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Shenandoah Brooktrout
Up To Ninety
Drove into DC Wednesday to see the new Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery. The exhibit does not actually start until mid September but I'm not one of those anal retentive types that has to know exactly when and where everything starts. Bernadette knew it was there or was going to be there and that is good enough for me. I checked online and remember glancing at the end date--I thought it most important that we not be late--and I was comforted by seeing something that ended with a 2008. We had plenty of time. We would not be late. In truth, I am a little anal retentive about being on time. Not that that by itself is such a good thing because once I arrive on time I feel no compulsion whatsoever to make good use of that time. If I can find a comfortable chair I might enjoy hours just staring into a corner contemplating all the degrees that add up to 90. And the shading therein.
I called BC from the road and he said he may like to join us so that was a thing I looked forward to while I worried for nothing about finding convenient parking. We found a nice spot right on Constitution Ave. and I called back and got his Blackberry. Speak slowly it instructed me because my voice message was to be miraculously transcribed to written words BC could look at on a screen. I have previous experience with the miracle so I knew it was best not to overtax the technology's capacity. I said, very slowly, Edward Hopper. He would know that we were at the National looking at Hoppers. I called back about thirty minutes later and slowly like a sleepy drunk said, No Hopper. I never did hear from him and wonder even now, two days later, is he roaming that vast cool marbled maze for art loving mice and men, staying to the edges and peeping up every once in a while--I don't see the Hopper, Jim? Bernadette?
Drove into DC Wednesday to see the new Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery. The exhibit does not actually start until mid September but I'm not one of those anal retentive types that has to know exactly when and where everything starts. Bernadette knew it was there or was going to be there and that is good enough for me. I checked online and remember glancing at the end date--I thought it most important that we not be late--and I was comforted by seeing something that ended with a 2008. We had plenty of time. We would not be late. In truth, I am a little anal retentive about being on time. Not that that by itself is such a good thing because once I arrive on time I feel no compulsion whatsoever to make good use of that time. If I can find a comfortable chair I might enjoy hours just staring into a corner contemplating all the degrees that add up to 90. And the shading therein.
I called BC from the road and he said he may like to join us so that was a thing I looked forward to while I worried for nothing about finding convenient parking. We found a nice spot right on Constitution Ave. and I called back and got his Blackberry. Speak slowly it instructed me because my voice message was to be miraculously transcribed to written words BC could look at on a screen. I have previous experience with the miracle so I knew it was best not to overtax the technology's capacity. I said, very slowly, Edward Hopper. He would know that we were at the National looking at Hoppers. I called back about thirty minutes later and slowly like a sleepy drunk said, No Hopper. I never did hear from him and wonder even now, two days later, is he roaming that vast cool marbled maze for art loving mice and men, staying to the edges and peeping up every once in a while--I don't see the Hopper, Jim? Bernadette?
Left My Water Pump In PA
On the off ramp waiting for the light to change a man driving up the on ramp alarmingly gestured that I was leaking antifreeze. I nodded and started to make the left but Bernadette told me the light was still red. I waited for the light to turn green, made the left and then the first right and parked under a big floppy-leafed shade tree in Hellertown, PA. Bernadette and I exited the vehicle and the leaves overhead were like damp green washcloths mopping away from our brows any worry. We would live under the shade tree, abandoning at least temporarily any other plans that threatened to inhibit our new found good fortune.
In short time, recovering from ill-conceived and unrealistic expectations regarding life under shade trees, and inspired in part by the need for slow cooked, heavily rubbed, fat juicy baby-back pork ribs and ice cold bottled beer, I called the Adman and sang to him a song I have been working on--I Left My Water Pump in PA. He lacks the necessary tools to understand my musical genius but offered to come pick us up and also gave me the number of a mechanic in his area who does towing. The shade tree we had contemplated living under was four hours from our starting point and 30 minutes from the Adman's barbecue grill.
Bernadette was meanwhile around the corner at the station formerly known as Esso. Even with a hard-earned, paid for walk-up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan I don't think she has ever considered herself one of the rich until a pimply faced, butt-smoking, teenage employee on break tagged her with the greeting, uh oh, rich person in trouble. She forgave him the crude greeting and extracted as much useful information as the young man was capable of providing. If we could only wait until 10p.m. this very youngster himself might be able to look into our situation.
Bernadette was reporting this to me after I reported to her that the Adman was in transit, that our overnight journey from Virginia solely inspired by our desire for Cuisine du Adman, would not be very much interrupted. To sweeten that pot which had us driving four and a half hours for a meal was the added attendance of Adman's brother, Hector, a good friend and dabbler of real estate who does not live in New York and did not graduate from Lehigh University.
Leaving the driveway here at Mt. Pleasant Bernadette and I had discussed the many meanings of a vehicle's Check Engine light. I was, for those purposes that had us eating ribs and drinking cold beer with good friends, deciding to interpret the engine light in one of its lesser connotations. A glitch. Or an electronic misinterpretation. Bernadette was with me on this but we both knew, even as we have so little experience with it, that we could be wrong. When a mile later she further considered our potentially dire future as rib-seeking travelers, I became a little testy and suggested that our only two options are turning back, or going forward with as little mention of dire consequences as possible. Based on a life well seasoned with questionable vehicular judgment I have trained myself to never leave home without expectation of breakdown. When I notice my worried knuckles turning white from their fierce grip on the steering wheel, as they anticipate any number of horrific mishaps, I remind myself that it is better to save your energy for the actual handling of a mishap and not to waste time stressing over that which has not yet happened.
While we waited under the shade tree we counted our blessings, talked briefly to a passing policeman, and considered from a distance the rather impressive butt cleavage of a gym short wearing man tooling around in his back yard across the street.
Winding along back roads near the Delaware River Adman said I bet you can taste that cold beer.
On the off ramp waiting for the light to change a man driving up the on ramp alarmingly gestured that I was leaking antifreeze. I nodded and started to make the left but Bernadette told me the light was still red. I waited for the light to turn green, made the left and then the first right and parked under a big floppy-leafed shade tree in Hellertown, PA. Bernadette and I exited the vehicle and the leaves overhead were like damp green washcloths mopping away from our brows any worry. We would live under the shade tree, abandoning at least temporarily any other plans that threatened to inhibit our new found good fortune.
In short time, recovering from ill-conceived and unrealistic expectations regarding life under shade trees, and inspired in part by the need for slow cooked, heavily rubbed, fat juicy baby-back pork ribs and ice cold bottled beer, I called the Adman and sang to him a song I have been working on--I Left My Water Pump in PA. He lacks the necessary tools to understand my musical genius but offered to come pick us up and also gave me the number of a mechanic in his area who does towing. The shade tree we had contemplated living under was four hours from our starting point and 30 minutes from the Adman's barbecue grill.
Bernadette was meanwhile around the corner at the station formerly known as Esso. Even with a hard-earned, paid for walk-up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan I don't think she has ever considered herself one of the rich until a pimply faced, butt-smoking, teenage employee on break tagged her with the greeting, uh oh, rich person in trouble. She forgave him the crude greeting and extracted as much useful information as the young man was capable of providing. If we could only wait until 10p.m. this very youngster himself might be able to look into our situation.
Bernadette was reporting this to me after I reported to her that the Adman was in transit, that our overnight journey from Virginia solely inspired by our desire for Cuisine du Adman, would not be very much interrupted. To sweeten that pot which had us driving four and a half hours for a meal was the added attendance of Adman's brother, Hector, a good friend and dabbler of real estate who does not live in New York and did not graduate from Lehigh University.
Leaving the driveway here at Mt. Pleasant Bernadette and I had discussed the many meanings of a vehicle's Check Engine light. I was, for those purposes that had us eating ribs and drinking cold beer with good friends, deciding to interpret the engine light in one of its lesser connotations. A glitch. Or an electronic misinterpretation. Bernadette was with me on this but we both knew, even as we have so little experience with it, that we could be wrong. When a mile later she further considered our potentially dire future as rib-seeking travelers, I became a little testy and suggested that our only two options are turning back, or going forward with as little mention of dire consequences as possible. Based on a life well seasoned with questionable vehicular judgment I have trained myself to never leave home without expectation of breakdown. When I notice my worried knuckles turning white from their fierce grip on the steering wheel, as they anticipate any number of horrific mishaps, I remind myself that it is better to save your energy for the actual handling of a mishap and not to waste time stressing over that which has not yet happened.
While we waited under the shade tree we counted our blessings, talked briefly to a passing policeman, and considered from a distance the rather impressive butt cleavage of a gym short wearing man tooling around in his back yard across the street.
Winding along back roads near the Delaware River Adman said I bet you can taste that cold beer.
Bethlehem Steel
Dwayne The Hitchhiker
In the state of Washington a congenial looking fisherman with his thumb extended was walking off the ferry landing at Lopez Island as we drove by and I stopped and picked him up. He had been fishing for salmon near the tip of San Juan when his boat stopped motoring. The fisherman paddled the boat to shore and a woman living up the hill saw his predicament and offered to take him to the ferry and that's how we ran into him. As we drove along he pointed out local houses of interest and told us a bit about the occupants. We dropped him at his weekend house which was in mid construction and he showed us the inside and suggested a place or two on the island to check out in the one hour we had to kill before catching the ferry to Anacortes. He said he had seen seals at a point on the way out that morning so we went to that point and also saw seals, fat juicy seals sunning on the rocks. A few days later leaving out of Hood River, Oregon, towards a town on the other side of Zig Zag Bernadette as driver approached an intersection where stood another--somewhat less congenial looking--hitchhiker and she said, should we pick him up? and before I could clear the hairball stuck in my throat she had pulled over and Dwayne was getting in the back seat. It was eight in the morning and Dwayne was reeking of beer and exuding the love of Christ or someone like Christ, a being or group of higher powered beings with whom he had regular conversations. Dwayne was a talker not impeded by his missing teeth and for twenty miles regaled us with tales about his mother and his father and his spiritual and political leanings. He stayed with his mother sometimes even though they did not really get along too well. These things he talked about when not talking about the mushrooms he was out to hunt in the woods of Oregon and which he would sell, according to him, that same day somewhere in Washington state, hitchhiking all the way. When he was a kid he had found a dollar on the street that he had watched a number of people pass by and his father had taken it and put it in an account. Did you ever see any of that money I asked even though I really did not want to encourage him to speak any more than he was speaking. He would not shut up but I didn't want him to think I was one of those people that picked him up and then told him to shut up, which he admitted was a thing that happened to him occasionally. He said he never saw a penny of that dollar and that was some kind of money back in those days, like he was 85 years old instead of what he was, which was 46. He early on had challenged Bernadette to guess his age and Bernadette had not wanted to hurt his feelings because it was obvious that he was suggesting that he looked much younger than he was but in fact he looked about 8 years older. She guessed 40 thinking she was being kind and he was ok with the 40 guess but he let on that other people thought he was much younger and that he sometimes still got carded when buying alcohol. He spewed on and on about his version of spirituality which was a convolution of Karma meets God meeting the Easter Bunny who then is sucked up by a UFO piloted by a liberal ill-informed Democrat. He kept insisting that he would be ok when we let him out in the middle of nowhere thinking that we would wish to take him all the way to his particular patch of woods laden heavily with desirable mushrooms. These were not hallucinogenic mushrooms he was after. I want to make that clear. However, Dwayne was wrong about us. We did not want to spend anymore time with him. We let him out and said goodbye, and take care, see ya, good luck, okay then, hope you find a bunch, we sure will look for you if we come back this way, and then goodbye we said again wishing he would shut the door and he eventually did. In the future Bernadette and I will probably have some discussion before picking up hitchhikers. Not all of them are ax-murderers but some of them are Dwayne.
In the state of Washington a congenial looking fisherman with his thumb extended was walking off the ferry landing at Lopez Island as we drove by and I stopped and picked him up. He had been fishing for salmon near the tip of San Juan when his boat stopped motoring. The fisherman paddled the boat to shore and a woman living up the hill saw his predicament and offered to take him to the ferry and that's how we ran into him. As we drove along he pointed out local houses of interest and told us a bit about the occupants. We dropped him at his weekend house which was in mid construction and he showed us the inside and suggested a place or two on the island to check out in the one hour we had to kill before catching the ferry to Anacortes. He said he had seen seals at a point on the way out that morning so we went to that point and also saw seals, fat juicy seals sunning on the rocks. A few days later leaving out of Hood River, Oregon, towards a town on the other side of Zig Zag Bernadette as driver approached an intersection where stood another--somewhat less congenial looking--hitchhiker and she said, should we pick him up? and before I could clear the hairball stuck in my throat she had pulled over and Dwayne was getting in the back seat. It was eight in the morning and Dwayne was reeking of beer and exuding the love of Christ or someone like Christ, a being or group of higher powered beings with whom he had regular conversations. Dwayne was a talker not impeded by his missing teeth and for twenty miles regaled us with tales about his mother and his father and his spiritual and political leanings. He stayed with his mother sometimes even though they did not really get along too well. These things he talked about when not talking about the mushrooms he was out to hunt in the woods of Oregon and which he would sell, according to him, that same day somewhere in Washington state, hitchhiking all the way. When he was a kid he had found a dollar on the street that he had watched a number of people pass by and his father had taken it and put it in an account. Did you ever see any of that money I asked even though I really did not want to encourage him to speak any more than he was speaking. He would not shut up but I didn't want him to think I was one of those people that picked him up and then told him to shut up, which he admitted was a thing that happened to him occasionally. He said he never saw a penny of that dollar and that was some kind of money back in those days, like he was 85 years old instead of what he was, which was 46. He early on had challenged Bernadette to guess his age and Bernadette had not wanted to hurt his feelings because it was obvious that he was suggesting that he looked much younger than he was but in fact he looked about 8 years older. She guessed 40 thinking she was being kind and he was ok with the 40 guess but he let on that other people thought he was much younger and that he sometimes still got carded when buying alcohol. He spewed on and on about his version of spirituality which was a convolution of Karma meets God meeting the Easter Bunny who then is sucked up by a UFO piloted by a liberal ill-informed Democrat. He kept insisting that he would be ok when we let him out in the middle of nowhere thinking that we would wish to take him all the way to his particular patch of woods laden heavily with desirable mushrooms. These were not hallucinogenic mushrooms he was after. I want to make that clear. However, Dwayne was wrong about us. We did not want to spend anymore time with him. We let him out and said goodbye, and take care, see ya, good luck, okay then, hope you find a bunch, we sure will look for you if we come back this way, and then goodbye we said again wishing he would shut the door and he eventually did. In the future Bernadette and I will probably have some discussion before picking up hitchhikers. Not all of them are ax-murderers but some of them are Dwayne.
The Chief In Charge
We have a balcony overlooking the dumpster here at the 8th Ave Inn in Seattle and if Bernadette knew it was me that lost that hubcap on the rent a car she would lock me out here as punishment with nothing more than my laptop picking up the wireless signal from the Hurricane 24 hour cafe and a rather prodigious childhood-developed talent for climbing down from balconies. If she even suspected it was me she would make me sit out here and think about where I lost it. I think it's probably in that parking lot in Anacortes where I ran over the curb while she was grocery shopping. I just remembered that. When we first noticed it missing, on Orcas Island, I was as dumbfounded as she but now it seems probable that it is in Anacortes. Bernadette will probably be punished by the rent a car company, as if the Ford Focus is not punishment enough.
Going tonight to see the Mariners play Boston at Safeco Field. Look for us midway between the first base line and the right field fence, in section 115, row 35. I will be the person ducking the foul balls.
Bernadette wants to go see a Gehry building now, yes dear, and some other stuff and then have a nice greasy bowl of Chili at Mike's.
I have been disparaged as navigator and relieved of all duties and now am in charge of picking up trash from the floorboards of the rent a car. The good thing about this duty is that I can drop trash on the floorboards and when Bernadette gives me that look I can toss my chief in charge of car garbage title back at her. I'm going to see if I can get a badge today and maybe a hat, or better yet a hat with a badge on it and then I will be such an intimidating force to deal with that I expect Bernadette will be cowering in my presence, even as I throw Almond Joy wrappers on the floor.
Last night I got dangerously drunk on one martini and a half bottle of Oregon wine and spent a couple of hours in the motel room trying not to throw up. I was successful but it wasn't pretty. I'm feeling much better now.
We have a balcony overlooking the dumpster here at the 8th Ave Inn in Seattle and if Bernadette knew it was me that lost that hubcap on the rent a car she would lock me out here as punishment with nothing more than my laptop picking up the wireless signal from the Hurricane 24 hour cafe and a rather prodigious childhood-developed talent for climbing down from balconies. If she even suspected it was me she would make me sit out here and think about where I lost it. I think it's probably in that parking lot in Anacortes where I ran over the curb while she was grocery shopping. I just remembered that. When we first noticed it missing, on Orcas Island, I was as dumbfounded as she but now it seems probable that it is in Anacortes. Bernadette will probably be punished by the rent a car company, as if the Ford Focus is not punishment enough.
Going tonight to see the Mariners play Boston at Safeco Field. Look for us midway between the first base line and the right field fence, in section 115, row 35. I will be the person ducking the foul balls.
Bernadette wants to go see a Gehry building now, yes dear, and some other stuff and then have a nice greasy bowl of Chili at Mike's.
I have been disparaged as navigator and relieved of all duties and now am in charge of picking up trash from the floorboards of the rent a car. The good thing about this duty is that I can drop trash on the floorboards and when Bernadette gives me that look I can toss my chief in charge of car garbage title back at her. I'm going to see if I can get a badge today and maybe a hat, or better yet a hat with a badge on it and then I will be such an intimidating force to deal with that I expect Bernadette will be cowering in my presence, even as I throw Almond Joy wrappers on the floor.
Last night I got dangerously drunk on one martini and a half bottle of Oregon wine and spent a couple of hours in the motel room trying not to throw up. I was successful but it wasn't pretty. I'm feeling much better now.
Backyard Buck, Orcas Island
Surviving Friendliness
At the Jetro food wholesaler in Brooklyn as a mule for The Restauranteur I waited in the checkout line with a flat cart piled not too high but with notably a small pallet of strawberries that drew the interest of the woman behind me. How much were those strawberries she asked and I did not know. Restauranteur I yelled over the din, how much were the strawberries. She looked at me like I had ask her the square root of some number she should not have to consider in this context and said she did not know. The woman behind me said they were very cheap in Chinatown and was in a completely non threatening way challenging us to justify our total lack of concern for strawberry economics. She looked at the cart and wanted to know what we were, a restaurant or what and I said yeah a restaurant even though there ain't no we about it, as I said before I was just the mule. The woman looking at all the vegetable matter on the cart said what you is, vegetarian? That or a musician or a Subversive or some godforsaken artistic type is the thing you get pegged for all the time if you go around in this world with long hair. I said no, not vegetarian, and she said good because she liked her pork chops. I like pork chops too but I could not comfort her with reportage of a menu that included pork chops so I just shut up which is how many New Yorkers survive the world in which they live when confronted with in-your-face friendly people. As I told the story later a man sitting across from me at the very restaurant for which we were earlier shopping said in response to my wording--that the woman was in-your-face-friendly--that in his opinion those were well chosen descriptive words and they drew a picture of what for him after 25 years in New York was an aspect of humanity that he had little tolerance for. I have some familiarity with urban life and I know that responding to overt friendliness from strangers can turn badly or tedious at times and I too shut it out when necessary but I cannot see that shutting it out as a rule is the way I will be going about it. The woman behind me at the Jetro asked what and where the restaurant was and I told her but then she asked did I have a card and I finally had to tell her I was just a mule and not a card carrying one. I yelled again up to The Restauranteur in front of me but she said she didn't have a card. I said to the woman who seemed disappointed in not getting a card, why do you need a card, I just told you where it was. She said, honey, that's no good because I have craft. Craft? I said. She said yeah, craft, can't remember a fucking thing. I said oh yeah I see what your saying and she said not only do I have craft but I gots CRS. I just waited this time, with the appropriate eagerness she had come to expect from me and she came back with--can't remember shit. I have some of that too, I said. It was a close call that instance of friendliness with a stranger but it seems to be one which up to this point in time I am surviving.
At the Jetro food wholesaler in Brooklyn as a mule for The Restauranteur I waited in the checkout line with a flat cart piled not too high but with notably a small pallet of strawberries that drew the interest of the woman behind me. How much were those strawberries she asked and I did not know. Restauranteur I yelled over the din, how much were the strawberries. She looked at me like I had ask her the square root of some number she should not have to consider in this context and said she did not know. The woman behind me said they were very cheap in Chinatown and was in a completely non threatening way challenging us to justify our total lack of concern for strawberry economics. She looked at the cart and wanted to know what we were, a restaurant or what and I said yeah a restaurant even though there ain't no we about it, as I said before I was just the mule. The woman looking at all the vegetable matter on the cart said what you is, vegetarian? That or a musician or a Subversive or some godforsaken artistic type is the thing you get pegged for all the time if you go around in this world with long hair. I said no, not vegetarian, and she said good because she liked her pork chops. I like pork chops too but I could not comfort her with reportage of a menu that included pork chops so I just shut up which is how many New Yorkers survive the world in which they live when confronted with in-your-face friendly people. As I told the story later a man sitting across from me at the very restaurant for which we were earlier shopping said in response to my wording--that the woman was in-your-face-friendly--that in his opinion those were well chosen descriptive words and they drew a picture of what for him after 25 years in New York was an aspect of humanity that he had little tolerance for. I have some familiarity with urban life and I know that responding to overt friendliness from strangers can turn badly or tedious at times and I too shut it out when necessary but I cannot see that shutting it out as a rule is the way I will be going about it. The woman behind me at the Jetro asked what and where the restaurant was and I told her but then she asked did I have a card and I finally had to tell her I was just a mule and not a card carrying one. I yelled again up to The Restauranteur in front of me but she said she didn't have a card. I said to the woman who seemed disappointed in not getting a card, why do you need a card, I just told you where it was. She said, honey, that's no good because I have craft. Craft? I said. She said yeah, craft, can't remember a fucking thing. I said oh yeah I see what your saying and she said not only do I have craft but I gots CRS. I just waited this time, with the appropriate eagerness she had come to expect from me and she came back with--can't remember shit. I have some of that too, I said. It was a close call that instance of friendliness with a stranger but it seems to be one which up to this point in time I am surviving.