The Bridge Home…

In the early fifties my father bought a new car every year.  He was doing well in business, building a new house for us, and playing golf, not all that successfully, at the local country club.  The cars were usually Cadillacs.  This was the time when a “Caddy” really was a luxury car, with shiny chrome bumpers, paint that looked a mile deep, and a fragrant genuine leather interior.  I was about six years old, and the back seat was my domain.  Father driving, Mother enjoying the ride, and me, just me, in the back seat.

We were living in New Jersey, in a big old house, waiting for that new house to be finished, and we took lots of car trips.  With gas selling for about twenty-five cents per gallon, this was cost-effective entertainment.  We went to the Jersey Shore where my mother grew up.  We went to visit my grandmother in New York City.  We went to see friends in Clifton, Farmington, and any number of other small industrial towns trying to pass themselves off as suburbs.  We would start out early, make a day of it, and often we would return quite late, the lights of the factories and the oil refineries and the chemical plants giving the landscape, through the smoke and the mist, an undeserved ethereal look.

I don’t think that I ever stayed awake for an entire ride home.  Maybe it was my age, or the lateness of the hour, or maybe it was the gentle, bosomy luxury of the back seat.  No matter what I did to try and stay awake, the softness of the upholstery and the rhythm of the tires beating cadence over the seams in the roadbed would always cause me to drift off into wonderful dreams…dreams of puppies and of holidays and of good things to eat.

There was a small bridge not far from my house, or rather my parents’ house, although I always thought of it as mine.  The bridge was nothing more than a tiny hyphen on the long road home.  It crossed what must once have been a narrow creek, but was now nothing more than a muddy, weedy ditch, punctuated by derelict tires and rusted-out appliances.  It was an old bridge.  The sides were the corroded spiderweb steel of a railway trestle, only in miniature.  The floor of the bridge was made of old, thick, weathered, gray wooden planks, and some of them were loose.

I had the same graphic fears as every child.  I could describe the monsters in my closet in excruciating detail.  I knew with crystal clarity why I must never let a hand or a foot dangle off the bed.  And in my child’s mind, I could see the car, with me in the back seat, plummeting through the loose boards into the ditch.  But that fear was quickly banished by another, stronger feeling.  Those loose boards made a distinctive sound as the car rolled over them, a sound so subtle as to defy accurate description.  My pediatrician once tried to calm me down (prior to a shot, I think) by encouraging me to listen to my own heart through his stethoscope.  That’s as close as I can come to a description of the sound of those loose boards.  I have few early memories as rich and fully realized as my memories of being awakened by those boards, their heartsound telling my now-half-awake self that it was late, and I was tired, and we were nearly home.

And soon, my father’s business burned down, and we moved to Florida, and I went to school, and my father died, and I suddenly became old, and although now I’m too tall to stretch out in the back seat, and although now I do the driving, and although now I always stay awake until the end of the trip, I would give most anything to hear the heartsound of that bridge just once again, reminding me that it is late, and I am tired, and I am nearly home.

Solid Gold…

Although I really like Fettuccine Alfredo, I almost never order it in restaurants. I’m getting older, and my heart is not in the best condition. The last thing I need is more butter and cheese in my diet. But whenever I eat Italian food, in a restaurant or even at home, I think of Fettuccine Alfredo. Here’s why.

I spent a good amount of my childhood traveling with my parents. My father was an importer, and he had to travel a lot. He and my mother could not bear to be apart, so she went with him, and they took the kid, me, along with them as often as they could. Even though my father had no business in Italy, one year we stopped over in Rome for a full week. We toured the Vatican, the Colosseum, and just about every other historical sight we could find. We took day trips out into the countryside near the city. We tossed coins in the Trevi Fountain. And we ate…oh my, did we eat. Then as now, Italian food in Italy was terrific. Very few ingredients, carefully and lovingly prepared and beautifully presented. Nothing frozen or canned or otherwise tinkered with. And on our first night in Rome, my parents wanted to eat at a restaurant named Alfredo’s.

Movie Star Mary Pickford, “America’s Sweetheart” was married to Douglas Fairbanks, “The King of Hollywood.” They loved to travel, and they loved to entertain. While in Rome during the twenties, they visited Alfredo’s and loved the restaurant’s eponymous signature dish. They returned for it night after night, and asked for the recipe so they could have the dish when they returned home to southern California. Just before leaving, they presented the restaurant’s founder and owner, Alfredo di Lelio, with a gift…an ornate solid eighteen-karat gold fork and spoon, along with a picture of the two of them dining at his restaurant. Since Pickford and Fairbanks were the most popular and scrutinized celebrities of their day, Alfredo’s restaurant became very well known in America, even among those who would never travel much beyond their hometowns. The gold fork and spoon became the symbol of the restaurant, displayed with the photograph of Pickford and Fairbanks in an elaborate showcase just inside the front door.

Many years later Alfredo sold the restaurant in order to retire, but after some time the new owners, who had renamed the place L’Originale Alfredo in order to compete with copycats, convinced him to come out of retirement to act as the greeter/maitre de. He was a large man, with a nose the size and shape of a ripe Roma tomato, but noble in appearance nonetheless, in his fine fitting, beautifully tailored dark suits and subdued ties. His formal appearance belied his demeanor. He was both friendly and outgoing, with a big smile, a booming voice, and a ready, hearty laugh…and he seemed to love kids. He was the Italian version of my father, a situation that was not lost on either of them. They really hit it off. Each night of our stay, the two of them would chat while we were eating, as my mother looked on…smiling. He introduced my father to Campari and soda, which became my father’s drink of choice (on the rare occasions that he drank) for the remainder of his short life. Alfredo brought us special products to taste, including tiny wild strawberries the size and shape of olive pits. They were delicious. We ate there every night for a week. It felt like home.

Our last night in Rome arrived. It would be more than a month until we returned home to Florida. Our next stop would be Bangkok, and then on to Tokyo for several weeks of business meetings. We were going to miss both Alfredo’s food, and Alfredo himself. He greeted us as usual, and seemed as sad as we were upon finding out that this would be our last meal with him. My father had his Campari and soda, and then the steaming bowls of Fettuccine Alfredo arrived. Alfredo approached the table, and placed next to my bowl a meticulously rolled white linen napkin. When I unrolled it, I was surprised to see, tucked carefully inside…the famous solid gold fork and spoon. Alfredo watched me carefully, and burst out laughing when I finally realized what he had done. And so I proudly ate my last meal at Alfredo’s with that legendary flatware, while everyone at the nearby tables watched jealously. I’ll never forget that meal, or the kindness of that lovely man.

When we had finished, the dishes were cleared, and we had our dessert. As we said our goodbyes, Alfredo handed me one of the restaurant’s wineglasses, which had enameled on it the name of the restaurant and a picture of the solid gold fork and spoon. I carefully wrapped it in paper, and for the rest of our travels, I guarded it like my life depended on it. Somehow this fragile piece of stemware made it all the way home in perfect condition. I still have it. That trip was more than fifty years ago.

I have many memories of wonderful travels with my parents, and numerous mementos to help trigger those memories, because after all is said and done, that’s the only thing that souvenirs are good for. When I catch sight of that glass, the first thing I think about is my parents and our trips together, and then I think of Alfredo. Although he’s long gone, virtually every Italian restaurant in America serves his namesake dish. Most of them screw it up by adding things that don’t belong (shrimp, chicken, garlic, onions), or by using substandard ingredients, or by overcooking the noodles, or finding some other way to complicate or otherwise ruin this simple delight of egg noodles, butter (added twice…that’s the secret) and Parmesan cheese taken from the very heart of the “wheel”, which must come only from the caves of Parma.

That wineglass sits proudly on a shelf in my study today, like a totem…part of the detritus of a well-lived but ultimately ordinary life. The image of the gold fork and spoon enameled on its surface is as bright and clear as it was on the day the glass was given to me. And even today, perhaps somewhere, if only in my mind, my father and Alfredo toast each other with Campari and soda, as my mother looks on…smiling.

Fish Story…

I used to love doing things with my father. He was a big guy…six feet four…two hundred and twenty pounds…and “bald as a cue ball” as he used to say. He worked very hard all day during the week, so when I got to spend time with him on the weekends, it was important.

When I was eight years old, we moved to south Florida, and after some searching, my parents purchased a home on the water. Although the lot was a small one, as waterfront lots tend to be down here, the house had something wonderful…a dock. The dock was not a large one…only sixteen feet wide and just as long, but it was SO COOL for a little boy from New Jersey. One day, not long after we moved in, my father stopped at Reef Bait and Tackle on his way home from work. He purchased two “entry level” rod and reel sets, and some line, hooks, sinkers, and so on. Everything we’d need to fish from our new dock. And that very weekend, first thing Saturday morning, we started fishing. It was great fun. We caught a few little fish, which we very carefully threw back, and we even caught a couple of larger ones…Mangrove Snappers…which my mother fried up in butter and fresh ground pepper for breakfast. They were delicious. And I was as “hooked” as those snappers were. I found that I LOVED to fish.

I continued to fish with my father whenever I could. And as I got older, I started to fish alone. I had to…my father died young. And I discovered something else about fishing. It allows your mind to wander. It’s quiet most of the time when you fish alone, and very meditative if you allow it to be. And every time I fished alone, I thought about my father. That was nice. The more I fished the more my technique improved, and I started to try different kinds of fishing (plugs, fly fishing, ultra-light tackle, etc.). I liked them all. I learned to catch my own bait, tie my own leaders, sharpen my hooks with a clever little device made expressly for that purpose, and repair my rods and reels myself, with advice from an elderly gentleman who worked part-time at the tackle shop. He could fix anything, using the odd bits of hardware that he kept in hundreds of tiny, unlabeled drawers in a cabinet that covered the entire back wall. The place smelled of bait and chum and sweat and salt water, and sometimes I hung around there just for fun.

As I got older I fished as much as I could, but my time was now occupied by other endeavors. School, girls, cars and so many other things…all beckoning, vying for the few available waking hours. And when I went to work, my time was still very limited. but since I worked for the state, my weekends were, for the most part, my own. So I still managed to fish…not as often as I had in the past, but I still managed. And I developed a preference for one type of fishing.

The water behind my house is brackish, and so it favors two types of large game fish…the Tarpon and the Snook. With lots of advice from the grizzled, beer-soaked old timers that frequented the tackle shop, I learned how to fish for them, and I caught more than my share. I tried eating Snook, which most people seem to enjoy, and I didn’t like it. No one eats Tarpon. The Snook that I caught on a regular basis weighed up to thirty-five pounds, and the Tarpon, sometimes over one hundred. When I landed a big one, sometimes after a lengthy fight, I would climb down into the water, gently unhook the fish, measure it so as to calculate its weight, and release it. If it was particularly large, I would photograph it first. It was a lot of fun…at the time.

And then several years ago, I hooked the largest Tarpon of my life…well over one hundred pounds, and longer than my wife is tall. I fought it for nearly two hours, marveling at the powerful jumps that lifted it entirely clear of the water while it shook its massive head trying to be rid of my hook. No wonder the Tarpon is called the “Silver King.” Finally it was exhausted, as was I, and I brought it to the side of the dock. It was beautiful. I jumped into the water as I had so many times before, and unhooked the fish. It was too tired to swim away. I stayed in the water and “walked” it for longer than I had actually fought it, passing the water over its gills to try to revive it. I couldn’t, and it died in my arms. I felt awful. I had killed this beautiful creature for my entertainment, like the cruelest bullfight, only without the ceremonial trappings. I vowed then and there that this would not happen again. The only way to be sure was to stop fishing altogether, so that’s what I did.

I think of that one particular fish every time I look in the water from my little dock. No matter how beautiful the view, and no matter how much sea life I see, the sadness of that pointless killing to this day overwhelms me, although I know that it probably shouldn’t. I still eat fish fairly often, although I try to consume farmed species as much as possible. The Tilapia and the Salmon and the other farmed fish aren’t bad at all, particularly fried up in butter and fresh ground pepper.

Time is relentless. The Reef Bait and Tackle shop has been closed for many years, and the building that it used to occupy is now part of a drug rehabilitation facility. The elderly gentleman who could fix anything is long gone. I still miss my father, and I think of him every day. And I don’t go fishing anymore.

Katherine…

My wife loves to crochet. She has been doing a lot of it lately, and it makes me think about some of the items she has made in the past. Here is a story about one of them.

Since my retirement at the age of fifty-two, I have done all of the grocery shopping for our household. Since I do almost all of the cooking, this makes sense. In the process of doing this, I have made friends with a number of the employees of my local supermarket, and I enjoy being greeted warmly and treated like a “regular” whenever I visit. A few years ago, on a routine visit to the store, I met someone who taught me more than I wanted to know.

I said hello to one of my friends at the market, a young cashier with a smile so bright that it looked as if her teeth were lit from within. She was pushing a cart down one of the aisles rather than working the register as usual. She was walking with a very tiny, very elderly woman, a woman who could not have been more than five feet tall, and could not have weighed more than ninety pounds, a pound for every year of age that she appeared to be. I realized that the cashier was patiently helping the elderly woman shop for groceries, and thought how nice it was that she was doing so in such a pleasant and caring fashion. And I went about my business. It was just a few days before Thanksgiving.

When it came time to check out, I got on line, coincidentally, directly behind this little old lady. In addition to the usual grocery items…bread…milk…potatoes…I noticed that she was purchasing a pretty little arrangement of fresh flowers in autumn shades of brown and golden yellow. I commented to her (I talk to strangers…it’s a bad habit, but it’s too late to break it now) that I thought the arrangement was beautiful. She told me that she was invited to Thanksgiving dinner, and she said that she would never show up “empty handed.” I heard her ask the cashier to please call for a taxi. Even though she spoke in a cultured manner, this woman did not look like she could afford a bus, let alone a taxi. I asked her where she lived, and it was only a few miles away, so I offered to drive her. I carried her packages along with my own, since she was not strong enough to manage even a portion of them, I helped her into my truck, and off we went. She told me that her name was Katherine.

I asked about her family (since she was shopping alone and with the help of one of the supermarket’s employees) and she told me that she had no children, and that her husband was long deceased. He had been a Civil Engineer. They had lived for many years near the supermarket where I met her, on a street called Grand Concourse, which is and has always been just as luxurious as it sounds. They were members of the local country club. Her husband had lost his job, and soon after, had taken ill. By the time he had passed away, they had gone through everything they had, including the house. So the county moved her into a tiny room in this public housing project, one of the most notorious, dangerous addresses in the city.

I parked on the street, and Katherine and I took the long walk through the gap that had been broken into the tall iron fence, across the brown lawn, and up to her place. When she unlocked her door, she was greeted by one of the largest cats I have ever seen, a huge gray tabby. His name, she told me, was Jack, and he was, as she put it…”My best friend…the light of my life.” I had not felt so sad since my mother died. I did not go inside. I asked her if it would be alright if my wife and I came to visit her now and then. She was very pleased with this prospect, and I said goodbye and went on my way.

I thought about Katherine quite a bit in the days after our initial meeting, particularly at Thanksgiving dinner, surrounded as I was by friends and family, with enough food to feed an army. Perhaps these thoughts resulted from the fact that this was my first Thanksgiving without my mother, who died at nearly ninety-six years of age. The psycho-dynamics of my new-found need to help this elderly stranger were pretty obvious. Or it may just have been the sadness of it all. I suggested to my wife that with Christmas coming, we should go visit Katherine. She had no phone, so we would have to just show up at her door.

A few days before Christmas we went out and got a large cardboard box. I cut the top off, and my wife decorated it with the most beautiful and colorful Christmas wrap that we could find. I returned to the supermarket and searched out the cashier that, as it turned out, regularly helped Katherine do her shopping. So the cashier and I went through the whole store, selecting items that Katherine usually purchased for herself, as well as some luxury items that the cashier knew Katherine liked, but could not afford on a regular basis. And we kept selecting until this large box was overflowing. There was a canned ham for Christmas Dinner, a bottle of sparkling apple cider for New Year’s Eve, and even cat food and a catnip-stuffed toy for Jack.

We drove to Katherine’s place, and I knocked on the door. She was very happy to see me, and pleased to meet my wife. The dark and shabby room was illuminated by a small, brightly lit Christmas tree, under which Jack was napping…at least until he smelled catnip and realized that he had a new toy. We put the box in Katherine’s tiny kitchenette, visited for a bit, and said our goodbyes…promising to return soon. My smile vanished as soon as the door closed behind us. My wife and I had taken care of my mother for nearly eighteen years. We had taken her everyplace we went, tucked her in at night, and made sure that she wasn’t lonely. There was no one to do this for Katherine. No one.

When I met my wife, she had never done any needlework, but she read about an organization that provides handmade blankets to sick and homeless children, and it set something off in her determined little soul. She painstakingly taught herself to crochet, and later to knit, for the purpose of making blankets to give away to this organization. Since she now had all the needed skills, my wife decided to crochet an afghan to help keep this lovely, frail woman warm, since she had told us about the problems with the heat in the housing project. My wife thought the afghan, since it was to be handmade, would remind Katherine that at least someone was thinking of her. So, crochet hook and yarn in hand, she went to work.

A few weeks of constant effort later it was done…beautiful, colorful, warm, and perfect. Big enough to cover, but not so big that it would be difficult for tiny little Katherine to use. Best of all, it would brighten up a dismal dwelling with its rainbow of pastels. We couldn’t wait to see the look on her face, so the next day we drove to Katherine’s home. We knocked, but there was no answer. We thought that she must be out shopping or visiting. On our way back, we stopped by the supermarket on the off chance that she might be there. We asked her cashier friend, and were shocked to find that just a couple of weeks earlier, Katherine had died suddenly.

My wife has been crocheting up a storm lately, and because of that I’ve been thinking about Katherine…imagining what she must have been like when she was younger, in her lovely home with her loving husband. Thinking about her listening to music. Thinking about her going dancing at the country club on a Saturday night. Thinking about her and her husband visiting friends and bringing gifts…so as “not to show up empty handed.” And I’ve been thinking about her dying. I was told that she died suddenly, but I don’t think so. I think that she started dying many years earlier. She started dying when her husband got sick, and died a bit more when she lost her home, and died a bit more when there was no heat in her dark, tiny room, and so on. There is something so very wrong in a world where lovely people like Katherine end their lives like that…alone. I learned from Katherine that when you are alone in the world, sudden death is not really sudden after all. We all die just a bit every time life deals us a weak hand of cards, but most especially when we are playing solitaire.

Katherine never did get to see that beautiful afghan. It was white with pink, light blue, aqua, lavender, and pale yellow stripes, in a “waffle weave” design. It’s a shame…she would have liked it, and we would have so enjoyed giving it to her. And I like to think that it would have helped just a little bit to keep her warm against the chill, not only of the winter, but of old age and poverty and loneliness. We wanted to adopt Jack the cat, so we asked around at the housing project, and were told that he had been taken in by one of Katherine’s neighbors. I hope he’s being well cared for, the way Katherine would have wanted it. After all, he was her best friend…the light of her life.

The Good Humor Man…

Not one summer passes me by without thoughts of the Good Humor Man and his ice cream truck. There are still a few independent operators driving around in badly converted minivans selling awful, brightly colored and artificially flavored off-brand concoctions that look MUCH better than they taste. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the ice cream trucks of my childhood…the sparkling pure white open-cab Good Humor truck with the immaculately uniformed driver…the Good Humor Man. That was how I REALLY knew that it was summer. The trucks were not mechanically refrigerated in those days. They were basically rolling ice boxes, with several small doors (so as not to let out too much of the cold) opening into carefully stocked compartments chilled to below freezing with chunks of dry ice. I can vividly remember the burst of frigid air on my small, uplifted too-warm face as the man in white would open one of the doors to retrieve my treat.

We were living in the northeast, so the Good Humor Man only appeared in warmer months, like bathing suits and robins. I always wondered what they did (the Good Humor Men, not the robins, and certainly not the bathing suits) the rest of the year. Perhaps in the winter when all the lawns were brown they delivered heating oil, or coal, or perhaps they just climbed into their trucks and hibernated atop the dry ice chunks until spring. I never knew. All I knew for sure was that when the first Good Humor Man appeared, like the first robin, it was officially spring, and school was almost done, and my summer vacation was about to begin. It was nice to have indicators like the Good Humor Man…harbingers to help mark the way through the year and through the years to come.

My family never knew when the Good Humor Man would show up. Sometimes we would hear the tinkle of the music from the truck while we were out in the yard in the early evening. Sometimes we would see a truck while out for a drive, and my father would make a show of “chasing him down.” It was fun, the products were really good, and more than anything, it was summer with my mother and my father, and this was as much a part of it as the warm tall green grass or the fireworks on the Fourth of July. My father always had the Toasted Almond Bar, my mother, the Strawberry Shortcake Bar, and for some reason, I never wanted the ice cream…I always had the Lime Ice Pop. And so there we were, the three of us, eating our frozen treats and getting sticky and laughing. And nothing would ever change…ever. At least in the mind of the little boy with the Lime Ice Pop.

And so we moved to south Florida, where we have only two seasons, the warm one and the hot one. And the grass is always green. For a while we would still see the Good Humor Man, but since it was summer almost all year ’round, some of the excitement was gone. There was a newsstand in our new neighborhood where my father would go every evening after dinner to buy the early edition of the morning paper. They sold Popsicles there as well, and I could have one whenever I wanted. For a while I wanted one every evening, and then less often, and eventually, not at all. And the tinkling music from the ice cream truck, when one did drive through the neighborhood…it didn’t sound quite the same after a while. And then I stopped hearing it altogether. And then I stopped missing hearing it.

I’m an old man now, and once in a while I buy what today passes for a Lime Ice Pop. They call them “Frozen Juice Bars” to appeal to the health-conscious, but just like the old days, they are sugar and water and coloring and a bit of lime flavoring. They’re not bad, but they’re not the same. I’d like to think that it’s because they don’t make ‘em like they used to, but deep down inside I know that it’s because I’ve grown up, and my parents are gone and the only Good Humor truck I’ve seen in decades was at an antique car show, where I spent much too long looking at it. The truck had been meticulously restored, but it was empty, a butterfly pinned in a frame, as beautiful as ever, but as lifeless as a tomb. And as I looked at that truck, I realized what I had learned from the Good Humor Man. When you’re a kid, have every Lime Ice Pop that you can. And savor each one. Because just like the Lime Ice Pop, childhood itself, as sweet and tasty as it may be, melts away so very quickly, and when winter arrives, as it inevitably does, the Good Humor Man doesn’t come around any more.

Gays in the Military…

I’m disturbed about the continuing discussion regarding gays in the military. It’s not like this is a new controversy. Even the late Barry Goldwater, “Mr. Conservative”, famously said “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.” And that was many years ago. So here we are, in 2010, still trailing (again) much of the industrialized world in allowing EVERYONE who wants to serve the nation (and is physically able to do so) to join the military. Why? One of the excuses I’ve seen for this is that straight soldiers will not want to serve with gay soldiers. Now you and I both know that this “reason” comes, at least in part, from the right-wing religious nuts, some of whom seem to have infiltrated our armed forces. Others are “projecting” in a futile attempt to banish their own “unacceptable” urges (“Señor Rekers…table for two…”), and still others are looking for ways to promote the “us-verses-them” environment in which they are the most comfortable, and which yields the greatest financial returns in the plate on Sunday. Why donate unless your money goes to fight a common enemy, whether it’s “Satan” or “The Mooslims” (the offspring of Osama bin Laden and Bullwinkle?) or “The Gays?” And so the cash rolls in. But in reality, there is no legitimate reason for this institutionalized discrimination to have occurred in the first place, let alone a reason why it should continue.

Consider the following case…

Mark Bingham was a graduate of University of California, Berkeley, where he was president of his fraternity and a member of the UCB National Championship rugby team. When United Airlines flight 93 was hijacked, Mark Bingham was on board. He knew from cellphone conversations that planes were being crashed into buildings, and he knew what was coming. He was one of the leaders of the counterattack that caused the plane to crash in rural Pennsylvania, rather than allowing it to be used to “take out” the White House, or the Capitol, or whatever. Everyone on board died…no one on the ground was hurt. At Mark’s memorial service he was eulogized by (of all people) Senator John McCain, who believed that Flight 93 was headed for the Capitol, and so posthumously thanked Mark for possibly saving his life. Mark’s partner, Paul Holm, shared the stage with the senator.

Can you imagine a soldier on night patrol in Afghanistan who would NOT want Mark Bingham next to him? And of course there are now, and there have always been, innumerable gay soldiers and sailors and pilots and…well..you get the idea. When our nation has needed them, gay Americans have stepped forward and answered the call, even though they have had to deny who they are in order to do so. Now, when we need them so much, and are so grateful to them for their service, why do we put them in this awful position? In this country, it should have NEVER been this way. But we can’t rewrite history…we can only stop playing it out over and over again. The gay soldiers currently serving have much in common with straight soldiers. They want to serve their country with honor and pride, keep from being hurt, protect their fellow service members, and get home safely to their families and to their futures. The worst thing that can happen if gay soldiers are allowed to serve openly is that the barracks will be tastefully redecorated and the uniforms will fit better (“desert fatigues are the new black”).

And GET OVER YOURSELVES my fellow straight people! Gay people want to be involved romantically with other gay people, just like you and I want to be involved romantically with other straight people. Gay people are NOT interested in your lush body. You are NOT irresistible. You can’t even count the number of people, both gay and straight, that resist you on a daily basis. Do you ever consciously set yourself up for rejection? If not, then why would you assume that gay folks would? Rejection is unpleasant, and you have to be a fool, gay or straight, to knowingly put yourself in a situation where you know you are likely to be rejected. You are not so amazing that everyone wants you (trust me…you’re not), and even if they do, they’ll leave you alone if they know that you’ll turn them down. That applies to straight people, and that applies to gay people. And this applies both inside and outside of the military.

If we allow men and women to serve together (another piece of good sense that was too long in coming, and which is now accepted as if it had always been so), despite the potential for romantic complications, then we need to do the same with gay people and straight people. And is it just me, or have you noticed that the straight people that are most concerned about being propositioned by gay people are those least likely to be? Nasty, ignorant, prejudiced folks are not usually highly attractive to ANYONE. Not to gay people, not to straight people, and not even to OTHER nasty, ignorant, prejudiced folks. As we all know…REAL ugliness, like real beauty, is on the inside. So like I said…GET OVER YOURSELF…

So it looks like we’re FINALLY going to see this silly “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy die a long overdue death. There will be a few fits and starts along the way, just like there were when President Truman desegregated the military in 1948. And when the new law, if there is one, is put into place allowing gay Americans to serve their country openly, let’s call it “The Mark Bingham Law.” Mark never served in the military, but aboard that doomed plane he bravely volunteered to fight for his country. He died doing so, and may have helped save hundreds or even thousands of lives in the process. And most important, on that awful September morning, the fellow passengers who fought alongside him didn’t care if he was gay or straight. All they cared about was the mission. And I can’t imagine the same not being true when brave young Americans, both straight and openly gay, fight side by side in the future to protect each other and the rest of us. “The Mark Bingham Law” has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

The $39.00 Chicken Salad…

Here’s some more evidence that I married the right woman.

If you’ve seen Toy Story 2 and enjoyed the music, particularly the “Woody’s Roundup” theme song, then you’ve heard a band called “Riders in the Sky.” I like these guys. They perform, in full cowboy regalia, the classic western style music of the thirties and the forties made popular by such heroes of my youth as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. The music is fun, and I wanted to see them in person. Although my wife claims to like them, I know (and she knows that I know) that she plays along with the joke just for my benefit. I found out that they were coming to Lake Wales, a town about four hours from my home, and I looked forward to going. It was an afternoon performance, so we could leave at a civilized hour, enjoy the show, have dinner, and take a leisurely drive back home. So we bought our tickets online, and everything was in place.

I didn’t tell my wife, but I had a plan. I knew that Lake Wales was the home of a legendary Florida restaurant named Chalet Suzanne. Their most famous dishes were their Lobster Newberg, and their signature appetizer, a broiled, caramelized Grapefruit served with Chicken Livers. Chalet Suzanne also had a reputation for being the most expensive restaurant in Florida (this was before the emergence of South Beach as the Mecca of wretched excess that it has become) with its very own FAA-approved airstrip, so that wealthy diners could fly in for dinner. Now I’m not all that fancy, and neither is my wife, but I thought that just once, as long as we were going to be in the neighborhood, she might like to be treated to dinner at such a place. It was going to be a surprise.

The concert was, as expected, great fun. We got to meet the performers after the show, and we really enjoyed walking around Lake Wales. It’s a beautiful place, with an old-fashioned downtown square. But the sun was going down, and it was time for dinner. After much searching (and after demonstrating several times that the old cliche about men not stopping to ask for directions is untrue), we came to Chalet Suzanne at the end of a dirt road featuring potholes the size of major appliances. It looked like a charming little Swiss village, if charming little Swiss villages were festooned with half-burned-out Christmas lights in May, and if charming little Swiss villages were in dire need of painting. But we didn’t spend two hours driving in circles for the visual impact…we were going to try the famous food. So we parked in the rutted gravel lot, and walked into the restaurant. The entry vestibule of the most expensive restaurant in Florida smelled of urine, which was even more incongruous when contrasted with the many framed awards on the walls. They had a menu on a small table near the receptionist station, and we thought we’d have a look before being seated.

My wife grew up in a series of small towns in central Florida. She “ate a lot of government cheese,” as she puts it. She is a wonderful woman…kind, loving, generous of spirit…and the nicest person I’ve ever encountered. She was just barely out of her teens when we met. One of the things that I’m most proud of is that I’ve managed to give her a pretty good life for more than twenty years. She has gotten used to the finer things in life without requiring them in order to be happy. A perfect balance. So as she read the menu, with the $95.00 (à la carte) 6 oz. filet mignon, the $10.00 (plain) baked potato, and so on, she began to question my sanity. I thought that I might make her feel better if I ordered the least expensive item on the menu. It turned out to be a scoop of chicken salad (à la carte again) at $39.00. This seemed to bother her more than the $15.83 per ounce steak. She looked at me with that “are you out of your f-ing mind” look that I suspect all husbands in good marriages see with some frequency, and out we walked, past the burned out Christmas lights, through the gravel, into the car…we drove around the potholes, and back onto the highway. At least one of us is sensible.

I’m a good money manager…I can easily afford an expensive dinner. But, as my wife pointed out, the fact that I can doesn’t mean that I should.

We ate at a Burger King in the parking lot of a strip shopping center near the entrance to the highway that would eventually take us to the turnpike. The Whoppers were delicious, and two for $3.00. The place didn’t smell of urine, and all of the light bulbs were lit. Best of all, I was there with the great love of my life, and the Whopper dinner served in paper wrapping on plastic trays was more romantic than Lobster Newberg, candlelight and strolling violins could have ever been. I got her one of those silly paper crowns that Burger King used to have available to give to children, and I made her wear it. She thought that I was kidding. I wasn’t. She looked so very beautiful. We took the money that we saved on dinner that night and went to see Riders in the Sky again the next year…and still had enough left over for pizza after the show.

I think of that trip to Lake Wales often, both for what didn’t happen, and for what did.

I looked at the Chalet Suzanne menu online a few days ago, and noticed that the prices have gone down a bit lately, perhaps because of the overall financial condition of the nation. It’s still a really expensive place though. In addition to lowering the prices, I hope that they’ve also fixed the lights, painted the place, and gotten rid of the urine smell, but I’m not going back to find out. As for our eventual dinner choice I was reminded once again that evening that when you’re really in love, and when she is too, a hamburger under fluorescent lights is a celebratory feast. And that $39.00 scoop of chicken salad? It seems to be not so much a meal as it is perhaps an ineffectual treatment for a sad and all-too-prevalent disease…a disease characterized by a big, dark, empty space in the center of the heart…a disease from which, thank goodness, neither my wife nor I suffer.

What Love Smells Like…

My father spent the last years of his too-short life as an importer. He made a really good living at it. But I think more than the income it provided, my father liked being an importer because it allowed him, along with my mother, and often me, to travel all over the world. We went everywhere together. We crossed the Atlantic twice, first class, on the ocean liner S.S. United States. We marveled at the noise in the Pachinko parlors off the Ginza in Tokyo. We flew on Pan American Flight 002, which went from New York to New York, around the world heading east. A traveler on this flight could get off and get on anywhere along the route, stay as long as he wished, and pick up the next available seat(s) to the next destination. These were wonderful experiences for an inquisitive kid like me. One of our favorite stops was Paris. On several occasions I was able to wander the Louvre, stroll along the Seine, and visit the Eiffel Tower. And of course, Parisian food and Parisian shopping were even more renowned in the those days than they are today.

My parents’ favorite shop in Paris was Sagil. It’s still there, at 242 Rue de Rivoli, in the same block as Angelina, home of the world’s best hot chocolate. My father used to love to take my mother shopping at Sagil, with its designer handbags, luxury accessories, and, best of all, a huge selection of the finest French perfumes. I liked to go with them, because Sagil employed a saleslady that even as a kid I found alluring. Her name was Odile. She was very petite and very beautiful, with porcelain skin and the longest eyelashes I had ever seen. But what really interested me was her hair. If you’ve ever seen the film of Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to President John Kennedy…well…that was Odile’s hairstyle…except, unlike Marilyn’s hair, Odile’s was pink. The color was exactly that of cotton candy. I had always liked cotton candy. No one in those years had pink hair…except Odile…and I was smitten.

My mother loved perfume, as did most women of that era, and my father loved buying it for her. The perfumes smelled good, but more than that, the perfumes reminded them of their trips together, and the perfumes reminded my mother of my father. I can remember them choosing the various scents…some scents which were not even exported to the United States. My mother had four favorites…”Oh La La”, “Mitsouko”, “Shocking” and the one she liked best of all, “Mistigri.” My mother and my father had happy times shopping at Sagil. When my father died, he had only been in the import business for about ten years. The trips ended, the business was sold, and my life and my mother’s life continued, albeit incomplete without my father. And my mother continued to apply small amounts of those perfumes each day, not because she was going out, but, as she explained to me, they reminded her of my father. She never so much as looked at another man.

After a while, the perfumes were used up. My mother took the empty bottles and put them in her dresser drawers, so that the faint scent remaining in the bottles would infuse her clothes. Even that eventually stopped working. Nearly forty years had gone by. One day I saw her remove the “Mistigri” bottle from the drawer and put her nose to it. She commented (with some sadness) that it no longer had the fragrance, but I noticed that she put it back in the drawer anyway. This clearly was not about the scent. It was about my father, their travels, and their love for one another. My mother (who was by then in her late eighties) had a birthday coming up, and I had a plan.

By this time I was a regular user of ebay, the online auction site. I had sold hundreds of items, and found that I could buy things on ebay that I could not find anywhere else. I began to search ebay for those very same perfumes, and, much to my surprise, I was able to find them…brand new, sealed bottles, in their original boxes…perfumes that hadn’t been produced in decades, and some of them had never even been sold in the United States. But there they were…and I bought them. You might think that these were rare items and therefore were very costly, but to my great surprise, they cost me less than they had cost my father forty years earlier. And so…they began to arrive. An “Oh La La” gift set from the early sixties, with its bottles and sprays all of classic mid-century design. A small bottle of “Shocking” by Schiaparelli, with its famous “shocking pink” label. A beautiful round bottle of “Mitsouko”…a fine crystal flask in miniature, with its ground glass stopper and its golden cord. The birthday was drawing near, but still, no “Mistigri”, my mother’s very favorite, and the one that, more than any other, reminded her of my father.

With about two weeks to go, I finally found a listing for “Mistigri”, in, of all places, St. Augustine, right here in my home state of Florida. It was hard to believe the listing. The seller stated that the bottle contained an unheard of 1 1/2 ounces of perfume…not cologne…not toilet water…perfume. The seller claimed that the bottle was sealed, in its original satin-lined wooden box, which was in turn encased in its own original paper outer box. This didn’t seem possible, considering that “Mistigri” hadn’t been produced since 1968. I didn’t care how much it would cost…I had to have it…so I bid a lot of money. Fortunately, no one else wanted it very much. I won the auction for about the price of a good quality dress shirt…much less than my high bid. It arrived just as advertised…it was perfect. I had all four of the perfumes I wanted to find, with about a week to spare.

In my family, we’ve never been much on special occasion gifting. My wife and I have given up on it all together. But this was different. This wasn’t about gifts…this wasn’t about “stuff.” This was about traveling though time. I wanted to give my now-elderly mother the gift of her past, the gift of a better time, the gift of a few more happy memories of my father. When she unwrapped the package and realized what it contained, her eyes lit up like they hadn’t in many years. And so it was…she was back in Paris, and young, and healthy, and back at Sagil with my father, if only in her mind, and if only for a little while.

Neuro-scientists tell us that of all of the senses, smell is the one that persists longest in memory.

My mother didn’t live long enough to use up those perfumes. She loved them, and in her last years she loved telling the story of how she got them. After she died, I gave away most of her things, as she wanted me to do. But I still have those partially used perfumes. They’re stashed away in the back of a closet. They remind me, as they did my mother, of the past, of a better time, of my father. And now that she’s no longer here…they remind me of her. When I’m gone, I hope that my wife will sell them on ebay. Even though they’re now slightly used, someone will be as excited to find them as I was, and someone will be as happy to receive them as my mother was. I can’t possibly be the only one with a story like this to tell…and a loving quest like this to complete.

My Top Ten Valentine’s Day Gift Giving Tips…

Of the many ways in which my great good fortune manifests itself, all pale in comparison to my being married to the love of my life. We have been together for many years. Early in our relationship I received a tearful, sobbing telephone call from her. She had gone shopping at a local mall with her best friend, and she was calling out of frustration, not having been able to find the perfect Birthday/Christmas/Valentine’s Day/Anniversary/Hanukkah/Arbor Day/Kwanzaa/Whatever (who remembers these things) gift for me. NOTHING is worth making my wife cry. At that point we agreed to STOP BUYING EACH OTHER GIFTS. Things are not the barometer of how we feel about each other. We have all that we want, and if we need a little something, we go get it together, with no special occasion necessary. To us, a perfect holiday involves being together, in good health, on the couch in the family room, with the phone disconnected. That’s it.

Now…that having been said…I realize that most folks are still going the GIFTING route. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (as they used to say on “Seinfeld”). So I’m here to help, with my Top Ten Valentine’s Day Gift Giving Tips…

1. If you intend to write an original love poem, three words to avoid are MUCOUS, CHAFING, and NANTUCKET.

2. One Dozen Long Stemmed Red Roses…Yes
Stolen Funeral Arrangement…NO

3. No matter what it says on the sign in the store, WALMART sells underwear, NOT lingerie.

4. Box Wine… OK
Box Champagne…not so much

5. If you are a man purchasing clothing for a woman as a Valentine’s Day gift, ALWAYS know the correct size, and then
purchase AT LEAST two sizes smaller. She needs to believe that you think she’s still a size six.

6. Make certain that you remove the WALGREEN’S sticker from the heart shaped box of candy.

7. Hot Chocolate Dipped Strawberries…Yummy
Hot Chocolate Dipped Body Parts…Painful

8. The fact that you can purchase Edible Panties does not mean that all panties are edible. Please do not ask how I found this out.

9. There is no such thing as a SWIFFER Gift Set.

10. Valentine’s Day cards should never be addressed “Occupant” or “To Whom It May Concern.”

Now that I’ve helped you with a few gift ideas, I have some additional suggestions. Tell your Valentine that you love her (or him). Tell her every day. Several times. Many times. Mean it. Every time. Things don’t really matter. We all have too many things anyway. Life is short. Your time together is shorter still. Make the most of it. There is not enough jewelry or chocolate or champagne in the world to compensate for one minute of lost time.

On the Death of the Hobby…

I am now officially an Old Fart. I know this to be true because I find myself referring longingly to “The Good Old Days.” This is not a welcome development in my life, but it is very real, and I must confront it, even though I cannot embrace it.

When I was a young man (see what I mean…) it seemed that most people had hobbies. A hobby, for those of you who have never had one, or known anyone who has had one (there it goes again…) is something you do consistently and frequently, focusing on a particular area of interest or endeavor, that gives you some degree of emotional satisfaction. It must be distinct from your occupation. Working overtime and like a dog is NOT a hobby. It must be distinct from your family. Figuring out ways to protect your children from themselves is NOT a hobby. And it must be distinct from your love life. Memo to Tiger Woods: What you have been up to is NOT a hobby.

Many years ago EVERYONE, or so it seemed, had a hobby…but when was the last time that you met a Coin Collector or a Model Plane Builder or a Water Color Artist who was under fifty-five years of age? One of the main passages of childhood used to be the selection, after much trial and error, of a hobby…one that would persist into adulthood, and one that the now-adult would unsuccessfully attempt to pass along to his or her children, only to be rebuffed by a flurry of extreme disinterest that represented one the the child’s first, but by no means last, incidences of healthy (although it didn’t seem so at the time) rebellion.

When you go through Granddad’s things after he passes on, you’ll probably find that old book with the few stamps in it, still hanging around from the time many decades ago that Granddad’s father tried to “get him interested” in stamp collecting to “keep him out of trouble.” It didn’t work. The only thing Granddad wanted to do was hang out with his axle-grease-stained friends (“those no good bums who will never amount to anything” as they were referred to by Granddad’s father when Granddad was a kid) and tinker with that old Model A Ford (this is what Granddad’s father referred to as “trouble”)…and he kept tinkering with old Fords throughout his life…didn’t sell ‘em, didn’t race ‘em, just got a kick out of putting them back together and making them run well and look good. This is how hobbies developed, and, like genetic traits, often skipped a generation or two. That spotless “Model A” that Granddad used to proudly drive in the Memorial Day Parade each year was the result, like most hobbies, of equal parts skill, interest, and rebellion. He sure looked handsome and happy driving it, didn’t he? That’s what a hobby used to be, and that’s what a hobby used to do for a person.

When I was a kid (oops…there it goes again) I tried stamps, coins, model trains, and more. They all bored the hell out of me. I was pretty good at sports, but not all that interested in them. Then, for my ninth birthday, a friend of my father’s went to Sears and bought me a present…a Silvertone brand guitar. I loved it…and learned to play it pretty well…well enough to sound good to myself and later on to impress the girls at the occasional party. I still play a bit today, using a Gibson J-series…that old Silvertone is no doubt long gone, probably used as kindling. Hobby One.

About that same time we moved to a house on the water. On his way home from work one day my father, who had never fished before, stopped by the Reef Bait and Tackle store and bought two “entry level” rod and reel sets, and some frozen shrimp. That weekend, we started to fish together from the small dock behind our house. I fished from that same dock well into adulthood, and even though that dock has been replaced by a new one, I continued to fish there until recently…thinking of my father every time I wet a hook. Hobby Two.

One year my wife and I decided to put in a rose garden as a birthday gift for my late mother. My wife really enjoyed doing it, and through some odd combination of evolution and osmosis, we BOTH became interested in gardening. Hobby Three.

My wife read about an organization whose members knit and/or crochet baby blankets for donation to needy and homeless families. She could neither knit nor crochet, but she painstakingly taught herself to do both, and produced a series of wonderful, complex, colorful, beautiful blankets, all of which she donated through this organization. She still knits and crochets, and gives away everything that she creates. Hobby Four.

And what about today? What passes as a hobby for a young person in the 21st century? Is someone with eight thousand songs in their iPod a music collector? Not really. Is selling the contents of your garage on ebay a hobby? Probably not. Does anyone still elect to play a musical instrument for fun and for fun alone? Not that often.

It seems to me that everyone today knows everything, or, using the computer, knows HOW to know everything. But most (younger) folks don’t know how to DO anything. How many twenty-somethings can repair a toilet?…roast a turkey?…rewire a lamp?…well, you get the idea. Maybe that’s what hobbies are really good for. They are a training ground. They show us that knowing how to actually do something or being really interested in something is satisfying in and of itself…not for profit…not because you have to…just because. And when, devoid of any practical application, you find your knowledge or your interests satisfying, then the acquisition of more knowledge and more interests becomes one of life’s goals. I miss hobbies. I think we’re all diminished as they fall more and more out of fashion.