear that school had been canceled for the day.
