Clean Up

It may have been the Monk who got it into his mind that cleaning the apartment for the New Year’s was a good and worthy thing to do. ” a new broom sweeps clean for a New Year,” he stated. Most of the other habitues of the Folkie Palace just looked at him as though he was crazed. So it took a day for him to recruit, shame, and inveigle enough help to grab a sponge, mop, and buckets for a New Year’s clean-up. Many grumbled that it was absurd to interrupt leisure time for cleaning. This comment led the Monk to comment that it was clear their poor mother got abandoned to do all household duties alone, while the layabouts lazed the days away. The Teahead of the August Moon looked up from reading Playboy long enough to tell the Monk to lay off the comments about his mother. It was only through an abundance of caution that they were resting. Too much physical activity after so much partying would be harmful to their health.

Once we started, though, enthusiasm for the project developed as trash buckets filled and washing revealed the actual color of the hardwood floor. When completed, everyone agreed that the Monk had been right. The Folkie Palace looked so good, pristine, and neat that they decided that a post-New Year’s party was in order.
So it was decided that the Palace would host a grand Three Kings Day party, complete with a visitation by the three kings – myself, the Monk, and the Teahead.

The party was a great success, but it undid most of what the clean-up had achieved. It also created a massive rift with the landlord, who swore that the next time we did something like that, it would abrogate our lease, and he’d toss the lot of us out. So we carefully cleaned up again. And set out to turn over a new leaf for the new year and behave.

And we did behave until our Patriot’s Day party when Officer Cappucci and several of his brethren in blue hauled off party attendees who were dancing nude on the sidewalk. But that’s another story.