3/30/02 Saturday 8:57 am
The journal, the journal!
In anticipation of viewing the DVD of Apocalypse Now Redux I reread Conrad's The Heart of Darkness.
I began to feel inadequate as I read (actually I "read" an audio book borrowed from the library). My experience with them tells me that, after the act of “reading”, I cannot distinguish having read the book with my inner voice from having listened with the narrator's voice. I, then, watched the movie. I decided taking the trip up river (Africa and Asia) that I could never meet a guy like Kurtz, let alone deal with him, because my life experience left me with a dearth of depth. The words of John Berrymen’s Dream Song Henry echo in my ears frequently, "I conclude now that I have no inner resources."
Yesterday morning I started to seriously structure a story that has been on my mind for some time (about Six Goddam Years, my superego, shouts unkindly. I figure that conscience stricken Joe is really the major perpetrator of the dense block that prevents the composition). I sat with writing software called Power Structure and my basement computer and worked things out with the characters and the story. The more I worked the more vapid the plot became. The more I drew the characters up, the more I was bored with them and then I thought about Conrad and Kurtz and Marlowe and the dark river and my personal situation and a glimpse of Marlon Brando's ivory billiard ball head.
The world that Conrad inhabited was different. Maybe, I divined; the world that all ingenious writers inhabit is different. I could not but wonder for the millionth time. Do I suffer enough? Which turned on, Why Don’t I suffer enough?
I remember a cartoon wherein some character meets a suffering artist (It was probably committed by Stan Freburg). The artist is a flurry of frenetic pencil line, his body as untidy as his hair which grows and flies everywhere. "Ohh!” says the character upon seeing the artist, "man, you suffer too much!"
It's not that I don't suffer. I do. I won’t bore you with my “plights and gripes” (back once again to dreaming Henry who is heavy bored). The question that comes to my mind is do I suffer enough to create? I live in a suburb in the east of Pittsburgh. The skies are blue the days they aren’t gray (Not much of a song there.) Bird’s, that don’t caw, whistle pretty ditties the long day. My neighbor does wake me on weekends with his riding mower. Sometimes the supermarket runs out of Mancini’s bread. The last war fought around here was when Braddock and Jumonville (both pretty inept as it turns out) got cut down by the French.
I grew up in Penn Hills, where I presently live. I left a couple times and broadened my horizons. I did not travel to a combat zone. I did not witness the burning of a Buddhist monk. The most traumatic time I spent in California was when two naked women and a naked dwarf walked down Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. On the plus side (suffering that is) I had two bad mothers-in law and my relationships with women have been interestingly unsatisfactory. Okay this is getting close to a gripe so I’ll stop here. I was just making the point that when it comes to really good deep dark dripping miserable suffering, mine has been pretty prosaic.
Add to those facts; I just don’t make such a big deal out of things that many would treat as dire tragedy. Here I sit, after some analysis, in the ridiculous position of suffering because I don't suffer enough. Despairing because I don’t despair enough. It really does make me laugh, which adds to my minus suffer quotient.
I will never write the Heart of Darkness. But I have visited it. Of course, what else could be the reason for Conrad and Coppola's work?
Somewhere it is said, if you want the facts read non-fiction, if you want the truth read fiction. (I guess whoever said that never read Jacqueline Susann.) Finally I have decided to be seeker after the truth. The facts, unlike Joe Friday, merely interest me.
So, I sit, coffee in hand, in the very cold of my winter basement and in the sweated heat of my summer backyard and read works of varying depth. Once in awhile I steel myself for a voyage to some deep, clinging backwater. The only question that I have is how good am I am exploring my depth. Actually the question has become, Do I have a depth to explore?
Now comes the time to bear my dirty little secret. I journal, pretty much daily, and I do try to travel to the heart of my darkness. So far it is pretty bright, but I know how I work overtime to kid myself. When you look up at the night sky and see the universe of heavenly body wheeling over head, it is pretty hard to believe that all that is just for us. As I pass a tributary, a branch and I chose to explore the main course, I figure that there is more untapped in me than even I can imagine.
What was the horror that Kurtz was viewing as he drew his last breath?
Saturday, March 30, 2002
Wednesday, March 27, 2002
3/27/2002 7:14:39 PM
Curdling Curmudgeon’s Incautious Comments
It’s hard not to love a curmudgeon and it’s even harder not to be irritated by one that is close to you. Not that I have anyone in mind. I am merely anticipating my golden years and the good time that I will have exasperating everyone I know. It won’t be that long a list because I have already alienated a whole class of people with my overweening humor and my “smarty pants” opinions.
First there is my mother who still says with a jot of irritation, “You think you know everything!”
“Not everything,” I remind her, “just the important stuff.” But we’ve had this conversation so many times that it has passed beyond cliché, become far more than stereotypical, moving, I swear, into the realm of the archetypical.
And there are my colleagues at work who steam when I forcefully expose my theories on social injustices and the ridiculous waste of all political thought. Which brings me to one of my favorite curmudgeons. This is where I got on this electronic band wagon to begin with.
My oldest friend is Phil, well he’s not that old really, I’m older, (only by a few months or maybe a year) but I have known him the longest; since 9th grade when we became fast friends sitting on the bleachers of Seneca Junior High where the Penn Hills Indians still played to glory on account of the new high school didn’t yet have a football field. And Phil had a grandfather, who, if still alive, would certainly qualify as the oldest person I know. His name was Ralph. He spoke English with an Italian accent and the sum total of all his commentary on our life and times went something like this: ”Shiiiiiiiish” a sibilant blast like a steam locomotive struggling to leave the station. He would raise his hands up in the air like a supplicant about to receive some manna from the multifarious gods of his personal mythology, then shake his head and look around the room in grave disbelief. And this subject under consideration was merely something about the weather the next day. The hiss would grow longer and louder, the look more daunting, his hands now fending off an invasion of Harpies when the TV anchor started describing the shenanigans of some politico or organization.
A scant few years later, I saw the Marx Brothers movie Horse Feathers for the first time. Groucho (Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff) is the President of Huxley College. He explains to the trustees in song:
I don't know what they have to say.
It makes no difference anyway.
Whatever it is, I'm against it
I knew that I had not only heard the tuneful embodiment of Ralph’s hissing, found a new hero in Groucho, but a fruitful philosophy upon which to mature.
(Yes this is the movie with these lines that can only be attributed to SJ Perelman:
Secretary: (Entering again.) The Dean is furious! He's waxing wroth!
Wagstaff: Is Wroth out there too? Tell Wroth to wax the Dean for a while.)
When I was a growed man and somewhat down on my luck I had the immense misfortune to be employed at a place called Funland. It was in a mall on the NorseSide of Pittsburgh. It was full of pinball machines and video games, the newest of which was Breakout and the only video game on the market, very expensive, that you could play on your personal TV screen was Pong. Eventually after Sub Chaser a game was delivered that only a true Curmudgeon could enjoy. You drove a tin lizzy and tried to run over pedestrians. The gall of the designer was at least unmitigated. It was kinda fun running over those small scampering old ladies.
I wore a red jacket with Funland proclaimed across the back in bold white and baby sat inner city kids while they figured how to beat the pinball machines out of games. It was absolutely true. They exhibited genius. It would take me days to figure out their winning strategies. “What,” I used to think, “if these kids applied that kind of thinking to their math classes? Teachers would be horrified, new geometries and alien algebras would be born, the world would change, we would probably have a starship or two traveling faster than light down some local wormhole to confront Cygnus X1. Alas, they only succeeded in perplexing me and much worse Art, who was the day shift. A man of such curmudgeonly properties that Ralph, Groucho, Henry Morgan, Alexander King, Oscar Levant and I looked like small fried fish in comparison.
Art was retired from the Air Force and living quite nicely on that pension. He worked at Funland and proudly wore the red coat with the bold white writing to earn a little drinking money. He spent his time between the bar in a restaurant up the mall in the afternoon a short skip past the elevators, where my mother was manager (You didn’t think I could get such a prestigious job without knowing someone, did you?) and a couple restaurant lounges on and about 6th Street, downtown Pittsburgh in the evening.
My good friend Bill was bartender at Art’s afternoon mall abode. He knew and put up with Art long before I came and long after I left the extreme joy of Funland.
Art walks in to the bar after a tough shift down at the joint. The blinking lights, ringing bells and harsh buzzers could get to you after a while. He sits at the first stool, which was his place at the bar, upset he would be if some other mortal dared to challenge his ascendancy, and made a sound roughly like a steam locomotive that had hitherto been Phil’s grandfather’s trademark.
“What,” says Bill?
“Those damn kids!” says Art.
“Yes,” said Bill?
“They think its all fun and games down there!”
I have never been able to put it better myself. You’ve really got to admire the single minded misery that such thinking recommends. What is it that the bumper sticker says? ‘I only want to live long enough to make my children miserable.’ Well, it’s something like that anyway. God, old age is gonna be such fun.
Curdling Curmudgeon’s Incautious Comments
It’s hard not to love a curmudgeon and it’s even harder not to be irritated by one that is close to you. Not that I have anyone in mind. I am merely anticipating my golden years and the good time that I will have exasperating everyone I know. It won’t be that long a list because I have already alienated a whole class of people with my overweening humor and my “smarty pants” opinions.
First there is my mother who still says with a jot of irritation, “You think you know everything!”
“Not everything,” I remind her, “just the important stuff.” But we’ve had this conversation so many times that it has passed beyond cliché, become far more than stereotypical, moving, I swear, into the realm of the archetypical.
And there are my colleagues at work who steam when I forcefully expose my theories on social injustices and the ridiculous waste of all political thought. Which brings me to one of my favorite curmudgeons. This is where I got on this electronic band wagon to begin with.
My oldest friend is Phil, well he’s not that old really, I’m older, (only by a few months or maybe a year) but I have known him the longest; since 9th grade when we became fast friends sitting on the bleachers of Seneca Junior High where the Penn Hills Indians still played to glory on account of the new high school didn’t yet have a football field. And Phil had a grandfather, who, if still alive, would certainly qualify as the oldest person I know. His name was Ralph. He spoke English with an Italian accent and the sum total of all his commentary on our life and times went something like this: ”Shiiiiiiiish” a sibilant blast like a steam locomotive struggling to leave the station. He would raise his hands up in the air like a supplicant about to receive some manna from the multifarious gods of his personal mythology, then shake his head and look around the room in grave disbelief. And this subject under consideration was merely something about the weather the next day. The hiss would grow longer and louder, the look more daunting, his hands now fending off an invasion of Harpies when the TV anchor started describing the shenanigans of some politico or organization.
A scant few years later, I saw the Marx Brothers movie Horse Feathers for the first time. Groucho (Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff) is the President of Huxley College. He explains to the trustees in song:
I don't know what they have to say.
It makes no difference anyway.
Whatever it is, I'm against it
I knew that I had not only heard the tuneful embodiment of Ralph’s hissing, found a new hero in Groucho, but a fruitful philosophy upon which to mature.
(Yes this is the movie with these lines that can only be attributed to SJ Perelman:
Secretary: (Entering again.) The Dean is furious! He's waxing wroth!
Wagstaff: Is Wroth out there too? Tell Wroth to wax the Dean for a while.)
When I was a growed man and somewhat down on my luck I had the immense misfortune to be employed at a place called Funland. It was in a mall on the NorseSide of Pittsburgh. It was full of pinball machines and video games, the newest of which was Breakout and the only video game on the market, very expensive, that you could play on your personal TV screen was Pong. Eventually after Sub Chaser a game was delivered that only a true Curmudgeon could enjoy. You drove a tin lizzy and tried to run over pedestrians. The gall of the designer was at least unmitigated. It was kinda fun running over those small scampering old ladies.
I wore a red jacket with Funland proclaimed across the back in bold white and baby sat inner city kids while they figured how to beat the pinball machines out of games. It was absolutely true. They exhibited genius. It would take me days to figure out their winning strategies. “What,” I used to think, “if these kids applied that kind of thinking to their math classes? Teachers would be horrified, new geometries and alien algebras would be born, the world would change, we would probably have a starship or two traveling faster than light down some local wormhole to confront Cygnus X1. Alas, they only succeeded in perplexing me and much worse Art, who was the day shift. A man of such curmudgeonly properties that Ralph, Groucho, Henry Morgan, Alexander King, Oscar Levant and I looked like small fried fish in comparison.
Art was retired from the Air Force and living quite nicely on that pension. He worked at Funland and proudly wore the red coat with the bold white writing to earn a little drinking money. He spent his time between the bar in a restaurant up the mall in the afternoon a short skip past the elevators, where my mother was manager (You didn’t think I could get such a prestigious job without knowing someone, did you?) and a couple restaurant lounges on and about 6th Street, downtown Pittsburgh in the evening.
My good friend Bill was bartender at Art’s afternoon mall abode. He knew and put up with Art long before I came and long after I left the extreme joy of Funland.
Art walks in to the bar after a tough shift down at the joint. The blinking lights, ringing bells and harsh buzzers could get to you after a while. He sits at the first stool, which was his place at the bar, upset he would be if some other mortal dared to challenge his ascendancy, and made a sound roughly like a steam locomotive that had hitherto been Phil’s grandfather’s trademark.
“What,” says Bill?
“Those damn kids!” says Art.
“Yes,” said Bill?
“They think its all fun and games down there!”
I have never been able to put it better myself. You’ve really got to admire the single minded misery that such thinking recommends. What is it that the bumper sticker says? ‘I only want to live long enough to make my children miserable.’ Well, it’s something like that anyway. God, old age is gonna be such fun.
Monday, March 25, 2002
3/25/2002 6:14 PM Monday
Hamsters into butter I churn.
I spent the first three days of last week in Kansas City, MO at a place called the Crown Center, which is an inner city mall that closes around 6 PM and is comprised of the Westin Crown Center Hotel and the Hyatt Regency, a court full with gushing fountains, the world headquarters for Hallmark Cards, three floors of middle to upscale shops and the Link. The yearly convention of the International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration. Me, gosh, a new member.
I pulled off exit 2Q from I-70 (I had spent about 850 miles on I-70 with a stop over in Columbia MO to visit my daughter and was glad for a brief moment to be at the end of the rainbow) about 4 PM on Sunday, March 17, 2002 and stared at a gaggle of police cruisers with twirling red lights directly in the path of the street that my map insisted was the key to my destination. ‘Oh, dear,’ I thought. I would have thought something a bit more crusty and salty but I was on my best behavior in a completely foreign city. I turned left, there seemed little choice.
You did notice that I carefully mentioned the date of my arrival. Even my feeble brain put together, exposed as it was to piles of green crepe being swept from the streets, and folks with silver and green plastic top hats sporting four leaf clovers, and leprechauns singin’ “Dee dee dee dee doo!”, the fact that I was facing the aftermath of the Kansas City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.
A couple traffic lights and I saw a cop at one of the street blockades, rolled down the window and asked, meek as an Italian caught in the throes of the glory of Ireland, “Uh, excuse me, how do you get to Crown Center?” He looked daggers at me and then raised his eyebrows as if to say, “How can you be so stupid?” but said instead, “Crown Center, that’s all the way back there!” thumb pointing opposite my present travel. No doubt the direction I would have been heading had I not been cut off by parked and glowing and growling police cruisers. He added, “Go up to the corner, turn left at the light and then go a block and turn left again.” I added up two left turns, being no slouch in eighth grade geometry and figured that I would be heading 180°; directly opposite my current vector. I thanked him; cut across three lanes of traffic made the two turns and headed toward my new temporary residence.
Dumb luck and I found a handy parking space in the subterranean garage directly below the hotel. I checked in, got to my room, called the people I was to meet and immediately discovered that I had booked a room at the more inconvenient hotel. I had to travel two city blocks to get to the convention hall. And travel I did that two blocks every day at least three times, but I traveled the Link.
The Link connects the hotels and various buildings that make up the Crown Center via a two story above the ground walkway that looks like, well, that looks like those tubes that connect Hamster abodes to Hamster playgrounds. I spent three days and nights surprised that I did not find a large water bottle with stainless steel tube affixed. Regulated by a ball that would feed liquid as it was pushed mercilessly by my thirsting tongue. Something to quench my considerable thirst as I arrived at various destinations. Hot as it was in the link, I would have enjoyed dribbling the water down the front of my shirt as I vigorously, licked, sucked, gnawed and guzzled. And where the hell was the wheel? I so looked forward to cavorting and trying to climb the endless path afforded me by the Sisyphean Hamster Wheel. How different is it from the treadmill that engages, tortures me each morning at the health club? I believe that I did find pellets, but will say not one more word more about that!
The convention was a success and my trips hither and yon in the Link encouraged me to avoid the dastardly exercise devices on Floor Five. My exit from Kansas City was far more straightforward and gracious. 850 miles on I-70 East after a stop over in Columbia, MO and I was able to hit drive time traffic on the Parkway East. Not so many miles to go, but a good half hour before I could sleep.
Hamsters into butter I churn.
I spent the first three days of last week in Kansas City, MO at a place called the Crown Center, which is an inner city mall that closes around 6 PM and is comprised of the Westin Crown Center Hotel and the Hyatt Regency, a court full with gushing fountains, the world headquarters for Hallmark Cards, three floors of middle to upscale shops and the Link. The yearly convention of the International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration. Me, gosh, a new member.
I pulled off exit 2Q from I-70 (I had spent about 850 miles on I-70 with a stop over in Columbia MO to visit my daughter and was glad for a brief moment to be at the end of the rainbow) about 4 PM on Sunday, March 17, 2002 and stared at a gaggle of police cruisers with twirling red lights directly in the path of the street that my map insisted was the key to my destination. ‘Oh, dear,’ I thought. I would have thought something a bit more crusty and salty but I was on my best behavior in a completely foreign city. I turned left, there seemed little choice.
You did notice that I carefully mentioned the date of my arrival. Even my feeble brain put together, exposed as it was to piles of green crepe being swept from the streets, and folks with silver and green plastic top hats sporting four leaf clovers, and leprechauns singin’ “Dee dee dee dee doo!”, the fact that I was facing the aftermath of the Kansas City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.
A couple traffic lights and I saw a cop at one of the street blockades, rolled down the window and asked, meek as an Italian caught in the throes of the glory of Ireland, “Uh, excuse me, how do you get to Crown Center?” He looked daggers at me and then raised his eyebrows as if to say, “How can you be so stupid?” but said instead, “Crown Center, that’s all the way back there!” thumb pointing opposite my present travel. No doubt the direction I would have been heading had I not been cut off by parked and glowing and growling police cruisers. He added, “Go up to the corner, turn left at the light and then go a block and turn left again.” I added up two left turns, being no slouch in eighth grade geometry and figured that I would be heading 180°; directly opposite my current vector. I thanked him; cut across three lanes of traffic made the two turns and headed toward my new temporary residence.
Dumb luck and I found a handy parking space in the subterranean garage directly below the hotel. I checked in, got to my room, called the people I was to meet and immediately discovered that I had booked a room at the more inconvenient hotel. I had to travel two city blocks to get to the convention hall. And travel I did that two blocks every day at least three times, but I traveled the Link.
The Link connects the hotels and various buildings that make up the Crown Center via a two story above the ground walkway that looks like, well, that looks like those tubes that connect Hamster abodes to Hamster playgrounds. I spent three days and nights surprised that I did not find a large water bottle with stainless steel tube affixed. Regulated by a ball that would feed liquid as it was pushed mercilessly by my thirsting tongue. Something to quench my considerable thirst as I arrived at various destinations. Hot as it was in the link, I would have enjoyed dribbling the water down the front of my shirt as I vigorously, licked, sucked, gnawed and guzzled. And where the hell was the wheel? I so looked forward to cavorting and trying to climb the endless path afforded me by the Sisyphean Hamster Wheel. How different is it from the treadmill that engages, tortures me each morning at the health club? I believe that I did find pellets, but will say not one more word more about that!
The convention was a success and my trips hither and yon in the Link encouraged me to avoid the dastardly exercise devices on Floor Five. My exit from Kansas City was far more straightforward and gracious. 850 miles on I-70 East after a stop over in Columbia, MO and I was able to hit drive time traffic on the Parkway East. Not so many miles to go, but a good half hour before I could sleep.
Wednesday, March 06, 2002
Wednesday, March 06, 2002 7:30 PM
One from column A, a little schmaltz and more starch in that collar please.
It was 1969-1970 and I was working at a Cleaners and Tailors Supply Place on the corner of 12th and Franklin in Oakland Ca. One block off Broadway. The place was run by a brisk seventy-five year old man named Ben Rosenberg and I swear he was way healthier and younger than my twenty-four years. He was also a tough guy with a heart of gold. The place was populated by Jews who had been kept, in one case by the British in concentration camps and in the other by the Japanese in Singapore in concentration camps. They were not called concentration camps, but the effect was the much same. Later a kid without proper papers worked with us for a few months until the INS sent him back to Hungary. The two older women in accounting did not have so exotic a story as the others but they were upstanding members of the Oakland Jewish Community and Ben’s synagogue in particular.
So what the hell was a Larimer Avenue Dago doing there? Well, I loved everyone who worked there and fit in a very comfortable way. I am a pretty good worker and it was a plus that my wife Andrea was Jewish. We were Abbie’s Irish Rose in reverse. A negative Bridget Loves Bernie.
Trudy, a survivor of the hell camps in Singapore, she lost her family somewhere in Nazi Germany, taught me Yiddish. “What,” I asked one day after she disparaged a customer, “the hell, Trudy, is a schlimachel. “ She explained, “Just like a schlimazel only worse.”
Emil had graduated, at a later time, from the same high school in Linz, Austria that Adolf Hitler attended. Both Trudy and Emil had seen Hitler speak at rallies. Andre had been in Hungary when his countrymen were tossing Molotov Cocktails at Russian Tanks. It was an odd way to be touched by history, but it affected me.
Each morning I would have coffee and Danish at the Chicago Delicatessen. Then I would load up my VW bus with hangers, diatomaceous earth, bolts of cloth, and skeins of thread, make the drive across the Bay Bridge into San Fran and most definitely China Town. I knew my way around in those days. Would travel from the near orient of Rosenberg Bros. to the far orient above North Beach. It turns out, and should have been no surprise, that Chinese families involved in the laundry business in San Francisco/Oakland are all related. For some reason that must have to do with genes and chemical triggers, I was immediately liked and accepted by the families.
I would walk into a narrow store front perched in the middle of an impossibly steep street. The emergency brake on my dull green VW bus tightened to a frightening maximum. There was invariably an old man in a white shirt and black slacks, who looked like he had many of the kung-fu secrets to the world. He would point to a door that led to the back room.
Once I left that laundry façade, I entered a new world.
In the first of the many back rooms, there were always one or two women who were cooking some concoction that looked indistinguishable from the liquid that was in the swirling in the washing machines. The brew was always fragrant and often as not would smell enticing. I would smile at them as the old man pointed to another doorway. This one always led to a narrow passage guarded by a dog, who would growl and let me know just how happy I should be that he was tethered just a few inches short of me as I hurried passed. Then into another room that was full of oriental folk eating and chatting in Chinese. The corridors were endless. The building that looked so tiny from the street was as huge as the Cow Palace inside. And populated with more people than must exist on mainland China. Every place that I would deliver to, in Oakland, out in the Sunset District, in Chinatown, in Pittsburg, in Richmond, even in Contra Costa County would be the same.
I also to felt comfortable, at home with the “laundry” people. I didn’t understand all that they said, they didn’t understand much of what I said, but we did try and that was enough.
One day, in search of adventure, I asked one of the white shirted cloned keepers of the laundry, where I could find authentic Chinese Food. He told me that the best restaurant in the Bay Area was located on Broadway in Oakland at about 8th Street.
Andrea and I went along with Phil and Kay. Authentic it was. The name of the place is lost in the shards and fog of my memory, but it was a very understated place with booths on both side of the washed out lime walls. A couple thousand year eggs graced the front window, along with heavy Chinese cups and dishes full of food that looked a lot like my grandmother’s vegetable garden on Lenora Street in East Liberty.
I am probably imagining this, but as we walked up to the front of the restaurant to one of the few empty booths, I swore I saw an eyeball gaze up at me from a bowl of shark’s fin soup. I wish I could say that the food was great or horrible but I don’t remember. But I am sure it was “authentic”.
Next day at the Chicago Deli, I had a chopped liver with brown mustard on dark rye for lunch. I love schmalz!
One from column A, a little schmaltz and more starch in that collar please.
It was 1969-1970 and I was working at a Cleaners and Tailors Supply Place on the corner of 12th and Franklin in Oakland Ca. One block off Broadway. The place was run by a brisk seventy-five year old man named Ben Rosenberg and I swear he was way healthier and younger than my twenty-four years. He was also a tough guy with a heart of gold. The place was populated by Jews who had been kept, in one case by the British in concentration camps and in the other by the Japanese in Singapore in concentration camps. They were not called concentration camps, but the effect was the much same. Later a kid without proper papers worked with us for a few months until the INS sent him back to Hungary. The two older women in accounting did not have so exotic a story as the others but they were upstanding members of the Oakland Jewish Community and Ben’s synagogue in particular.
So what the hell was a Larimer Avenue Dago doing there? Well, I loved everyone who worked there and fit in a very comfortable way. I am a pretty good worker and it was a plus that my wife Andrea was Jewish. We were Abbie’s Irish Rose in reverse. A negative Bridget Loves Bernie.
Trudy, a survivor of the hell camps in Singapore, she lost her family somewhere in Nazi Germany, taught me Yiddish. “What,” I asked one day after she disparaged a customer, “the hell, Trudy, is a schlimachel. “ She explained, “Just like a schlimazel only worse.”
Emil had graduated, at a later time, from the same high school in Linz, Austria that Adolf Hitler attended. Both Trudy and Emil had seen Hitler speak at rallies. Andre had been in Hungary when his countrymen were tossing Molotov Cocktails at Russian Tanks. It was an odd way to be touched by history, but it affected me.
Each morning I would have coffee and Danish at the Chicago Delicatessen. Then I would load up my VW bus with hangers, diatomaceous earth, bolts of cloth, and skeins of thread, make the drive across the Bay Bridge into San Fran and most definitely China Town. I knew my way around in those days. Would travel from the near orient of Rosenberg Bros. to the far orient above North Beach. It turns out, and should have been no surprise, that Chinese families involved in the laundry business in San Francisco/Oakland are all related. For some reason that must have to do with genes and chemical triggers, I was immediately liked and accepted by the families.
I would walk into a narrow store front perched in the middle of an impossibly steep street. The emergency brake on my dull green VW bus tightened to a frightening maximum. There was invariably an old man in a white shirt and black slacks, who looked like he had many of the kung-fu secrets to the world. He would point to a door that led to the back room.
Once I left that laundry façade, I entered a new world.
In the first of the many back rooms, there were always one or two women who were cooking some concoction that looked indistinguishable from the liquid that was in the swirling in the washing machines. The brew was always fragrant and often as not would smell enticing. I would smile at them as the old man pointed to another doorway. This one always led to a narrow passage guarded by a dog, who would growl and let me know just how happy I should be that he was tethered just a few inches short of me as I hurried passed. Then into another room that was full of oriental folk eating and chatting in Chinese. The corridors were endless. The building that looked so tiny from the street was as huge as the Cow Palace inside. And populated with more people than must exist on mainland China. Every place that I would deliver to, in Oakland, out in the Sunset District, in Chinatown, in Pittsburg, in Richmond, even in Contra Costa County would be the same.
I also to felt comfortable, at home with the “laundry” people. I didn’t understand all that they said, they didn’t understand much of what I said, but we did try and that was enough.
One day, in search of adventure, I asked one of the white shirted cloned keepers of the laundry, where I could find authentic Chinese Food. He told me that the best restaurant in the Bay Area was located on Broadway in Oakland at about 8th Street.
Andrea and I went along with Phil and Kay. Authentic it was. The name of the place is lost in the shards and fog of my memory, but it was a very understated place with booths on both side of the washed out lime walls. A couple thousand year eggs graced the front window, along with heavy Chinese cups and dishes full of food that looked a lot like my grandmother’s vegetable garden on Lenora Street in East Liberty.
I am probably imagining this, but as we walked up to the front of the restaurant to one of the few empty booths, I swore I saw an eyeball gaze up at me from a bowl of shark’s fin soup. I wish I could say that the food was great or horrible but I don’t remember. But I am sure it was “authentic”.
Next day at the Chicago Deli, I had a chopped liver with brown mustard on dark rye for lunch. I love schmalz!
Monday, March 04, 2002
Monday, March 04, 2002 6:57:32 PM
Perfect Pitch Relative to What?
I make no secret about it. I have a passion for the guitar. As I write I am listening to John Williams and the English Chamber Orchestra play Vivaldi. Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra in D Major. It is the D Major that will ultimately concern me in this six hundred to a thousand words.
I make it a little more of a secret how long I have been playing the guitar. It is a sordid, as are many tales of my achievements in the world, story. When I was in my early teens my parents thought that I should take music lessons. I always suspected that because we couldn't afford a piano that the guitar became the primary instrument for me. That and the fact that my Uncle Augie and Uncle Rab would do a mean Five Foot Two or Dark Town Strutters Ball on either the six-string guitar or the four-string ukulele at family get-togethers. Music, even then, held charm for me. One, Two, Three, I thought, Look at Mr. Lee. An instructor was employed and he would visit the house weekly, making clucking sounds and little marks on Mel Bey's Method for Guitar. I played them all with equal enthusiasm, Mary and her Little Lamb; I toiled with the Volga Boat Man, more marks in the lesson book and learned at least the first position play on all six strings. My talent was less obvious and it was a lot to ask to sit in my bedroom while everyone was playing whiffle ball outside. I was, after all is said and done, a failure. My teacher eventually suggested that I try another instrument and we actually rented an accordion. Lady of Spain was never my favorite piece of music and I still cringe when I hear Dick Contino at the Italian festival.
Let us now move forward to the years immediately following high school. In the days of my abortive attempt at a college education. I discovered Miles and Ornette and Charlie Parker, but I was intrigued by Wes Montgomery. Further my new college found friend Steve played a wonderful deep hued F-hole Sunburst Gibson pretty well in the jazz idiom. And then I heard Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and progressed beyond Brownie Maghee and Sonny Terry to a whole host of Texas and Mississippi and Loosiana Blues. When my school career ended abruptly, I picked up a Grey Painted F-Hole Silvertone Guitar from Sears donned a blue work shirt, jeans and played until my fingers bled on those thick steel strings. I was on my way to glory!
Somewhere along the line I heard Carlos Montoya. I did not understand the difference between Classic Guitar (It is the word that Aaron Scherer prefers to Classical) and Flamenco. Impressed by the fireworks, I promptly traded my jazz guitar for my first nylon string round holed guitar and I began to study. Vicariously, through his method, with Aaron Scherer. Four maybe six hours a day.
Fernando Sor, Mauro Guiliani, Matteo Carcassi. I discovered the difference between Segovia and Montoya and first heard via phonograph the man that Segovia called the Crown Prince of the Guitar, John Williams, he was and remains a marvel to me. I saw him perform in San Francisco and never really recovered from the experience.
Petty Music, Liberty Avenue, Downtown Pittsburgh, Spring of 1965 I bought a Guild Classical Guitar. Paid $300 bucks for it. It is at this moment in the repair shop because the bridge has lifted. That guitar traveled the world with me. I don't play it much any more, but imagine it is worth a lot of money because of inflation and age.
Here it is, what, thirty-five years later? I am a quirky guitarist at best. I still study from Volume Two of Aaron Scherer's method. I have some knowledge of the higher guitar positions and can fingerpick a Travis pattern (play Railroad Bill with the best of them). Mediocre, yet satisfied and certainly more pleased than I would have been playing the 'cordeen.
Lately it has been bothering me, as I also try to pick up some keyboard technique, that my musical knowledge or more properly my ear is so untrained. Enter David Lucas Burge.
If you read the mags, namely Guitar Player or Keyboard (and there is no good reason that you should) somewhere, usually near the end, there is a two page advertisement that is essentially a story about David Lucas Burge and how he discovered that everyone can have Perfect Pitch. You don't have to be born with it. The short of it, I bought his message and his course and although I can't yet say that it works, it has sufficient merit that I will continue through the lessons.
Of course, along with the course, came another advertisement for Relative Pitch, which works in concert with Perfect Pitch. Not the same thing at all. Perfect Pitch is of the heart and Relative Pitch is of the mind. Today, with the morning mail, came the Relative Pitch course. It is an attempt on my part to actually become a musician. At present I am merely a technician and not very inventive at that.
So, me re do. Solveggio and begorrah. I look forward to the day when I can say, after hearing the beginning chord of some rhapsody, IGod that there bit of harmony was was an Augmented 7th, Flatted 11th, Flatted 13th and Eb was in the root position. The smallest things please me!
Perfect Pitch Relative to What?
I make no secret about it. I have a passion for the guitar. As I write I am listening to John Williams and the English Chamber Orchestra play Vivaldi. Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra in D Major. It is the D Major that will ultimately concern me in this six hundred to a thousand words.
I make it a little more of a secret how long I have been playing the guitar. It is a sordid, as are many tales of my achievements in the world, story. When I was in my early teens my parents thought that I should take music lessons. I always suspected that because we couldn't afford a piano that the guitar became the primary instrument for me. That and the fact that my Uncle Augie and Uncle Rab would do a mean Five Foot Two or Dark Town Strutters Ball on either the six-string guitar or the four-string ukulele at family get-togethers. Music, even then, held charm for me. One, Two, Three, I thought, Look at Mr. Lee. An instructor was employed and he would visit the house weekly, making clucking sounds and little marks on Mel Bey's Method for Guitar. I played them all with equal enthusiasm, Mary and her Little Lamb; I toiled with the Volga Boat Man, more marks in the lesson book and learned at least the first position play on all six strings. My talent was less obvious and it was a lot to ask to sit in my bedroom while everyone was playing whiffle ball outside. I was, after all is said and done, a failure. My teacher eventually suggested that I try another instrument and we actually rented an accordion. Lady of Spain was never my favorite piece of music and I still cringe when I hear Dick Contino at the Italian festival.
Let us now move forward to the years immediately following high school. In the days of my abortive attempt at a college education. I discovered Miles and Ornette and Charlie Parker, but I was intrigued by Wes Montgomery. Further my new college found friend Steve played a wonderful deep hued F-hole Sunburst Gibson pretty well in the jazz idiom. And then I heard Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and progressed beyond Brownie Maghee and Sonny Terry to a whole host of Texas and Mississippi and Loosiana Blues. When my school career ended abruptly, I picked up a Grey Painted F-Hole Silvertone Guitar from Sears donned a blue work shirt, jeans and played until my fingers bled on those thick steel strings. I was on my way to glory!
Somewhere along the line I heard Carlos Montoya. I did not understand the difference between Classic Guitar (It is the word that Aaron Scherer prefers to Classical) and Flamenco. Impressed by the fireworks, I promptly traded my jazz guitar for my first nylon string round holed guitar and I began to study. Vicariously, through his method, with Aaron Scherer. Four maybe six hours a day.
Fernando Sor, Mauro Guiliani, Matteo Carcassi. I discovered the difference between Segovia and Montoya and first heard via phonograph the man that Segovia called the Crown Prince of the Guitar, John Williams, he was and remains a marvel to me. I saw him perform in San Francisco and never really recovered from the experience.
Petty Music, Liberty Avenue, Downtown Pittsburgh, Spring of 1965 I bought a Guild Classical Guitar. Paid $300 bucks for it. It is at this moment in the repair shop because the bridge has lifted. That guitar traveled the world with me. I don't play it much any more, but imagine it is worth a lot of money because of inflation and age.
Here it is, what, thirty-five years later? I am a quirky guitarist at best. I still study from Volume Two of Aaron Scherer's method. I have some knowledge of the higher guitar positions and can fingerpick a Travis pattern (play Railroad Bill with the best of them). Mediocre, yet satisfied and certainly more pleased than I would have been playing the 'cordeen.
Lately it has been bothering me, as I also try to pick up some keyboard technique, that my musical knowledge or more properly my ear is so untrained. Enter David Lucas Burge.
If you read the mags, namely Guitar Player or Keyboard (and there is no good reason that you should) somewhere, usually near the end, there is a two page advertisement that is essentially a story about David Lucas Burge and how he discovered that everyone can have Perfect Pitch. You don't have to be born with it. The short of it, I bought his message and his course and although I can't yet say that it works, it has sufficient merit that I will continue through the lessons.
Of course, along with the course, came another advertisement for Relative Pitch, which works in concert with Perfect Pitch. Not the same thing at all. Perfect Pitch is of the heart and Relative Pitch is of the mind. Today, with the morning mail, came the Relative Pitch course. It is an attempt on my part to actually become a musician. At present I am merely a technician and not very inventive at that.
So, me re do. Solveggio and begorrah. I look forward to the day when I can say, after hearing the beginning chord of some rhapsody, IGod that there bit of harmony was was an Augmented 7th, Flatted 11th, Flatted 13th and Eb was in the root position. The smallest things please me!