Dr. Metablog

A Scene from my Youth

 
This Here is a photograph of Coney Island Avenue, the grim commercial thoroughfare along which I crept to school unwillingly like snail between the years 1944 and 1952. The unknown photographer who left us this record stood at the corner of Newkirk Avenue, just in front of the P. S. 217 schoolyard, and pointed his camera north toward Ditmas Avenue. It's the east side of the street; on the west side stood a used-car lot and a gas station, where, if the view were more panoramic, signs reading "Veedol" and "Mechanic on Duty" would have been visible.

It takes only a few seconds of detective work to date the photograph. In the center is the marquee of the Leader Theater, which advertises the 1947 release It Happened in Brooklyn, a soldier-returns-home musical with Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Peter Lawford, and especially Jimmy Durante, who was clearly the neighborhood favorite.  The second feature, Undercover Maisie, a policier with Ann Sothern and Barry Nelson, was released in the same year. (The double bill was standard -- and at 14 cents for kids and a quarter for adults, a darn good value). It's early autumn not only because the ivy and, in the distance, a Norway maple are still in full leaf, but because the Casa del Rey advertises High Holy Day services (the orthodox congregation's synagogue on 18th Avenue had not yet been constructed). I would guess that the large traffic sign that dominates the frame has something to do with the fact that the old trolley tracks had recently been removed. The shops near the Leader are too small to identify, but I remember Singer's drug store, Safier's candy store, a shoe repair place, a small liquor store owned by P. V. Melia, and Joe Montuori's barber shop.  At the moment the camera snapped, I was eight years old, in Mrs. Sherwood's third grade class at P. S. 217. 

The architecture is hodge-podge -- the featureless apartment house and shops, the vaguely deco Leader, and then, closer to the camera, the what-the-heck-is-it-doing-there Moorish Casa del Rey (for weddings and other gatherings;  I passed it thousands of times but never once entered).

The man at the right of the frame, jingling his car keys in the pocket of his voluminous slacks, stares at the camera unenthusiastically.

It's a dreary picture, I'm afraid. Gray. A nondescript street in a nondescript neighborhood.   

I'm trying, but I just can't seem to work up the requisite nostalgia for the old country. 

No Words, No Words? Hush.

A few nights ago, I attended a performance by our local treasure, the ever-glorious Takacs Quartet. Without asking my leave, they chose to play works by Aarvo Part and Philip Glass. I suppose that there must be virtues to "minimalist" music, but a single motif played over and over again in the same tempo, with the same unvarying dynamics, and in the same non-key -- what's the point? Music without melody, harmony, or rhythm is like a novel without a plot or like a severely abstract painting. Sorry folks, I'm antediluvian. A relic. I want a story and I want it dressed in rhyme and meter. It's exhilaration that I crave, not forty-five long minutes of total ripvanwinkleization.      

I was already in a sulky mood at the intermission when Mr. and Mrs. Talkative behind me, after gushing over the minimalists, directed their intellects toward Shakespeare. Mrs T. announced, "You don't need to read a Shakespeare play before seeing it. Just read a plot summary so that you know what's happening." Mr. T. agreed:  "Absolutely. Going to the theater is all about the costumes and the set and the business. As long as you have a general idea of the story, you don't need to understand the words."   

No need to understand Shakespeare's words?  Go to the theater and ignore the words of the finest poet in human history?  What are the Talkatives thinking?  The costumes are the work of the costumer; the business is the work of the director and the stage designer. The only part of the performance that is Shakespeare's is the language. 

One of the teachers of my youth, the late and much lamented Alfred Harbage  -- the finest Shakespeare scholar of his generation -- used to say that he didn't care what the actors did on stage as long as he could hear the words.  I'm not nearly so tolerant. I don't want Rosiland and Orlando to send email messages to each other -- I want them to articulate. I don't want Cinna and Metullus Cimber to be dressed as blackshirt fascist thugs. And I certainly don't want Snug and Bottom to ride to the Duke's Oak on motorcycles. Such antics are stupid and distracting.

The performance for which I'd pay a premium price is one at the Theatre, or at the old Globe, or at the Blackfriars during the years when Shakespeare was teaching the parts to Burbage and Hemmings and Kemp. Dollars to doughnuts he insisted that the actors pronounce the words distinctly.   

After the grating intermission, the Talkatives ran out of insights and my indignation began to wane. Eventually Ed, Andras, Karoly and Gerry returned to the stage and played one of Haydn's great Opus 76 quartets. It was transcendent -- melodic, intelligent and intelligible, warm, robust and sensuous. It was music.   

Tolstoi's Moth

A third of the way through Anna Karenina -- the finest novel in this or any other universe -- Anna's deceived husband Karenin reluctantly brings himself to consult with a famous divorce lawyer.

The lawyer was short, stocky, and bald, with a dark, reddish beard, long light eyebrows, and a bulging forehead.  He was dressed like a bridegroom, from his cravat and double watch chain to his patent leather boots.  He had a clever, rustic face, but his clothes were dandified and in poor taste....  Won't you sit down?"  He indicated an armchair beside a writing desk covered with papers, and sat down himself behind the desk, rubbing together his little hands with their short fingers overgrown with fair hairs, and leaning his head over to one side. 

The lawyer's "clever rustic face" is the tipoff that he's of peasant origin and probably only a generation or two away from scythe and flail. With his pretentious get-up and his bulging forehead and his stubby hirsute fingers, he is repulsive, even brutish. O, the indignity of it all -- an aristocrat like Karenin having to seek help from such a pretentious upstart!

And there's worse. The lawyer is not only a social-climber; he's also a ruthless opportunist.      

He had just settled into this pose when a moth flew over the table:  with a rapidity it would have been impossible to expect, the lawyer unlocked his hands, caught the moth, and again assumed his previous posture. 

I would not want to assert that Karenin is precisely a moth. Nevertheless, Tolstoi certainly suggests that, given half a chance, the lawyer would not hesitate to strip his client's wings. It's clear that the awkward relations between the lawyer (whom Tolstoi never even bothers to name) and Karenin are governed by centuries of master-serf antagonism and by the prospect of revenge. 

Tolstoi quickly brings this episode to a close and never brings the lawyer back on stage. But he lets him exit exultantly.

He bowed deferentially, showing his client out the door. But once he was alone, he abandoned himself to his glee. 

Our lawyer now decides that it is time to give up moth-catching.  Instead,

he had definitely made up his mind to have his furniture reupholstered in plush the following winter, like Sigonin's. 

The dog-eat-dog lawyer is convinced that he can transform Karenin's distress into hard cash. The fees, which he savors prematurely, will allow him to catch up with his rival.

The world of Anna Karenina is both tough and unsentimental -- and revealed with great economy by its accomplished creator. It's a long novel, but packed with significance, every rift loaded with rich shining ore.  olstoi takes on all the great perennial and nineteenth-century issues -- class, wealth, family, labor, spirituality, city and country, science, women's rights, royalty and democracy, agricultural reform, bureaucracy, sexuality, etc. -- but he still manages to extract significance even from the lowly, Czarist moth.      

It had been thirty years since I re-read Anna Karenina. Now I've resolved to make it at least a biennial event. It's too astonishing a novel to let lie fallow.

Wild Turkeys in My Garden

Even a decade ago, wild turkeys were an utmost rarity, and the sight of one in the distance caused everyone to stop and peer. But each succeeding year, there are more and more of them. They're everywhere -- on the roads, in the fields, even under the apple trees, gorging themselves. Last week, a hen and a dozen poults walked bold as brass right up onto our front lawn, ten feet from the deck.  Didn't even bother to hasten away -- took their own sweet time wandering off.

I don't believe that turkeys were native to Vermont, but it's well known that since the reintroduction, they've expanded well beyond their former range. They're adaptable and wily creatures.

The domestic turkey is legendarily stupid. Its brains have waned as its breasts have waxed. The wild turkey, on the other hand, is smart, though given to occasional lapses. Sometimes the hen leads her brood through the woven wire fences. She knows the route, but one or two of the poults will find themselves barricaded from the flock. They set up a wail. The flock comes to a nervous halt. After a while, the spectator -- me -- can't endure the tension. I slowly head over to see what I can do, trying not to alarm the lost fowl -- whereupon the poults suddenly remember that they know how to fly. Unlike their domestic cousins, they're strong fliers. They clear the fences with ease.

I now understand a few words of Turkeyish. The male gobble: "I am very large and handsome; come mate with me."  The poult peep: "I'm lost.  Where is everyone." The hen cluck: "Come along with me." The double cluck: "Everyone fly into the trees."

Here's what worries me. Every year there are more and more turkeys. Even the hunters can't keep up with the population explosion. Will the turkeys turn into a rural version of pigeon? Overrun our gardens and fields? 

Where are the fisher-cats, the foxes, the coyotes, the hawks?  Get to work, guys. While turkeys are not exactly sitting ducks, they're still very tasty.   

Cuisine de Minnesota

The Ranch Restaurant (family-owned, not a chain) in Rochester, Minnesota offered a splendid salad bar. In addition to the conventional fare (greens, onions, tomatoes, peppers, etc.), there were some items that were distinctly regional: herring in wine sauce, baked beans, cherry jello topped with whipped cream, chocolate pudding and also Watergate Salad.

Watergate Salad, new to me I must confess, is a melange of pistachio pie filling, mini-marshmallows, canned pineapple chunks (with syrup), pecans, and Cool-Whip. Here's a question for those who are expert in Minnesotan fine dining: is your Watergate Salad best eaten with or without herring?

Our waiter at The Ranch, asked whether the tomato soup was prepared with cream, replied, "It's a tomato biscuit with peas and stuff in it." He was slightly off the mark: lots of stuff in the bisque but alas no peas. 

Why I Hate Machines

So I've been trying, by god, to figure out why the riding mower has been cutting on an angle, the right side leaving the grass higher than the left, and I've been crawling under the machine looking at the cutting deck from all angles and not able to understand the mechanism except it's obvious that it's not parallel to the ground, and my neighbor Ed was by and he's kind of a genius with machinery which I most definitely am not, and I said to him, Ed would you take look and see why the mower is cutting at an angle and he said, Well, here's one problem your left rear tire is flat which made me feel really dumb because I was so busy trying to understand the suspension system on the deck that I never even looked at the tire and I said, Flat, how can it be flat, I never run it anywhere but over the grass and he said, Well, look right there it's got a thorn in it, A thorn, I said, how can a thorn penetrate a Carlyle Super Tuff tire, and he said, Oh yeah they do that, but I can fix it, I'm busy today but I'll do it tomorrow I have a system you just push through what looks like knitting needle with sticky stuff on the end and pull it out, it will seal it right up, it's a tubeless tire isn't it? and I said Yes it is, and if you could fix it tomorrow that would be great, well next day he took the tire and tried it his way but he couldn't get it to hold air so he says Take it down to PTOs and they'll patch it from the inside, so I put it in the trunk of the car and drove to town and they fixed it and then I put it back on the axle, it has three small washers and one large washer and one of those spring nuts and I started the engine but by god the mower wouldn't move and I thought what the heck is going on here, I put everything back exactly as it came off and it was running just fine when I took it off so what could I possibly be doing wrong, I took the wheel off and put it on again and I still couldn't figure it out so I got in the car and drove over to Ed's, he was cutting wood but he stopped and I said, Ed, what's wrong with that lamb, why do you have him penned up all by himself and he said, you know how the lambs are always butting heads and pushing each other around, well I went out in the field and he was down, couldn't move a bit, so I took him home and I don't know whether his brains are addled or he's really hurt, I thought we'd better have him slaughtered but you can see he's doing better, getting up and eating so we'll hold off a day, and I said maybe he has a bad back like me, and he said, No, he's too young for a bad back, so I said, Well, maybe he has vertigo like you, which is not all that funny because Ed lost a week to vertigo last June, and he kind of laughed and said, Well, is your mower working now, and I said, Not exactly, the engine's fine and the belt turns but it's not moving frontwards or backwards and he said, How can that be, I'll come over and take a look so later that day he came by and sure enough it wouldn't move, so we took off the wheel again and studied it but I certainly couldn't figure it out and he couldn't either, everything looked good and perfect, we puzzled over it for a while and then he called the John Deere dealer in North Haverhill and the technician said maybe you lost the key when you took off the wheel and Ed said, O yes of course, we must have lost the key, I didn't think of that, and I said What the heck is the key and he said Well, in a lot of these machines the axle is broached which means there's a slot in it and a slot in the wheel and you have to have a key which is just a small piece of metal otherwise the axle will spin but the wheel won't rotate, so we looked all around for the lost key but couldn't find it and then Ed said, Look at your tire they didn't even mount it right, it's out of round, you'd better bring it back in and while you're there check if the key is in the shop somewhere, it might have stuck in the wheel because of the grease, so I took the wheel and put it in the trunk and drove back to PTOs and showed him that the tire was out of round, the owner was embarrassed about the bad job he had done and wouldn't even look me in the eye but he re-mounted the tire and when he finished I said, By the way, you didn't happen to find the key I lost it, and he said I'll look inside but he couldn't find it, so he said I'll make you another one which was nice of him though the key is only at most a 50 cent piece but it saved me from having to go to Napa Auto Parts or drive 30 minutes to North Haverhill to the John Deere dealer, so he made the part it took him only a couple of minutes, he had the stock he just had to cut and file a two inch piece, I brought it home and I put the key in the slot and put the wheel on, I had to use a board for a lever to get the rear of the mower up in the air and it was tricky because I held the board with my right hand and the wheel in the left but I managed alright and then I got on the tractor and started the engine and everything worked perfectly except that the tractor still wouldn't go either forward or backward, I took the wheel off and put it on again, but it still wouldn't work, so I walked over to Ed's and I said, Ed, I can't for the life of me figure it out, I got the key and it fit just perfectly but the machine still doesn't move, and he said It's got to work, it makes perfect sense, I said, Hey look, your lamb looks a lot better but why did you put a hog panel across your driveway, he said It's because of the dog, he's been getting out, tomorrow he's going to be snipped and that will quiet him down a bit, which is a good idea because the dog is far too friendly even to me and I don't particularly like the dog, he's a beagle mix, not as bad as their other dog which was a rescue dog a bulldog, very ugly in my opinion, which also got out and trotted over to the pottery down the road where he was  seen running off with the Murrays' Silkie in his mouth, a Silkie is a fancy chicken, they charged Ed a hundred and sixty dollars for vet bills and mental anguish, the chicken died anyway, so Ed got out his rifle and shot the bulldog and then dug a hole four feet deep, he said that all the way down it was nothing but powder, it's been that dry the last few weeks, anyway Ed came by again and we tried the machine and it wouldn't go forward or backward and I was about to surrender and load up the damn thing and take it back to the dealer when we lifted both back wheels off the ground and suddenly the axle which hadn't been turning even though the belt had been turning started to spin, it must have been something about the gears that didn't mesh properly anyway we put the wheel back on again and I started it up and by god it ran as good as ever but I had wasted a whole day fussing with the mower just because it had picked up a goddamn thorn probably blackberry which is in brief why I hate machines