Treasure

When Carrie, my wife, and I first moved into our house, we were delighted to discover that in addition to all the usual house stuff there was a built in safe. I never thought about having a safe before, but this was an actual safe of gray spotted gunmetal hidden in a cabinet just off the floor of the study. I thrilled at the idea that we’d no longer hide my wife’s jewelry in an empty  Chocolate Haagen Das quart container we stored in the back of our freezer.

            The previous owner, an eighty-five year old woman whose husband had built the house in 1935, gave us the combination to the safe written in pencil on a small piece of spiral notepaper she had placed in a sealed envelope. Her son handed it to us at the closing before wishing us luck. I tucked the piece of paper in my wallet and forgot about it while we moved our stuff into our new home, but with that mostly done, it was time to open the safe and throw something in it. Because we could.

            Flashlight in hand, I bent down and began to work the combination lock,  following the instructions to the letter, or so I thought. After several failed attempts, Carrie pulled at my shoulder and told me to get out of the way so she could do it.  I ignored her and after just four more tries, I heard the tell-tale “click” and looked up at Carrie. “Bingo,” I said.

            I pulled open the heavy door, which was about the size of a dinner plate and reached inside. “Wow,” I said, putting my arm in up to my elbow, “this is a big safe. Plenty of room in here for our stuff.” As I pulled my hand out along the bottom of the safe I felt something move. “Wait a second, there’s something in here.” The flashlight revealed a small black velvet bag. I handed the bag to Carrie and she pulled out a diamond stick pin. “My, that’s a big one,” I said, looking at a diamond larger than a pea but smaller than a grape.

            “A diamond this big, it’s probably fake,” Carrie said, “but we’d better tell the son that we found it. Maybe it’s a family heirloom or something.”

            Carrie went into the bedroom to make the call, and after a minute of talking I heard her hang up. “What did he say?” I asked when she walked in.

             “He said that his mother never had anything valuable like that and that it’s probably junk. He said we can keep it.”

            I placed the stick pin in the black velvet bag and returned it to the safe. 

                                                            *          *          *
            We sold the house twenty five years later. Carrie was cleaning out the safe when she called out, “Hey, remember that diamond stickpin?” I walked in and she was holding it up to the light. “I still think it’s fake,” she said, “but I’m getting some of my jewelry appraised. I might as well take this with me.”

            A few days later, she returned from the appraiser and told me the news: “Guess what? That stickpin? The diamond is real.”

            “Really,” I said. “Worth anything?”
            “He offered me $8,000.”

            “Yay!” I said as I did an exuberant victory dance.

            Carrie watched me dance for a few seconds, and then said, “Hang on there, John Travolta. You know we have to give it back, right?”

            “What?” I stopped my dancing “We tried already twenty five years ago and they didn’t want it.” Carrie glared at me. I knew she was right, and of course we called the family and returned it. But for a brief moment, I reveled in the joy of discovering the buried treasure I’d been looking for since I was a kid.

Covid Wave

Even though the morning was muggy and hot by 9am, I pushed myself to take a walk. There was plenty of shade along my walk, and I appreciated the slight breeze. As is my custom when walking alone, I strode quickly and powerfully, arms swinging almost 45 degrees from my body. Every now and then a car would pass and I’d step off the road as best I could and watch the car swing wide of me as best it could. Covid was in the air, and everyone and everything repelled like two positively charged magnets jumping away from each other.

            About a mile into my walk I spotted a man walking toward me on the other side of the road. He was older than me judging by his white hair and goatee, his slight hunch, and his ragged stride but he was dressed for exercise and moving briskly. As he got closer I noted with a smile the colors he was wearing: his running shorts were the lime green of faded Astroturf and his shirt the pale blue typical of a wispily clouded sky on a hot sunny day. The color of his clothes would have been more appropriate on the golf course, but in my tony Connecticut town the preppy colors popular in the mid 90’s hung on like a bad habit.

            The man saw me after I’d spotted him. He’d started to cross to my side of the street, but when he saw me he veered back. Without looking at me, he walked to the curb next to a vast expanse of dense forest that dotted the area between the homes. Then he turned toward the forest, undid his fly, and, still standing on the asphalt, proceeded to pee as if I wasn’t there.

            My resolute gait softened as I considered the scene—not just the tableau before me of an older man peeing on the curb, but of me witnessing the older man peeing. He knew I was walking toward him with a deliberateness that would within seconds have me standing close. After all, he had met my glance before deciding to abort his move to my side of the road and return to his. But he could have waited the few seconds for me to pass before initiating the peeing process (the turn toward the curb, the yank of the fly, the flow), and this left me with questions. Was it an act of desperation, a physical need no less urgent or controllable than a sneeze or a sudden belch? Or was it an act of defiance aimed at the upper class suburban neighborhood that may or may not have been his? Or was it an act of aggression aimed at a stranger who had thwarted his intended route? At me?

            I picked up my pace. The man finished his business and returned his fly to its pre-pee status before returning to his walk. He remained on his side of the road and I on mine. Neither of us wore cloth masks and therefore obeyed the rule of the coronavirus road: Keep your distance. I usually waved to every passerby to show solidarity against the virus and to acknowledge with a shy smile our rebellious act against self-incarceration. In my experience everyone waved back. Not a grand wave requiring a full arm extension, the wave you give as your ocean liner pulls away from the pier at the start of your world tour. Just a flip of the hand in the other’s direction. But I worried that my wave to the old man after his leak might suggest my approval or endorsement or even bemusement.

            In the end, I waved.

            The old man glanced at the movement of my hand as we moved past each other from the safety of the 25 feet separating us. Then he continued past me without waving back. Nor did he nod or smile or in any way acknowledge me, confirming to me that even his glance in my direction was inadvertent on his part. At that point I quickened my pace. I didn’t want to see him or for him to see me; not even as a blur in our peripheral vision. We made ourselves mutually invisible on our walk on the hot morning, erasing as best we could any thought of the other and of the viral threat that connected us.

I Lost My Power

The interesting thing about disasters is that it recalls other disasters that may have been even more harrowing than the one you’re living through. As I write this, my generator roars, and if it weren’t supplying our house with all the electricity we need, I’d be standing at my front door yelling, “Shut up! Too loud. Shut up or I’ll call the cops!” So this outage for me is not so harrowing.
            Several years ago Hurricane Sandy roared through the area. The devastation was horrifying, mostly due to the storm surge, but there was plenty of wind to bring down trees and wires. Our lights flickered and died, and there was no generator to save the day. The heat went off and the house started to get cold. While the outdoor temperature during the day was tolerable, maybe 55, at night it dropped. I called the electric company. No estimated restoration time given, but it wouldn’t be soon.

            I spent hours walking around the neighborhood marveling at the downed trees, the tangled wires, the amazed and appalled looks on the faces of my fellow neighbors. These kinds of disasters tend to bring people together who otherwise wouldn’t exist for us. But I didn’t feel much togetherness and I don’t know if that was me or them. We were all in the same boat, and the boat was sinking. Time to run for the lifeboats.
            My wife and daughter decided to drive to Virgina to stay with my sister-in-law. I volunteered to stay with the house and guard against intruders. I pictured myself as an old hillbilly sitting on my front porch with a shotgun across my lap and a bottle of moonshine to keep me warm. But I had neither shotgun nor moonshine so I just stayed indoors and hoped the crazed marauders would look elsewhere for food and shelter.

            During the day I did connect with two neighbors down the street: and older woman and her twenty something daughter. I stood in the street and we talked for a long time. “We’re so cold at night” the mother said. “This house is old and the insulation is terrible. I don’t know what to do. All the hotels are full.”

            “You’re welcome to sleep in my house. It’s staying relatively warm, and there’s nobody else but me.” They declined. We had no power for 17 days. When things went back to normal I kept an eye out for the older woman and her daughter, but I never saw them again.

We’ve since moved out of that neighborhood. Every time a storm comes, I think of the older woman and her daughter, and hope they are somewhere safe, dry, and warm.

Drumming: My History, Part 2

My mother was a piano teacher. Growing up I studied classical piano. While I played trumpet in the school band, piano was my main instrument. Rock was ubiquitous, but despite the fact that I liked rock music it never even occurred to me to play keyboards in a rock band. And I didn’t really think much about the drummers. They were typically in the back, which told me they must be less important to the guitarists and singers who were out in front.

            When I was 15, I went to my first rock concert at the suggestion of my adventurous friend, Sonny Volanzo. Sonny was my age, but he was growing up fast, certainly faster than me. He introduced most of his friends to the joys of drinking, pornography, foul-mouthed cursing and filthy jokes way before most of us were ready. So it made perfect sense that I’d go to my first rock concert at Sonny’s urging. “My dad can drive us up there, but we gotta hitchhike back. Tell your mother we’re getting a ride back, okay?” Sonny knew my mother was not keen on these adventures, and the less she knew about the details, the better. Luckily it was an afternoon concert at a college about 20 miles away, and when I told her I had a ride both ways, Mom said fine.

            The band was a British band, Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Keith Emerson had my attention and admiration because he was a classically trained pianist and the band played not only their own stuff, they also played rock versions of classical pieces. One I really loved was a rock take on Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” originally written for classical piano by the Russian composer but well known in its orchestrated version. Classical converted to rock seemed cool, and it justified my nerdy classical piano playing in the eyes of my friends. (Actually, none of them ever mentioned this to me.)

            When we took our seats in the concert hall (a college gymnasium with folding chairs on the gym floor), the road crew was still tinkering on stage, adjusting booms, saying, “Test, one, two…test…” into each of the mikes, aligning the drums and cymbals and bells and all the other percussion equipment. The kid next to us kept standing up and screaming, “Yeah, hell yeah,” during the setup, like he was cheering on the roadies. Sonny whispered to me that the kid was probably tripping. It was my first rock concert, so I figured sitting next to someone who was apparently out of his mind was normal.

            It was impossible not to notice the drums set up at the rear of the stage. There must have been twenty-five separate drums aligned in two or three rows, countless cymbals, and on either side of the drums, a series of enormous metal Chinese gongs. Hanging from one of the gongs was a giant fluffy ball on a stick, like a five-foot tall Q-tip, used to strike the gongs. Wow, I thought, with all that leverage, that giant gong was going to make some significant noise.

            When the band came on and the drummer, Carl Palmer, sat behind the drums, he seemed to be the guy with all the power on stage. During the concert he played a ten minute drum solo where he used every one of his drums and gongs, moving around like a crazy person swinging the mallots, sticks, brooms, hands, and feet to make the sounds. And it was breathtaking. This was my first moment of drum appreciation, not counting Mr. Stinner’s drum pad exercise. We hitchhiked home and the sounds of the drums, cymbals and gongs rang in my ears, mingling with the whooshing of the passing trucks and cars and Sonny’s loud swearing at the drivers who didn’t stop to give us a ride.

            As I got older and started listening to jazz, I once again focused first on the piano, then on the horns and other instruments, and finally the singers. The drums were there, but I didn’t really know what to make of them. They kept the time, and every now and then I noticed a drum solo that sounded loud, or complicated, or soft and nuanced, but nothing I really understood. Then, in my twenties I lived in New York and started going to jazz clubs. That’s where I really started to notice the drummer. I noticed the drummer because of the way they moved with the music. It was like watching a dancer, but a dancer who moved in a very compact way. As to exactly what the drummers were doing when they played jazz drums, that remained a mystery. But I found myself liking their playing more and more, and focusing as much on the drummer as on the other instrumentalists.

            I kept listening and watching jazz. Piano continued to be my instrument and I enjoyed playing both classical and jazz. My wife and my two children were my main audience and my biggest fans. Before the kids were born I played whenever I wanted, even late at night. (One delightful consequence of my practicing Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” while my wife was pregnant was that immediately after Steven’s was born, he instantly fell into a deep contented sleep whenever I played the piece. Seems the Debussy reminded him of better days in the womb!) But as the kids got older, I found I had to restrict my playing to before bedtime.

            One evening, as Carrie put our eight-year old daughter, Julia, to bed, I was playing Chopin’s Prelude in D flat Major, a short beautiful piece known as “Raindrop.” Carrie came downstairs and said, “Art, Julia’s trying to get to sleep, so can you please stop playing?”

Reluctantly I stopped and pushed myself back from the piano. Then I heard my daughter’s little voice from my bedroom.

            “No, Dad, don’t stop. I love that piece. It helps me get to sleep.”

            Carrie smiled at me and said softly, “Okay, play it once.” I did, and before I finished, Julia was asleep and my piano playing was over for the night. Now what? Should I read? Reading made me sleepy. Watch TV? I made my living in television so it wasn’t something I craved when I got home. I’d been playing Chopin but suddenly I remembered a jazz tune I’d heard earlier in the day and I felt like playing it. I started tapping out the rhythm on my thighs while I was still sitting at the piano. That’s when it occurred to me that my rhythmic sense, so important to playing jazz piano, kind of sucked. I pictured myself playing drums in the basement. Not real drums, electronic drums that I could play using headphones so nobody could hear me: I could play after the kids were asleep. I could play in the morning before they got up. I could play in the middle of the night. EUREKA!

            I looked up electronic drum sets on my computer. Carrie asked, “Whatcha doing?”
            “I can’t play piano after the kids go to bed, so maybe I’ll take up drums.”
            “Drums? You’re kidding, right?”
            “I think those electronic drumkits are cool. Maybe they’re fun to play. Maybe my jazz piano would improve from playing drums, you know, because I’d be learning rhythm. Yeah, I could play jazz drums. I always wondered what the heck those jazz drummers were doing.”
            “Really? I smell mid-life crisis…” said Carrie.

            “Why is it when a guy over fifty embarks on some kind of new interest or declares himself on a quest or buys a hot new car everyone starts nodding knowingly and chanting ‘mid-life crisis?’” 

            Carrie just smiled and nodded knowingly.

            “Could be worse,” I said defensively. “Could be a lot worse.” I continued my Google electronic drum search.

Drumming: My History, Part 1

I had my first sidelong brush with drums when I was in the fourth grade. I don’t remember the exact circumstance, but there was a music teacher who I recall was also our gym teacher. His name was Mr. Stinner, and he came into class to teach us an hour of music each week. On this particular week, he brought with him six practice drum pads, circular rubber pads on a wooden base used to practice drum rhythms without making much noise, and six pairs of drumsticks. We went up in front of the class in random groups of sixes and had to try and play a series of rhythms on the drum pad while counting, “one, two, three, four,” over and over. He had written the rhythms on the board, and we practiced by chanting them aloud.

            When it was my turn to go up and play, I felt my anxiety skyrocket, but I didn’t know why. Stage fright? I never had stage fright. In fact I was always pretty good at getting up in front of people and doing whatever I had to. It was something about keeping the beat and  playing a steady rhythm, despite the fact that it seemed really easy when I first heard it.

            I stood at my drum pad and held my sticks at my side as the first kid played through the rhythm. Then the second kid. When it was my turn, I started right in, counting aloud as expected. But I was so nervous that I started having trouble breathing, as if I was doing some strenuous physical exercise instead of just hitting the pad with the sticks. Finally I finished. Mr. Stinner said, “You kind of got out of breath there. I didn’t know if you’d make it to the end without passing out from lack of oxygen!” Everyone in the classroom started laughing, except for me. When they stopped laughing, the next kid started playing the drum pads. I stood there, sweating and angry, wondering what went wrong.

            I didn’t pick up a drumstick for the next forty-one years.

Next week--Drumming: My History, Part 2.

Impromptu

The sun blazed through the windows of our house and warmed the living room just past comfortable. I was sitting at my piano with my back to the windows, and in order to see outside I had to turn completely around.  I stopped playing, turned around and looked up at Deer Valley Mountain, part of the Wasatch Mountain Range, rising above some small lakes about a mile away. Some find the ocean to be a locus of calm; for me, it’s the mountains. Especially the mountains in the summertime, with their cool streams, mountain lakes, and vast forests.

            I turned back to the piano and continued to practice. In front of me on the music stand was Chopin’s Ballade Number 1 in g minor. I find Chopin to be generally difficult to play but beautiful to listen to and the First Ballade was no exception. I’d been working on it for a couple months, making my way through it slowly, deliberately. Now I had memorized a lot of it and could play it, even the hard parts, without fumbling. Nobody had heard me play it other than my wife, and I expected nobody would—I hadn’t taken a piano lesson in years and I rarely played for anyone else.
            I started to play the Chopin again, from the beginning. A few minutes later, Carrie, my wife, who had been sitting on the deck reading, called to me through the screen doors.

            “Art, stop for a minute.”
            “What’s the matter?” I got up and walked to the screen doors. There was a man I’d never seen before standing on our deck. He was tan and fit, a nice-looking man with short brown hair and an open, friendly face. He wore khaki shorts, a dark blue tee shirt, and white sneakers. He appeared older than me, maybe in his early 60’s.

            “Art,” Carrie said, “this is John. He was walking by and heard you playing piano, so he stopped to listen.”

            “Hi Art, nice to meet you.” John held out his hand. He seemed friendly enough. What did he want? “My wife and I are renting the house up the street,” he said. “I was taking a walk when I heard the first Chopin Ballade. That was you, right?” I relaxed a bit. He seemed non-threatening and he knew something about music.

            “That was me. I’m just learning it,” I said.
            “Can I come in? I play piano, too. Will you play it for me? Maybe I can point out a couple of things to you.” I glanced over at Carrie, but she seemed as confused about the whole thing as I was. Other than my teachers and my mother, I never played for anyone. When I didn’t respond, he said, “I love that piece.”

            “Are you a piano teacher?”
            “No,” he said with an abashed smile. “I’m a pilot. I used to work for American Airlines. Now I fly privately, and the guy I fly for has a place in Park City, so I’m based here for the summer. But I went to Julliard, and that piece has always been one of my favorites.” Then he asked again: “Can I come in?”
            I’m typically unadventurous, so I was surprised when I said, “Sure. Yeah, c’mon in.”
Carrie stayed on the porch. I sat down at the piano and John stood next to me. As he reached for the music and turned it to the first page, he said, “You know, if Chopin hadn’t composed any other music but this Ballade, he would still be famous. He’d still be considered one of the great composers. That’s how amazing this piece is.” I considered that for a moment, then, hands trembling a bit, I started to play. When I got through the first section, John stopped me. “I like a lot of what you’re doing there. But you sound like someone who’s concentrating on hitting all the right notes.”
            “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”
            “Yeah, but you’re past that. Now you have to figure out how to make it sound beautiful. Play from the beginning. But don’t worry so much about getting the notes right. Play what you feel. Let go a little. Relax with it. You already know the notes. Now you have to make it sing.”
            The impromptu lesson went on like this for an hour. When it was over, John again told me again to stop thinking so much about hitting the right notes.

            “But that’s what I was taught to do since I was a kid!” I said, recalling how my piano teachers would stop me when I hit a wrong note and tell me to start again. 

            John shook his head. “Do you think of Chopin as a technical exercise or as a beautiful piece of music? If all you’re doing is proving that you can play it, technically, you’ll never uncover Chopin’s radiance.” He smiled. “And if you don’t, well, you’ll have missed the best part of being able to play the piano.”

            We finished the lesson and I walked to the kitchen, opened a bottle of wine and poured a couple of glasses. John, still at the piano, asked if he could play some Rachmaninoff he’d been working on. Of course he played beautifully. When he finished, he and I chatted over wine. We were interrupted by his cell phone. “My wife,” he said as he answered. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you,” he explained, “I’ll be home soon. I’m just finishing a glass of wine with some nice people I met.” I asked John if she would join us, and a few minutes later the four of us were sitting engaged in a lively discussion about piano, about the concert series John and his wife oversaw in Florida where they lived, and about how Carrie reacted when John, a perfect stranger, asked if he could come in. An hour later we said goodbye and promised to see each other again.

            A few days later, I opened our front door and found a small envelope. In it was a note from John and a CD. In the note, John said his employer had to leave suddenly, and they wouldn’t be coming back to Park City. He’d enjoyed meeting us, he had fun giving me a lesson, and he wanted to give me the CD of a friend of his who was a particularly fine pianist. “Enjoy. Best, John.” I never saw him again.

An Enviable Life

Neil bopped down the sidewalk listening to the song in his head. He moved forward to the beat, swaying in time, snapping his fingers, and twirling every now and then to avoid a fellow pedestrian who seemed disinclined to move out of the way. He was dancing, really, and dancing was the thing that made him feel most alive.

            Neil wasn’t always a dancer, but he was always fascinated with music, rhythm, the beat of the drum, and when he was six he started moving to the music. Any music he heard on the radio, or if someone played a record, or even in the elevator, he danced to the music whether it was danceable or not.

            People thought that he was happy. His life seemed enviable, as any life might seem if it’s not as familiar to you as your own. But Neil had a problem not of his own making, a problem that he thought would eat him alive if he stopped dancing. So he kept dancing, and hoped his problem would stay hidden, and that people would smile when they saw him dancing; smiling in that envious way people have when they see someone who seems momentarily happy, happier than they are, more alive than they are.

            And Neil was right. Nobody could see what was troubling him, how his life really was, while he was dancing.

Fresh Man Blues

It’s late August and I arrive at freshman orientation at the small liberal arts college I’ve chosen. I successfully locate my dorm and my dorm room and toss my suitcase on a bed to claim it. The first of my four roommates shows up. Dan, from the Midwest, a violinist, very self-possessed and self-assured. It makes me wish I was more self-assured. Self-assurance had not, to this point, been my defining feature.

            I walk outside leaving Dan to unpack his violin and other stuff. Summer’s over and it’s just short of kicking into fall, the leaves whispering a bit of orange. The trees make the campus beautiful. I think about how to present myself to the 399 other kids I’m about to meet. No reason to be so different from how I was in high school, right?

             Or not right?

            This is, I realize, my chance to create myself anew, to put on any mask I can conjure up, to rewrite my life story. In high school that was impossible. Those kids knew me for most of my life. They saw me grow up. They caught me at the worst moments of adolescence. They heard my voice break. Masks and made-up histories were a complete waste of time. It was like getting up every day, getting dressed, only to arrive at school completely naked.

            Maybe I should just adjust the dials. Turn up the funny, turn down the pessimistic. Or create something out of whole cloth: “Yeah, I was a dancer with the Joffrey, they said I had a brilliant future, but I busted my ACL and, you know, I’m looking for ways to channel my creative brilliance so I think I’ll try mime.” No, I’d be found out instantly—I’m short and stocky so nobody would mistake me for a dancer. And I loathe mime. A girl walks by and I look up and smile at her. She gives nothing back even though she looks right at me. Okay, further confirmation that this version of me isn’t working. I return to my room and meet two more roommates.
            We talk for a while. I don’t love these guys, but after a few minutes we share a laugh and some of the toxic anxiety that strangled me loosens its grip. Dan keeps to himself, holding his violin while the rest of us continue to chat and settle in. I realize that recreating myself would be a waste my time and everyone else’s.

            What a relief.

What Would I Put In A Time Capsule

Time capsule in the age of digital and the internet is an interesting concept. Every generation since early man wanted to communicate to the future (the cave drawings were probably meant to communicate to the very near future). Writing is like that. We write something, and then in the future someone reads it, making it a time capsule of sorts. The space age gave us Voyager, that interstellar time and space capsule that hopes to ensure human culture (as represented by some Beatles songs and stuff—I honestly can’t recall what they put in there) survives in the minds of someone, or something, assuming the somethings even have minds.

And, of course, the internet preserves just about everything for all time, as long as humans are able to decode the 0’s and 1’s.

So it’s refreshing to even think for a moment about an old fashioned time capsule, because it brings us back to things, objects especially, that represent something meaningful about us. I would start with a smart phone, something that sums up humanity: Communication device, information device, entertainment device, and best friend. Sad. Art, in the form of paintings and sculpture would be a more flattering inclusion, but you’d need a pretty big capsule to get Michelangelo’s best work in there. And burying the Sistine Chapel seems a waste given so many people who are alive and haven’t yet seen it.

I think some of our crazier foods would be interesting. Let’s get a freezer and put in some Hostess Twinkies, pigs in a blanket, and maybe a lasagna (vegetarian). Pizza—the greatest of all foods should definitely be in there. We could include instructions for thawing and preparation, which of course requires both a pizza oven and a microwave, because you can’t microwave pizza—too mushy. And how about the complete works of Phillip Roth, just in case his stuff doesn’t otherwise survive.

Finally, I would like to climb into the time capsule myself. Science hasn’t figured out how suspended animation works, but what better way to transmit the culture than send me to the future? Actually, I’m sure there are much better ways, but let’s worry about that—in the future.

Rich As Rockefeller

Our family spent summers at my grandmother’s house in Owen Sound, Ontario, a small, quiet, picturesque town nestled in the hills near Georgian Bay. My brother and I adopted my grandmother’s neighborhood as our own in the summer. Our first task was to explore the immediate area by walking the streets, cutting through yards, and mapping in our heads the playgrounds, parks, tennis courts, baseball fields, and other useful places nearby. One day soon after we arrived, Brian and I found a few nickels, dimes and pennies someone had dropped on the sidewalk, so we headed straight for the corner store to spend it on penny candy. Thirty cents bought a ton of licorice, gum drops, and malted milk balls and the store owner didn’t seem to mind that it took us twenty minutes to make our selection. Walking back from the store we happened on a pack of kids who must have lived nearby. One kid asked, “You guys live around here?” in a threatening sort of way, so Brian and I offered up our candy and everyone took a piece.  From then on, and for the rest of the summer, these were our pals.

They were a scrappy bunch, seven boys aged five to nine, and I was surprised to learn that they didn’t all have bicycles. In Lakewood, my hometown in New Jersey, everyone had some kind of personal transportation like a bike, or a scooter, or a toy car with pedals that you could move around the sidewalks on. Their clothing (torn, dirty, too big or too small) matched the row houses on the street (dirty windows, broken steps, in need of painting). Some of the kids never wore shoes. Brian and I joined in their games of pirates, or army, or just running through the yards of people who hated us running through their yards. “Hey, you kids, stay off my property or I’ll…” But we ran fast and never heard the last few threatening words.

There was one kid called Bunchy who never said anything. I remember seeing him for the first time and staring at him. As I did I felt strange--not sick exactly, but definitely not good. Deke, Bunchy’s older brother, was standing next to him. “Hey,” he said, breaking my concentration. “What are you staring at? His arm? My Mum says it’s not polite to stare.” In fact, I was staring at the place where his arm should have been. He was wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt with red and white stripes, grimy, streaked with food and grease. His right arm came out from the sleeve but ended abruptly, and poking out from the short smooth round stump was what looked like a nipple. I was staring because I’d never seen a kid with half an arm ending in a nipple, and I was trying to figure out how this happened. Deke filled me in.

            “Bunchy, he was borned like that. Never had no arm, but he still gets to play with us.”
            I dropped my gaze to the sidewalk and mumbled, “Sorry.”
            “Yeah well don’t do it again.” He turned to his brother. “You okay Bunchy?” Bunchy nodded and then smiled at me. I smiled back. Somebody started running, and like a flock of birds leaving a telephone wire we all followed, running nowhere, just enjoying the feeling of flying through the neighborhood.

One of the places we liked to go was the baseball field a few blocks from my grandmother’s house. It was a real baseball field, with bleachers and a concession stand made of cinder blocks and painted light green, the green you see in hospital hallways. Several nights a week during the summer there were professional fast-pitch softball games. Once in a while one of my uncles would volunteer to take Brian and me to a game, but we had almost as much fun watching night games from an upstairs window of my grandmother’s house. Strong white lights lit up the field. When a batter got a hit, we saw the ball soar away before we heard the crack of the bat. Every time that happened Brian and I would look at each other in shock and disbelief. “That’s so cool!” he’d say and I’d agree. We could hear the crowds cheering even after we went to bed.

Next to the baseball diamond was a tennis court. The net was raggedy and drooping, and the asphalt was badly cracked and sprouted weeds and grass everywhere. After I found some old rackets and a couple of scuffed tennis balls in my grandmother’s house, Brian and I had everything we needed to play tennis. We had no idea how the game was played so we made up some rules and ran after the ball, swinging our rackets with high spirits and high hopes. On the rare occasion that the ball limped over the net, one of us would proclaim himself the winner.

One day we were on the court when we saw a couple of guys with tennis rackets standing by the fence. They were teenagers and they wore clean white sneakers, white shorts, and white polo shirts, so to Brian and me they looked like professionals. Their rackets weren’t warped like ours; they looked shiny and new in their racket presses.
            “You guys gonna be long?”
            “No, you can play, we’re finished,” I said, and we walked off the court and sat on the bench on the side. These guys started playing and they actually knew how it was done: overhand serves, lobs, points! I watched, fascinated, and hoped that by watching them I could learn how to play. When they finished, I said to them, “You guys are good!” One guy said, “Thanks.” As he put his racket back in the press, I asked him if he lived around here. He laughed.
            “No, we’re from Detroit. We’re just here on vacation.”
            “Us, too! My name is Arthur. Arthur Bell. We’re from Lakewood, New Jersey. That’s my grandmother’s place over there,” I said pointing.

            “My name’s Arthur, too. Arthur Rockefeller,” he said.
            “Like the famous Rockefellers? Are you famous?”
            “Well, I’m a Rockefeller, if that’s what you mean. Distant cousin.”
            That night at dinner I boasted to my mother that we’d met a real Rockefeller with the same first name as mine. I told her how I felt special because I talked to a rich guy from a famous family.

“How do you know he wasn’t just pulling your leg?” my mother asked. “Maybe he’s not really a Rockefeller, or maybe that’s his name but he’s not related. And what makes you think he’s rich?” I thought about that for a minute, about how he looked, how he talked, his laugh, his clothes. His shiny tennis racket.

“No, I’m pretty sure he was a real Rockefeller.”

“Well,” my mother said, “what’s he doing playing on those broken down old tennis courts?”

I didn’t answer her. I just moved the food around my plate with my fork, feeling cheated because maybe he wasn’t a real Rockefeller. I pushed my chair away from the table and went upstairs to my room. I felt like slamming my bedroom door, but I just climbed onto my bed and stared out the window at the baseball field.

Control In The Age Of Covid

During the pandemic we’re all thinking about the loss of control. Most people dislike not having control, but sometimes you just have to give it up. For example, my former boss, Linda, doesn’t like to fly, and I flew with her once to a meeting in Dallas and we went through a horrific storm. The pilot sounded worried. We were bouncing around, people were screaming, and my boss grabbed my hand. The pilot gave short updates with no information about the state of the plane. I would have liked to hear him say, ”This isn’t the worst I’ve ever flown through,” but instead he said, “This is the absolute worst I’ve flown through.”

            I noticed that my boss kept trying to steady the plane with her body. She’d move it around, like if we tilted right, she’d lean left and start pulling on her armrest. I said, “Linda, you’re not going to control the plane like that, you know. Only the pilot, the plane, and the weather are really in control here.”

            Linda pondered that for a moment before responding. “You fly your way, I’ll fly mine.”
            My way was to place complete faith in the pilot, the plane, and the weather. I wasn’t relaxed, but I was calm, and tried to think of the whole experience as something I was watching with interest, registering the bumps, cataloguing the screams of the passengers, checking whether the flight attendant seated in the jump seat across from me would smile when I caught her eye. I did that more than once. Eventually she stopped smiling, which I took as a sign only that I was getting annoying and she no longer found me cute.

            On the other hand, some situations that I can’t control make me crazy. Take the pandemic. All I can do is read about it or get updates from TV, the internet, or my wife who occasionally weighs in with, Did you see this article about…?  My attempts at control now are about setting up a fairly tight schedule for my day and sticking to it. The closer I get to the time I set, the happier I am. Like, today I said, up at 7a, read paper until 8:30a, walk for 20 minutes (around the yard…no way I’m leaving the property, ya know?) and then exercise and finish by 10a. When I finished, I looked at the clock in the kitchen. Ten am on the nose--I feel like I’m in complete control.

            Then I took a shower and it wouldn’t drain, so the whole control thing went south.

Why I Write

What is more satisfying, in the human experience, than regarding with love that thing you made. The pride that comes with praise deepens the experience and makes it last. I always wondered if toilet training kicks this off in all of us as our mother explodes with delight at our wonderful first attempts. When you finally get it right, she calls to your father: “Come see what Arthur did!” So there we are, on the potty at three years old, looking down into the watery abyss, and thinking, “Wow, that did come out pretty well didn’t it?” And we all move on to ashtrays at camp, finger painting, and beyond. For me, writing.

I write, first and foremost, for this moment of self-love and self-appreciation. That sounds horribly narcissistic, but I’ve long accepted that I’m one of those people who needs the approval not only of others but of myself in order to move forward in life. I have some sort of an engine that runs on approval. It’s not my favorite thing about me, but I’ve learned to accept it. I suspect many writers and artists have the same need for approval despite often loudly declaring that they don’t care what anyone thinks; but of course I don’t know for sure.

The second reason I write is to entertain. I’ve always enjoyed telling stories, from the time I was a very little kid. Some of these stories were lies, whoppers really, that got me in trouble. Once I told my mother that our bus driver, who was mean to me, got so mad at everyone on the bus that he drove us down to the police station to show us the jail where we’d end up. Apparently my telling was so detailed that everyone believed me. Except for the bus driver. He used the f-word when hashing the whole thing out with my parents. But I secretly loved the fact that I could be believable, and ultimately, hold an audience rapt with attention. I wondered how it worked and how I could get better at it.

In the end, I like to write because I like to observe, and I like to remember, and I like to reflect. This is, to me, the essence of great storytelling. I can immerse myself in the recounting of a situation as I write, and then I can laugh or cry at what I’ve written. We often talk about making ourselves laugh out loud, but I’m more amazed when something I’ve written makes me cry. My hope now is that I become more effective at eliciting an emotional response in my reader, so they will laugh and cry, the way I do when I write.

Coming Zoom to an Online Store Near You

As we enter the fifth year of the pandemic lockdown, Zoom has eclipsed Amazon as the most valuable company on the stock exchange. They’ve done this by adding many new products that take advantage of the Zoom technology, but they admit that the inspiration came from bad puns provided by the founder’s wise-guy younger brother. Below, a selection from their latest catalog.

Zoombah: This is essentially Roomba, the floor cleaning robot, fitted with a Zoom app that runs continuously and travels around every inch of your house broadcasting everything you do. It results in a kind of reality show that all your Zoom friends can log into at any time. Of course, there’s a shutoff switch to hide your more private moments, but most people forget to hit it during arguments, misdemeanors, or embarrassing moments. It’s a hoot!

Baby Zoomer: Just drop this into your nine month old’s crib to enable the baby to make her own playdates! All she has to do is hit the giant button and she’s Zoom-connected to a random baby friend. Available with choice of pink or blue button.

ExZoom: Trying to “dig up” an old flame? Now you can “exhume” with ExZoom, the smart Zoom app that tracks down that old girlfriend or boyfriend and connects you instantly. What a great way to surprise that formerly special person who dropped you like a rock during your formative years!

WoomZoom: Why wait until your sonogram to see and hear your little bundle-of-joy to be? With WombZoom you can see, talk, listen, and play Bach to make the baby extra smart at birth. Baby can skip year one and go right into year two of Mommy and Me class."

Life At Five

My name is Arthur Bell. I’m five years old and don’t go to school yet. That comes after this summer. My address sounds like a nursery rhyme a little; at least that’s what I think when I say it to myself or out loud. “14-29 Canterbury Road.” I like the way it has a little beat. Anyway, I have a few friends in the neighborhood. But there’s one my parents don’t like, and one who’s mean to me. It’s funny that they live next door to each other, just down the street.

The one my parents don’t like is Freddy Fallon. He likes to play with me and he’s real friendly and shows me his toys, his scooter, stuff like that. He talks slow, and he makes funny movements with his fingers all the time in the middle of sentences. I don’t know why, he just does.

Once he invited me into his house for some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and we made them ourselves. It was so much fun I went home and made some peanut butter and jelly myself. My mom asked me how I learned to do that, and I said, “Freddie Fallon!” She looked unhappy and asked about what I was doing with him, so I told her.

“Ben!” she yelled, calling for my father.

Then both of them bent down and explained that since I was only five, and Freddie was 15, it wasn’t good for me to play with him. “He just seems like he’s your age because…” They didn’t explain, but I got the feeling there was something wrong with him. But I still liked him.

The other friend was Jeffrey Zedner. I knew it was okay to play with him because he was five, too. I’d been to his house for his birthday party, except my mother got the date wrong and I showed up at his door, dressed up holding my birthday present, and his Mom said, “Oh, no, it’s next Saturday.” I walked home sad.

Jeffrey and I played outside together, but one day he hit me in the face, hard, for no reason. I looked at him for a minute, and I think I started crying but it hurt so much I couldn’t tell if I was crying or just feeling the stinging. Jeffrey laughed and I just went home and didn’t tell my Mom about it.

The next day, Jeffrey hit me again. I ran away. When I got home my mom asked me what was wrong.

“Jeffrey Zedner socked me. Twice.”

“We’ll discuss this with your father.” Was I in trouble?

My father came home from work and took me into the den. We sat down and he said, “When someone hits you first, it’s okay to hit them back.” Then he showed me how to box. It was fun, boxing with my dad. He didn’t really hit me and he showed me the right way to make a fist. You don’t put your thumb next to your pointer finger like I was doing, you wrap it around so it covers your middle finger. “You can hit better that way,” my dad said. He knew a lot about this and I was glad he taught me.

The next day was Saturday. I remember because my parents were both home. After breakfast, I looked out the window and there was Jeffrey Zedner. “Mom--I’m going out. Jeffrey’s there.”

I walked up to Jeffrey and he didn’t even say hi. He just hit me in the face. This time I knew what to do. I made a fist, pulled my arm back, and hit him as hard as I could. He started crying and just stood there. I backed up from him and just watched. There was some blood coming from his eye. I turned around and went into my house and Jeffrey just stood there and cried. “Mom, Dad, Jeffrey hit me again.

“Oh, no.”

“Did you hit him back?” my father asked.

“I sure did. Hard.”

“Great, that’ll teach him.”

“Yeah-- he’s crying!”

“I hope you didn’t hit him too hard,” my father said. “He’s probably crying because he’s surprised.” My father looked at me to see what I thought.

“Well, he’s bleeding.”

“Bleeding? A lot?”

“No, just a little.”

“His lip? His nose?”

“Nope. His eye!”

“HIS EYE?!” they said at the same time. Then my mother said we’d better go outside and see what’s going on.

We took Jeffrey to his house and my dad talked to his dad. I got the feeling something had gone wrong but I wasn’t sure. My dad and I walked home and he wasn’t mad. Just quiet.