How nice, to get credit for being alive
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr
Late afternoon Sunday, summertime. We had returned from Boston and unloaded the wagon. I inspected the lawn out back to see whether it would beseech mowing before the sun went down, or could wait. It had rained on Saturday, and the grass was singing. This was not crickets, it was the grass singing, and shouldn’t be disturbed. Not for another six days. The scent of freshly mown grass can take its turn.
During the drive I completed a paperback by one of my choice creators of fiction, a rapidly exhausting author whose works were ageless but as I now appreciate not timeless. What fifteen year old doesn’t wish, or need, to be seen reading a best-selling novel beyond his years?
This write what you know author was of his era and today is all but overlooked, though I’m glad I matured during his heyday and can say I finished all his works I was going to by my mid-20s. This was the third of his I read on the ride home, though out of sequence and by that stage, he was finished with serious books.
In this novel, the main theme was the demise of the American Mid-West before his eyes. The smokestack industries went first, the social decline ensuing quickly thereafter. The story was told through the eyes of a recurring character who resisted the inevitable by inventing a religion and canvassing the Great Lakes for subscribers. One of his disciples moved up the depth charts and became a supporting actor, and two thirds the way through faced the fortune of his fated encounter with the town’s wealthy benefactor, the son of a factory owner who invested wisely and, luckily for him, went from strength to strength when the brick pillar which bore their prominent name billowed its final puff of acrid-red smoke into the saddened skies. Think the Ambersons without a decline and fall.
This famous meeting between Kilgore and Dwayne was foretold in the previous tale and at the start of this one, which left the timing as the only mystery. At the end of their set-to at the fading diner, the scion raised his voice and shrieked at the everyman, as if it wasn’t self-apparent that his trust fund underwrote the religion during its fledgling era and ensured it could achieve sustainability without a martyr – better to have a deep pocketed angel investor than to pray in vain for a patron saint who after all will not be reborn. As if there was any doubt, and no one worth his or her salt would ascribe to any other faith. The inheritor then walked out, not to be seen or heard from again. Until the next book.
The working class devotee lost his logframe of reference, because he assumed those well at heel would be above the fray and not beholden to false idols and hopes like him, he didn’t anticipate common denominators or great equalizers. They were all conformists, he realized, no one had a mind of their own. There was no one to look up to. No one was going to save them if they didn’t save themselves. When the townsmen grasped that the religion was a hoax the bottom would fall out and nothing would be left, not even their sanity.
He closed his eyes briefly and looked down. On the discoloured yellow Formica next to each placemat was a large decal, a reminder to those who presumed the proprietor was anything but commercially oriented. “We’ve made a deal with the savings & loan. We don’t extend credit and the S&L doesn’t fry burgers.” Nonetheless, the diner was full every weekend, and ever would be, whether the clientele had money left from its pay-checks at the end of the month or not, whether they would enjoy their Parmigiana’s with the Diner’s Club coupons they had saved from the previous year, or not.
The author was renowned for his naïve and primitive drawings at occasions of suspense, a piece of clothing here, a beaten down Chevy coupe there. His springboard to fame was a less than 200 page memoire of war, fighting in a conflict he found futile, when battles were fought by live soldiers, before both sides had robot warriors of their own. Less than 200 pages, just like this one, until I couldn’t stop writing.
And so it goes, and so it goes.
The end.
When I finished my post-trip chores, I walked back outside, flicked my eyelashes upward and breathed the summer air anyway, rationalizing away lack of motivation to trim the lawn. After all, this was the summer before dark as well. A 340-page novel was still in my hands. The sum of the author’s work had not declined in my estimation, but this effort would not be proudly displayed in the main house.
I would make space for these 340 pages plus cover in the Guest House, the side building which was devised for you guessed it guests, but given the existence of electrical lighting though not running water, it became a storage space for belongings we wished to keep, but didn’t wish to eye-gaze every day. Clothes that were a few seasons out of fashion, school play mementos from a sibling who had grown up and gone to college, concert posters featuring The Syndicate of Sound and The Chocolate Watchband, and books that we liked but not that much, such as the one I just finished.
It was named the Guest House on the recommendation of the previous owners, who claimed they frequently hosted visitors in this room, physically detached for the sake of privacy, or in the event the main house was full and couldn’t handle the overflow. This begs the question of why they would extend weekend invitations, but didn’t adore these guests enough to share living quarters for two slim nights, and would offer electricity via long florescent light bulbs, but not plumbing. Perhaps Outpost would have been a more fitting nickname for this structure.
It was not our wont to go through these motions; if cousins or aunts and uncles were going to visit from out of town, they could sleep on sofas in the living room, or they could spring for a motel. As time passed and us children aged, the Guest House became a venue for youngster sleepovers when the weather was too inclement for pitching a tent in the side yard, but we bored of this gradually too and it became an excess proper for the said clothing, concert posters and books, and a way station for hand me downs suitable for Good Will or Salvation Army shops.
One late spring Friday a year later I stayed up to watch the Movie of the Week and it had me thinking, such was its relation to the times in which I was living. If video tapes had been in existence I’d have watched the slow motion ending a few more times and stopped the recording when the closing theme approached the second line of the chorus – “yesterday a child came out to wander” - and scanned forward until the network’s epochal jingle and logo appeared. I stayed up a little later to watch the 11 PM news, but three stories and 10-15 minutes was all I could handle. I turned off the set and looked out back, to imagine the leaves blowing in the weekend wind. I should have given myself a pat on the back for lasting fifteen minutes, considering the lonely channel choices of 6, 8 and 13.
Instead of darkness, a flash of red light appeared, and it shocked me out of my senses. In my rural American suburbia there were no houses for two miles in that direction, and a lake would intervene at any rate. It was the reflection of a car’s lights, I eventually determined, though it could have been a trespasser’s flashlight, or a very lost rambler. An alien from another solar system is as likely to appear on earth as a flash of light from a little green man, but there would be nothing for him to see up here. Why carouse at night in rural suburban America, when if you are a passenger in a flying saucer that travels above the speed of light, Machu Picchu has so much more to offer. Moreover, like a retired couple traveling the country full-time in a Winnebago, there’s no reason for the alien to be attached to any particular planet, if he has his own means of transportation and a great expansive galaxy to explore.
Undaunted, the subsequent weekend I joined an offer to our family from a local business moghul to assemble at his summer camp, where we’d go on slow, gentle boat rides and reminisce about earlier afternoons on the lake, or on its pebbly beach, and how nothing compares to boating of any manner when it’s scorching outside and there are no clouds marring the sky view. If not for the cost and hassle of maintaining amphibious vehicles, and the prevalence of stormy weather during the summer, probably families would do it more often. Back on dry land, we sat on elongated director’s chairs and thanked our host liberally while munching on finger food, and publicly regretting that none of our clan’s waterfront was usable except for when it froze over.
When our backs got stiff from sitting for too long, or the nylon fabric made marks on the bottom of our thighs, we got up to stretch and walk around his property. There are bragging rights in owning large plots alongside your summer escape, but he let us in on a secret. It is advisable for much of this to be wooded and up wind, because this directs mosquitoes toward your neighbors. Moreover, the smaller the lawn, the less you have to maintain. In addition, while the phrase waterfront footage has a certain ring to it, the preferred ringtone of the town’s property tax officer is kerCHING, so you don’t want too much of that either. If this is so complicated, why bother, I asked. He laughed, sensing me to have a good knack for one-liners for someone of my age. I was not joshing.
If this teen was destined for a career as a comedy writer, though, I have to start somewhere, and if unintentional wit catches on, I’d have a notebook of material. I didn’t intend for my question to be funny, but it got a laugh, so I’ll break it down into whether it was the unexpected nature of my enquiry or my formula. If the humor was intentional and got a laugh, it would be Lucky 7 on the slot machines, and all the difference between getting on the scoreboard and getting on the leader board. If not, was he laughing with or at me?
He seemed to spend most of his time explaining why owners of vacation homes had to be careful about one thing or another, and on the water he had to keep constant watch on his guests to ensure the life preservers remained fastened, especially the children, and lamenting that he’s always the summer host bride, and never the bridesmaid.
Thereafter, I noticed a classic car in a nearby driveway and excused myself from the group, in order to inspect it from a closer but respectful distance. Halfway there I spotted an empty beer can on the grass and bent over to pick it up so no one would trip over it but stopped abruptly when the rank smell got to me. In the extreme heat a dead soldier would have emitted a powerful stream of odour; being 10% full the scent was that much worse. I nearly regurgitated my chicken salad delight, and would have had I consumed more than three spoonfuls. However, if it had been a can of Tuborg Gold rather than Schaeffer I might not have resolved to foreswear any and all cocktails for the next six months. I do believe this can of Schaeffer was the weakest link.
Nevertheless, when that winter Sunday afternoon arrived six months later, as coincidence would have it we were invited to another neighborhood gathering, although this time on Cranesbill Hill, at a snowy year-round residence. The host was Armin, and he looked like an Armin with a patented moustache and stocky welterweight build, despite not sounding like one. His voice was more puppet than trumpet. We were among the first to arrive, though even so were 20 minutes late and Armin was starved and thirsty but dared not dig in before any of his invitees. The dip had to be smooth as glass to the naked eye when the first guests did pierce the threshold, and the punch bowls filled to the maximum brim. Therefore, he virtually begged us to sample his equally-patented spiced nuts before his wife Happy Helen graciously accepted our winter coats, and pour ourselves a beverage of choice.
Six months later and you’d think I’d be six months wiser, for there were two punch bowls, one an orange fruit juice mix for the minors and another Bloody Mary’s for the adults. Being parched from a Sunday morning best two of three at our indoor tennis club, I ladled myself a large glass from the red bowl and began slurping away, clear of the eyes of the assembled adults with the exception of Armin, who gave me a steely glance and informed me the receptacle I had dipped from was for those of legal drinking age. He’d have to turn me in if I took as many as two more sips, given that there would be less for everyone else, to say nothing of him when all had departed and it was a choice of dub the remainder a Scorpion Bowl and finish the dregs with two straws or toss it down the drain, when he could have improvised and generated a supply of extreme ice cubes. ‘Yes, I am cognizant …,’ I concurred, and took four more sips before batting an eyelid, as if I was still suffering from hair of the salty dog from the previous summer.
For the record, though, Armin, or Happy Helen, could shake and stir a USDA Grade A Prime trough of Bloody Mary’s, and no one’s first glass should touch the sides. For all I’m concerned the fruit punch consisted of Screwdriver’s that he had not too subtly spiked just for laughs, and to form an ever more perfect union of families within the mile radius ingroup.
The neighbor up the road joined us with his plus one not from the tennis courts but straight from his regularly scheduled ice fishing expedition, though he came up empty this time, aside from the quartet of glorified minnows that he caught and cooked for himself and his wife, along with bacon and eggs and Coleman grill they had brought with them for the ride. He was strangely enough perfectly dressed for both occasions, and I smiled wryly to myself when they knocked on the door and entered, because my true bravado could go unpunished. Mark and Sandra had pre-loaded – for the brunch rather than for the ice fishing – and they’d request coffee for sobering up before starting again. Because they weren’t talking too much and too fast to begin with.
The prior afternoon M&S visited former neighborites who had relocated about an hour away as the crow flies and he was full of stories about how different the sea air is not far down the coast. If Mark told us once about how impressed they were with the “historic” Cribstone Bridge, of a stone girder design and fifty years old already by that date, he told us three times. “A genuine mechanical marvel!” he repeated and repeated, although I think he meant engineering marvel. I whispered this under my breath, so as not to draw attention to myself or further attract the ire of Armin. Their German Shepherd Brutus was spellbound and speechless at the Life and Times of the Cribstone Bridge, though had their kitten Duchess been stirring and in the room, she’d have been salivating at the scent of bait that permeated Mark’s clothing, and no less the boots that he declined to take off.
I took a bite of the Triscuit smeared in Lipton cran-onion soup dip and pretended to fling the fresh half in Brutus’s direction, but he remained immobile from the hypnotic effect of Mark and his war stories, and didn’t budge. I folded the unused Triscuit in my palm, and left it there for future reference.
Lest I forget, this was five to six years on from Armin’s rotation as Minutes’ Secretary of the Citizen’s Poetry Society. Most of the quarterly meetings were adult only, though once a year children were permitted to attend. Pretty sure I stuck to acoustic Kool Aid on that occasion, although it would have been helpful if Rhymezone or Roget had been phone-a-friend options, as I was lost for a good rhyme for “peel” for my limerick. I was inspired by the blossoms on his crab-apple trees if memory serves.
Fast forward to freshman year at college and it was my turn on this Thursday night for a Central Square there-and-back after a six pack of Dirty Dawson’s apiece, theoretically armed with a Church’s fast food burger and fries for each of us, a Little Stevie’s Greek pizza pie, or the late nite special from Burritos ‘n Shit. It was a race, and my objective was both to set a personal best and beat Johnny Bu’s previous Thursday’s clock. However, I was interrupted on my return by a wino who could smell beer, or something stronger, on my breath, and steamed Beef Wellington inside my take out bag. What could I say, he was the spitting image of Sammy Davis, Jr, and how could I be short tempered with the spitting image of a Rat Packer. It seemed like ages that we were talking, well him slurring and me speaking while short of breath, though it was probably three minutes, and I came to my senses when he insisted, “Gimme a bite of your burgers!” I could neither deny this man an evening meal, nor reverse tracks and buy more food. Therefore, I gave him one of the Cambridge Hots (a cheeseburger with extra jalapeños) that I instantly determined had my name on it and chalked this up to a learning experience.
Once in the dorm again, I claimed that I’d been hungry and could not wait and chowed on my sandwich while running back for energy; I was in a hurry because of an unexpected surge at Church’s due to a sudden exodus from the mass transit station, and I still had a large bag of fries to bask in with my dormmates in the Common Room. I wouldn’t see the wino in the future and he won’t be able to tattle on me. This incident took place across the street from the gas station whose profit margins were so phat they didn’t dare display their retail prices during daylight hours. But they uncharacteristically spelled “Open” correctly.