Lemons to lemonade...

For men, one of the many joys of getting older is the challenge to grow a huge, award-winning prostate. Mine’s the size of an avocado. Florida, not California. I walk with a distinct cowboy saunter, as if I’d been riding horses all my life. Fortunately, I have my VA doctors available to certify the winning size of my flesh avocado located between the troublemaker and the waste factory.

I’m used to having to pee every few minutes, anywhere, anytime. There’s usually just enough time when I leave the bathroom to turn off the stove, and circle back again. The Publix parking lot works great too, even though I just left their men’s room. Trees interspersed on grassy islands. No problem. Five times at my AMVETS club before I leave. A quick stop at the park on the way home. Pulling into my driveway, there’s usually not enough time for me to get inside, so the hydrangeas get watered. It’s another way to give the lady who walks by with her nasty little Pomeranian just one more thing to huff about. She’s old so I’d expect a little more understanding. Actually, she walks a bit bowlegged too. That may be a pound or two of prolapse she’s carrying around.

So my VA nurse set an appointment for me to come in and test all my fluids. I told her not to wear her good shoes, you never know when a distraction may cause her to lose focus and turn back to see me splashing the floor. Saves her a paper cup anyway.

Turns out they want to plant a mini-atomic bomb right between the troublemaker and the waste processing plant. Much as that sounds like great fun, I told them to just take it all, like a woman with minor cancer in one breast who gets a double mastectomy, I’ll simply never have to worry about it again.

So I’m going to have all of my man parts removed, be like a Ken doll. But I’ve got one step more in my quest to turn lemons into lemonade.

I’ve been perusing outfits for older women on Amazon Prime. Cute and practical. I see a whole new world of possibilities on the horizon.

Carla will flourish with a female roommate. We can scrapbook in our jammies all night, maybe get facials, mani and pedi appointments side-by side before we go shop for shoes…

The grandkids can look at old pictures and point out grandma…and grandma. 

WHAT HOUSE DID YOU GROW UP IN?

 

What House Did You Grow Up In?

For me? 530 Alden Avenue, Westfield, NJ. A suburb of NYC. That’s us in 1949. “Judy, Sue, Kenny Hugh. We all love you.” Mother would sing. I was a year old when we moved into that house. Fifteen years later we moved out to a new development near the end of Lawrence Ave, in an area we used to call “Egypt Hills”. It had been a barren, open field of dry straw grass where we hunted for insects with Mr. Ferguson, the Entomologist. His son Donny and I were best friends.

I thought we were rich moving into a new, split level out there. Everything sod green where the parched earth had been. Mom bought a new cage for her sun yellow canary that came with a matching yellow cover, a sure sign to me that we had gone big time.

Dad had a law firm at #5 Broadway, Mom ferried him to and from the train station five days a week. A goodbye & hello peck on the cheek, in or out, punctuated each ride. Dad’s idea of casual was a sports jacket on weekends, his uniform for pulling crabgrass in the front lawn while swearing under his breath about the world going to hell.

Mom was in charge of us kids, Dad brought home the bacon. You could do that in those days. Mom always made us “a good breakfast” to start the day. Eggs, bacon, toast, Kippered Herring, Cod fish cakes. Dad lived on Kent cigarettes, coffee and stress. He was exempt from Mom’s breakfast rules.

I walked to and from Franklin Elementary School five days a week, memorizing the irregularities in the sidewalks, playing a game with myself of only looking down to know my location. Sycamore trees shed their bark on both sides of the streets.

Donny Ferguson lived across the street. He and I rode our bikes like a couple of maniacs, racing down to the Mountainside News Stand every Saturday when we each got our $1.00 allowance. Cards in the spokes helped up pretend they were motorcycles even though they sounded like cards in spokes. Ten 5 cent candy bars and five 10 cent comic books. We spent all afternoon on his screen porch with Superman and a sugar high.

David Callahan lived behind us on Bradford Ave. We ran the smooth dirt path between our two houses, barefoot in the summertime. At night, fat slugs squished up between our toes when they came out to cross the path in the cool dark.

We strung a telegraph line between our houses. Bedroom to Bedroom, our first e-mail.

Choir practice at St Paul’s three nights a week, Boy Scout meeting at one of the guys houses twice a month. Dad was smart. He never hosted one. I still have the plywood Santa we cut out in Robbie Rink’s basement though. We finally got to finish them even though Jimmy Siebert had said the “f” word when a splinter went into his thumb and Mr. Rink almost had an aneurysm. He said that was the end of our meetings, no more. Where did you kids ever learn to talk like that? We met in his basement again two weeks later, finished cutting and painting our plywood Santa and no mention was ever made of the evil language.

When Joe, my sister Judy’s first boyfriend came over to our house one night, sporting a crew cut and looking like one of the Kingston Trio, he carried a huge suitcase with him. Laying it carefully down on the ottoman at the foot of Moms big living room chair, we all gathered around as he opened it up to reveal two panels of flashing electronics straight out of a Buck Rogers movie. It was the first tape recorder I had ever seen. Totally magical stuff.

Christmas days, Easter baskets full of candy, a bottle of liquid mercury from Mr. Robinson, the paint chemist who lived next door.

Our dark, musty basement had stairs with no backing. They allowed the long bony arms of the pale monster to grab my ankles if I were to only walk down, but I didn’t, I flew. Quickly throwing open the door to the furnace room, I scurried over to the lone hanging bulb and pulled the string furiously before dark creatures could grab me. The bulb was always burnt out. It never worked. I would freeze with panic, spider webs covering my face and hair, deciding my next move. All senses on full alert as I listened for shuffling feet. That’s when the huge oil furnace, covered in peeling layers of asbestos insulation like a fat grey leper with curls of dead skin hanging loose, would fire up. WHOOMP! When that thing lit up we both jumped two feet into the air. I still get a tachycardia rush with the memory.

Those were the days of Ant Farms, BB guns, white rats that got loose and colonized the entire third floor, fat tire bikes, a brand-new Ford Fairlane 500 with rocket wings…

Sister Sue wrote on the wall by her bed: “Elvis is 24!” It looked like it said that Elvis was only 4 though because the plaster wall was so spotted and damaged from a particularly wet squirt gun fight that ended with water balloons. The cream-colored wall looked like the spotted, flaking legs of my Aunt Jeedie. When she was in the old people’s home.

Elvis made his debut on Ed Sullivan

Weenie, our attack dachshund, got loose and tried to protect the entire neighborhood from the trash truck by running backwards and biting the wheels. Not a good plan. That truck turned poor Weenie into a hairy Frisbee.

Mom and I sat on the front stoop and cried when I got home from school that day.

We played “Ain’t no bears out tonight” after dinner on Summer nights until it was too dark to see and we all had to go back inside.

George Harris had a pet Raccoon that bit everything and everyone. I had rats, turtles, dogs, cats, snakes, toads, fish and birds, but a biting Raccoon? No way.

Flying June bugs on a long thread with a noose around one rear leg, catching fireflies in a jar, smearing our faces at night with luminescent war paint from sacrificial lightning bugs.

The smell of cap guns.

The whole neighborhood was excited to learn that one of our own, Jeffery Hamlet from up the street, would be on The Howdy Doody Show. After Buffalo Bob finished speaking with Mr. Bluster, the camera panned the peanut gallery. With families up and down Alden Avenue on the edge of their chairs looking to spot Jeffrey, there he was! His forefinger buried so far up his nose it looked like he must be scratching his brain. Oblivious to the camera, he slowly pulled nose oysters out from those damp cavities, examined them closely and licked his finger clean. A proud moment for the hood. Hell, even I was grossed out.

On his tenth birthday, David Callahan and I watched Steve McQueen fight “The Blob” in the Rialto Theatre.

Teresa from one block up. pulled the top of her bathing suit down in Kerry Hill’s back yard when we were all running through the sprinkler. We were both only nine but it still seemed like a big deal back then.

I regularly dragged a beat-up red wagon filled with coke bottles down to the Mountainside Drug store to recycle. Two cents each.

At a middle school dance in 1963, I was flopping around out there on the floor with a girl I didn’t know, but whose words would be forever burned into my brain: “You sure know how to Mash Potatoes!”

That was a turning point. Time to put away childish things and embrace even more childish things. I was ready for the big time, High School and a new house.

After suffering through the humiliation of riding the school bus for my entire sophomore year, much like the human equivalent of my dog wearing a clown collar, I bought a motorcycle as soon as I turned 16.

Back then I looked 14 and got stopped by every cop in town whenever I went out. In wintertime my hands were frozen into useless claws for the first three periods at school. Even so, a small price to pay.

New house, new ride, new school…I was cool

I assumed childhood to be in the rear-view mirror, that I was an adult by then, no clue that it would be another 20 years before I learned to legitimately carry that mantle.

AMVETS SALVATION

 

Being around a lot of people for all of my working life, co-workers and customers, I learned to behave as an extrovert. Got good at it. But as a card-carrying introvert, I need more down time, more alone, recovery time, than most.

I’m the guy who goes to a party and wonders how soon I can leave. Most people dream of their upcoming vacations, leaving home for destinations they believe will take them away from their daily lives, far from home. The grass is greener syndrome.

Not for me. Home is my happy place, warm & reassuringly familiar. On vacations or family get togethers, I love seeing everyone, but I’m always counting-down the days, happy when it’s time to head back. Home to my lair.  

In full retirement five years ago, I mostly looked forward to not having to leave the cave at all.

That became unhealthy on many levels.

When Carla was out working, I started drinking too much. If she was out of town on an assignment, I often went several days without hearing any other voice than my own, talking to the dogs. A little step into crazy town. Knowing it had to stop, I banished alcohol from my own house, and decided to try a different approach. That’s when I wound up at our local Amvets club, a veteran’s group, with a bar. One, maybe two drinks and out. That’s been almost every day for the last four years.

But here’s the thing I didn’t expect…it was the people there that saved me. The comradery of a familiar group that comes from all walks of life. A Bell curve of  varied lifestyles, beliefs and approaches. So refreshing. Very quickly our differences fade into the background as our common ground, Veterans, and community, takes the stage.

A few drinks, some laughs, the football game, poker, bingo. The bright machines with flashing lights that call out to people looking for a little Vegas action. Old reruns of Wagon Train over here, Pandora country music over there. Didn’t that guy go on to star in Gunsmoke? Checking in on how the knee operation went, maybe a new house or dog. I’m sorry to hear about your brother.

Congratulations, support, sympathy, friendship.

Excited that the oyster roast Ed pays for out of his own pocket every year is coming up soon. A Christmas dinner today. Karaoke laughs every Saturday. The bingo, the endless dishes that the ladies group puts out for every event…all more nourishing than just food or drink.

It's family, and at this point in my life, on the day-to-day, it’s my fresh air and sunshine, even though it’s inside a darkened bar that smells of smoke. Swapping the latest stories, going for a laugh…it means everything to me.

Many, many thanks to my AMVETS group. Humanity without division. We’re all more alike than different.

I needed that.

Can I buy you a beer?

 

Note to Orlando

 

Orlando

2:51am. Coffee, a Trulieve chocolate drop, bustling about in the kitchen, gathering ingredients for sweet potato chili. Set the crock pot on low for eight hours or four on high. You know the drill.  Alexa playing old Moody Blues stuff. Thinking about Brooke being gone, remembering a time we all shared so many years ago. It seems I generally entertain the same memory points, ones I’ve revisited for 50 years, the rest of it streaked and unclear, a dirty window to a familiar but unspecific swirl. Another cosmos far, far away.

Maybe I’ll kick it up a notch,  Oye Como Va! Images of you turned to the record player, bellbottom jeans sweeping an acrylic carpet made of orange sandpaper. 

There was a cigarette machine at the bottom of our stairs. It came as a surprise to me recently when I realized that I hadn't seen one in years.

Peace & Love my friend...

Rumspringa

 

 

A friend in his 70’s was patting himself on the back for having completed a few days of productivity. He was proud of acting like a responsible adult, actually getting shit done. Apparently riding a wave of “fuck off” days as he called them, is more his norm.

A good boy, but only briefly.

That made me smile with admission of the fact that after I fully retired four years ago, every day for me is a “fuck off” day. Never inserting a “responsible adult” day, I’m like Snoopy lost in dance.

A permanent Rumspringa.

Sore from pinching myself about today, the only productivity day I’ll even consider, is tomorrow.

Satchmo sings in a never-ending loop:

“I see skies of blue, and clouds of white
The bright blessed days, dark sacred nights
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world”

If I had known it was going to be this good, I would have retired in my twenties.

“We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout.”

 

“We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout.”

That was on a cold January day in the front parlor of a Justice of the Peace 45 years ago. She was 21, I would turn 30 some eight days later.

We immediately moved to a shack on 38 remote acres of Ohio woodland. A gift from my brother and commuting distance to Ohio University. Our closest neighbor was a half mile away, living and raising her brood in a Tepee.

On that birthday night, my brother generously offered to buy us a lobster dinner to celebrate. We were to meet in town. But Carla and I had never lived together before, so I learned my first lesson in “Carla time”. Things happen when all the stars align for her, but not until then. Our 7pm dinner became, 8, 9, …maybe tomorrow.

I crashed.

At 3am, she woke me up to present the birthday cake she made for me. No easy task with a broken-down antique wood stove that had been converted to propane. The tank outside leaned drunkenly up against the front stoop.

No pluming or running water.

More like a bread bowl with a liquid center than cake, but in the middle of the night, with my bride of eight days, that thing tasted like euphoria.

It was better than any lobster dinner could ever be.

I hadn’t been looking for Betty Crocker or a maid. Actually, I hadn’t been looking at all. But along came this girl. So quick and bright, totally out-of-the box, the author of long articulate letters back and forth before we married.

I was powerless.

In his song “Galway Girl”, Steve Earl asks: “what's a fella to do?

Because her hair was black and her eyes were blue”

It’s like that, only with Carla it was freckles on her knees and hair that smelled Ivory soap.

Family Ties...

 

2021

I try to please her most of the time, but it's not enough. Her need is more visceral, deeply imbedded by shared DNA.

Best I can do is to take her to the source of her longing, watch her drink deeply of that linear connection, past, present, and most importantly, future.

Carla's active mind drives her too hard, too fast. Exits and opportunities blur. But not here, not now.

These peak moments allow her to pause and be present, completed by a human connection as old as our species itself, a bond that answers all questions of purpose and path.

Peace.

Thanksgiving Morning

 At 9am, this four-olive bloody Mary assures me of getting the healthy breakfast I need… packed with liquified vegetables, it's hard to beat. (Yes, Hannah, I went to the gym first.)

Two is better than one. Eight olives. Like them, I’m stuffed!

Later today, the club will deep fry 20-30 turkeys for people who booked a space on the sign-up sheet. Then at 3 o'clock they’ll serve a full turkey dinner for any AMVETS members who want one.

Carla is working eight hours today, gets an hour off from 5 to 6 tonight, and then she goes for 24 hours straight at a different job. So I'm coming back this afternoon to get a to-go box.

We’ll have a nice sit-down 20-minute Styrofoam Thanksgiving dinner together.

And yes, I’m very thankful!

 

 

Mexican Turkey

 

Apparently, turkey tastes better there. Maybe it’s the water but let’s hope not. Given the news of increasing cartel activity with heads stacked neatly in pyramids pointing the way to the snow cone machine, I expressed concern. Ruth assured me that the resort where they were staying had long ago been leeched clean of the slightest hint of cultural relevance. Zero Spanish would be spoken, and the kids would learn nothing new to expand their worlds, other than the quickest path to the waterslide.

 

The Meaning of Life...

 

 The meaning of life…

We are born in bumper cars, bump into stuff randomly for 70-80 years if we’re lucky, and then the power shuts off.

The end.

 

 

 

 

Billy the Fisherman/Perfection in a Bowl...

 

Perfection is the goal; balance is the key. Everything seeks balance: the moon and stars, opposing magnetic poles, heat sufficient to melt mountains squaring off with a deadly frigidity of space, the salinity of our oceans and our cells, a swirling interplay among all ingredients of our lives stirred up in a bowl.

Our physical and psychological well-being teetering on a balance beam.

Perfect moments can reveal themselves in the unfolding dawn of a new Spring Day…as the retreating chill of night cooled breezes are banished by sunbeams that stab eyes and recharge exposed skin.

I look for balance, perfection, somewhere in every moment I’m given, if for no other reason than the reassurance that it’s out there.

Then along comes Billy the Fisherman with his generous gift, a container of his much-acclaimed fish chowder.

An all too rare example of perfect gastronomic balance.

Much more than just a bowl of warm soup. The pyromaniac sun rising in the East lights scarlet fires in the hair of a distant tree line as I break my fast among the gods of balance… with perfection itself steaming promise up to me from an oversized ceramic mug.

Many thanks to Billy the Fisherman for reminding me once again, that perfection wears many faces, all most welcome.

 

 

Dental Sadism...

 

3 hours in the chair, using a drill bit on loan from a defunct mining company in Oklahoma...go deep... just to see if we can make the pulp scream.

Conjures bad memories from kid-hood.

That long-ago dentist trained under Dr. Mengele. He hurt me on a regular basis. I believe he enjoyed it.

When I asked him about Novocain, he said: “that's fine for the little ladies”.

I made a mental note to wear a skirt next time.  

Some kind of gender shaming going on there. It's like when Carla and I go to a steak place and they ask me if I want the King cut or the Queen?  What the heck do they expect most men to say…even if they secretly want the smaller portion? Manly men huff up and act like for them, the King is the only possibility.

Not falling for it, I ask: “Is there a petite queen cut? Something cute?”

Yes, I would like to have a steak, but it doesn’t matter. I’m only drinking my meals today anyway.

Where’s Danny Akroyd’s Bass-O-Matic when I could really use one… to make a nice grilled sirloin smoothie?

Swingers...

 

A small, brown web-spinner swings ever so slightly on her trapeze, dangling in midair under my toothbrush holder, a resident there since we moved into this house, some 16 years ago. Today’s performer I assume to be a great, great, great of the one I spotted way back then. Still in the same place, swinging.

There’s a growing pile of tiny exoskeletons on the pink Formica surface beneath her…ant, silverfish, mosquito, gnat…all sucked dry like a flattened juice pack, but I still wanted to be assured that she was well fed.

Plugging in a night light adjacent to her trapeze did the trick. A beacon in the dark, it attracts the gnats and other miniscule, winged roast beef sandwiches and leg of lamb dinners she thrives on.

That was two weeks ago.

Now there are three little brown web-spinners hanging from the toothbrush holder, doing their ariel dances, trying to outperform each other, and only coming down from their high wires to suck on a still struggling juice pack or two.

In the morning, I check in, say “hello” to the girls, brush my teeth and leave, noting that as I turn off the bathroom light, the night light turns on simultaneously.  It becomes the marquee, for an all-night diner, illuminating a dark road, calling in weary travelers who don’t realize until it’s too late, that they themselves are what’s for dinner.

Doggie Daze...

 

That big mound they're lying on is actually a human stomach, their faces about 4 inches from mine.

Bored with my questions, but listening intently for keywords,
I ask: OK girls, who wants a bath? (No response)
How about a nice breakfast of fresh lettuce with mushrooms? (Blank)
Want to watch me read a book? (A what?)
Talk politics? (Who has ticks?)

As far as food goes though, you both look like you're full and wouldn't be interested in having a TREAT...

DING DING DING…

"He said the word! TREAT!" they scream in unison, as both launch themselves off of my stomach down to the floor and into the kitchen, to sit at attention under the cabinet that holds the bag of “Beggin Strips”.

Thirty seconds of frenzied excitement. Now only 14 hours of staring at me before bedtime. 

The Amazing David Lindley

 

A lifelong aversion to crowds trumped my desire see many favorite artists back in the day, but a handful still managed to get me out. Gordon Lightfoot, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, and my main man, Jackson Browne. All in their prime when I saw them. But as great as he is, Jackson Brown wasn’t Jackson Browne without the amazing David Lindley. His lap steel channeled an angel choir in perfect harmony. Beauty so pure it can only be experienced, words fail.

Meriweather Post Pavilion in 1977 was one of those nights for me. Jackson was recording live for his “Running on Empty” album. He had been breathing new life into the Maurice Williams classic “Stay” and when it came time for the famous “Oh won’t you stay…” high vocal, everyone assumed the voice coming from the stage to be that of Rosemary Butler, Jackson’s blond powerhouse background singer at the time.

But it wasn’t.

It took a few seconds for the crowd to realize that the incredible falsetto was coming from the little gnome with hair down to his knees, now front and center…the incomparable David Lindley.

Cheers and applause came with appreciative cries of “It’s David Lindley! Yea David!” We all knew and loved his musicianship, but this singing gig was out of left field. Of course, he aced it.

It gave me a rare, indelible peak moment that many people who actually go to concerts must be familiar with but felt familiar, something of a flashback. I remembered the scene from the “Little Rascals” take on Romeo and Juliet. Alfalfa called up to the balcony, “Juliet, my Juliet, wherefor art thou?” Darla was expected to show up but she had refused the scene because Alfalfa had been eating onions. So up popped Buckwheat with “Here I is!” After a delayed double take the crowd went crazy, yelling and pointing “It’s Buckwheat! Hooray for Buckwheat!”

That's how it was with David.

I wrote a little story about it, sending it to David Lindley’s e-mail address. Within a few days, David’s wife, Joan, sent me back a note letting me know that she had read my story to the entire band when they were all gathered around her large kitchen table. Much appreciated, she said everyone laughed and applauded.

Made my day.

RIP to my favorite musician, who worked with many of my favorite artists, people like Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Warren Zevon, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Crosby, Nash, James Taylor, Dolly Parton…

Still alive and well in the cloud, I’m listening to David’s music this morning. "For Everyman", "Late for the Sky", "Running on Empty," and one of the best albums on the planet if you want to kick it up a notch or 12, David Lindley El Rayo-X.

I am forever grateful for his brilliance.

 

The Runner...

 

With a song as old as time itself, the canopy choir greeted a summer squall with the increasing psithurism of a thousand woody arms embracing overhead.

Breaking out into open fields, the runner filled his lungs with a delicious petrichor of new rain as sunshine turned puddles into a thousand pieces of shattered mirror strewn out before him, a diamond path flashing fun-house rainbows on his way back home.

O’Steen’s

 

 A mix of locals and tourists have been queueing up, sitting under the awning on that long wooden bench outside, for more than 50 years. Not the same people for that long mind you, but sometimes when Carla insists that we wait, it feels that way to me.

Not equipped with a “let's get in line and wait” gene, I always want to go eat somewhere else when the line is too long. John Wayne and Elvis could come back to earth, happy to autograph 8 x10 glossies for the crowd. I wouldn’t wait in line.  For Carla though, there’s that antique/junk store next door so we wait.

Well, I wait while she goes inside and touches absolutely everything in the place, especially the stuff with the “Do Not Touch” signs.

She makes me stay, unswayed by my petulance, as she dances joyfully off to bond with all the same kind of old and interesting (junk) that is already stuffed into every corner of our house.

Sooner than expected, the hostess calls out our name over the speaker system. It’s even wired into the antique store. Smart. Diners browse, maybe buy something, waiting to hear their names called out. Win-win.

On our first visit some 40 years ago, I balked. No booths. No beer. Cash only. Spotting another diner under the age of 40 is rare. Sometimes it seems like an oxygen tank and three-headed cane may be part of the required dress code.

There’s a good reason for that though. The older crowd no longer care about the trappings, the “cool” factor has no relevance. What does?

Great food at a great price. Good service with a smile.

The best “home cooking” in town. Want some crunchy perfect fried chicken? Maybe a big slice of meatloaf with gravy? Try the daily specials. The big draw for all these years though has been the lightly fried local shrimp. Butterflied, hot, awesome. You want 9 or 12? Some pink sauce with a dash of Datil heat?

Carla and I split the 24 platter, the best deal.

It's simple, really. I’m 74 now and no longer care much about the beer, booth, music, or the cool factor nearly as much as I care about reliably outstanding Southern style food, at a fair price.

Oh, and Osteen’s has always had the best staff as well. Long time waitresses we’ve seen dozens of times. Been there forever. (Must be a good place to work.)

Ready with cash, we carry our Styrofoam treasure up to the cashier. Eternally cheerful, concerned to know that everything was up to par. It is.  She beams. Actually, always more than up to par.

We walk out, “God blessed” by the cashier.

No longer pouting, happily stuffed with some of the best fried shrimp…anywhere. I leave the Styrofoam out on the kitchen counter, looking forward to more of the same later in the day.

My wife is wonderful. She makes me do stuff I never want to, stuff that I insist I won’t do. Then I’m always happy that I did. How does she know?

Carla hugs the sunny cashier when we leave. Funny that something so totally out of character for me and so natural for her, makes me smile inexplicably like the Cheshire cat every time I remember it. 

If you haven’t been to the fort, walked St George Street, and eaten at O’Steen’s… you’ve never been to St Augustine.

Dawn on Moultrie Creek

 

Dawn on Moultrie Creek

Spoonbills shuffle like old men staring at their feet,

swaying side-to-side, bent in concentration.

First sunlight cuts sharply across brackish water,

illuminating the small flock,

like so many pieces of rose quartz mounted on cane

poles.

Customer Service

 

For the last twenty years, before retirement, I worked for one homebuilder or another. A Realtor, my job was to meet and greet customers who came into our model homes. Answer questions, provide information, give a tour, build credibility…all that stuff.

Although I’ve always prided myself on being able to engage with people from many backgrounds making the experience all about them, not everyone wanted to hear it, or anything else.

As with any kind of customer service position, certain behaviors stand out. Some people seemed to think it was cute for their kids to run around screaming, using the beds as trampolines.

I used restraint in handling it.

Some ladies apparently thought the extra toilet paper they found in our bathroom cabinets was free for them to take home for their own bathrooms.

Again, I used restraint when I would see it sticking out of a handbag as they exited.

A family of very large people with six big kids who came in right after an AUCE breakfast at Shoney’s, lumbering through the house like a swarm of locust. They used every bathroom, brushing aside the “Do Not Use” signs I carefully placed on the top of each toilet seat. Only one bathroom is set up with tissue, soap and towels for public use.

I showed restraint.

A bath towel I found weeks later, still folded neatly over the tub rim, held large chunks of excrement on the inside. Nice.

One guy was checking out our refrigerator, a brand we showcased. But when I walked into the kitchen, he was standing inside the fridge, browsing the shelves, with both doors flanking him as he slowly chewed on one half of my tuna sub.

Much as I wanted to use the bowl of fake fruit sitting there next to the sink to make the back of his head look like a watermelon dropped in the driveway, I didn’t.

I used restraint and politely told him that it was my lunch and that we, as a builder, do not stock the refrigerators in our model homes with food for customers. Nor does my company buy lunch for any of us. I bought that sub myself at Publix on my way into work. Told him he was welcome to one of the 50 bottles of cold water though. They were the ones with a sign that said, “Help Yourself”, unlike my sub which had been hidden in the back of the produce drawer.

Frequently over the years, I’ve shown great restraint. Generally, customers were polite, and we all had a good time.

After so many years of pent-up restraint, a cathartic visit happened on one of my last days working in a model home, before Covid made retirement a necessity.

An older couple came in to browse. In their sixties, they lived up North and their 20-year-old daughter had recently moved out of the house. They speculated that maybe they would downsize and move to Florida.

The lady's attitude problem was instantly apparent. She had a face like she smelled poop in every room we toured. Nothing was good enough. She was used to much greater, finer things. Although I pointed out the wide variety of customized options to give her what she wanted, her bottom line was that our offerings simply wouldn’t do. Everything was distasteful, beneath her high standards.

They would have to sell their home up North; they weren’t able to afford two houses. She knew it probably wouldn’t sell for what they wanted though, because “people don’t appreciate quality”.

I finally got to the point of suggesting “perhaps we aren’t the builder for you.” as I did when there was no pleasing the customer. That “take-away” often got customers to back up and show real interest if there was any there in the first place.

Not with her.

After about an hour of her negativity I chimed in with: “Well, you say you never see your daughter but if you moved to Florida, she would probably be knocking on your door before you even got unpacked! Young people love the beaches, surfing, all that stuff!”

With that, the woman insisted that their daughter was an ingrate, didn’t care about them at all, and doubted that she would ever visit.

Her sour face permanently frozen into a sneer, she looked at me for a sign of agreement that her daughter was way off base, one of the younger generation who don’t respect and value their parents, as all kids should.

I knew ten minutes in that these people weren’t buyers anyway and that there was nothing in this world that would or could please that sour prune of a lady, not one of our houses, not her long-suffering husband and certainly not her estranged daughter.

Still staring at me for confirmation that her daughter must be a bad one, she again asked “Why wouldn’t any decent daughter come visit her mother?”

I couldn’t help myself in replying: “Perhaps it’s because you are such an abysmally unpleasant and negative person to be around?”

I didn’t add: Unsmiling, judgmental, and demeaning. You carry a cloud of negativity, and the look of smelling poop is permanently frozen into your face. You act like nothing is good enough for your millionaire ways, but dress in Walmart bargain specials and drive a car crushed on one side. If I were your daughter, I would have left long ago.

I used restraint. No need to overdo it.

The woman was stunned silent, her husband working hard to repress a smile, causing him to turn away so she wouldn’t see it.

I doubt that lady is smiling today, wherever she is, she is unhappy…but the memory of that particular day, makes me grin like the Cheshire cat.

 

Spoonbill Shuffle

 

Spoonbills shuffle like old men staring at their feet,

swaying side-to-side, bent with concentration.

First sunlight cuts sharply across brackish water,

illuminating the small flock,

like so many pieces of rose quartz mounted on cane

poles.