Wednesday, November 30, 2005

 

Advice for Over-Privileged Assholes

I have read several essays in major publications on how to get your kid into a good kindergarten. I thought they were fucking kidding but they were dead serious. I guess it is up to me to take a dump on this topic.

It’s time to start looking for a school for your child. I don’t mean to point out the obvious but you really should have started looking when the kid was two years old, but you screwed around and waited until he only has two years before kindergarten. Most responsible parents these days start filling out applications to competitive schools once they get a sonogram or as soon as the paper turns blue on the pregnancy test. You may have procrastinated and screwed up your child’s entire future. Let’s face it, if your kid doesn’t get into the right kindergarten you may as well send them to a training academy for janitors or lunch ladies.

If you were only able to get your child into a second-tier kindergarten there is no need to panic. All you have to do is put that child up for adoption, learn from this mistake, and start over with another baby. If you have become “too attached” to this child to relinquish it, you may consider keeping it as an employee in some domestic capacity, say as a maid or gardener. Let’s be honest with one another, even though your second choice of kindergarten costs $35,000 a year plus supplies, the only thing your child will be fit for in life will be manual labor and he or she will surely be a complete disgrace to your family name.

Since 1997 the Hillsboro Academy has been preparing five year olds for some of the most prestigious first grades in the country. The Hillsboro Academy has recently unveiled a pre-coital registration program in which couples can put their child on a waiting list (along with making a sizeable deposit) even before they have had conception-inducing sex. Registration contracts stipulate that only a partial refund is available if there happens to be something too good on television that night to have sex.

If this whole process seems too daunting, there is another option available to prospective parents. Instead of the traditional process of having a child of your own, scratching and clawing to get that kid into a succession of ever more expensive schools which may or may not culminate in producing an offspring you would be proud to call your own, if this seems just “too much” then there is a new service for you. At My Son the Doctor Adoption Agency you can chose from an array of accomplished adults. All candidates for adoption are licensed physicians from leading medical schools, a fact which relieves you from suffering all the usual anxieties of over-bearing parents. At a cost of only $500,000, the My Son the Doctor adoption process will save you a fortune over raising your own doctor from scratch. The bond between you and your adopted doctor will be so authentic that your adult child will want to have nothing to do with you, just like in traditional families.

In America today the most unimaginable nightmare in the realm of childrearing involves sending your kid to a public school. If you believe what is printed in major magazines about the urgency of matriculating your child in only the most elite academies, the public school system is one step below selling your offspring into white slavery or enrolling them in a gladiator academy. You may as well change your baby’s name from Wilson to Spartacus if all you have planned for him is a public school education.

If you choose to send your child to a public school you are setting them up for failure in life. If your child attends a public school how will he learn to cross over to the other side of the street when being approached by a minority? What if they actually become friends with someone of a different ethnic background? We all have nothing against African-Americans as long as they are famous or rich or both, but tolerance can only be pushed so far. I mean, it’s cool to be enlightened these days, but it’s kind of going overboard if your kid brings home a minority playmate.

12:30 AM

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Monday, November 28, 2005

 

There is nothing funny about Hitler, or is there?

Where do you draw the line with comedy? At what point would you consider that someone has gone “too far” in the pursuit of a laugh? Of course, everyone has their own ideas about what is out of bounds in humor, everyone has different standards, but can we all agree on a few basic topics that are forbidden? It would be extremely difficult to come up with a universally agreed-upon set of standards in the realm of humor. Would it be possible to insure that not a single American be offended by any of the offerings produced by the vast humor industrial complex operating in this country? I think that we owe it to ourselves to try.

How about Hitler? Does anyone have an argument against banning history’s absolute biggest prick from being employed in the attempt to get a cheap laugh? My initial instinct, my knee-jerk response is to say that in deference to the millions of victims of his terrible reign of terror, Hitler should be a forbidden subject of gags, limericks, knock-knock jokes, sit-coms, funny greeting cards, and humorous anecdotes of any sort. I’m glad we could all agree on that one.

But think about this for a minute. I don’t think that I will get any argument when I say that Jewish people make up an extremely disproportionate share of comedians. Now take a situation in which millions of Jewish people were being persecuted by just about the silliest-looking fucker in history and you just have to believe that there were a lots of Fürer jokes. And come to think of it, I also remember watching a Three Stooges episode when I was a kid in which Moe did a very convincing, and hilarious impersonation of that infamous Nazi shit heel. If I were to denounce that humorous portrayal of Mr. Hitler, wouldn’t I be guilty of rewriting comedy history? I am ashamed to say it but I can also remember a fairly funny joke having to do with Hitler and tequila. Let’s leave Hitler off the banned list for now.

In today’s newspaper there is an article about a consumer group warning parents of certain toys that pose a choking hazard or other dangers for children. Surely only a monster would consider as fair game for laughter a subject that involves over 210,000 emergency room visits for children annually. One of the products the consumer advocacy group mentioned was a toy guitar that could damage a child’s hearing because it puts out 117 decibels. If there were a child anywhere near me playing with a toy that put out 117 decibels, the last thing you would have to worry about would be the kid’s hearing—unless the child’s hearing could somehow be damaged by me smashing the guitar repeatedly over his head. I don’t think there is a court in this country that would convict me of any wrongdoing, and they would probably get a chuckle out of hearing that story. A jury of my peers probably wouldn’t object if I had also gone after the parents for providing their child with such an incredibly obnoxious toy.

Finding subject matter that is totally taboo to everyone is harder than I thought. Something that I find particularly heinous is anyone who finds humor in the day-to-day cute things that kids say and do, but Family Circus is one of the most beloved comic strips in America, so what do I know? Something even more unpardonable for me would be someone who cuts a Family Circus panel out of the paper in order to show it to coworkers around the office. To me, that violates all standards of human decency. I am also horribly offended by the canned laughter used in television situation comedies, but I seem to be in the minority on this issue and so will remain silent.

I will close this essay with the issue unresolved. Until we come to some kind of agreement all of you sick minds out there go ahead and make jokes about handicapped kids, 9/11, Princess Di’s premature demise, dying Popes, dead babies, Helen Keller, necrophilia, leprosy, and the glory hole in Michael Jackson’s bathroom stall. It’s open season on everything. Happy hunting.

Labels: Humor

11:07 PM

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Saturday, November 26, 2005

 

CENTRALIA
A Novel

Chapter 15
Daybreak

“Get a life!” That used to be some sort of insulting exhortation. The suggestion was that you didn’t have a life yourself, you weren’t really living, and so you should start, henceforth, to get a life. I think that went out of the popular lexicon as quickly as it entered—thank God. But a few thoughts still linger. Is it improper to tell the guest of honor at a funeral to get a life? Is it vulgar to shout, “Get a life” at the top of your lungs while driving by a cemetery? Is driving your kids to soccer practice every night a life? How about working 9 to 5 every day until you retire and then fighting off life-threatening illnesses like a kid playing some morbid video game until one finally gets you, it that a life?

What kind of life was I supposed to get? I guess people meant that you should get the kind of life that celebrities have—whatever kind of life celebrities have, probably a life of endorsing products and posing for magazine covers. Did they mean a life of alcohol and drug abuse with failed attempts at rehabilitation? By “get a life” did that mean an endless cycle of marriage and divorce like the seasons, with talk show confessionals in between? From the scant attention that I paid to the personal lives of celebrities their lives seemed every bit as pointless as mine.

I wasn’t sure what a life was exactly, I just thought that I hadn’t had much of one up until now. Perhaps I was being too hard on myself in the past, but I felt that I was beginning to make some progress. I thought that I was headed in the right direction. I was beginning to understand that getting a life had nothing to do with ample free parking. I didn’t think “that new car smell” was important, or a faux antebellum mansion south of town, or a luxury cruise, or anything else that could be tacked on to a credit card with the interest compounded daily.

I wasn’t a celebrity and, barring any outrageously embarrassing personal misfortunes, I probably was going to remain a non-celebrity, which probably passes for a tremendous lack of ambition these days. Being famous has become the ultimate—and I sometimes think only—validation in our culture. It often doesn’t matter how shamefully you obtained the status of being well-known, being famous has become important simply for its own sake. It is getting so bad that the only voices that we are able to hear in our society are those of our celebrities. You have to make an effort to tune them out and hear the true voices of wisdom that flourish sometimes beneath the radar of popular culture.

If you have ever spent time on a sailboat you may have had the very good fortune to pass a rough night at sea. Of course, the good fortune is being able to talk about it in the past tense. It can be pretty terrifying to spend a night on a small sailboat in a storm. Perhaps you were sleeping soundly and were roused out of sleep to help the crew on watch. After struggling with your rain gear you have to make your way to the bow of the boat to take down a sail in the pounding rain. The ship pitches and rolls in the roiling sea beneath you that is as black as pitch.

I suppose that sailors become accustomed to these terrible nights but the first time can be extremely harrowing. Even if you are near the shore there are no beacons to be found, there is no comfort of a lighthouse. The night sky, absent of stars and moon, is as unfriendly and unfamiliar as the ocean. There seems to be no up or down, and there is definitely no horizon. You cling to a lifeline or hold the wheel and time passes more slowly than you have ever experienced.

Although cold and wet and blinded by torrents of rain, you still have a job to do which is the only comfort in these hours of early morning. But even in the worst of storms something miraculous happens: the day breaks. Whoever coined the term ‘daybreak’ must certainly have been a sailor. It is almost a cataclysmic event if the daybreak happens to correspond with a break in the storm. The day can come on like a tremendous bolt of lightening. In spite of our sophistication and all that has ushered into our lives, there is something about experiencing daybreak in this way that brings out a vestigial and primitive appreciation for the way the world works. I would imagine that before there was any understanding of the universe, our ancient ancestors felt this way upon seeing every new day.

As I made a few modest changes in my life I was beginning to feel like you do when you glimpse that first bolt of daybreak on the horizon. I had weathered a different type of storm, a different form of night. I was riding my bike to the Portofino Apartments to enjoy the calm of this daybreak in the courtyard. It was early morning, technically a little past daybreak, and Juan, Kate, Andy and Caroline had called to invite me over to join them as they sat around one of the patio tables sharing a pot of coffee.

If it seems that all that I was doing since I moved to the Village was sit around drinking beer, wine, tea, and coffee I guess that about sums our lives. It is just a part of innate human desire for sociability and if this is denied we probably become less human. Even when I was sitting somewhere by myself I didn’t feel alone.

I coasted to a stop on the other side of the wall of the courtyard and said hello to the breakfast party. As I was closing the gate behind me Kate practically shouted out to everyone, “Oh my God, look at the muscles on Chris’ legs!”

I hadn’t worn shorts in a long time but now that I was riding a bike very day they seemed to make more sense than the big baggy khakis I had used to hide myself. The truth is, before I was fat I used to be a bit of an athlete. I started running in high school and kept it up for several years until I started working in the office. I suppose that my legs were forced to retain some of their former muscularity just to haul around the rest of my fat self.

But talk about a thunder bolt, I can’t remember when a woman, any woman and this one happened to be beautiful, had commented favorably—out loud—about my body. I was so incredibly out of practice that I didn’t have any idea of how to respond except to pretend like I didn’t hear it. But I had heard it and it made me feel better than I had in a long time.

That was my daybreak, my wake-up call. I had gone so long feeling numb, without feeling anything, without feeling like a man that I guess that I got out of practice. I still had a long way to go but I felt like I had begun the whole “Get a life” project. It’s not as if I had spent my entire life adrift and directionless. There were many things that I had accomplished thus far that brought me to where I was now. I had just lost my way for a few years.

Instead of darkness I had been making my way through a blinding confusion of false beacons. This is the treacherous downside of the Information Age. Information is no longer precious; the profusion of information has made it infinitely accessible and trivial at the same time.

There was an age when an educated person could know everything that his culture had to offer. You could have read every book that had been written or recited every story or poem that your people had handed down over the centuries. Being a complete man could take on an almost literal sense. Of course, a culture in which a man could possess its entire learning would be unthinkably ignorant for even the most unsophisticated of modern men, but we can only wonder about the value of having a person with complete wisdom.

Now it is impossible to know everything there is to know abut a single subject. Ours is an age of specialization and many of us never venture out of our particular box of expertise. Our comfort of knowing as much as we can about our jobs often comes at the expense of an adequate understanding of art, literature, and music. These we have reduced to mere entertainments or distractions.

I don’t know any other way to put this but trying to live your life without a solid knowledge and appreciation for art, literature, and music is like trying to enjoy watching a sporting event without knowing the rules—you may enjoy it but you couldn’t possibly understand it. I had always tried to round out those areas of my life. I said that I was fat and ugly; I never said that I was stupid.

8:05 PM

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Monday, November 21, 2005

 

CENTRALIA
A Novel

Chapter 14
Living and Learning

Centralia isn’t a big town and it got a lot smaller for me when I moved to the house on Center Street. I began to recognize many of my neighbors, most of whom fell into two groups: those who had lived in this neighborhood all of their lives in the older homes built mostly around the beginning of the last century, and the newer residents that had moved here because the rents were usually lower than in the new housing developments on the outskirts of town. Many of the larger single family homes had been chopped up into multi-unit apartments. My place was built as a duplex in 1918.

Walking and bike riding put me into more situations in which I had to interact with the people in my neighborhood. When you walk or ride by someone on the street it’s almost impossible not to acknowledge them in some way. I found that I would see the same people out and about. When I rode my bike to work in the morning I would see an elderly couple waiting at the bus stop at First and Center. If I was forced to wait at a red light I would say hello to them—something you never do from inside an automobile.

I learned the names of the waitresses at the Main Street Diner. Juan and I went there 3-4 times a week, either for breakfast or dinner. The counter at the Main Street Diner became another one of the regular hangouts for people at the Portofino. The owner, John, always says that he isn’t out to make award-winning food; he just wants to have better food than most people are capable of making at home.

The wait staff plays whatever music they feel like listening to every day. Even if I don’t care for the songs they have picked out I always appreciate the fact that a person picked it out and it wasn’t something decided by a committee at the world headquarters. I’ve always thought about why it is that I can’t stand the ubiquitous canned music that you hear in chain stores and restaurants. It’s not that I don’t like the individual songs; it’s the fact that the random order at which they come at you completely drains them of any emotional impact. Without any emotional impact the songs are no longer music, they become decoration. An original song becomes like the cheap poster print of Van Gough’s Café de Nuit that adorns the fast food restaurant. Almost every time I go to the Main Street Diner I have to ask one of the waitresses about a song they are playing that I like.

When you think about it for more than one second it seems bizarre that someone would allow someone else living a thousand miles away to dictate the music played in their business. That’s a little like having a complete stranger choose the clothes you wear. This may sound like a minor issue until you remember that we are talking about music which is incredibly important. The corporate boardroom has always had a lot to say about the songs we listen to, there’s no reason to let them dictate when and where we listen to that music.

I get a kick out of the music selection of one of the younger waitresses. Claire is 22, I think. She will play music by Celia Cruz and Edith Piaf, Tony Bennet and The Glen Miller Orchestra, in other words, she only plays music that probably comes from her grandmother’s era. “My mom was some sort of hippie so I’ve had my share of rock and roll.”

Melissa is the oldest of the crew. She’s probably 30 or so and she is the most up on new music at the diner, perhaps in all of Centralia. When she works it’s like walking into an alternative radio station. Just about every time she works I get a recommendation for a new bit of music. If you just bought a new recording that you like, bring it to the diner on Thursday evening and she’ll play it on Melissa’s All Requests night. Someone told John his slogan for the diner should be “Good food, cool music.”

A few of us were sitting in the diner one afternoon when Juan mentioned that this downtown area of Centralia reminded him of Greenwich Village where he lived for a year in New York. “If you can’t say something nice, Juan will do it for you,” I replied when he mentioned this. No one else agreed with him but it caught on and we started referring to our neighborhood as “The Village.”

I stop by the diner at least three times a week. I eat there most of the time or for that other of life’s little necessities: beer. I was never much of a beer person until Juan came along. He calls the Seattle and the rest of the Northwest region the Bordeaux of beer country. Although we don’t have any local beers, the diner carries two good beers from other parts of the country. It took a little getting used to drinking good beer after the watered-down stuff in bottles that I drank before.

Drinking good beer is just one more thing that I am forced to do more deliberately. When I went out before I would often drink more than three bottles of light-tasting beer. I couldn’t really comment on the taste; beer was just something cold and mildly refreshing—with alcohol. Now I sit at the counter at the diner and when they set the chilled pint of beer in front of me I take a few seconds just to look at it. It is darker than the old bottled beer I drank—the beer I prefer, an India pale ale, or IPA, is copper colored. When first poured it has a substantial head and it looks richer and more substantive than what I drank before.

These well-crafted beers don’t cost much more than the mass-produced stuff, yet they often have an alcohol content that is twice as high, for after all, we drink beer for its effect. The beer I drink is medium bodied and the alcohol is immediately evident, which allows you to savor it slowly, tasting every sip. It takes a little adjustment if you are used to pounding down three or four bottles of tasteless beer. Carl says the same thing about olives. He says that we are used to eating appetizers in huge portions, things like nachos laden with cheese or fried chicken strips that are more like meals in themselves. You don’t eat more than a few olives, it’s not about the volume consumed, it’s strictly about the flavor. Sometimes you have to forget about equating quality with volume.

As I sit at the counter of the Main Street Diner I am surprised at how much I enjoy drinking beer. I find that the first pint is always the best, the second not quite so sublime, and anything more is probably too much. I want to learn more about beer, I want to learn how to make it myself. Juan tells me that it is a fairly simple process. He says that in Seattle there is a brewery in every neighborhood, many of which are among the best in the country.

“You make Seattle out to be such a great place but you seem pretty content with Centralia,” I say to Juan as we are having our first beer at the diner one evening.

“I love it here. I have everything that I need: a nice apartment with a patio, some nice places to hang out, friends, and no car. Maybe instead of comparing this place to the Village I should say that it’s more like Walden Pond.”

I had to admit that I didn’t have much to complain about lately. I was still fat but my clothes were fitting a little less snugly. When you are overweight you notice the slightest change because you feel more comfortable in you clothes, there’s less strain. I wasn’t dieting; I had tried them all and they don’t work. If any diet worked everyone would be on it and there wouldn’t be any fat people. If diets worked, there wouldn’t be five new ones coming out every month like movie premieres. Carl told me that Julia Childs, the famous master of French cuisine, swore that the secret was to eat everything and drink everything in moderation. Easier said than done, but that makes better sense than going on some kooky new diet every six months.

Sometimes this moderation thing is pretty nice. Juan makes it look easy, but I suppose that I’m new to it so I need to give it some time. The idea is to slow down which completely goes against convention in our society where we are constantly told that we need to speed up. If we do things fast we are promised that we can get more out of life. Doing something twice as fast leaves you more time to move on to something else. People brag about not having any free time, about not having time to read or relax. Executives often admit to getting by on half the amount of sleep that the human body probably requires so that they can have an edge on their competitors. The only valuable use of your time is work.

People drive as fast as they can regardless of where they are going or why they are going there. Driving slow is a waste of time. This driving metaphor carries over to almost all aspects of our daily lives. Why do anything slowly if you can do it faster? Our obsession with saving time very often borders on the ridiculous. The need to save time is never questioned; it is a constant in almost every task we perform.

Slow is a concept that we don’t understand, we see no value in doing things slowly. Slow has nothing but negative connotations. Slow means lazy, stupid, inefficient, unproductive, sluggish, slothful, inactive, indolent, lethargic, idle, and a lot of other pejoratives. It is hard for us to say something nice about slow.

The truth is that very often fast is not the best way to do things. Doing things fast can be destructive and even dangerous. Driving fast can certainly kill you. The old adage “slow down, you’ll live longer” takes on a literal sense behind wheel of a car but also has many other applications. Right now, for example. I am trying to drink this beer as slowly as I possibly can. With beer you take sips a little bigger than with wine because it takes more volume in your mouth to expose all of beer’s elements. You don’t want to drink it so slowly that it returns to room temperature, but that usually takes quite a while. Drinking it fast would be like speeding by a beautiful landscape. It’s always better to take the scenic route. If you don’t have time to take the scenic route, maybe you should just stay home.

This is all pretty new to me. I’ve always been a slow learner which isn’t really an advantage when you are learning to slow down. None of this is as easy as it sounds. Doing absolutely everything at a frantic pace is wired into system in America. We have been taught that to get more out of life requires you to get more, do more, go farther, go faster, and to get more, do more, go farther and faster than everyone else.

If we have reduced sipping beer slowly to a competition then I am doomed always to finish second behind Juan Eduardo Mejía. He’s been at it longer than I and he’s had more practice. He’s a good teacher and I have always thought that one of the most important things in life is to find great teachers. I think that another important thing for all of us is to become great teachers ourselves.

6:52 PM

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Thursday, November 17, 2005

 

CENTRALIA
A Novel

Chapter 13
What if There Was a Mall and Nobody Came?

Sometimes you have to go to the mall. In Centralia, as in many cities, the mall replaced most of the stores in the downtown; it’s the only game in town. Malls are like amusement parks for shopping. Some people who love to shop will go to the mall and pretend to shop. I would rather go to a cemetery and pretend to be dead or go to the hospital and pretend to have a fatal disease. I don’t like to shop. Malls weren’t made for people like me.

Malls aren’t made for people who equate shopping with death and disease; they are made for people think of shopping as a way to fulfillment. Shopping is a form of dreaming. It is pretty wonderful when you think that before you is everything in the world, all of the riches of the earth are at your finger tips, the toil of every man is yours for the taking with the simple exchange of cash or the swipe of a credit card. I need to buy underwear.

I have learned recently to park in the very back of the lot when I go anywhere, anywhere that I have to drive my car. This forces me to take a bit of a hike even tough I arrived in my car. It’s not much of a walk most of the time but in the bigger places, like the mall, it could be quite a stretch from your car to the front door. I made it to one of the entrances and hesitated a second before I walked in. My philosophy of shopping is to get in and get out as quickly as possible. Smash and grab. Once I walk through the doors it’s like I’m holding my breath underwater until I walk out again. I take a deep breath and open the door.

The cool air seems somehow unhealthy and I immediately feel underdressed for the mall climate of extreme air conditioning. I know exactly where I am going and I beat a direct path there without so much as glancing at any of the other stores standing in my way. I found a style of underwear that works for me several years ago and I have stuck with it. They are only sold at a certain store, a rather pricey national chain retailer. The underwear are expensive but they are worth every penny. I have noticed that my current stock is beginning to get a little droopy. I go down a couple sizes on the new batch. Not knowing whether or not I will remain at this size, go back to where I was before, or shrink another notch or two, I only buy enough for a provisional stand at my new waist.

I have nothing else that I want to accomplish at the mall on this excursion so I make a hasty retreat. As I am leaving I pass an electronics store that catches my eye. There are a collection of video cameras on display in the front window. I really don’t feel like doing it myself but I am convinced that Carl needs to film a cooking show from his butcher shop. How hard could it be? You buy a camera, turn it on, point on it at a guy cooking, and then play it on TV.

Inside the store I’m standing at a counter littered with cameras of every shape, size, and price. The mall offers nothing if not choices. The sales staff is too overwhelmed to offer any help, not that the minimum wage teenagers employed here could be of any technical assistance. After a minute or two of diligent study of the selection I’m ready to give up when Hayworth, of all people, comes up to the counter. ‘Hey Chris, what’re you doing here?”

I shrug my shoulders and lift the bag containing my underwear purchase, “Just propelling the economy forward, like I’m supposed to.” I pick up one of the cameras, “I’m thinking about getting a video camera for a project I thought up. They all seem inexpensive. I suppose they are all the same.”

In the surprise of the day it turns out that Hayworth knows something other than college football scores and whatever else clutters up the minds of guys his age. Hayworth is a bit of a photographer, or videographer. He goes on to bore the living shit out of me for the next twenty minutes about video cameras and lighting. His tedious soliloquy is enough to convince me that I won’t have to learn anything about this subject myself; I can outsource the work to my coworker. He studied photography in college, although he admits that he has lacked the energy and the creativity to do anything with it. He seems vaguely embarrassed to admit this to me; the first time I have noticed the slightest crack in the wall of false self-confidence that seemed to define him.

Although I only knew him tangentially through work, I thought that Hayworth was pretty typical of a lot of young men. Good looking, athletic, middle class or better, he had made it through life so far without trying very hard. What he had came easy for him so he never bothered to try anything that might be too much of a challenge. He is fairly ambitious as far as his career is concerned but that seems to be the only thing that he takes remotely seriously. He always came across as completely devoid of any passions.

I can’t get him to shut up about video cameras, especially after I mention the show I want to film with Carl. Hayworth has never been to the butcher shop and doesn’t really understand how it could possibly be worthy of a TV program. It seems pretty obvious that he is attracted to anyone who might have an idea on the subject of photography that might include him. I’m thrilled that I may have a willing accomplice for one of my impulsive ideas, one who will do most of the work. The TV show wasn’t something that I particularly cared to do; it was simply something that I thought needed to be done.

I want to show Hayworth the shop so I have him follow me to my house where I leave my car and I drive with him the few blocks to Carls’ Butcher Shop. He must have been expecting the place to be some sort of amusement park because his enthusiasm is almost completely extinguished. Hayworth is having a bit of trouble understanding how anyone could possibly make a TV program about a corner butcher shop, especially this one. He lives in an apartment on the south side of town near my old place. He buys his meat at the supermarket. One month ago I’d be having the same misgivings.

Business at the shop is fairly brisk so Carl doesn’t have time to chat. I order a couple of coffees and we sit at one of the tables outside.

His own insecurities about his artistic abilities are definitely the most endearing thing I have seen in him since we first met. I don’t have to work hard to sell him on the idea.

“Just look at the building this is in. It was made in 1922. The shop itself has hardly changed in over 50 years. It’s practically a historic monument.”

“I guess, but a show about meat?”

“A show about food as a lifestyle. Wait until you sit in on one of Carl’s classes or chats or whatever they are. All you’ll have to do is make it look good,” I said.

I never had a very high opinion of Hayworth before but it isn’t like he is stupid. He is competent at his job, which requires a bit of intelligence, it’s just that he never seemed to apply himself to anything else. Seeing him almost giddy with excitement over the TV show is a side to him that I had never seen because I was so used to the façade of pseudo-hip irony that he affected. I got the impression from my contact with Hayworth that he felt it wasn’t cool to get excited or care deeply about anything other than a sporting event. I’m convinced that when he gets a chance to learn more about Carl and how he runs the shop he’ll be even keener on the idea.

Hayworth is almost apologetic as he explains some of his failed attempts at creativity. He hasn’t done much of anything with his photography since he left the university where he was ordered think. At least he has honed his technical skills with his equipment. We both agree that this could be just the thing to kick-start his motivation. He admits that he may not be up to the task.

“Are you kidding? This thing will make itself. You get this on film and I’ll get it marketed.”

He looks unconvinced.

“That was a bit of luck running into you at the camera store. I didn’t even realize that you were interested in film.”

“I practically live at that store so there wasn’t much luck involved,” he said.

“I’ll get back to you when I find out when Carl feels like giving another lecture.”

Hayworth offered to drive me home from the shop and then about fainted with surprise when I told him I would walk. As a newcomer to this whole pedestrian lifestyle thing, it becomes immediately evident how our attitudes about walking anywhere have turned rather bizarre. Hayworth looks like one of those people who will run 10 miles on a treadmill and then drive home four blocks from the gym. That’s just the way things are set up these days.

I walk a lot since I moved. I walk just for the fun of it. I guess that I cold have taken walks for fun where I used to live but it just never occurred to me. I walk past the Portofino Apartments and Kate calls out to me from the courtyard. I come up to the gate and I see that she has a couple of books laid out around her. She offers to make coffee and I accept even though I am about ready to overdose on caffeine for the day. In the way of entertainment she invites me to help myself to any of the reading material. She also has a portable radio tuned to a baseball game. She goes inside.

I realize that I don’t know much at all about her. She has left a few pieces to the puzzle out here in the courtyard. There is an English dictionary, a Spanish grammar book, a novel that is currently very popular that appears to be about half finished, a big city newspaper that is two days old, and the baseball game on the radio. None of this information gives me much of a clue to her but I can’t help thinking that this isn’t a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

A few minutes later Kate returns carrying a tray with two small cups, a sugar bowl, a small stainless steel pot, and a portable gas camping stove. “I thought that I’d show you how to make Greek coffee since you weren’t at Carl’s class when he taught us. This pot is called a briki. This one is big enough to make two cups. Carl sells them in his shop. To the water I add two teaspoons of coffee and sugar. You let it bowl until the froth reaches the briki rim.” She waits until the pot boils. “Then you remove it from the heat. You do this a total of three times.”

After the third time Kate pours the coffee into the two cups.
“You have to let this settle or it will taste like mud.” She stacks her books on the table and we both sit down.

I tell her about my trip to the mall. “I think that I must suffer from agoraphobia. Going to the mall shouldn’t be such an ordeal for me.”

“Not unless ‘agoraphobia’ means fear of things that suck. Although it isn’t quite either, I think ‘necessary evil’ is probably the easiest description of the mall. We all pick on the mall but there’s no way to avoid it in Centralia.” Kate takes a sip of her coffee. We are interrupted by some excitement in the baseball game. A runner has scored on a suicide squeeze bunt. After several minutes of screaming the announcers and the crowd at the game go back to the normal volume. “How could the same country that invented baseball also invent malls? I love sitting out here in the courtyard listening to a game on the radio. It’s like someone telling me a story.”

If I didn’t like Kate before—and I did—I certainly do now.

6:43 PM

(113225307880611954)

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

 

Carls' Buther Shop 
CENTRALIA
A Novel

Chapter 12
La Vita Bella in any Language

I wasn’t bound by a lease at Brentwood Terrace because I had been there so long, so a month later I moved into the top floor of a duplex on Center Street a few blocks from the Portofino. It was cheaper than my old place and a lot bigger: two bedrooms, a bathroom with a footed porcelain tub, and a screened-in sun porch in the front. Just walking up the stairs should be enough to kill me, but just in case that isn’t enough I bought a bicycle. I can’t even remember the last time I had been on a bike. I think I was eleven or twelve, but it’s true, riding a bike is like riding a bike. I can still do it.

The hardest part about riding a bike was trying to get over how silly I thought I looked pedaling around my new neighborhood. At first I felt like a hippo on ice skates—make that a hippo on ice skates on thin ice. I started out a little awkwardly on my garage sale bicycle complete with a steel basket on the handlebars. Juan, a self-professed bike nut, gave me a lot of encouragement, to say the least. He practically threatened me at gun point to buy it in the first place.

I wasn’t even aware that I was looking to buy a bike when I got a call from Juan insisting that I meet him one Saturday morning at an address around where we now both lived. When I met him at the garage sale he was riding tiny circles on the bike. “This has your name all over it, Chris. It’s in great shape and costs less than two tanks of gas.” Two tanks of gas were getting to be pretty expensive. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

It was fun. I kept my new bike locked to the railing of the entrance to my duplex. As my confidence in my riding ability gradually increased I started riding more and more. The lack of parking in the downtown area used to keep me away from the shops still struggling to hang on. All of the things that made this part of town difficult to access by automobile—no parking, narrow streets, and short distances between businesses—conspired to make it ideal for travel on a bike. I discovered so many new places downtown that I felt like I was visiting a new city, at least they were new to me, or I was rediscovering places that had been here in Centralia forever and I had let them go fallow in my years living on the southern, suburban end of town.

My favorite new spot was Carls’ Butcher Shop. The first time that I went there I thought they had made an unfortunate grammatical error on the sign but it turns out that there are two Carls working there, father and son. Carls’ was on Vine Street, an easy three block bike ride from my house. Carls’ had been there for over 40 years. I probably drove by it 100 times without ever stopping inside.

As far as I knew, meat was something that you bought wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam at the supermarket. After only a few minutes inside their shop you became aware that Carl and Carl Jr. were true artisans. No guild craftsmen from Medici Florence took their skill more seriously than the Carls. They were Renaissance butchers, Michelangelo’s of meat, they were artists. Carls’ Butcher Shop, as it turned out, became one of my favorite places in Centralia.

Carl Senior’s father had worked for the U.S. Forces in Italy during World War II and had immigrated to Centralia not long after the fighting was over. In Italy he had been a butcher, as had his father and grandfather. Grandfather Carl, born Giancarlo Anzoletti, came to Centralia following a cousin who had left Italy before the war. He and his cousin became butchers and soon opened their own store in 1950. Carl was born that same year and upon finishing high school he came to work for his father, the cousin had ventured out to California to start a restaurant.

Carl had never intended for his son to enter into the family profession although his son had practically grown up inside the shop. Carl Jr. had gone to college and afterward had tried his hand at a series of other occupations. He always admired the way his father was connected with his neighborhood customers. Carl Jr. had traveled through Italy and wanted to make his father’s shop even more Italian than it already was. In addition to meats and poultry, they expanded to include the production of their own array of sausages and mozzarella. Because of Centralia’s rural roots Carl Jr. had local hunters and fishermen supply the shop with fresh game and fish.

Carl Jr. was savvy enough to realize that he and his father could only remain in business by offering the highest quality product available. They could never match the chain grocery stores in price. They added a few café tables inside the shop and served coffee, sandwiches, and a rotating menu of Italian delicacies. They sold Italian wine, olives and other pantry items. Carl Jr. explained to me one day that the products he sold weren’t for rich people. He didn’t sell anything that would be considered exotic to an average Italian family. He just wanted his customers to be able to appreciate the fine cuisine of the Mediterranean that he studied while living in Italy and traveling around the region.

When Carl’s grandfather had come to this country most Americans didn’t know the difference between olive oil and motor oil. Now you could by fifteen different types of olive oil in most of the big supermarkets in any city in the country. In the later years of the twentieth century America had done more to assimilate the foods of its diverse immigrants if not the immigrants themselves. Foods that were once considered luxury items had become the daily fare of everyday Americans. Carl Jr. called this the democratization of good food. Even Americans on the most modest budgets could eat well if they knew how to do it. His passion was teaching people how to prepare excellent economical food everyday.

They weren’t getting rich but they made a living and they loved what they did. Carls’ Butcher Shop was a local institution. It was also Centralia’s best kept secret; at least it was to me until I moved into the house on Center Street.

When Carl Jr. first started working with his father he lived in the apartment directly above the shop. Hi smother and father has a house four blocks away on Vine Street. After his mother passed away Carl Sr. switched living quarters with his son to help him accommodate the family he was beginning. With father and son sharing the hours at the shop they were able to open every day from 6 a.m. until 6p.m. Monday through Saturday.

During the summer months Carls’ Butcher Shop had two small tables on the sidewalk in front under a canvas awning. Juan and I soon got into the habit of meeting there for coffee before going to work in the morning.

I had long ago decided that my first cup of coffee in the morning must be taken outside of my apartment. Back when I made coffee for myself was when about 99 percent of my tragic household accidents occurred. One morning as I was attempting to make coffee I spilled an entire carton of milk behind the refrigerator. Crews that clean up after an oil tanker spill probably would have taken pity upon me. As I pulled the refrigerator out from the wall I half expected to find flocks of pathetic sea birds covered in milk needing medical attention. I never made coffee for myself in the morning after that catastrophe.

Back when I lived at Brentwood Terrace, I don’t think that I ever left my apartment without getting into my car to drive somewhere, ever. There was no place you could conceivably get on foot. Now that I lived on Center Street my car was becoming like some type of recreational vehicle, like a snowmobile or a ski boat, something that I only took out on rare occasions. On most mornings you could find my bike in front of Carls’ Butcher Shop and my car sitting idly in front of my apartment.

Carl Sr. was there in the mornings making coffee, and in the evenings after work Carls’ Butcher Shop became another tradition for us when Carl Jr. started held court. He started teaching a cooking class in the shop after store hours, complete with wine tasting. It was more just an excuse to drink wine while Carl cooked. He didn’t cook meals; he only prepared a single simple dish that everyone could linger over, as Carl liked to say. It was a simple accompaniment to the wine and vice versa.

There were perhaps ten of us who showed up for Carl’s classes, which were more like discussions in the Socratic tradition. His best classes were when he could get his students excited about a single, simple ingredient. He would preach about the importance of fresh basil, or different kinds of capers, or bread, or olives, or home-made mayonnaise. After one of Carl’s impromptu gatherings you would feel as if you were tasting a tomato for the first time.

“Tonight I’m going to talk to you about how I got to be a butcher in Centralia after years of study, travel, and thought,” Carl said to his small group of disciples. “I spent an entire summer there after a year in Italy. I was meeting two American classmates of mine from the States in Athens. They were on a three month trip across Europe and were flying into Athens from Vienna. I met them in Athens and we immediately made our way to the port of Piraeus. Jim had Greek parents and spoke the language a bit. For this trip he found it easier to go by his Greek name, Demitri. Joe was making his first trip to Greece, as was I.

“We took one of the massive passenger ferries that ply between the islands and the mainland during the summer. They are like a cross between the Love Boat and a slave ship. They probably have decent amenities, but for those of us paying for third class passage there wasn’t even a place for us to sit except the deck of the ship. This was more than anyone could ever ask for during the beautiful summer months in the Aegean. We brought along provisions for the five hour voyage to the island of Paros. Back in those days of extreme and unapologetic youth, the only provisions we required was alcohol. There were three of us so that meant six bottle of wine—just in case we got lucky.

“On that afternoon the sea was so calm we could have water-skied behind the ship. We were sharing our little corner of the upper deck with what could have passed for the United Nations of backpackers. We became the most popular people on board when we started sharing our wine with everyone in our little group. I speak a little French and began a conversation with a young couple from Paris. I have always admired Parisians; they all seem so confident; they all seem aware that they come from the most wonderful city on earth.

“I remember walking through the Louvre when I happened upon a French grade school glass being lectured by one of the curators of the museum. They were sitting around a magnificent statue by Pierre Lepautre’s (1648-1716) entitled Enée et Anchise. Their teacher was showing the children the actual tools that ancient sculptors used in fashioning a hunk of marble into an almost living being. All that I remember thinking at the time was what a head start these kids were getting in life. When I was their age I probably scribbling in a coloring book or something.

“So it was a little difficult for me not to feel a little inferior to this Parisian with his drop-dead gorgeous Parisian girlfriend. Their English was much better than my French but they were charming enough to let me practice talking to them. I offered them some wine in the little plastic cups we were handing out. We began with a Greek table wine. My friend Demitri was the only person who was even remotely Greek in this little get-together so he raised his glass and praised the Greek wine. He didn’t get much agreement.

“The next bottle we opened was a modest French Bordeaux. The young Parisian asked how much we had paid for the bottle and then commented on how French consumers insist on value from their wine no matter how much they pay. He was certainly correct on this point. In most of the major wine producing countries of Europe, citizens demand that there be good wines at every price. In any bistro in France there will be several wines by the glass at extremely modest prices.

“We moved on to the next bottle which I poured surreptitiously. The Frenchman in our group, along with everyone else, said that this was by far the best wine we had sampled. When I showed everyone that what they were praising so generously was an American red zinfandel the Parisian couldn’t have looked more startled than had I said they had all tasted hemlock. He made an attempt to qualify his compliments but I wasn’t having it. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to report you to the French Wine Council for treason,’ I said.

“I realize that it is incredibly hard for a lot of Europeans to accept, but America is no longer a country that consumes nothing but soda pop and hamburgers. We have learned a lot from Europeans and then we have applied American standards of quality control that has revolutionized our cuisine. Granted, a lot of our daily fare is dreadful, but if you make the choice to eat well, you can eat as well here as anywhere in Europe.”

Carl made sure that our glasses were full as he continued with his story. “But there is a lot more to the way Europeans live than the ingredients that go into their dishes. The most important thing is to get the pace of their life correct. This is especially so with people of the Mediterranean. I had already lived in Italy for over a year by this time. I was used to sitting around for hours over a meal of even a cup of coffee. I thought that I understood how life worked in this part of the world, but what I happened to me on this summer in Greece is that I became aware that this was who I was now. I wasn’t just mimicking the people whose country and culture I was temporarily sharing. I was beginning to think that I had figured it all out. I also realized that I had reached a point of no return. I wouldn’t be able to live any other way.

“I can look back to one particular afternoon as the day that I came to this understanding about Mediterranean life. It was probably our third day on the island and we had decided to meet in the main village of Parikía for lunch at around 1:30 in the afternoon. The three of us were staying in the same hotel room but had seen little of each other since arriving. That’s just the way life is for young tourists on the Greek islands in the summer.

“I was up early that morning to do a little snorkeling in the crystal clear waters off the beach from our hotel. The water was still cold on that June morning, but the sun was hot enough to make it bearable. The Aegean has some of the clearest water I have ever seen anywhere. You could drop a coin off the deck of a ship and watch it sink thirty feet before resting on the sand. I think that I tried to swim ever mile of ever coast on every island that I visited that summer.

“Demitri, Joe, and I had planned to rendezvous at a taverna in the main village near the port. The rendezvous was an essential element to traveling in Europe with friends who all had different objectives, or similar objectives but distinct methods to achieve them. Generally, our objectives included experiencing the local culture, sight-seeing, eating, drinking, and trying to meet women—definitely not in that order. We would meet at our prearranged destination with military precision. Well, perhaps Greek military precision. On this afternoon Demitri and Joe showed up an hour late. But who was counting? I had ordered a coffee and was writing letters when they fell into their seats beside me.

“The taverna was identical to a hundred other tavernas across the Greek mainland and the islands. The restaurant was split in two by the street in front. Half of the tables were inside the restaurant and on the sidewalk in front. The other half were across the narrow street on the broad stone walkway along the low seawall. All of the tables in this section were shaded from the scorching sun by colorful umbrellas. The tablecloths were clothes-pinned down to the table to keep them from blowing away when the stiff sirocco blew across these waters. Today everything was as calm as the cats that sunned themselves on rooftops, windowsills, and stairways all over the island.

“The first thing that you had to do when you say down at a Greek taverna was to prop a matchbook under one of the table legs to keep it level. The moist sea air clogged the salt and peppers shakers, but luckily the food was always properly seasoned so these condiments weren’t necessary. The bread was either good or bad in a taverna but the olives were always excellent. We ordered a plate of olives every time we sat down, even if we were only having a glass of wine of a beer.

“Demitri and Joe were hung-over just enough to be relaxed on this particular afternoon. The waiter made his way from inside the restaurant and across the street to our table. We ordered three bottles of beer and olives to start. We still weren’t sure if we would stay here for lunch or move to another place. We were the only customers besides what looked to be the waiter’s family sitting on the other side of the street. We sipped our beers and looked out over the small public beach on the other side of the seawall. The beer was so cold the first few sips were slightly stinging.

“The quality of the olives is more or less a sure thing anywhere in Greece. Olives are the perfect appetizer and the perfect definition of an appetizer. They are a means to stimulate that appetite. They are a great accompaniment to beer and even better for wine.” Carl had a tray of assorted olives for all of us to sample. “These Kalamata olives are only slightly bitter and have a texture almost like that of meat. Every country in the Mediterranean believes their olives to be the best. As much as I love the olives of Greece, my favorite come from around Seville in Spain.

“The taverna gradually was beginning to fill up a bit as people who had enough sun for the afternoon filed in for a late lunch. We ordered a bottle of wine and Greek salads. The wine was inexpensive and totally adequate for our purposes on that summer afternoon. My philosophy of wine is simple. I would rather drink wine than go without, so quality is secondary to effect, and the effect is always there.

“This is probably as good a time as any to set the record straight on the Greek salad. It is called a horiatiki salad in Greek, a peasant or country salad. I had a Greek salad the very first time I ate in a restaurant in Greece and it immediately became my favorite dish. I never cared for salads before because I don't care for lettuce. In all of the times I have traveled in Greece I have never seen a Greek salad that contained lettuce. That’s fine with me. I suppose there is a little room for improvisation when it comes to this dish but not much. There's never room for lettuce. Here is my recipe:

GREEK SALAD (?????? ?????????)

1 cucumber
1 onion
1 green bell pepper
2 tomatoes
several Greek olives
feta cheese
pepperoncini peppers (optional)
anchovies (optional)
Olive Oil and Vinegar.

Chop up the tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and bell peppers into bite-size pieces. Portion out the vegetables on each plate along with a couple olives, pepperoncinis, and anchovies. Top the salad with a piece of feta and drizzle with oil and vinegar.

“By about the time our salads arrived we were beginning to feel the way a baseball pitcher must feel when he is on his way to a perfect game. It was like our entire lives were coming into alignment around this afternoon meal in a remote Greek taverna. By this time I had hundreds of meals in idyllic cafes, tavernas, and trattorias in Europe and I had enjoyed every one. I always felt like I was on vacation at every meal, even though I was living in Europe. I think that for the first time I began to realize that I wasn’t a visitor any more. I wasn’t just pretending to be a European as I stretched out a midday meal into a work of art; this was who I was and I was good at it.

Now I could see that Carl was making his little butcher shop on Vine Street as much like that Greek taverna on Paros as he could. He was also trying to educate his customers so that they would appreciate the need to elevate the simplest ingredients in their lives. He was trying to bring us to the same conclusions about living that he reached in during his time spent in Italy and Greece.

Carl often lectured his class that if you couldn’t get passionate about the simply ingredients like bread, oil, olives, wine, and cheese, then how could you feel strongly about the bigger issues like love and friendship? On this evening we were sampling a modest bottle of Chianti that he sold in the shop for less than what we all paid for a gallon of gasoline at that time. He had three different types of olives: French, Spanish, and Greek. He had a few loaves of bread that he had baked himself accompanied by a dipping oil for the bread that was just about the best thing that I had ever put in my mouth. Carl had written the ingredients for the oil on the blackboard above the counter of the shop:

Mediterranean Oil

1 cup of good Greek olive oil
2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
a couple cloves of minced garlic
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese
a pinch of red pepper flakes
a pinch of chopped parsley
a pinch of oregano

Mix these ingredients together and let steep. Serve with bread

Kate and Juan were seated with me at one of the tables outside after Carl finished his story. We were finishing our wine and making plans on what we should cook for dinner. “Carl should be a teacher,” Kate said. “I wish that he were reaching more people than can fit into his shop once a week for his talks.”

That’s when I got the idea that what Carl needed was his own TV cooking show.

7:20 PM

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Friday, November 04, 2005

 

CENTRALIA
A Novel

Chapter 11
The Fine Art of Loitering

Kate was seated at one of the tables with a couple, Andy and Caroline, who were also residents of what was turning out to be a pretty cozy little apartment building. They, too, had a bottle of wine, or what was left of one. We pulled up chairs and joined them. A plate of olives was the only accompaniment to the wine.

“I guess I should have bought a bigger bottle,” I said as I pulled the cork with a pop. “That is one of the most pleasing sounds in the world. I want my morning alarm to sound like that. I want a 21 cork pop salute at my funeral.” I took a sip and made a face like I was trying desperately to understand what was in my glass. “You would think that I’d get more knowledgeable about wine, what with all of the practice I get.”

“I like that, Chris. Nicely put. I need a few more euphemisms. ‘Drinking’ is starting to get a bit of a bad name.” Andy turned to the others, “We’re not drinking; we’re practicing.’ His glass was only half full. “It’d be a shame if we ran out of wine and had to stop practicing.”

“Stop panicking. We can always move down the street to Powers Lounge when the wine situation here gets critical,” Caroline added as she topped off their glasses with the last of the bottle.

I suppose for the sake of the two new people present Andy added, “We haven’t given up on going out, but this is our favorite spot in Centralia.” He spit an olive pit into his hand, “And not many places in town will let you throw olive pits.” He chucked the pit over the wall.

“I like the pace here,” Kate said. “It’s so slow and quiet out in the courtyard during the summer. It’s like being on vacation.”

“I know what you mean,” Caroline said. “I wish that there was a bar or a restaurant that was as inviting as our courtyard. I’d spend as much time there as I do here.”

“It’s our own sidewalk café,” Kate added. “Maybe we should open it up to the public. Centralia could use a place like this.”

“If someone did open a place like this they’d screw it up by making the waitresses wear name tags and force them to say things like ‘Have a great day’.” I couldn’t hold back my two cents worth of cynicism.

“Chris, not every place is like O’Something or Other’s,” Juan reassured me.

“What’s O’Something or Other’s?” That wasn’t the real name of the place so the others were curious.

“It’s that awful Irish-esque place out on Highway 31,” I explained.

“After I traveled a bit and came back home I always thought that it was strange that the idea of cafes never caught on here in America,” Andy said. “I suppose there’s a little too much idling going on and not enough buying.”

“I’ve wondered the same thing. I suppose there are the financial concerns but mostly I just think that cafes aren’t really congruent with our nature. We have a hard time with inactivity.” Juan sat back in his chair and continued. “My introduction to European café etiquette started when I was a 19 year old summer school student in France—my first time in Europe. I would go to a café for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, drink it, pay the check, and leave. I quickly noticed that everyone who was there when I arrived was still there when I stood up to leave. I became self-conscious of my haste. I quickly began to see cafes as a sort of game, a waiting game.

”I began to take note of the other patrons when I first took a seat. I would nurse my coffee or glass of wine to make it last while I waited for other people in the café to call it quits. I would write letters to pass the time, or read, or simply people watch. I quickly learned that there are worse ways to spend time than sitting on the terrace of a Parisian café. I have since come to believe that there are few better ways to spend an hour or two or three.

”I got pretty good at the waiting game my first summer in Europe, but I never won. It didn’t matter how patient I was; I could have been in the middle of the best book I had ever read; I could have been engaged in the most interesting conversation of my young life—that wouldn’t have been saying much at 19; it didn’t matter. There would always be some grizzled old French guy in a beret and a seemingly bottomless glass of red who wasn’t about to be hurried out of his café by some hyperactive American kid raised on too much sugar and television. For all I know that old French guy never left that table, ever, he may be there right now, but I learned to like his style.

”In America this sort of behavior would be called loitering. Loiter: to spend time idly. In America we have equated loitering with not spending money, or not spending enough money, or not spending money fast enough, and we have actually made that illegal. After several years of living and traveling around the Mediterranean—the most café-influenced culture on the planet—I learned that if loitering were against the law there you’d have to build a pretty big fence to contain the guilty. In the Mediterranean they have a different word for what we would call loitering. The closest English equivalent to this word would be ‘living.’

”It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of the café in the quotidian life of many Europeans. Cafes are a meeting spot for friends, or a place where you won’t feel out of place sitting by yourself. You can read the morning paper, or write a letter. They are a place to be among people, or a refuge from the crowded street. A café is a good spot to begin an evening out with friends, or the last stop on the way home. A café terrace is like your living room with better coffee and a view.

”I had been brought up to believe that consumption was the purpose of going to a bar or restaurant. I soon learned during that first summer in Europe that what you bought at the café was definitely not the main point of the whole exercise. That glass of wine was merely the rent you paid for that piece of café real estate that you had chosen or had chosen you. The food and drink aspect is a secondary concern.

“When I go to Europe the first thing I do is head for a café. When I come back home cafes are what I miss the most. The explosive growth of coffee shops in America is a response to this basic human need for community. Coffee shops here aren’t quite the same thing, they aren’t as utilitarian, they are a lot more casual, but they’re a good start.

”The primary function of a cafe is to offer a shared public space. The public space you are sharing may be next to some movie star at an ultra chic Parisian café, or next to a shepherd in a remote Greek mountain village, but the idea is still the same. It doesn’t matter what language you use to order your beer, the same rules of the café apply. Sit back, slowly sip your wine, and try not to think of loitering as a bad thing.”

“A lot of our ancestors are from Europe. Why didn’t they bring cafes with them?” No one had an answer to Kate’s question so I thought that I’d take a stab at it.

“Maybe we don’t have cafes here in America for the same reason we don’t have the metric system.” Andy seemed as if he had considered this before. “Maybe we just can’t figure out how to make the transition. The terrible thing is that our systems, for measure and leisure (Andy made them rhyme), don’t really work, and we don’t even understand them, yet we refuse to let go. I couldn’t tell you how many feet are in a mile or how many quarts in a gallon. Do any of you know how many feet are in a mile?” No takers. “That’s what I thought. If we aren’t going to understand something, we may as well not understand the system the rest of the world uses. Maybe we could just have someone come in and put the metric system under our pillows in the middle of the night like the tooth fairy. While they are at it they could drop a few cafes on us.”

“At least we figured out how to make wine here in America,” Caroline added.

“Pretty good wine, too. We have got a few things right,” Juan said.

With that we all raised our glasses and took another sip. After Juan’s story I had to ask him, “That summer in Europe seems to have messed you up fairly thoroughly, wouldn’t you say?”

“Without a doubt, that summer and subsequent trips have affected me. I like to compare it to how war veterans come home traumatized. The horrible things people experience in wartime make it difficult to integrate back into everyday life. The difference was that my experiences in Europe were all incredibly positive. Here in America I try to find places that have some of the qualities of those European places that I admire so much. This courtyard is a great example.”

Night had fallen completely. The courtyard was lit by six electric lanterns attached to the four foot wall that surrounded it. I had never been anywhere remotely resembling the European cafes that Juan was talking about, but this courtyard suited me just fine on this evening. It seemed to suit everyone else as well. We had finished our modest amount of wine and no one looked the least bit anxious to go anywhere else. I was hardly looking forward to returning to my place at Brentwood Terrace.

4:38 PM

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Wednesday, November 02, 2005

 

CENTRALIA
A Novel

Chapter 10
At Home on the Centralia Riviera

Juan mentioned that he wanted to move out of the extended-stay motel where the company had booked him and find an apartment in town. This was going to be more difficult than trying to find a good place to have a drink in Centralia. I had been living on the south end of town since I got out of college and started working. I didn’t know of anything besides the apartment complexes and the Brady Bunch ghettos of single family homes that had sprouted up along the highway. For the first time in all these years I tried to imagine living in some other part of town.

I got a call from him the next morning. “Are you ready for this?”

I wasn’t, but I wanted to sound optimistic. “Do you want me to pick you up?”

“I’m already out. I’m downtown on First and Poplar, why don’t you come meet me. I’m at the Main Street Diner.”

The Main Street Diner had been around forever although I probably hadn’t been there in over ten years, maybe longer. Parking was a bit of a problem because it was Saturday morning and the one day of the week when people actually went to the downtown area. I found a spot a few blocks away and I was annoyed by the short walk. Juan was sitting at the counter talking with an old guy who probably hadn’t left the diner since I was last there.

Juan introduced me to the old guy. “Charlie was telling me about some apartments near here that sound promising.” I was starting to realize that Juan was the kind of person who could talk to a complete stranger for ten minutes and the person would loan Juan their car or let him have the guest bedroom. He had been in the diner for 30 minutes and he and Charlie seemed like they were ready to go on a road trip together, or drink beer and listen to a baseball game on the radio. From the little I had been around him it was obvious that people just seem to like Juan. It’s not the forced friendliness of a bad used car salesman. It’s not like he tries to make people like him, they just do. He seems to exude a complete lack of guile. There is a child-like quality of honesty about him that you pick up on but none of the vulnerability that usually goes along with it.

“Charlie lives over near the Portofino Apartments. Have you ever heard of that place? They’re on Euclid Street. That can’t be too far from work, it’s the same street if I remember correctly.”

“Euclid and 7th North,” Charlie added for clarification.

“I know where that is,” which I did, technically. I couldn’t think of anything around this part of town that wasn’t old and boarded up, but I knew the address.

“Charlie thinks I should take a look at that place. It was built in 1926.”

Juan mentioned the date like something that old was a good thing. I had almost forgotten that there was anything built in the pre-mall era in Centralia, so 1926 was like talking about the Acropolis. Just about everything in my life was built in my lifetime.

“I’d like to take a look at it if you’re up for it. We can walk from here, can’t we?”

Walk? Was he kidding? It was seven blocks away. I wouldn’t have ever dreamed of walking seven blocks, but I wanted to sound like a good sport. “Sure, we can walk,” I said just before I realized that I would then have to walk back to my car—14 blocks round trip. I wanted to help him find an apartment, not be part of a National Geographic special.

As we walked Charlie greeted several people we passed along the way. It seemed strange to run into people you know on the street, but I never walk anywhere. It appeared perfectly normal to Charlie. I couldn’t believe that Charlie walked the five blocks to the diner every day. Didn’t he have a car? His house looked nice enough so I would imagine that he afford an automobile. He probably lost his license.

We made it to the Portofino Apartments without any tragedy in our party. It was a four story brick affair and it looked like it had about thirty units. There was a bike rack out in front with a herd of well-used bikes locked up to it—presumably for the other people like Charlie who had lost their driving privileges. Who else would ride a bike in Centralia except people who didn’t have a choice? As we stood on the sidewalk out front one of the lawless cyclists rode up and put her bike in the rack. She was dressed like a college student with a backpack and jeans, but she looked like late twenties, perhaps older.

“Any of these units for rent?” Upon hearing his question she stopped and gave Juan a good look. She slid the pack off one shoulder and reached into her pocket for her keys.

“I’m not sure but come in and I’ll call the manager.” She opened the front door that led into an elegant entryway. There was a row of mailboxes with a table beneath it. The woman opened her mailbox as she held the phone to her ear. “This place went condo about five years ago but there always seems to be a unit available.”

The manager showed us a unit on the second floor that was being sublet. “I’m sure he’d be happy to have you here for four months. He teaches at the college, but he said that something came along that was too good to pass up, gonna be gone for a year at least.”

The place was furnished and completely bursting with books. There were books in shelves from the floor to the ceiling along every wall and more books lying on every flat surface. It was one of those they-don’t-make-them-like-this-anymore places: hardwood floors, varnished wood trim, twelve foot ceilings, a porcelain tub, and a big bay window that looked out to the street. I was about to scream out “I’ll take it” but I remembered that we were looking for a place for Juan.

The manager left us to get the paperwork. We left the apartment and made our way to a courtyard behind the building. Groups of wrought iron tables and chairs were scattered around the courtyard underneath two maple trees. The woman we had met out front was reading at one of the tables alone in the courtyard. She looked up from her book as we walked through the door. “Welcome to the Riviera or the closest thing to it here in Centralia.” Her name was Kate. I had no idea what she was talking about until I remembered that the place was called the Portofino Apartments. The patio had a vaguely Mediterranean look to it, complete with what looked like a very well used bocce ball court. There were terra cotta pots of geraniums along the brick walls. Kate looked like she would be as comfortable on the deck of a yacht in the harbor as she was here reading her book.

She seemed extremely interested in Juan’s story and not quite so enthused about mine. Juan was the visitor, after all, and he would be the new guy here at the Portofino. And just like that Juan had a place to live. He had been in town a little over 24 hours and he seemed to have Centralia figured out better than I did after 32 years. I mentioned this to him when we walked back to my car.

“I just know what to look for. Perhaps you haven’t figured that out yet. Finding that apartment was easy for me because it’s almost exactly like the place where I live in Seattle. A lot of people would look at that place and just see an old building in a neighborhood that has seen better days. You don’t have to look too carefully to see that the Portofino is beautiful and it was built that way for a reason. Take a look around this area. This probably used to be the best part of town until everything got transpose to the suburbs. “

The rest of the neighborhood was old, probably older than the Portofino building. Most were single family homes of the Victorian style and most of them were quite handsome, although a lot of them weren’t in the best condition. A lot of the homes had been split up into multi-unit apartments for modest to lower income people. More affluent residents of Centralia had given up on this part of town decades ago. I have never given it much thought when I was looking for my own place. The newer subdivisions had attracted people like me because of the conveniences: parking, washers and dryers in the units, air conditioning, and don’t forget about the tennis courts. After seeing Juan’s new place I didn’t know what I was thinking back when I moved into my apartment at Brentwood Terrace. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Moving in for Juan was only a matter of transferring a few suitcases from his hotel over to the Portofino. He didn’t really need me but I went with him when he dropped off his rental car. As I was driving him back to the Portofino I had to ask him. “So you are actually going to live here in Centralia without a car?”

That was his plan. Not only did he get a furnished apartment, but the professor who left on some sort of emergency sabbatical left a bicycle behind. Considering that he was turning over his entire life to a total stranger, the professor had left behind almost no instructions about how he wanted his possessions cared for, but he was fairly explicit about the bike, and it wasn’t much of a bike. A surrogate wife and children would have made Juan’s new living quarters complete. I figured he would figure that out tomorrow.

I offered to drive him to the supermarket and although he didn’t want to put me out I insisted. While he was shopping I picked up a good bottle of wine as a house warming gift. After we put away his groceries we found a couple of wine glasses and headed out to the courtyard. Before we were outside it we could hear the other people who had the same idea on this late summer evening.

8:53 PM

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I felt like taking a break from the novel.

Over My Dead Body

What if someone walked up to me right now, put a gun to my head, and told me to write something funny or they would shoot me? Would that inspire me to come up with a humorous essay or would the pressure strangle my creativity? What if I wrote something that was sort of funny, but not ha-ha funny? Would they just shoot me a little? Perhaps they would just shoot my ear off. I could live with that. I wouldn’t want to get shot in the eye, though. That wouldn’t be funny at all and definitely not ha-ha funny. If someone else got shot in the eye it might be funny. That’s called slap stick.

If someone I didn’t like got shot in the eye it would hilarious, so if someone wanted me to write something funny they should point a gun to someone else’s head and not mine. That’s kind of like tickling my funny bone, except replace ‘my funny bone’ with someone I don’t like’s eye, and then replace ‘tickle’ with a bullet. Does that make any sense? It makes sense to me so stop waving that gun at me and go point it at somebody else.

I refuse to be blackmailed into writing humor, so don’t even attempt that approach with me. You could try to take a member of my family hostage and threaten to harm them if I don’t get a laugh. That would not work with me and I’ll tell you why: I don’t like most of the members of my family. I may even enjoy it, so don’t waste your time with that ploy unless you are out to do me a favor.

What about bribery, you ask. I don’t know if I can be bribed into coming up with a humorous essay, but I’m certainly willing to give it the old college try. What did you have in mind? If you are having difficulties trying to think of things to bribe me with, allow me to give you a few suggestions: sex, money, gold, food (something with bacon on it sounds good), chocolate bars, nylon stockings, baseball tickets, and sex are just a few things I can think of. Did I mention supermodels? Perhaps some sort of combination of those items?

If you really want me to write something funny perhaps you should just get off my back and stop bloody hounding me. Good lord, you’re going on and on about this like a fucking broken record. Heaping this kind of pressure on a guy is what gives people ulcers, or heart attacks, or rickets, or that’s what makes people become bulimic, or schizophrenic, or it gives them irritable bowel syndrome (IBS, Known as the silent killer except when it isn't silent and then it is hugely embarrassing). I am under so much pressure to perform that I can’t think straight. I am losing my humor erection, so to speak. There it goes. I’m as limp as a noodle. Are you happy now? Do you think that is funny? I would if it happened to someone else. How about if I just drop dead for you? I’m sure you’d love that. You always were one for a cheap laugh.

1:56 AM

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