great wall 2

My mother used to live in The Bethany, a retirement home about a mile north of the Ten Cat.  It was a pretty nice place, and I was wondering if that is the kind of place Old Dog was moving into.  She had a kitchen, and she had kind of taken pride in her cooking, but she never used it.  Cooking was work and she wanted no more to do with it, which was fine because along with room came board, and they had a big dining room, and I think the chow was pretty good.

From what Old Dog is saying I am guessing board does not come with the room, and I am thinking maybe there is a difference between senior living and retirement homes. The Bethany also used to have things like bingo nights and they brought in entertainment sometimes, I remember an Elvis impersonator and they had a nice little Christmas/Hanukahs/something vaguely Buddhist celebration.  I wonder if the folks at the Ravenswood have something like that.  Are there any common areas?  I know Old Dog likes to spin a yarn, and you can't do that properly without an audience, of course then you have to listen to their yarns, but that can be pretty entertaining too.

At 700 sq ft is about the same size as my condo.  I remember when I moved here I was surprised at all the room I had.  Plenty of room to put all my stuff neatly into their own place, but sloth and clutter took up the slack pretty quickly.

I do almost all my cooking by microwave.  The only thing I use my burners for is making hard-boiled eggs, and I had a cooking spree a few years back and made my favorite food of my youth Rice-a-Roni which was as good as I remembered it, and broccoli and cheddar soup which was also excellent, but after that not so much.  

I was hoping to get some comment on Beacon, but failing that I will provide my own.  See I was thinking the reader would be transported to a high school auditorium (how much time have we spent in those?) and then this whole outrageous Are you from Beacon thing would play out, and tucked into the middle of it was his slipping his arm around Mary O'Connor's waist, the love interest.  And then it goes on a bit until the whole stupid auditorium is blasting it out.

And later he is summing things up,  He never had a chance with Mary, well don't we all have lost loves in our pasts, and now that is in the past, and all he has to remember is that stupid song.  Well so goes life huh?  Kind of a funny story with that extravaganza, but with a little sadness tucked in.  

That's my take but if you have a different one, that is fine too.

And here is the second installment of The Great Wall:

And in between the scotch and the food and the wine and even the cigars, were the cigarettes, the maggots in the remains of the good time, bent and stained, nestled into the gristle, floating bloated in half empty glasses, squashed on the bare wood of the bar at the end of a smear of ash.

I felt a little sick looking at it and sat down on a stool facing away from the bar, into the side room.

The sound system was back there.  Mostly nobody bothered, but Dawn, the new girl, the Heroine Who Led the Way, looked through the tapes and set aside the Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis to play one of the mysterious cassettes with Chinese characters ball-pointed onto the scotch-taped labels and the restaurant rang with the sound of Chinese Opera.

Which seemed to suit her just fine as she bustled about to the music, getting that steam thing under control, filling the mustards and the sweet and sours, setting out the fortune cookies on their little plates.  She was wreathed with the remnants of the steam cloud like streamers and she was dancing like a character from The Red Detachment of Women.

Elbow on the bar, head aching, I watched her.  I had a job where I really didn’t have to do much and it paid the rent and I could get drunk every night.  I had it made.  But she was so happy.  Maybe I was missing something.

Movin' on up

Uncle Ken is going to spoil us with all of his stories; is this the first time they are seeing the light of day?  With all of the craziness that we can't avoid it is a blessing to read these little gems.  I'm liking them, a lot.

-----

It's been more than ten years since I moved into my cozy little studio apartment, and it was an ordeal, humping all my crap the quarter mile down the alley to the new place.  It was a solo effort, just me and my hand truck, and I vowed I would never move again.  You can see where this is going.

More than a year ago my sister told me about this senior housing development going up in a former hospital, located only a couple of hundred yards from my current digs.  She even called the alderman's office to get me on the "list."  I wasn't crazy about the idea but I went along with it, taking the path of least resistance.  Nothing seemed to be happening but then I got a phone call and the ball started rolling and I entered the paperwork hell of government housing.  So, now I'm in the process of moving and I'm taking it easy this time.  The end of August sounds about right.

It's a strange experience to see all these geezers; I'm not used to seeing folks my own age.  Instead of a 400 sq. ft. studio I'm now in a 700 sq. ft. one bedroom.  More space than I know what to do with, and all of the stuff is brand-spanking new.  My only critical observation thus far is that there is no gas range; everything is electric.  Maybe Uncle Ken can give me some tips about working with the glowing red coils.

I'm slowly adjusting to this new way of living, taking elevators instead of stairs.  The view isn't bad, facing south with a direct line of sight to the downtown TV transmitters.  I'm on the fifth floor, the lowest available for us "independent living" types.  The lower floors are for assisted living residents and they have their own entrance; we're not connected.

This should be an adventure; all the food and kitchen crap is in place, leaving me with nothing but instant coffee in the old crib.  Slow and steady will win this race and there is a long way to go; lots of books, vinyl albums, tools and gadgets have got to make the trip and they are all heavy.  Oh, my aching back!

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/7/6/22559807/ravenswood-hospital-refurbished-senior-tenants-cha-evergreen-real-estate-group

 

 

great wall 1

 This one is not as long as Catfish, but is set in the same place.

It was four blocks through white and wind and sneaker-soaking drifts with a Loch Ness monster scotch hangover to The Great Wall, but today was Leon’s birthday and I had to show up for that.  I pulled the door open and it banged shut behind me with a blast of blizzard.

Annette ran down from the head of the stairs to see who was coming in and she was a little disappointed that it was just me, the bartender, and not the new girl, just hired yesterday afternoon, who lived clear across town, and was already late.  And if she didn’t show then who would wait tables?

“It’s not going to be me, I’ll tell you that.” she assured me, though of course it would be.  She had climbed her way up from waitress to head waitress to managing the waitresses, and her tray toting days were over thank you very much.

I shrugged, tried to give her a sympathetic look, as if I gave a shit, and brushed on past her to the side room to punch in and hang up my coat.  Against a wall were the tea urns already fired up warm and moist and inviting after the white and wind as I poured myself a cup.  But maybe they were steaming a little too much.  The room was filling with fog so maybe something needed to be turned down.  I wandered back towards the cash register to tell Annette.

And just then the front door slammed open and shut again and Annette squealed like a schoolgirl.  Dawn, the new girl had arrived, and Annette’s dignity was saved.  Through my steam-fogged glasses I could barely make out two figures looming towards me from the dark dining room.  Annette had Dawn by the elbow and was guiding her back to the side room because Dawn had walked clear across town in the blizzard to get here and now her eyes were frozen shut.

“All the way from Vine Street,” Annette was saying, “Walked clear here in the storm with her eyes frozen shut” and she led her past me into the side room. By the time I got back Dawn’s dark hair was a nest of snowflakes, ice crystals glistened in her eyelashes, melted in the steam from the tea urns, damped her rosy cheeks, and allowed her to open her now unfrozen eyes.  Shrugging off her coat shyly, revealing her red Great Wall waitress uniform with the gold Chinese characters down the side, she looked like the heroine in one of those old Red China propaganda posters, The Peasant Girl Who Saved Her Village.  

I was just the bartender and I would be serving no food to the hungry villagers and I was no hero. I left the giggling Annette and the smiling modestly shrugging heroine, and went to my province, the bar, with its thick layer of detritus, the scene of the crime last night, the wages of sin.

Leon’s younger brother, Sam, had flown in last night for Leon’s birthday.  He had a restaurant in San Francisco and was worldlier than Leon, here in Decatur Illinois.  He’d strutted in waving a cigar like a baton while Leon had sat punching filter-tipped cigarettes out in a plastic ashtray. 

Leon had put a smile on his face and brought out this dark bottle of scotch made especially for the King of Scotland or something, the main point being it was incredibly expensive.  He poured Sam and himself a generous portion, and then because I was standing there, and the high cost of this scotch meant nothing to a man such as Leon, he poured me a generous portion also.   Normally I get in enough trouble just drinking beer, but I knew I was going to have to drink this one for Leon.

And the one that followed, and the one that followed that.  Then there were the fat black cigars, the steaks, the pricey wines, and then there was another bottle of The King’s Own Nectar.  I didn’t understand a word that was said, but the three of us had a great time.  From the looks of the bar, the good times had continued after I’d left early, decapitated by the King of Scotland.

Beacon

 I have always been writing something.  Even in high school I was writing these little humorous pieces that sometimes got into the school newspaper.  In college I took narrative writing courses.  I can't say I actually learned anything there, like stuff you could put on a test, but it got you to write and to read what other people had written and to discuss it among yourselves, and that's about as good it gets for a writer.

It seems hard to believe but all those stories were handwritten.  What a chore it must have been for the teacher to read all those pages of script, but that's the way it was in those days,

Then on a visit to my folks I saw that they had an old portable typewriter which they gave me and I got a book out of the library and I taught myself to type with all my fingers.  Most of my life I have been pretty lazy and I am proud of that little moment of get up and go that I had.  

I like to talk.  I like to hear the sound of my own voice.  I like the way I can just turn on the spigot. and I like to hear what comes out.

Writing is a little different.  It is more formal, you have to type it and you are aware of things like punctuation and paragraphs, and you just have to pay more attention to what you are saying, you have to say it better and it has to make sense.  

Most people don't write.  That kid in fourth grade who is talking a blue streak to all his buddies and disrupting the class, put a paper and pencil in front of him and ask him to write what he did over the weekend or anything at all, anything off the top of his head and he has nothing, absolutely zero to say.  Most people are like that.  I don't know why.

As Beagles has noted I have a ton of this shit.  I was looking through my archives last night and I saw stories that I have forgotten about.  Here is a little short one.

 When the lights go down the curtains stay closed and then the music begins and grows louder, and then you hear the soft shoes, slow at first, but then growing faster.  The curtain opens and there is Mary O'Connor, "The best little hoofer to ever come out of Beacon High," as the music teacher, Mr Cahalan, likes to say.

 She is wearing a peppermint striped little jacket, and a rakish boater, and she has a cane as a prop.  She gets to have her solo here and she hoofs up a storm.  And then I come out of the wings, kind of drifting towards her at centerstage, an easy loping rhythmic stride, and I begin to sing:

 "Are you from Beacon?

Are you from Beacon?"

 She cups her little pink shell of an ear in my direction as I drift into my position beside her.

 "The Illinois River.

The verdant farmland."

 This is directed more towards the audience than at Mary, and then I take a deep breath so I can sing out that last line loud and proud.

 "Beacon U S A."

 Then a little silence with just the sounds of our hooves, I guess to give the viewers who have dropped their programs in all the excitement a chance to retrieve them.

 And then little Mary's bell-like chime:

 "Yes I'm from Beacon.

Yes I'm from Beacon."

 Probably it is just me that notices how for the next two lines she goes more distant, bored, almost sarcastic.

 "The Illinois River.

The verdant farmland."

 But she has to tone it all the way up for the next line.

 "Beacon U S A."

 And then we do one of those dosey doe things, linking our arms and dancing in a circle.

 "Oh we're from Beacon,

Oh we're from Beacon.

The Illinois River,

The verdant farmlands.

Beacon U S A."

 I wrap my arm around her waist then, which strictly speaking isn't part of Mr Cahalan's directions, but Mary doesn't mind, not at all.

 And then just after the U S A part, this other couple, kind of dance wander onto the stage, and Mary and I sing out to them:

 "Are you from Beacon?

Are you from Beacon?"

 And then the whole thing again, ending up with the four of us in kind of a pinwheel at the end.

 And then two more couples coming on, and after that four more, which is really too many, because the first two are pretty good, but the next four are not so hot and they really can't dance at all.  It is all they can do just to run to keep in place at the end of the pinwheel.  And when it comes time to sing towards the audience they are all gasping, but anyway we all sing low, just so that we can hear Mary's voice ring out.

 "Are you from Beacon?

Are you from Beacon?"

etc.

 The first two rows are taken by our classmates who return the favor:

 "Yes we're from Beacon

Yes we're form Beacon."

etc.

 And then together:

 "Oh we're from Beacon

Oh we're from Beacon."

etc.

 And then the first two rows of the audience turn back towards the rest of the audience and etc, and etc, and etc.

 And then, and then, and then, it goes on and on, just repeating itself, over and over, way more times than you would have thought were possible.

 I was a pretty good dancer.  It was just something I could do, like some guys can do those yo-yo tricks.  I didn't live to dance or anything like that.  But I was okay with it when Mr Cahalan wanted me to be in his annual Beacon Blast.  If I had known that I would end up in that peppermint coat, boater, and cane, singing that song over and over I never would have done it, but then when I heard that Mary O'Connor would be dancing next to me, I guess I would have done it even knowing how it was going to turn out.  Anyway I did it.

 I never got any further with Mary O’Connor than that arm around her waist.  She had a jerk of a boyfriend who got her pregnant and then they moved somewhere.  It's been over fifteen years now since I knocked the Beacon off my boots, and some things have turned out really well for me, and somethings have turned out very badly, but wherever I go and whatever I do, I will always know:

 I'm from Beacon. 

Another Keeper!

 I'm beginning to realize that Uncle Ken must be just full of this stuff.  How does he do it?  

People have been telling me all my life that I should write but, as Uncle Ken said, writing in those days was a more laborious process than it is today.  My father had a clackety clack typewriter, but I never learned to type with all my fingers, and I could manually write with a pen about as fast as I could type on one of those things.  It wasn't until decades later, when my daughter gave me her old laptop, that I found I could two finger type on a modern keyboard about as fast as I could think of what I wanted to write next.  I never thought much about selling anything, I just wanted to share my wit and wisdom with people who seemed to need it.  The trouble is the people who need it most don't have the patience to read anything longer than a Tweet, so there you go.  

A long time ago, a barmaid who had been overhearing my legerdemain for months offered me a bit of advice. She had studied psychology in college, but said that her experience tending bar had taught her more about human nature than she ever learned in school.  She told me that I was one of those people who needed to talk to maintain my sanity.  "Now you could talk to a psychiatrist for 50 bucks an hour (I told you it was a long time ago.), you could talk to me for the price of a beer, or you could sit on a log in the swamp and talk to your dogs, or even yourself, for free and it would provide the same benefit."  Funny she should say that because people had been telling all my life that I talk too much, and now this one tells me I need to talk even more.  Since then, I have discovered that posting on the internet seems to fulfill my need to talk so well that I can't remember the last time somebody told me that I talk too much in real life.   

Jenn again

 Actually I did send something to the New Yorker years ago and got a no.  When I was quite young I thought that I was going to be a writer and so I never actively pursued a responsible job, so as not to sell out you know, but of course that was a thinly disguised reason to hang out with my buddies and drink a lot of beer.

I did send stuff out those days.  And that was when you had to use a typewriter which meant if you did a typo there went the page, or you could attempt to fix it with one of those gadgets whose one side was a hard rubber circular eraser and the other a brush, then there was white out, and later than that a tape you could put over your paper and type in the letter you had hit by accident.  All were a pain in the ass and none quite covered up the error.  And then you had to take the whole mess and shove it into an envelope with some kind of snappy cover letter and include another envelope with postage on it so that you could get it back when they rejected it.  If you were lucky you would get a little handwritten note at the bottom of the rejection letter.  Nice try old chap, you show promise, try us again.

I did manage to get a handful of those notes, but that was as far as my writing career ever went.

Now in the cyber age you can write your opus with a word processor and send it out for free with the click of a send button.  Which is so easy that a lot more people send stuff in.  Magazines all claim that they have somebody read every manuscript, but I imagine it is a bleary-eyed intern who knows if he brings something to his betters, Hey guys you ought to look at this, they will likely be annoyed at the waste of their time.  Still now that it has been mentioned and, as I have pointed out, it takes so very little time, perhaps I will give it another go.

But for the nonce Gentlemen, I give you the conclusion of Jenn.

Women, well they can’t help it, they are the gatherers of the tribe you know.  Empty space in the fridge is something they abhor.  They have to fill it up with something, so that when the hunter returns with two six packs of Old Milwaukee, which he was able to get at an incredible price because the liquor store was dumping the brand, and which is best served very well chilled, and throws open the refrigerator door, he finds a full house.

 Compromises have to be made.  The game is already in the third inning, so three-four cans should do it. Eight cans can be set on top of the fridge for the time being.  And you know, that square blue container is just about two cans long on each side.  What could it hurt for it to sit on the kitchen table for an hour or two? 

 Who ever expects extra innings or a rain delay, and especially who expects both?  And who expects that when making tuna salad, something which even I know can go bad quickly, the gatherer wouldn’t use a transparent rather than an opaque blue container so that the hunter could see what was inside and maybe choose something else to displace to make room for the Old Milwaukee?    

 Anyway in the excitement of the thrilling extra-inning victory, and the couple celebratory more beers, and the nap that ensued, perhaps that blue container remained on the kitchen table too long, which it wouldn’t have had I known it contained tuna salad, which I would have known had it been in a proper transparent container.  

 And you know, she’s always talking about losing weight, and she was fit as a fiddle just a couple days after the unpleasantness.  So I don’t know why she makes such a big production about it.

 But she does.  Every time we have a little disagreement about anything the tuna salad incident comes up.  There’s no point in interrupting her, the story will be told.  The best thing is to play along, like I’m agreeing to what she is saying, almost like the two of us are discussing some third person.

 And this is not so unfortunate because this will give that maddeningly slow barmaid time to make her lackadaisical way to our end of the bar.  So all in all things are going well. 

 “I thought I would die,” she finishes, and fixes me with that piercing look.   

 “First of all,” I begin, raising my finger to illustrate that this will be the first of many points that I will raise in my defense, and begin with the folly of placing a perishable food in an opaque container, and before I even get to the part of so many transparent ones being right at hand, to my astonishment the barmaid has slipped a new beer in front of me.

 This is the purest serendipity.  There is no way that I would have ordered a beer at this sensitive point in our conversation, but the barmaid has clearly mistaken my enumeration of points for that very act.

 And so there it is, the tenth beer, or the twelfth if Jenn’s probably slanted calculations are accurate. But the point is it is the cornerstone, the acme of the evening, the pathway to fulfillment.  Oh, there will probably be some unpleasantness from Jenn, but I will be able to deal with this from the pleasantness of a comfortable barstool with my hand tightly wrapped around the cool base of the capstone beer. 

 And actually this is the best way for this little spat to proceed.  Were I irritable from being cut short, then I might speak sharp words to Jenn.

 This would be unforgivable.  This woman had this very evening, spurning my offer of help, prepared me an excellent meal.  To repay that kindness with wounding words would be most unfair.  How much better it was then for me to be ensconced and enbeered and kindly disposed to deal with the situation.

 So this was all for the best.  But then right at this point when all was going well with the world, as I was pushing my money towards the bar, I realized that I only had three dollar bills.  I was a dollar short.  Two options came immediately to mind.

 The first was the quick nod to Jenn accompanied by a sheepish look, my eyes darting from where the dollar was missing to Jenn’s purse.  No, that had best be discarded.

 The second was finessing the barmaid.  It was only a lousy buck after all, and hadn’t I enlivened her evening with my enchanting conversation?  Hadn’t I enhanced my volume so that she could partake of it?  Yes, this would almost surely work.  I shoved the three bills towards her with a little complicit shrug, imploring eyes, and that sheepish look which always works so well with women.

 And yet it doesn’t work.  “That will be another dollar,” she says, and worse yet she does not relinquish her firm grip on the glass.

 It is standing there right before me.  Right before me.  And yet for want of a buck I would be denied what fate had so clearly granted.  I give Jenn the quick nod, sheep it up to max. I even extend my hand towards the steely clasps of her purse so she won’t have to reach so far to slip me that single slim bill.

 Jenn’s a wonderful woman, a caring considerate woman who, noting that her man was immersed in the news of the day, would not disturb him by requesting his aid in a meaningless banging of pots and pans, even were he to generously offer his assistance.  Hardly would a woman of this nature deny him one paper thin, almost worthless really, scrap of paper.

 Yet she does, and worse yet she yanks the purse back off the bar and into her lap leaving my hand dangling where once the clasps had clasped, where surely behind this purely mechanical contrivance in sweet perfumed comfort resides at least one lousy buck.

 “Jenn,” I say, and then I say her name a little more softly, a little slower, a little deeper.  Women love a deep voice.  “Jenn, may I borrow a dollar?”

 “Borrow?” she asks.  “Borrow?  You mean in the sense that you will be paying me back?” 

Oh here is a sore point.  There have been times in the past when I have treated Jenn to an enchanted evening at a fine restaurant only to discover, when the bill was presented, that the previous evening when I had stopped at the bar for one quick one, but had unexpectedly met up with a lively and philosophic crowd, that the ensuing give and take, symbolized by the buying of rounds, had depleted my wallet, and I had required her financial assistance.

But this is all in the past.  We are living in the present now, this little present of just one more beer which is presently sitting before me, little bubbles rising from its base like giggles. 

And then in a second incident of serendipity the pool players are ready for another round and are being quite vocal about it and the barmaid has released her grip and then she is gone, gone down the bar, and my glass of beer is all my own, steady in my hand.

I seize the beer and the moment, take a quick quaff, and the whole thing is a fait accompli, the triumph of logic accompanied by a couple small quirks of fate, a heroic ending for my quest. 

Oh the glare from Jenn’s gimlet eyes.  There is trouble ahead, and more troubling yet is the realization that, what with all this consternation, this beer will not be the capstone anymore.  One more after it will be required.

 But with all my legerdemain, and with my current lucky streak going strong, I don’t see how this will be a problem.

Great Story!

 That's a great story Uncle Ken.  I had a vague idea of what legerdemain meant, but I looked it up to be sure.  I had mostly seen it used to describe magic tricks, but you're right that it can be applied to any skillful, possibly deceptive, display of adroitness including, of course, bull shit.  Did you know that it comes from the French language and is literally translated as "sleight of hand"?  I hope that "Jen" is the beginning of another saga and not just a stand alone story because I would really like to read about the Tuna Salad Incident.  

I knew that "vittles" and "victuals" both meant the same thing, but I thought they were two different words.  I had no idea it was one word that is pronounced differently than it is usually spelled.  

From where I live, crossing the Mackinac Bridge and the U.P. is indeed the shortest route to the Canadian border.  From Chicago, however, it might be shorter to cross at Detroit, but I suppose it depends on where in Canada you want to go.