This afternoon I heard on the radio that the U.S. Postal service was closing about 2,000 branches and an author about my age lamented and reflected about the little joys of getting and sending mail – now known as “snail mail” – in the 1970s and 80s. Then the program reflected about what was in a family’s mailbox was truly a snapshot into who we were in the same way as our groceries and our garbage cans. You see whom they correspond with, whom they owe and what they shopped for.
On the street where I grew up, our mailman was named Mike, Mike the Mailman. He drove a white jeep and had a sunny smile and longish sandy brown hair worn in a fashion that never changed for him. And as far as I can remember, his favorite word was “hi.”
He knew Dad’s bills, Mom’s magazines, my brother’s catalogues, my penpals, and that my little sister, was, well, little, cute and adored by everyone.
Mike delivered my family’s mail for as long as I could remember: back when I received birthday cards from Uncle Kel – the ones that were fun to shake to loose the nickels and pennies fitted into slots – through the springtime when the fat or light envelopes with college acceptance notifications arrived. He was a part of our community, a fixture in our lives. Boy, did I love the mail!
Every Christmastime, Mom gave him one of her loaves of Christmas bread and, in more prosperous years, I think Dad slipped him a check. We kids would wait for Mike the Mailman in the summertime and run down the driveway when we heard the rev of the Jeep as he accelerated from 20 Village Way up our hill to 10. Mom would catch up with him when she was home, just to hear how things were around the neighborhood and in his life outside of his white Jeep and stretched out light blue socks.
Sigh, what a time...
Rummaging through my parents keepsakes I once found all of the letters I wrote to them when I was on a term abroad in England, leafing back through them was like a sweet and silly diary I had never meant to keep. I wonder if a parent of today has a way to save and reminisce over the texts and tweets and emails from their kids.
It just makes me wonder how our communications have changed and how that change may come to define our memories.
Christmas newsletters and pictures, arriving November through January were (and still are) always a highlight of the holiday season for me. When I was a kid, often they were the only communication we got from friends my parents had in their lives before I was born: Funny stories about some other family’s vacations, random but sometimes serious illnesses, pets who came and ran away, and other people’s babies that got bigger each year. Even these days, I believe the phrase “I’m taking so-and-so off of my Christmas card list” still carries a strong social connotation for most people.
And I’ll bet that mail call at summer camp, in college, and in the Navy is still kind of a status thing. Care packages with stale baked goods and even the simplest stickie note keep spirits up for a week or more, long after we gorge ourselves on the contents. My mom sent me white chocolate chip and craisin oatmeal cookies once with a note apologizing that they might be stale or broken. We at sea have entirely different standards of freshness and excitement. If it comes in the mail and manages to make it to the ship and to our office or berthing, it is great! Each package a little home capsule – like a time capsule but a slice of what the sender from home thinks might make their Sailor happy.
And now that I think about it, though most of America’s mail has dwindled and become less important to them since the advent of the internet and snail mail, when my dad discovered the internet, he started collecting books by mail. In many ways, my dad has remained the kid most of us grew out of; the arrival of the daily mail is still the highlight of his day.
Go Dad and hi Mike -- wherever you are!
And although my mailbox now contains mostly junk and bills, I know that next time I am out to sea, I will again feel the thrill of mail call… the call of the mail!
03 February 2011
23 July 2010
As the Polygon Turns (Episode 28): Mere Mortals
It is with some remorse and much reflection that my fingers take to clicking my keyboard to tap out the final episode of As the Polygon Turns.
Tuesday July 7th was my last bus ride in. I took the old standby 6:20. And as often happens in the life of mere mortals and non-movie stars, nothing particularly momentous happened. The usual characters whom we have come to find curious and amusing were either not there or simply less than amusing. But the bland ride in silence gave me time to reflect and dig back through my notes of the past couple of months when I have been so remiss in reporting their shenanigans.
So as sort of a medley of bus rides – not unlike the awful medleys we children of the 80s were made to sing in chorus – I will recap some of the past few month’s bus snippets.
4/14 Ah... Nice and toasty! I just got on the bus. There's a slight chill to the morning. It's been warm - t-shirt and shorts weather for sure - so the fact that it's a bit nippy out now makes it feel all the nippier. Well, my pal Bill has left the office for good, so now I must take up opening up the office at 6:45. And here I find myself taking a bus at a new time, sizing up a new bus gang. Some of my 6:20 riders have also made the switch at some time or another. There is eyepatch man (whom my husband calls ‘Cyclops’), Friendly Face and plenty of people from the street up the road who sit in "priority seating" when they really shouldn't. Hmmm.
One woman who just got on is sporting a pin on the collar of her jacket. For a split second I thought it was a collar device, as it is placed and spaced to about the same specifications as a military collar device. Before the better judgment of my saner self could stop me, I thought, “What's her rank, rate or specialty? Diamond doggie?” What a style! PLEASE!
This woman became a regular fixture in my morning. Upon closer inspection one morning, I realized that it was a cat, not a dog on her collar pin. As you will soon see, just a week later Kitty Collar developed a new way to catch my attention – and incur my vexation.
4/29 Hmmm. The lady in the barn coat with the kitty cat collar device just came aboard. Good, she sat in front of me – that means Smoker Chica won't be in front of me. Smoker Chica’s ash and second-hand toxins plague my sensitive little nose receptors from Braddock to the Beltway and beyond. And somehow, as has become the running joke between me and my new bus stop pal Kate, Smoker Chica seems to magnetically find a place near me – or at the very least within noseshot.
Uh, but wait--- Kitty Collar is wearing simply pungent perfume... My nose can't win!
Some other woman in pink, the color and size of watermelon flesh just sat next to her. Uh, wait, Smoker Chica’s just now getting on... I can't type fast enough... Thumbs don't fail me now... Smoker lady just sat down NEXT to me. Damnnnnnn. Well, no matter… I am already breathing like I have a cold on account of kitty collar's repugnant eau de toilette. Sigh.
One afternoon, I was a little early for the bus – or the bus was running late, which in essence is really the same thing – and as I stood idly in line, deleting sent and stupid emails on my crackberry, I noticed a somewhat sallow, upper middle-aged gentlemen holding a book just millimeters from his face – so close it looked like he was sniffing it rather than reading it. And he was taking the story in – whether by nose or by eyes – so fervently that I thought had he drank it through a straw he would surely have given himself a headache. Heck, come to think of it, if most people held their book that close to read or to sniff, it would likely make them dizzy. His must have been a real page-turner and he a novel hoover. Maybe it was a scratch and sniff book.
5/1 It’s May. It’s Monday.
“Good Morning, Gene!” someone calls out as Friendly Face climbs aboard.
"Eh, ah, oh eh, ah, yeah, hey, morning, Monday again!" The salutations ring out then simmer to mumbles behind me like a pot turned down on the stove. But as each new familiar face comes aboard, they rise and fall again.
The 5:57 bus is remarkably voluble this morning. It's pouring outside, and the word is the previous bus didn't show. Some people, whether by their words or their clothes, seem to insist on making the wet weather wholly apparent to the rest of us here in warmdry bus world. Like the woman who waddled on like a water-logged hen, nested right in front of me and shook her soaked plumage all over the young blonde to her left, cluck cluck clucking all the time about late and rain and Mondays and rain and late buses and Mondays.
Looking around … Oh, all of our best friends are here: Cyclops, Sleepy Indian Man, Mr. Shitshoe, Kitty Collar, Smoker Chica … and others.
"What happened to the first bus?" a particularly snappy man queries the driver as he comes aboard.
"Ah! Ha! I have no idea, good morning, Sir!" the driver cheerfully answers back, trying to bring sunshine to make up for the rain as much as he is picking up passengers for his predecessor.
Standing room only now. And still more than a couple of stops until the highway. ...Ah, so it's Monday. It's May. And here I sit, taking in the collective gloom as much as the curiosities that are the morning commute.
5/11 While waiting in line for the afternoon buses, I spied a sign: "Lost Fountain Pen on 17K made by Cross black with matte finish if found call Linda 555-5555 [not the real phone #]. So the 17K is made by cross black with a matte? Finish if found call Linda? …I spun iterations and iterations of word combinations of that unpunctuated sentence around in my head and amused myself for a good ten minutes. Doing so reminded me of one lunchtime my friends and I spent in the cafeteria in high school. There was a boy a couple of tables over whom we deemed “gross.” I can’t now even remember what it was that made him seem gross, whether a zitty face, B.O., corpulence, or a despicable disposition. It really doesn’t matter. As my two best friends and I sat together, one of us said, “YOU are so gross.” Then another followed with, “You ARE so gross.” Me with “You are SO gross” … “You are so GROSS!” … and we just continued on in a circle until we realized that each and none of the emphases could possibly do his grossness justice.
About a week later, my morning was marked by more direct confrontation ... oh what these saintly bus drivers have to put up with!
5/25
“Hey... Move it all ’dway back!” the driver yelled to the Russian judge putting his bike on the front rack of the bus.
"You different... Everybody's different..." Judge said, waving his hands about in absurd frustration.
"Yeah...up. Everybody's different," the driver concurred half-heartedly as though he fully grasped the deeper meaning.
“No, listen!” Judge vociferated again, leaning forward insistently. "You see, I am there, s'my bike, I can see, I the judge."
"Okay, okay, well good." Clearly, the driver just wanted Judge to take his seat.
And so he did. Clomping down the aisle, he mumbled away, "I da judge, I da judge." Yes, yes, sir you are.
Oh and by the way, she's in my line of smell again. That’s right, Smoker Chica. Grr-ruh!
And so most of my mornings continued much like those: mostly comforting in their monotony yet spruced up by little minor events of mankind.
So whether one is commuting or communing with the masses, toiling at a daily grind or grinding out miles on the road, I have found that the best way to keep my spirits up and myself focused and fancy-free is to delight in people’s quirks – though they sometimes may be smelly – find a theme-song and imagine everyday as an episode in life’s great soap opera.
Incidentally, Cyclops’ theme song – or at least his ring tone – is “Give me that fill-lay o’fish … give me that fish!” This cracks me up. What a happy guy! My 2010 theme song is “Soul Sister” because the way you cut a rug, watching you is the only drug I need … and I ain’t gonna miss a single thing you do- ooo- oooh … tonight!
Tuesday July 7th was my last bus ride in. I took the old standby 6:20. And as often happens in the life of mere mortals and non-movie stars, nothing particularly momentous happened. The usual characters whom we have come to find curious and amusing were either not there or simply less than amusing. But the bland ride in silence gave me time to reflect and dig back through my notes of the past couple of months when I have been so remiss in reporting their shenanigans.
So as sort of a medley of bus rides – not unlike the awful medleys we children of the 80s were made to sing in chorus – I will recap some of the past few month’s bus snippets.
4/14 Ah... Nice and toasty! I just got on the bus. There's a slight chill to the morning. It's been warm - t-shirt and shorts weather for sure - so the fact that it's a bit nippy out now makes it feel all the nippier. Well, my pal Bill has left the office for good, so now I must take up opening up the office at 6:45. And here I find myself taking a bus at a new time, sizing up a new bus gang. Some of my 6:20 riders have also made the switch at some time or another. There is eyepatch man (whom my husband calls ‘Cyclops’), Friendly Face and plenty of people from the street up the road who sit in "priority seating" when they really shouldn't. Hmmm.
One woman who just got on is sporting a pin on the collar of her jacket. For a split second I thought it was a collar device, as it is placed and spaced to about the same specifications as a military collar device. Before the better judgment of my saner self could stop me, I thought, “What's her rank, rate or specialty? Diamond doggie?” What a style! PLEASE!
This woman became a regular fixture in my morning. Upon closer inspection one morning, I realized that it was a cat, not a dog on her collar pin. As you will soon see, just a week later Kitty Collar developed a new way to catch my attention – and incur my vexation.
4/29 Hmmm. The lady in the barn coat with the kitty cat collar device just came aboard. Good, she sat in front of me – that means Smoker Chica won't be in front of me. Smoker Chica’s ash and second-hand toxins plague my sensitive little nose receptors from Braddock to the Beltway and beyond. And somehow, as has become the running joke between me and my new bus stop pal Kate, Smoker Chica seems to magnetically find a place near me – or at the very least within noseshot.
Uh, but wait--- Kitty Collar is wearing simply pungent perfume... My nose can't win!
Some other woman in pink, the color and size of watermelon flesh just sat next to her. Uh, wait, Smoker Chica’s just now getting on... I can't type fast enough... Thumbs don't fail me now... Smoker lady just sat down NEXT to me. Damnnnnnn. Well, no matter… I am already breathing like I have a cold on account of kitty collar's repugnant eau de toilette. Sigh.
One afternoon, I was a little early for the bus – or the bus was running late, which in essence is really the same thing – and as I stood idly in line, deleting sent and stupid emails on my crackberry, I noticed a somewhat sallow, upper middle-aged gentlemen holding a book just millimeters from his face – so close it looked like he was sniffing it rather than reading it. And he was taking the story in – whether by nose or by eyes – so fervently that I thought had he drank it through a straw he would surely have given himself a headache. Heck, come to think of it, if most people held their book that close to read or to sniff, it would likely make them dizzy. His must have been a real page-turner and he a novel hoover. Maybe it was a scratch and sniff book.
5/1 It’s May. It’s Monday.
“Good Morning, Gene!” someone calls out as Friendly Face climbs aboard.
"Eh, ah, oh eh, ah, yeah, hey, morning, Monday again!" The salutations ring out then simmer to mumbles behind me like a pot turned down on the stove. But as each new familiar face comes aboard, they rise and fall again.
The 5:57 bus is remarkably voluble this morning. It's pouring outside, and the word is the previous bus didn't show. Some people, whether by their words or their clothes, seem to insist on making the wet weather wholly apparent to the rest of us here in warmdry bus world. Like the woman who waddled on like a water-logged hen, nested right in front of me and shook her soaked plumage all over the young blonde to her left, cluck cluck clucking all the time about late and rain and Mondays and rain and late buses and Mondays.
Looking around … Oh, all of our best friends are here: Cyclops, Sleepy Indian Man, Mr. Shitshoe, Kitty Collar, Smoker Chica … and others.
"What happened to the first bus?" a particularly snappy man queries the driver as he comes aboard.
"Ah! Ha! I have no idea, good morning, Sir!" the driver cheerfully answers back, trying to bring sunshine to make up for the rain as much as he is picking up passengers for his predecessor.
Standing room only now. And still more than a couple of stops until the highway. ...Ah, so it's Monday. It's May. And here I sit, taking in the collective gloom as much as the curiosities that are the morning commute.
5/11 While waiting in line for the afternoon buses, I spied a sign: "Lost Fountain Pen on 17K made by Cross black with matte finish if found call Linda 555-5555 [not the real phone #]. So the 17K is made by cross black with a matte? Finish if found call Linda? …I spun iterations and iterations of word combinations of that unpunctuated sentence around in my head and amused myself for a good ten minutes. Doing so reminded me of one lunchtime my friends and I spent in the cafeteria in high school. There was a boy a couple of tables over whom we deemed “gross.” I can’t now even remember what it was that made him seem gross, whether a zitty face, B.O., corpulence, or a despicable disposition. It really doesn’t matter. As my two best friends and I sat together, one of us said, “YOU are so gross.” Then another followed with, “You ARE so gross.” Me with “You are SO gross” … “You are so GROSS!” … and we just continued on in a circle until we realized that each and none of the emphases could possibly do his grossness justice.
About a week later, my morning was marked by more direct confrontation ... oh what these saintly bus drivers have to put up with!
5/25
“Hey... Move it all ’dway back!” the driver yelled to the Russian judge putting his bike on the front rack of the bus.
"You different... Everybody's different..." Judge said, waving his hands about in absurd frustration.
"Yeah...up. Everybody's different," the driver concurred half-heartedly as though he fully grasped the deeper meaning.
“No, listen!” Judge vociferated again, leaning forward insistently. "You see, I am there, s'my bike, I can see, I the judge."
"Okay, okay, well good." Clearly, the driver just wanted Judge to take his seat.
And so he did. Clomping down the aisle, he mumbled away, "I da judge, I da judge." Yes, yes, sir you are.
Oh and by the way, she's in my line of smell again. That’s right, Smoker Chica. Grr-ruh!
And so most of my mornings continued much like those: mostly comforting in their monotony yet spruced up by little minor events of mankind.
So whether one is commuting or communing with the masses, toiling at a daily grind or grinding out miles on the road, I have found that the best way to keep my spirits up and myself focused and fancy-free is to delight in people’s quirks – though they sometimes may be smelly – find a theme-song and imagine everyday as an episode in life’s great soap opera.
Incidentally, Cyclops’ theme song – or at least his ring tone – is “Give me that fill-lay o’fish … give me that fish!” This cracks me up. What a happy guy! My 2010 theme song is “Soul Sister” because the way you cut a rug, watching you is the only drug I need … and I ain’t gonna miss a single thing you do- ooo- oooh … tonight!
29 March 2010
As the Polygon Turns (Episode 27): Fancy That!
“No shorts and fancy shoes today?” Armyrock asked me when I got on the bus last Friday morning. He’s always wearing his digi-army cammies and as near as I can tell most of his features and physique look like an undefined boulder. To myself (and now to you, I guess), I refer to him as the Armyrock.
“Nah,” I answered him, grinning from ear to ear, “I did get my run in last night before it rained, though.”
That’s right, sports fans… a run! And not just any run: a back to nature, screw the accoutrements, walk in the woods, gotta be good, flight for freedom run – nothin’ between me and the trail but a thin slice of toe-covering rubber. Yup. Just me and my FiveFingers.
Back when I was running regularly, often the measure of accomplishment during my runs was standard, obvious stuff like my pace, my distance, whether I felt like I wanted to puke or not … sometimes it was simply if I felt better when I finished than when I started.
But now… now, I tell myself, in this next chapter of my quest to be healed for good, for all time … now, I just feel like, hey… did I make it? Am I “looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid”? Yeah, yeah, yeah…
I dream of the days when again I can, on a whim, escape the air conditioning and brain numbing of the Polygon and prance along the river when the summer sprinklers are on … the pleasure of the Potomac pelting my perspiring perspicacious person … when I can take the long cuts and forget where I am …
I might start keeping track of my time and my mileage again then too … maybe… maybe not… looking like a true survivor and feeling like a little kid is enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah!
So yeah, when I wear my new and nifty so-called “fancy shoes” coming to and from work, I feel like I am getting away with something… almost like the opposite of the Emperor’s New Clothes. My FiveFingers make me feel like I am wearing nothing (on my feet) and no one seems to notice. So then, I get to grinning… and the smirk, as it always seems to, gives me away…
But this smirk is different … different from the smirk I get when my hair blows back and away when I walk inside from the courtyard and feel like a model must feel, tossing her locks in the face of a high speed floor fan at a photo shoot (not sure if i actually tossle my head or if i manage to restrain myself just to smirking) … different from the smirk that strikes me when I see Lungerman deep knee-bending in the p-way … different from the smirk that strikes me when I have cheeks full of treats too many to swallow at once … different from the smirk that strikes me when I hear horrific releases of bodily gas in an adjacent stall... Yup. This smirk is different from all of those minor manifestations of mischeviousness.
For you see, in my FiveFingers, I am not only doing something that I want to that seems to defy all logic and definitely defies what my doctors have told me … it makes me feel better, from my feet to the street!
...wait, that's not very far. But it sounded neat!
Hey, by the way, have I told you about Lungerman? I don’t think so.
He’s the latest Polygon personality i've found that's truly a caricature in and of himself. He’s about 5’7-5’9” tall, somewhere between 48 and 58 years old… maybe I am being generous. He could be a youthful looking 68 and only 5'6"; he has white hair and a full white beard, is of average build -- but NOT what i'd call svelte -- and normally he wears earth tone shirts and ties well coordinated with similarly earth toned slacks, a belt and some pedio-friendly footwear. Now I am all about pedio-friendly footwear (duh?), but UNLIKE Lungerman, I take my stretching and exercise regimen to the gym. That’s right: he has a whole host of what look like physical therapy/rehab light stretching exercises that he chooses to perform in the hallway and on the steps adjacent to our office. So what if it is the end of a dead end hallway where no one would venture by accident? Come on, Dude! Deep knee bends, rhythmic breathing, lunges, side bends, toe lifts… do you need to do them on these steps? What’s your job, anyway? I mean the guy is out there so often and for so long, that just in my comings and goings to and from the upstairs offices, I have his whole routine down pat.
I don’t think that he is getting away with anything.
Maybe I should tip him off to my fancy shoes trick.
“Nah,” I answered him, grinning from ear to ear, “I did get my run in last night before it rained, though.”
That’s right, sports fans… a run! And not just any run: a back to nature, screw the accoutrements, walk in the woods, gotta be good, flight for freedom run – nothin’ between me and the trail but a thin slice of toe-covering rubber. Yup. Just me and my FiveFingers.
Back when I was running regularly, often the measure of accomplishment during my runs was standard, obvious stuff like my pace, my distance, whether I felt like I wanted to puke or not … sometimes it was simply if I felt better when I finished than when I started.
But now… now, I tell myself, in this next chapter of my quest to be healed for good, for all time … now, I just feel like, hey… did I make it? Am I “looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid”? Yeah, yeah, yeah…
I dream of the days when again I can, on a whim, escape the air conditioning and brain numbing of the Polygon and prance along the river when the summer sprinklers are on … the pleasure of the Potomac pelting my perspiring perspicacious person … when I can take the long cuts and forget where I am …
I might start keeping track of my time and my mileage again then too … maybe… maybe not… looking like a true survivor and feeling like a little kid is enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah!
So yeah, when I wear my new and nifty so-called “fancy shoes” coming to and from work, I feel like I am getting away with something… almost like the opposite of the Emperor’s New Clothes. My FiveFingers make me feel like I am wearing nothing (on my feet) and no one seems to notice. So then, I get to grinning… and the smirk, as it always seems to, gives me away…
But this smirk is different … different from the smirk I get when my hair blows back and away when I walk inside from the courtyard and feel like a model must feel, tossing her locks in the face of a high speed floor fan at a photo shoot (not sure if i actually tossle my head or if i manage to restrain myself just to smirking) … different from the smirk that strikes me when I see Lungerman deep knee-bending in the p-way … different from the smirk that strikes me when I have cheeks full of treats too many to swallow at once … different from the smirk that strikes me when I hear horrific releases of bodily gas in an adjacent stall... Yup. This smirk is different from all of those minor manifestations of mischeviousness.
For you see, in my FiveFingers, I am not only doing something that I want to that seems to defy all logic and definitely defies what my doctors have told me … it makes me feel better, from my feet to the street!
...wait, that's not very far. But it sounded neat!
Hey, by the way, have I told you about Lungerman? I don’t think so.
He’s the latest Polygon personality i've found that's truly a caricature in and of himself. He’s about 5’7-5’9” tall, somewhere between 48 and 58 years old… maybe I am being generous. He could be a youthful looking 68 and only 5'6"; he has white hair and a full white beard, is of average build -- but NOT what i'd call svelte -- and normally he wears earth tone shirts and ties well coordinated with similarly earth toned slacks, a belt and some pedio-friendly footwear. Now I am all about pedio-friendly footwear (duh?), but UNLIKE Lungerman, I take my stretching and exercise regimen to the gym. That’s right: he has a whole host of what look like physical therapy/rehab light stretching exercises that he chooses to perform in the hallway and on the steps adjacent to our office. So what if it is the end of a dead end hallway where no one would venture by accident? Come on, Dude! Deep knee bends, rhythmic breathing, lunges, side bends, toe lifts… do you need to do them on these steps? What’s your job, anyway? I mean the guy is out there so often and for so long, that just in my comings and goings to and from the upstairs offices, I have his whole routine down pat.
I don’t think that he is getting away with anything.
Maybe I should tip him off to my fancy shoes trick.
21 January 2010
Burning Rubber
It's been a busy couple of weeks at the Polygon with world events. So busy, actually that I have found very little to mock apart from my usual inner monologue of epithets to people who cut me off, piss me off, or otherwise blow me off, but to whom I, heeding the sage advice of my wise father, just nod and smile sweetly.
Having been under the weather most of this past week, I worked from home, causing me to feel more in touch with my cavorting Boson Terriers and neighborhood wildlife than the goings on at the Polygon.
Down the street from us, there is an older man who owns a loud motorcycle. He took it out today just for a spin around the block – which is all of six tenths of a mile. Actually, I don’t know if that is only how far he went. Maybe he was just trying to get his sea legs, so to speak. All I know is that I heard him fire it up before I left the house and shortly thereafter when I was on the next street up, he came whipping around the bend. Funny it was to me. I chuckled to no one in particular.
It reminded me of an older gentleman who lived on my block when I was a kid. His name was Mr. Kramer, Henry Kramer, and he was always the gentleman dressed in tweed, politely inquiring about my mother and her flowers. Daily he walked a pair of Welsh corgi dogs. Over the years, the dogs got old and probably died, but the Kramers always seemed to have two corgis, never puppies, so it seemed; just two yappy dogs. Whenever my brother, sister or I would sell things door-to-door, for scouts or some sort of fund-raising, the Henry and Janice Kramer would only open their door a crack, so there was still a catenary in the chain that held the door to, safe from intruders. They’d conduct whatever business or conversations needed to be had in that rectangle of safe space. And that was the way it was.
Every so often, on warm, clear evenings with soft skies, Henry would cruise around on his mo-ped. Janice or the dogs or the tweed must have gotten a little too much for him and he had the need for speed. Around the block he’d go, and we kids would just watch in wonder. Mr. Kramer on his moped.
When people ask me where I grew up and I tell them New Jersey, the question that inevitably follows is, “Which exit?”
Fact is, I didn’t live anywhere near the NJ Turnpike or even the Garden State Parkway – which I think are the roads that the joke refers to.
Although my zip code said “Somerville,” I grew up in a little town called North Branch, named after the north branch of the Raritan River. There were 13 houses on our U-shaped block and across the street there were acres and acres of farmland. The farms there raised beef cattle and as far as I knew, grew no crops other than corn and hay.
Through these farms, though, there was a dirt road, blocked to cars but a public right-of-way nonetheless – my dad looked it up. This road – known to us kids on Village Way as ‘the dirt road’ – was our pathway to adventure. At one end of the dirt road was Burnt Mills Road, the road that closed the “U” of Village Way. After crossing Burt Mills Road, we could ride our bikes all up and down the dirt road, making jumps, kicking up dirt, never worrying about cars. Best of all, it connected to another road, called Vanderveer Avenue - named for one of the founders of the town and owners of one of the farms along the road (a boy who came to be my brother’s best friend ended up living there later on in our life, but not yet at the time about which I am writing)… where was I? Oh yeah, best of all Vanderveer Avenue dumped right out by the North Branch General Store. At the General Store, back in the ’80s, a dollar could buy a kid a lot of happiness.
This happiness was not cheaply purchased, however. We kids had to undergo a lot of trials and tests along the way to earning the cold soda, neco wafers, and licorice waiting for us at the end of the line.
The most fearsome obstacle was for us to pass the Sutton’s house unscathed. The Sutton’s house was the second one we came to, at the bottom of the really steep dirt hill that I was famous for wiping out on. Before we’d get to what we thought was the property line, we kids would stop our bikes and line up abreast across the road. Then, we’d lean forward with our foot on one pedal, the other on the ground. Hunched over our handlebars, we’d look left, look right, stare each other in the eyes, then launch and scream, “Burn Rubber!!!!”
We’d pedal, pedal, pedal as fast as our little legs could carry us, spurred on by snapping dogs – German shepherds, Dobermans, and the meanest junkyard dogs imaginable – straining at their chains, lurching towards our throats like we were trying to steal the Hope diamond.
As we got older and braver, some kids would bark back at the dogs. But deep down inside we were always fearful. The only way we could get through there and to the treats on the other side alive was to stick together and to BURN RUBB-BER!!!
Having been under the weather most of this past week, I worked from home, causing me to feel more in touch with my cavorting Boson Terriers and neighborhood wildlife than the goings on at the Polygon.
Down the street from us, there is an older man who owns a loud motorcycle. He took it out today just for a spin around the block – which is all of six tenths of a mile. Actually, I don’t know if that is only how far he went. Maybe he was just trying to get his sea legs, so to speak. All I know is that I heard him fire it up before I left the house and shortly thereafter when I was on the next street up, he came whipping around the bend. Funny it was to me. I chuckled to no one in particular.
It reminded me of an older gentleman who lived on my block when I was a kid. His name was Mr. Kramer, Henry Kramer, and he was always the gentleman dressed in tweed, politely inquiring about my mother and her flowers. Daily he walked a pair of Welsh corgi dogs. Over the years, the dogs got old and probably died, but the Kramers always seemed to have two corgis, never puppies, so it seemed; just two yappy dogs. Whenever my brother, sister or I would sell things door-to-door, for scouts or some sort of fund-raising, the Henry and Janice Kramer would only open their door a crack, so there was still a catenary in the chain that held the door to, safe from intruders. They’d conduct whatever business or conversations needed to be had in that rectangle of safe space. And that was the way it was.
Every so often, on warm, clear evenings with soft skies, Henry would cruise around on his mo-ped. Janice or the dogs or the tweed must have gotten a little too much for him and he had the need for speed. Around the block he’d go, and we kids would just watch in wonder. Mr. Kramer on his moped.
When people ask me where I grew up and I tell them New Jersey, the question that inevitably follows is, “Which exit?”
Fact is, I didn’t live anywhere near the NJ Turnpike or even the Garden State Parkway – which I think are the roads that the joke refers to.
Although my zip code said “Somerville,” I grew up in a little town called North Branch, named after the north branch of the Raritan River. There were 13 houses on our U-shaped block and across the street there were acres and acres of farmland. The farms there raised beef cattle and as far as I knew, grew no crops other than corn and hay.
Through these farms, though, there was a dirt road, blocked to cars but a public right-of-way nonetheless – my dad looked it up. This road – known to us kids on Village Way as ‘the dirt road’ – was our pathway to adventure. At one end of the dirt road was Burnt Mills Road, the road that closed the “U” of Village Way. After crossing Burt Mills Road, we could ride our bikes all up and down the dirt road, making jumps, kicking up dirt, never worrying about cars. Best of all, it connected to another road, called Vanderveer Avenue - named for one of the founders of the town and owners of one of the farms along the road (a boy who came to be my brother’s best friend ended up living there later on in our life, but not yet at the time about which I am writing)… where was I? Oh yeah, best of all Vanderveer Avenue dumped right out by the North Branch General Store. At the General Store, back in the ’80s, a dollar could buy a kid a lot of happiness.
This happiness was not cheaply purchased, however. We kids had to undergo a lot of trials and tests along the way to earning the cold soda, neco wafers, and licorice waiting for us at the end of the line.
The most fearsome obstacle was for us to pass the Sutton’s house unscathed. The Sutton’s house was the second one we came to, at the bottom of the really steep dirt hill that I was famous for wiping out on. Before we’d get to what we thought was the property line, we kids would stop our bikes and line up abreast across the road. Then, we’d lean forward with our foot on one pedal, the other on the ground. Hunched over our handlebars, we’d look left, look right, stare each other in the eyes, then launch and scream, “Burn Rubber!!!!”
We’d pedal, pedal, pedal as fast as our little legs could carry us, spurred on by snapping dogs – German shepherds, Dobermans, and the meanest junkyard dogs imaginable – straining at their chains, lurching towards our throats like we were trying to steal the Hope diamond.
As we got older and braver, some kids would bark back at the dogs. But deep down inside we were always fearful. The only way we could get through there and to the treats on the other side alive was to stick together and to BURN RUBB-BER!!!
12 January 2010
As the Polygon Turns (Episode 26): Send-off
The send-off ceremony was held at a typical New England fairground that looked, well, typical, except that it was January. Corn dog and cotton candy booths buttoned up tight, as if to guard against the cold like their summer patrons would be; and where summer would have seen straw and livestock, we saw snow banks and snow drifts. In poetry, it’s called the pathetic fallacy – that nature commiserates with man, shares our joys and our sorrows in the form of weather, sunshine and rain. In this case it’s bitter, bitter cold. And snowing.
So it’s January and citizen-soldiers are being sent off, deploying away from their loved ones, families perhaps less used to long absences than, say, the regular or even the Reserve Forces. But somehow that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t make it any better on any one who has to give someone up today.
Inside the exposition center: nearly a thousand people – soldiers and families – comingle on the vast cement floor. Many rows of chairs face each other, askew from the stage that’s dressed in its finest red, white and blue. Looking at the crowd from above, the soldiers in their combat camouflage stand out like chocolate chips would in cookie batter. They are dispersed amongst their families just as our National Guardsmen spend most of their days, citizens first and most often, soldiers second but always truly.
These are no “weekend warriors.” These are patriots all, dedicated men and women who keep down “real” jobs and, since early on in these wars, have augmented our Active Duty and Reserve Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq so America’s military can continue the luxury of an all-volunteer force; so America doesn’t need a draft. Something to think about…
As the time for the ceremony draws near, families hold hands tighter, hug more often, and find it harder to hold back tears. Two minutes before 0930, the camouflage coalesces in the center, between the askew chairs, facing the leaders – statesmen, generals and an admiral. The soldier-citizens are upright, their families downcast, our leaders optimistic.
They deliver speeches about duty, sacrifice, and support. How the soldiers know the mission and never really worry about the mission. The leaders know that the stoic soldiers worry only about their families. Every thing they do, they do for the ones they love.
When the ceremony is over, the soldiers file out, to do their duty… for their families, for their country, and for whatever else I imagine they may believe in. The space they vacate leaves the askew families facing only each other.
They must be sad, I think. Obviously they are sad. It starts snowing harder.
I wish I could let them know that their heroes are doing what they love for the ones they love. I wonder if it would make a difference. It might. The snow may let up soon. When the soldiers return it will be another winter of another year. It will be snowing then, again.
So it’s January and citizen-soldiers are being sent off, deploying away from their loved ones, families perhaps less used to long absences than, say, the regular or even the Reserve Forces. But somehow that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t make it any better on any one who has to give someone up today.
Inside the exposition center: nearly a thousand people – soldiers and families – comingle on the vast cement floor. Many rows of chairs face each other, askew from the stage that’s dressed in its finest red, white and blue. Looking at the crowd from above, the soldiers in their combat camouflage stand out like chocolate chips would in cookie batter. They are dispersed amongst their families just as our National Guardsmen spend most of their days, citizens first and most often, soldiers second but always truly.
These are no “weekend warriors.” These are patriots all, dedicated men and women who keep down “real” jobs and, since early on in these wars, have augmented our Active Duty and Reserve Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq so America’s military can continue the luxury of an all-volunteer force; so America doesn’t need a draft. Something to think about…
As the time for the ceremony draws near, families hold hands tighter, hug more often, and find it harder to hold back tears. Two minutes before 0930, the camouflage coalesces in the center, between the askew chairs, facing the leaders – statesmen, generals and an admiral. The soldier-citizens are upright, their families downcast, our leaders optimistic.
They deliver speeches about duty, sacrifice, and support. How the soldiers know the mission and never really worry about the mission. The leaders know that the stoic soldiers worry only about their families. Every thing they do, they do for the ones they love.
When the ceremony is over, the soldiers file out, to do their duty… for their families, for their country, and for whatever else I imagine they may believe in. The space they vacate leaves the askew families facing only each other.
They must be sad, I think. Obviously they are sad. It starts snowing harder.
I wish I could let them know that their heroes are doing what they love for the ones they love. I wonder if it would make a difference. It might. The snow may let up soon. When the soldiers return it will be another winter of another year. It will be snowing then, again.
15 December 2009
As the Polygon Turns (Episode 25): Why Bother?
I’d like to report that last week was another busy, busy week at the Polygon.
So, I will: last week was another busy week at the Polygon.
Amidst the flurry of all of things industrious, I discerned or at least imagined a theme to some of the week’s adventures: BOTHER. One event was a fairly severe bother, on order of a coup, the second a minor comeuppance, and the third, basically just an indecency.
FIRST: Tri-Ark Take Over
Tri-Ark quietly but officially took over trash collection in our sector. And Bill and I didn’t get quite the reaction we expected out of Ishmael.
You see, on Tuesday, the multi-lingual Tri-Ark ladies stopped Slim and Bill in the hallway just outside out office and asked them if our trash had been taken care of. Ishmael had already come, and my two compadres tried to make it clear to the ladies that we already had a perfectly good trash man, capable and punctual (lately, anyway).
Wednesday, however, a mousey Tri-Ark lady came ringing our doorbell at 11:30 AM. Pretty early for trash call, we thought. Upon heaving herself and her giant trashcanonwheels through our behemoth door, she just stood there. Barely taller than the receptacle she carted, she simply chirped: “Trash? Trash? Trash?”
“Yep, we’ve got trash… here,” either Bill or I said (I get us confused sometimes) as we put our cans out flush with the end of our cubicle row. She eventually got the picture and came over to collect what little trash we had. Pretty early for trash call!
Before long she had collected the other two cans worth and courageously hoisted our door open to go on her way, conducting her unwitting land grab operation in the larger campaign known to us as The Trash War.
Not much later, our doorbell rang again, and just before we pushed the button to unlock the door, Bill and I both hollered for all the world to hear (which actually only included one other person):
“Ohhhhh, man… I’ll bet this is Ishmael”
“He is going to be fuhr-ree-yus…!”
“Hi, Ishmael! …Somebody already came to collect our trash.”
“Whah? You no have tradsh?”
“No… uh… who were they… Tri-Ark. Yeah, Tri-Ark. They already came by… about 45 minutes ago.”
“Whoo?”
“Yeah, Tri-Ark. Do you want me to call your supervisor so we can straighten this out?” Bill – ever Mr. Nice Guy – offered. And he did.
Well, the lady at the other end of the phone in very few words told Bill to relay to Ishmael that she had another route for him.
Bill and I, we were a little sad, actually… sort of. I mean this was our trash guy after all: the man who saved us from smelling banana peels and being overcome by lunch wrappers. The importance of his role and our extreme gratitude should not be downplayed.
We asked Ishmael if maybe he would come back and visit sometime – you know, just to say ‘hello,’ just so we could hear his verbal tirade about Bill not coming to work (which he actually rarely missed) or rail about the Redskins, smell his musky cologne, and watch him manhandle an ill-fitting plastic bag around a wastepaper basket with the grace and precision of a Marine with his rifle.
With merely a chuckle, Ishmael left quietly with a slightly bowed head.
Sigh. Truly, the end of an era.
SECOND: Sour Cleaner
At the risk of further demystifying the great American icon that is the Polygon, I will tell you that this place, like Triangle, NJ, Washington Square, Dupont Circle, and all other great places named after shapes is actually a slice of America, just like anywhere else. We have a post office, a shoe shine, a Starbucks, a Dunkin, a Popeye's, a florist, and just about any other retail store you can imagine – we just got a Best Buy! And, oh yes, our dry cleaning shop is run by Korean-Americans. It’s great! They do a fantastic job.
On Thursday, I went to pick up my dry-cleaning, and the woman who usually works the counter was perched upon her usual stool, legs crossed, with her usual sour-puss look on her face – not because she was sour; that’s just her look. Or so I thought.
This day, she actually was sour -- and with good reason.
Two men were standing immediately in front of her counter, yapping like they were at their goddamn high school reunion, just yak yak yaking away, oblivious… totally Oh-blivious to the world going on around them. I approached the counter and awkwardly reached around them to turn in my slip to get my dry-cleaning. Sour-puss stool-percher huffily waited on me at the opposite register, about five feet away from the garrulous gentlemen.
I smiled, thanked her, paid my seven oh five, and she either must have caught my sidelong glances inquiring “W-T-F is up with them?” or was just at the end of her wit’s end rope. As she gave me my change, she made sock puppet gestures with her hands and said “Tir-tee minutes… tir-tee minutes they talk like that! Grrrrrrr-uh!”
For some reason I tried to apologize for them, if only because I was wearing the same color uniform, making me somehow complicit. And I sidled away, back down to my little cave, away from this bother.
THIRD: Hamming the Pine
Now this last bother is not something that happened to me personally, but rather was relayed to me by my cohort Bill during one of his many adventures in the Polygon Athletic Center. Some creative and idle PowerPoint Ranger has captured similar indecencies in the men’s locker in stick figure cartoon form which I am afraid I lack the technology to attach, but I would happily send to anyone who sends me his/her email address. I am warning you. They are FUNNY!! Our absolute favorite is called “Hamming the Pine.” …picture an innocent bench being smothered by someone’s ham hock.
The one that is not there, however, is one that Bill was subjected to last week. As he was trying to dry his hands, he nearly groped a bottomless dude blow-drying his hair with the hand dryer. I suppose I don’t need to mention that these dryers are installed at hand/waist - not at neck/head - level. Ewwwwwww!
After relaying this story to me, he asked if we have similar shenanigans in the women’s locker room.
“We most certainly do NOT.” I told him. “We have couches, big roomy lockers, perfumed toilets—”
“And tickle fights in every corner,” he chimed in. Exactly.
“So you’ve been there?” Hmmm. I didn’t have to explain a thing -- which was, refreshingly, no bother at all.
So, I will: last week was another busy week at the Polygon.
Amidst the flurry of all of things industrious, I discerned or at least imagined a theme to some of the week’s adventures: BOTHER. One event was a fairly severe bother, on order of a coup, the second a minor comeuppance, and the third, basically just an indecency.
FIRST: Tri-Ark Take Over
Tri-Ark quietly but officially took over trash collection in our sector. And Bill and I didn’t get quite the reaction we expected out of Ishmael.
You see, on Tuesday, the multi-lingual Tri-Ark ladies stopped Slim and Bill in the hallway just outside out office and asked them if our trash had been taken care of. Ishmael had already come, and my two compadres tried to make it clear to the ladies that we already had a perfectly good trash man, capable and punctual (lately, anyway).
Wednesday, however, a mousey Tri-Ark lady came ringing our doorbell at 11:30 AM. Pretty early for trash call, we thought. Upon heaving herself and her giant trashcanonwheels through our behemoth door, she just stood there. Barely taller than the receptacle she carted, she simply chirped: “Trash? Trash? Trash?”
“Yep, we’ve got trash… here,” either Bill or I said (I get us confused sometimes) as we put our cans out flush with the end of our cubicle row. She eventually got the picture and came over to collect what little trash we had. Pretty early for trash call!
Before long she had collected the other two cans worth and courageously hoisted our door open to go on her way, conducting her unwitting land grab operation in the larger campaign known to us as The Trash War.
Not much later, our doorbell rang again, and just before we pushed the button to unlock the door, Bill and I both hollered for all the world to hear (which actually only included one other person):
“Ohhhhh, man… I’ll bet this is Ishmael”
“He is going to be fuhr-ree-yus…!”
“Hi, Ishmael! …Somebody already came to collect our trash.”
“Whah? You no have tradsh?”
“No… uh… who were they… Tri-Ark. Yeah, Tri-Ark. They already came by… about 45 minutes ago.”
“Whoo?”
“Yeah, Tri-Ark. Do you want me to call your supervisor so we can straighten this out?” Bill – ever Mr. Nice Guy – offered. And he did.
Well, the lady at the other end of the phone in very few words told Bill to relay to Ishmael that she had another route for him.
Bill and I, we were a little sad, actually… sort of. I mean this was our trash guy after all: the man who saved us from smelling banana peels and being overcome by lunch wrappers. The importance of his role and our extreme gratitude should not be downplayed.
We asked Ishmael if maybe he would come back and visit sometime – you know, just to say ‘hello,’ just so we could hear his verbal tirade about Bill not coming to work (which he actually rarely missed) or rail about the Redskins, smell his musky cologne, and watch him manhandle an ill-fitting plastic bag around a wastepaper basket with the grace and precision of a Marine with his rifle.
With merely a chuckle, Ishmael left quietly with a slightly bowed head.
Sigh. Truly, the end of an era.
SECOND: Sour Cleaner
At the risk of further demystifying the great American icon that is the Polygon, I will tell you that this place, like Triangle, NJ, Washington Square, Dupont Circle, and all other great places named after shapes is actually a slice of America, just like anywhere else. We have a post office, a shoe shine, a Starbucks, a Dunkin, a Popeye's, a florist, and just about any other retail store you can imagine – we just got a Best Buy! And, oh yes, our dry cleaning shop is run by Korean-Americans. It’s great! They do a fantastic job.
On Thursday, I went to pick up my dry-cleaning, and the woman who usually works the counter was perched upon her usual stool, legs crossed, with her usual sour-puss look on her face – not because she was sour; that’s just her look. Or so I thought.
This day, she actually was sour -- and with good reason.
Two men were standing immediately in front of her counter, yapping like they were at their goddamn high school reunion, just yak yak yaking away, oblivious… totally Oh-blivious to the world going on around them. I approached the counter and awkwardly reached around them to turn in my slip to get my dry-cleaning. Sour-puss stool-percher huffily waited on me at the opposite register, about five feet away from the garrulous gentlemen.
I smiled, thanked her, paid my seven oh five, and she either must have caught my sidelong glances inquiring “W-T-F is up with them?” or was just at the end of her wit’s end rope. As she gave me my change, she made sock puppet gestures with her hands and said “Tir-tee minutes… tir-tee minutes they talk like that! Grrrrrrr-uh!”
For some reason I tried to apologize for them, if only because I was wearing the same color uniform, making me somehow complicit. And I sidled away, back down to my little cave, away from this bother.
THIRD: Hamming the Pine
Now this last bother is not something that happened to me personally, but rather was relayed to me by my cohort Bill during one of his many adventures in the Polygon Athletic Center. Some creative and idle PowerPoint Ranger has captured similar indecencies in the men’s locker in stick figure cartoon form which I am afraid I lack the technology to attach, but I would happily send to anyone who sends me his/her email address. I am warning you. They are FUNNY!! Our absolute favorite is called “Hamming the Pine.” …picture an innocent bench being smothered by someone’s ham hock.
The one that is not there, however, is one that Bill was subjected to last week. As he was trying to dry his hands, he nearly groped a bottomless dude blow-drying his hair with the hand dryer. I suppose I don’t need to mention that these dryers are installed at hand/waist - not at neck/head - level. Ewwwwwww!
After relaying this story to me, he asked if we have similar shenanigans in the women’s locker room.
“We most certainly do NOT.” I told him. “We have couches, big roomy lockers, perfumed toilets—”
“And tickle fights in every corner,” he chimed in. Exactly.
“So you’ve been there?” Hmmm. I didn’t have to explain a thing -- which was, refreshingly, no bother at all.
01 December 2009
As the Polygon Turns (Episode 24): Trash Talk
In my little slice of the Polygon, trash collection has always been a bit of a theatrical production.
Back when I first started working down here, everyday at more or less three o’clock, our doorbell would ring and in would roll – literally roll – a man whom here I'll call Ishmael, the Trash Guy.
“TDRASH COLL … TDRASH!”
And we’d all stop what we were doing, get up out of our chairs like prairie dogs answering a call, and bring our wastebaskets to the front of the room where he was waiting, beckoning for our trash as though he were hawking peanuts at a baseball game.
As we’d bring him our cans and dump our refuse in his giant rolling bin, he’d heckle us:
“Where you been? …I not see you yestaday… you come to work?”
“No man! I was here,” my cohort would say. “I see you coming, I run.”
“Ahhh, ha ha ha ha… you not work enough! …here , here, you need new bag?”
“No thanks, I’m good. You gave me one yesterday. This one’s still clean.”
“Ahhh, s’clean? Okay, maybe too-morrow… maybe if you come to work… I be here!”
“Okay! Bye Ishmael, you take care!”
“Okay … Bye!” And out he rolled.
Peace was upon us once again.
When a new fellow took charge of our office, he started to question things: the way things were run, the way paperwork was routed, and his chief complaint with the status quo was the daily “Trash Call” ballet.
As it happened, about mid-summer, the trash collection ceased to be so regular. Maybe this was because it was, well, mid-summer in DC, when everything slows down because Congress is not in session. So why not trash pick-up? In fact one week, there was no pick-up at all. The following couple of weeks we only saw good Ishmael once, maybe twice. When he did, he’d even more vociferously complain that we weren’t in when he came a’ ringin’ – slim chance, seeing that rarely were all five of us out of the office.
Summer fruit and other lunch particles got a little smelly after a couple of days, so I did some research and found the right person to complain to – not any easy job in the Polygon, mind you.
The very next day Ishmael returned, angry… angry that we had complained to his supervisor that he had not come. “Why you call? Why you call and get me in trouble!”
He felt betrayed.
Hell, we just wanted our trash collected. What happened to that nice little prairie dog, peanut hawking system we had working so smoothly before?
I don’t know. But it was gone. Trust was broken. And our relationship would never be the same.
As I mentioned before, the new fellow – let’s call him “Slim” – thought the whole ballet was absurd and, undoubtedly beneath him, even though he said that it certainly wasn’t beneath him to dump his own trash can into the big refuse bucket at the beck and call of a small man with a heavy accent. Slim did some reading – which is not saying anything new; Slim was always reading.
Anyway, Slim did some reading up on the Polygon trash rules and contracts. “You know,” he started in with us, trying to gather allies, “you know… we don’t have to bring our trash to him.” Slim started speaking in a hushed tone, leaning forward and tapping his fingers together. “By his contract, he is supposed to go around to each desk and pick up our wastebasket and dump it himself. He is supposed to go around to everyone’s desk and quietly pick up and dispose of our trash. None of this ‘Trash Call!’ baloney!” he concluded as he waved his hand in disgust.
“I am going to talk to him about it tomorrow,” Slim continued, “or the next time he comes in here, and remind him what his contract says… let him know that I know what it says… that we know what it says...”
“Sure, okay,” one of us assented.
“Yeah, whatever, I don’t have a problem with that,” another agreed.
“Yeah, I did feel kind of silly pandering to him, parading my trash,” I added.
Loaf was out, so he didn’t get a vote.
The very next day I think it was, at some inconsistent time (he had long since ceased to be punctual), Ishmael rolled in.
“TDRASH COLL … TDRASH!”
And we all just sat there.
All of us except, of course, Slim.
He came out of his office, strode to the door and asked Ishmael if he could have a word with him outside.
We all slunk in our desks and stared straight ahead, like kids or puppies would when they know that someone else is getting yelled at, however more culpable that pitiable creature may be.
In a couple of minutes (Man, that was a good long ass-chewing!), they both came back in the room. We had all since pulled our wastebaskets out from under our desks and had positioned them at the corner of each cubicle row as Slim had instructed us to: the proper post for the new “Trash Call.”
And Ishmael quietly rolled around the room, picking up each wastebasket in turn with his grubby grippy-palmed gardening gloves, softly dumping each one into the big bin.
Then he somberly rolled out… a beaten man… a shadow of his former self.
Ishmael has never missed a day of trash pick up since. Each day he has quietly rolled in and dutifully collected and dumped each of our cans. It is with no small amount of gladness, however, that I note that as the weeks and months have elapsed since his Trash Talk with Slim, Ishmael has gotten progressively more chipper, even a little bit flippant, insulting the Redskins, questioning everyone’s whereabouts, taking attendance… but nothing like the revelry of old.
But last week… Last week, things got pretty silly again.
Late Monday afternoon, a different trash guy rolled in. This new garbage guy was jovial enough, but sort of struck me as a little creepy. Not sure just what it was, the crazy fly away hair-do, the apron askew, the unusually ruddy complexion… no, this was a trash collector after all. I didn’t expect him to abide by regulation grooming standards.
He came over to where Bill and I were seated, to pick up the wastebaskets posted at the edge of our cubicles. And he stood there, rather ceremoniously, waiting to be noticed or at the very least humored. Being a couple of days before Thanksgiving, we humored him. “Hey, what’s your favorite color?” he asked me.
“Blue,” I answered quickly, wondering if I was going to be summarily ejected from my chair and shot through the ceiling if I prevaricated like a Monty Python character.
“Well, I’ve got… this color!” It wasn’t blue. It was purple. A purple bead necklace.
Creepy!
I started to get backflashes – I mean flashbacks – of acts of Mardi Gras I’d never even performed … what did this guy want?
“Here, I will give you this one and this one!” he bubbled with glee as he pulled gold and a purple bead necklaces from his apron pouch.
Yes, I am fully aware of how creepy this sounds – try living it.
Bill likewise looked on uncomfortably. What did this guy want me to do with this crap? I was in uniform… I certainly wasn’t going to wear them, let alone reveal something for them.
So, I smiled and thanked him. After all, I didn’t want to be mean.
After he left, I picked the bead necklaces up with just two fingers and put them on Slim’s desk.
When he returned from lunch, he asked me what they were for and what did I do to get them. We chuckled about that, and as I was shuddering at the thought, he hung them on a thumbtack on my cubicle.
Just looking at them out of the corner of my eye kind gave me a sour taste in my throat … like I was tasting garbage… all of those places the beads had been… all of those other trash cans… all of the rolling barrels and bins and dumpsters those things must have seen.
Creepy!
I threw them in my garbage can.
Then Tuesday came. No Ishmael. It was crazy BeadBoy again.
Quick! I had to pull my beads from the trash… and hide them… so I wouldn’t hurt his feelings, but also so that he wouldn’t see them and remember our sentimental exchange.
Fortunately for me and all things mannerly, he was distracted, some might say downright lathered up. The sky was falling. He asked to borrow our phone.
“Sure!” I told him while I furtively guarded the area around my trash can.
“Which one…?????”
“Oh, you can use that one. No one uses that desk.” I offered Loaf’s old phone.
He picked up the handset and dialed his supervisor:
“Hey! I’m doing Ishmael’s route … Tri-Ark is down here trying to pull trash. There are three people from Tri-Ark just telling me they took the floor over.”
[Oh no! Say it isn’t so! The much feared trash wars have begun!]
“There are 3 people from Tri-Ark telling me they got an email to take over…”
[Not this turf… what’s Ishmael going to think? Hardly the Thanksgiving sprit!]
“I can skip this area?”
“The ones I pulled yesterday, I can still pull, right?”
“And the 92 I can get… and the whole hallway is gone to them”
“Okay, I’ll commence.” He hangs up.
“You’re lucky,” he assures us. “You’re on the route. This takes about ten rooms off of the list. I just talked to the assistant general manager. You’re on the list. You’re lucky. I can still pull you guys.”
Yeah, real lucky. Now you’re talkin’!
Back when I first started working down here, everyday at more or less three o’clock, our doorbell would ring and in would roll – literally roll – a man whom here I'll call Ishmael, the Trash Guy.
“TDRASH COLL … TDRASH!”
And we’d all stop what we were doing, get up out of our chairs like prairie dogs answering a call, and bring our wastebaskets to the front of the room where he was waiting, beckoning for our trash as though he were hawking peanuts at a baseball game.
As we’d bring him our cans and dump our refuse in his giant rolling bin, he’d heckle us:
“Where you been? …I not see you yestaday… you come to work?”
“No man! I was here,” my cohort would say. “I see you coming, I run.”
“Ahhh, ha ha ha ha… you not work enough! …here , here, you need new bag?”
“No thanks, I’m good. You gave me one yesterday. This one’s still clean.”
“Ahhh, s’clean? Okay, maybe too-morrow… maybe if you come to work… I be here!”
“Okay! Bye Ishmael, you take care!”
“Okay … Bye!” And out he rolled.
Peace was upon us once again.
When a new fellow took charge of our office, he started to question things: the way things were run, the way paperwork was routed, and his chief complaint with the status quo was the daily “Trash Call” ballet.
As it happened, about mid-summer, the trash collection ceased to be so regular. Maybe this was because it was, well, mid-summer in DC, when everything slows down because Congress is not in session. So why not trash pick-up? In fact one week, there was no pick-up at all. The following couple of weeks we only saw good Ishmael once, maybe twice. When he did, he’d even more vociferously complain that we weren’t in when he came a’ ringin’ – slim chance, seeing that rarely were all five of us out of the office.
Summer fruit and other lunch particles got a little smelly after a couple of days, so I did some research and found the right person to complain to – not any easy job in the Polygon, mind you.
The very next day Ishmael returned, angry… angry that we had complained to his supervisor that he had not come. “Why you call? Why you call and get me in trouble!”
He felt betrayed.
Hell, we just wanted our trash collected. What happened to that nice little prairie dog, peanut hawking system we had working so smoothly before?
I don’t know. But it was gone. Trust was broken. And our relationship would never be the same.
As I mentioned before, the new fellow – let’s call him “Slim” – thought the whole ballet was absurd and, undoubtedly beneath him, even though he said that it certainly wasn’t beneath him to dump his own trash can into the big refuse bucket at the beck and call of a small man with a heavy accent. Slim did some reading – which is not saying anything new; Slim was always reading.
Anyway, Slim did some reading up on the Polygon trash rules and contracts. “You know,” he started in with us, trying to gather allies, “you know… we don’t have to bring our trash to him.” Slim started speaking in a hushed tone, leaning forward and tapping his fingers together. “By his contract, he is supposed to go around to each desk and pick up our wastebasket and dump it himself. He is supposed to go around to everyone’s desk and quietly pick up and dispose of our trash. None of this ‘Trash Call!’ baloney!” he concluded as he waved his hand in disgust.
“I am going to talk to him about it tomorrow,” Slim continued, “or the next time he comes in here, and remind him what his contract says… let him know that I know what it says… that we know what it says...”
“Sure, okay,” one of us assented.
“Yeah, whatever, I don’t have a problem with that,” another agreed.
“Yeah, I did feel kind of silly pandering to him, parading my trash,” I added.
Loaf was out, so he didn’t get a vote.
The very next day I think it was, at some inconsistent time (he had long since ceased to be punctual), Ishmael rolled in.
“TDRASH COLL … TDRASH!”
And we all just sat there.
All of us except, of course, Slim.
He came out of his office, strode to the door and asked Ishmael if he could have a word with him outside.
We all slunk in our desks and stared straight ahead, like kids or puppies would when they know that someone else is getting yelled at, however more culpable that pitiable creature may be.
In a couple of minutes (Man, that was a good long ass-chewing!), they both came back in the room. We had all since pulled our wastebaskets out from under our desks and had positioned them at the corner of each cubicle row as Slim had instructed us to: the proper post for the new “Trash Call.”
And Ishmael quietly rolled around the room, picking up each wastebasket in turn with his grubby grippy-palmed gardening gloves, softly dumping each one into the big bin.
Then he somberly rolled out… a beaten man… a shadow of his former self.
Ishmael has never missed a day of trash pick up since. Each day he has quietly rolled in and dutifully collected and dumped each of our cans. It is with no small amount of gladness, however, that I note that as the weeks and months have elapsed since his Trash Talk with Slim, Ishmael has gotten progressively more chipper, even a little bit flippant, insulting the Redskins, questioning everyone’s whereabouts, taking attendance… but nothing like the revelry of old.
But last week… Last week, things got pretty silly again.
Late Monday afternoon, a different trash guy rolled in. This new garbage guy was jovial enough, but sort of struck me as a little creepy. Not sure just what it was, the crazy fly away hair-do, the apron askew, the unusually ruddy complexion… no, this was a trash collector after all. I didn’t expect him to abide by regulation grooming standards.
He came over to where Bill and I were seated, to pick up the wastebaskets posted at the edge of our cubicles. And he stood there, rather ceremoniously, waiting to be noticed or at the very least humored. Being a couple of days before Thanksgiving, we humored him. “Hey, what’s your favorite color?” he asked me.
“Blue,” I answered quickly, wondering if I was going to be summarily ejected from my chair and shot through the ceiling if I prevaricated like a Monty Python character.
“Well, I’ve got… this color!” It wasn’t blue. It was purple. A purple bead necklace.
Creepy!
I started to get backflashes – I mean flashbacks – of acts of Mardi Gras I’d never even performed … what did this guy want?
“Here, I will give you this one and this one!” he bubbled with glee as he pulled gold and a purple bead necklaces from his apron pouch.
Yes, I am fully aware of how creepy this sounds – try living it.
Bill likewise looked on uncomfortably. What did this guy want me to do with this crap? I was in uniform… I certainly wasn’t going to wear them, let alone reveal something for them.
So, I smiled and thanked him. After all, I didn’t want to be mean.
After he left, I picked the bead necklaces up with just two fingers and put them on Slim’s desk.
When he returned from lunch, he asked me what they were for and what did I do to get them. We chuckled about that, and as I was shuddering at the thought, he hung them on a thumbtack on my cubicle.
Just looking at them out of the corner of my eye kind gave me a sour taste in my throat … like I was tasting garbage… all of those places the beads had been… all of those other trash cans… all of the rolling barrels and bins and dumpsters those things must have seen.
Creepy!
I threw them in my garbage can.
Then Tuesday came. No Ishmael. It was crazy BeadBoy again.
Quick! I had to pull my beads from the trash… and hide them… so I wouldn’t hurt his feelings, but also so that he wouldn’t see them and remember our sentimental exchange.
Fortunately for me and all things mannerly, he was distracted, some might say downright lathered up. The sky was falling. He asked to borrow our phone.
“Sure!” I told him while I furtively guarded the area around my trash can.
“Which one…?????”
“Oh, you can use that one. No one uses that desk.” I offered Loaf’s old phone.
He picked up the handset and dialed his supervisor:
“Hey! I’m doing Ishmael’s route … Tri-Ark is down here trying to pull trash. There are three people from Tri-Ark just telling me they took the floor over.”
[Oh no! Say it isn’t so! The much feared trash wars have begun!]
“There are 3 people from Tri-Ark telling me they got an email to take over…”
[Not this turf… what’s Ishmael going to think? Hardly the Thanksgiving sprit!]
“I can skip this area?”
“The ones I pulled yesterday, I can still pull, right?”
“And the 92 I can get… and the whole hallway is gone to them”
“Okay, I’ll commence.” He hangs up.
“You’re lucky,” he assures us. “You’re on the route. This takes about ten rooms off of the list. I just talked to the assistant general manager. You’re on the list. You’re lucky. I can still pull you guys.”
Yeah, real lucky. Now you’re talkin’!
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