Category: Stories

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Cargo

In the 1980’s I taught as an adjunct professor of anthropology at a small college not too far from where I lived. I taught introductory classes in the subject, and lectures could become dry exercises in textbook repeats except for an open-ended discussion group I ran every week. The group’s purpose was to focus on our week’s lectures and readings. I tried to relate what we were studying to current USA events and culture as much as possible. Some topics were more straightforward than others.

We discussed Cargo Cults following World War II in Melanesia during one discussion session.
Massive amounts of equipment and supplies were flown in and air-dropped during the war to provide the supplies needed to support troops. Inevitably, some of this largesse found its way into the hands of the locals. To them, it was a wealth of a sort that they had never before imagined. However, when the war ended, cargo flow ceased, and locals who had become accustomed to the wealth of foodstuffs and manufactured goods faced a problem: bringing the cargo back.
The cargo cults attempted to lure the planes with their valuable cargoes of goods back. Cult adherents built control tower and airplane mockups. Others drilled on the abandoned airfields to give the appearance that soldiers were still there. But of course, the cargo never returned.

After reviewing the topic, I asked several people to point out movements, or trends, in current American culture that mirrored the Melanesian Cargo Cults. Dead silence. After looking around, I noticed that one of my students was eating a health food bar from a major diet food company. The company regularly used celebrity “Evangelists” to promote its products. I pointed out that emulating soldiers’ behavior at the old airfields had been considered paramount to attracting cargo. Wasn’t emulating celebrities and expecting to lose weight and reshape your body similar?

This comparison did not win me any friends among a particular class segment. Off to one side, I noticed that Chuck was laughing at the discomfort of others. Knowing that Chuck was, like me, an avid woodworker, I asked him if he were so different buying tools touted by famous woodworkers. The ads in the woodworking magazines certainly seemed to suggest that owning Hugo Slemp’s chisels and gouges would ensure that your work too would win prizes. Did he see any similarities?

I had made my point that Citizens of the States were not too different from the Melanesians. I had also dented my popularity with my students. Deciding to go for the gold, I mentioned that they might expect a question on Cargo Cults on the final. Be prepared.

My class was not pleased. But, in my defense, I have to say that I believe as Margaret Mead did that “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

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You’ll Pay!

You’ll pay! You were warned. White stuff! Seventy degrees one day. White stuff follows. Disgusting. I’m not some purdy, self important and disagreeable kitty that you do this and expect me to merely hiss.

I am Xenia. Hear me sing arias in your ear at 1 Am, improvise a trio sonata for you at three, and leave a hairball in your slipper at six.

I now glare at you with my baleful gaze, and launch a reign of feline terror on you.

Repent now or I’ll send word to all my niblings, and cousins to excommunicate you!

By the way, breakfast is expected promptly at the normal time.

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Deception

There are fewer hard edges in life than we like to pretend. 

We like to think that there sharp divisions, but in many areas of life, things grade gradually from one state to the other. 

For example, many people insist that their handedness is either right or left. But when we give them a “handedness inventory” to complete, they realize that many things get done off-handed. So it’s not as hard an edge as they thought. This mixture extends into many areas, including politics, diet, and other choices. People can become agitated when the inconsistencies get pointed out to them. They appear to be not what they wished. You’ll get accused of magnifying the minuscule. Cherished conceptions of self are seemingly contradicted. The liberal finds his conservative traits repulsive, and the conservative is horrified by those creeping crawling liberalities. The Litmus test prooves limited.

I made a reasonably good living creating programs that pointed these sorts of things out to people in safe environments. As a practicing anthropologist, I wasn’t so concerned about the divisions as about putting people into positions and places where they might be interested in exploring what they held in common. Commonality at least provided a basis for understanding and accommodation. So my goals were reasonably low level. I wasn’t too concerned with Kumbayah moments; getting them to communicate was more critical.

Things have become so strident that the programs I used to do are impractical. People are more interested in beating each other down than beating a system that divides them into neat little hard-edged boxes.

It’s deceptive because there are fewer hard edges in life than we like to pretend.

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Enjoy

It seems that almost every place in New England is rapidly becoming or is already a suburb. Small towns and even small cities are being gobbled up wholesale and casually incorporated into regional aggregates.
I suppose that this beats just drying up and blowing away.
If your small city had been a famous home of a tool steel company, brass foundries, or machinery manufacturer, becoming a suburb might be preferable to hanging a vacancy sign on the way into town.

In the post-World War II years, the companies had begun to drift away. They moved south for cheap labor or to be closer to essential materials.
By the time I first whipped through, the Main Street vacancies were beginning to appear. Vacant storefronts or small stores having closing sales were common.

The cheap little church-sponsored coffeehouse I was booked to play in was one vacancy. The main factory that had anchored the town for a century was closing, and the young people I was meeting did not expect to find good-paying jobs but had no idea of where they might go. I’d show up with a guitar and a backpack and become part of the problem. I was loose, unfettered, and unattached. Parents hated what I represented. Their children saw certain freedom rolling into town one afternoon and out the following one. I was on my way over the far horizon; they saw themselves bound by the horizon formed by the mill and factory buildings silhouetting downtown.

Monday, my wife and I were journeying to a greenhouse in an adjacent state. It was our annual late winter retreat to a green and beautiful location. We’d come home refreshed and with a car full of new plants. Needing a PM snack, I pulled off the highway after seeing a sign that vaguely reminded me of something. As we drove into the small city, I realized that it was one of those places that I used roll in and out of in about 1965. The process of industrial devolution had been completed sometime in the ’80s. And a competent Community Development Department had begun to repackage downtown rather thoroughly.

The old New Haven railroad station gleamed after a restoration. Pastry shops, antique shops, boutiques, fashionable restaurants, and pubs dotted downtown. Nearby was free public parking and restrooms.
A formerly shoddy area was now a lovely urban riverside park.

I found no reminder of the old coffeehouse. A robust local economy dependent on a larger nearby city made this all possible. I was in no way nostalgic for my 1960s memories. But, yes, the place had become a satellite whirling in orbit around a larger neighbor.
But all communities are satellites, not isolates. For example, this city used to be tied to an economic net of industrial procurement and supply. Now it is linked to different networks of supply and demand. Different, but similar.

My wife looked over at me, sipping my latte, and asked if I was thinking about the old days. “No,” I replied, ” just wondering what’s next. Even if you are real cagey and think ahead times, economies and communities change.” You can gaze into the cards and ask the Magic Eightball for answers, but people are lousy at predicting the future. I leaned back, took a sip, and watched the scene outside the window. All you can do is prepare, but you really can’t predict.
So enjoy and be ready for change; it’s a certainty.

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Influence

I appear to be a rather insouciant type of guy. Not the sort to be overly bothered by a small piece of gristle in his filet mignon. But, like most of us, I consider my life to be precisely that; mine.

With this in mind, it could seem strange that I’d get involved with anyone whose purpose was my improvement. “Wes, you don’t look good in black turtlenecks.” “Wes, try to avoid this..or that.” Those sorts of relationships have had a limited life span.

But as most men will declare ( when nobody is looking), young men learn an awful lot from their female friends, wives, and lovers. So over the years, we took to heart and made our own much that got suggested to us.

The method of suggestion is critical. We often emulate or mimic what pleases us and those close to us. Appreciative looks and compliments go further than being told that my blue jeans and black turtlenecks are soooo Steve Jobs! I wore mine in Greenwich Village while he was still in diapers! Comments like that enforce the opposite; I like my look in black turtlenecks. 

So, much of what I like came from helpful, appreciative, loving, and kind women. But it’s so much more than new things learned or some lost. It’s also about the nuance of having encouragement as you struggle with a new song or a tricky bit of art. Sometimes, I’d of tottered off the edge if it hadn’t been for an encouraging word or presence.

In great appreciation, I’d like to say to you all, and you know who you are: Thank you more than can ever get expressed in words.

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Show Boat

As a kid, I wish I could say that I was self-assured, well-muscled, and, if not feared, respected around the neighborhood. Not at all. I was skinny, frightened of my shadow, and picked on. A primary goal of my life was getting the idiots who were picking on me to layoff.

Judo turned out to be the art that turned things around. My senseis were young Japanese Judoka, some of whom had been all-star representatives of their art. Over my first six months at the dojo, my teachers came to realize that the bruises on my arms were not from our open sparring sessions. Eventually, one of my teachers sat me down for a talk. In a friendly but firm way, he extracted from me how Roddy and Julio were intimidating me. After carefully listening, he pointed out that I was acceding to their bullying by neither fighting nor walking away. I chose to do nothing because I was afraid, and fear was my actual problem. Then he sent me back to practice and to think about what he said.

It took a while for me to absorb things, but the next time I was cornered by the duo of Roddy and Julio, a part of me watched from the side as the episode unwound. First, there was the verbal intimidation, then there was the cornering so I couldn’t escape, and finally, Julio was pounding one fist into the palm of the other. Gradually he made a production of raising his fist to his cheek and rearing far back. Then there was a wind up to punch me. In the words of my teachers, this was a sort of Jo-Ha-Kyu ( slow, faster, fastest). It was showboating to get the maximum fear out of me in this case. But, for once, I acted rather than thought. As Julio completed his wind-up, I stepped into him and pushed him off balance. Then, turning, I grabbed the laughing Roddy with two fingers on the tip of the nose. Squeezing painfully, I found that as my sensei had told me, where the nose goes, the rest of the body must follow. In Roddy’s case, it was onto his knees. Then I walked calmly away.
Of course, I wasn’t calm. I was scared, almost witless. But it wasn’t till I got around the corner that I started panting and shaking.
After a bit, I realized that while Roddy and Julio weren’t precisely just rascals, they weren’t hardened gang types either. My counter intimidation worked fine because they were simple bullies. I didn’t let it go to my head.
Next week, I was back at the dojo working harder; I might not be so lucky next time.

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Second Breakfast

Kibble? Dry food? Scrugglies! How can a cat degust with elan, taste with elegance and care? No wet food?
Where is the Maitre D’! I want to see someone in management. Now!
No, I m not making a teapot tempest out of this. I am Xenia, Empress of all I surveys I am always in careful regard of the image I project, and I assure you…what? Oh. A nice piece of cream cheese for Madam? and it’s waaafeerr thin?
Oh, of course, I have room! But next time, can it please be Neufchatel cheese?

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Ephemera

The argument was the supreme form of discourse between Josh and John. They’d come to our gatherings prepared with topics, rebuttals, and reinforcing evidence. You had to do very little to get them going. Ask about the limits of copyright in the United States, and they’d roll on for hours; what made a substance waxy resulted in several trips to dictionaries, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and a biochemistry text. It was fun to get quizzical and ask seemingly innocent questions to get them wound up.

Their wives both certainly deserved diadems and sainthood because they related that at least twice a week, telephone calls lasted past midnight as they argued. But our monthly meetups were when we pulled out the saved ammunition of absurdities. The two seemed unaware that they were a primary form of entertainment. The potluck food was terrific, the company exquisite, but the ongoing kitchen debates were outrageous.

One night Ted decided to pull out an old chestnut and asked how many angels could dance on the top of a pin. To our surprise, neither fell for the bait. Instead, they dismissed the issue, saying there was no evidence anyone had debated this in the middle ages. Then Josh said, ” Yes, but there is the interesting commentary regarding the learned scholars debating this while the Turks breached the walls of Constantinople.” “Just folklore from the Crusaders!” argued John. ” I think it was a fabrication designed to discredit philosophy by materialists!” So back and forth it went until Ted piped up and asked, “All that is well and good, but how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
Slowly they turned, “who the hell cares.” stated Josh, with an agreeing harrumph from John. ” The historiography of the debate is what’s important.” After this, the entertainment value declined, and we all moved into the living room for coffee.

Not too long afterward, online encyclopedias became a thing, and John and Josh took to editing entries. You can find their work online almost any day. Just look in the sections of posts labeled debate, history, or edits, and you’ll find them arguing about how many jewels in the George the IV Diadem, The antiquity of the Procession of Saints, and the cost of watermelons in Philadelphia’s Italian Market on July 4th.

The old group scattered to the winds year ago; divorces, relocations, and changes in interests knocked us off one by one. Only those two continue in their senseless debate of ephemera. As Epictetus said, “First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.”

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Not-Friend

A not-friend is someone you sometimes are forced to socialize with, be courteous to, and pretend to be a friend for the sake of your friends who are his friends. Make sense? Well, you may have one. You know the guy who joins you at the table in the Harvard Gardens and spends the evening undressing every passing nubile female that goes by. That’s right him. 

We had one. Mongo was a friend of the Monks from the seminary. How someone like this ever got accepted into a seminary or became the friend of such a prayerful person as the Monk, we could not guess. But, we tolerated him because the Monk seemed to.

Please don’t get me wrong. The “gentlemen” of the Folkie Palace were not above leering, letching, ogling, and drooling. We were just more restrained about it. Mongo was not in the least reserved. If you’ve watched old cartoons, you may be familiar with the image of the wolf whose eyes are bulging out and whose tongue is extending out of his mouth an incredible length. From this mouth would stream a steady inchoate stream of lust. Yes, that’s what I’d adduce -enter in evidence- in this case. 

Eventually, we had a household conference with the Monk about this, and it turned out that Mongo was a not-friend of Mongo, who he tolerated because he was a friend of Carl at the seminary. So OK, now it was clear he was a not-friend of ours because he was a not-friend of the Monk because the Monk thought he was a friend of Carl at the seminary? Which meant he was certainly not a friend of ours.

It turned out that Mongo became a bit of not problem for a month or so. He had started drinking across the river in Cambridge with friends from Harvard. After that, things at our table settled back into usual feckless abandon, and some of our female friends felt comfortable enough that they rejoined us. Then one evening, in walked Mongo with a petite redhead.

It was a subdued Mongo who sat down with us. Talia, the redhead, seemed to take the lead in the conversation, once in a while looking towards Mongo. Mongo would smile, nod his head, and beam at Talia. The single-time Mongo’s eyes darted towards a young woman entering the bar, Talia reached over, grabbed his hand, and said, ” behave yourself.”We found out that Talia intended to march Mongo down the aisle and make an honest man of him.

Later sitting around the Folkie Palace, the Monk mused that Talia certainly was nubile. ” Well,” he said, “nubile is from the Latin nubilis -to take a husband; a marriageable woman. And Talia certainly is taking Mongo to the alter to make him a husband.”

We sat around in silence after this for a while. Eventually, one of us spoke up and said, ” But did you see how Talia said behave to him, and he just smiled and nodded his head?” Then, off in the darkness, another said, ” it’s disturbing.” Even though Mongo was a not-friend, we mourned his passing. If someone like Mongo could prove so malleable why not one of us?

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Useless

Everybody should have a tool in their kitchen or their shop that they purchased because it promised to do multiple things well. It will teach you humility and the cost of human stupidity. The pitchman tells us that having this marvel of industrial design will obviate the need for five tools. And eliminate any need for help in multiple jobs.
We consider ourselves canny, wise, and sharp when it comes to sensing bull shit, but never the less get parted from our money. And so there it sits, taking up space in our kitchen or shop. It does all that the manual says it does, just none of them well.

It was expensive enough that we couldn’t afford to pitch it out on trash day. We’d have to admit to the entire neighborhood that we were foolish enough to buy it. So it sits there in a corner covered in an old tablecloth. We search YouTube for videos that offer to show us how to make it genuinely functional; without luck. Everyone else who has one is shamed into silence because they can’t make it work either.

You think of ways to repurpose it and just set it up for one purpose, but that doesn’t work. You place an ad on Facebook Marketplace offering it to anyone who’ll come for it; no one does. In desperation, you put it out with a big “FREE!!!!!” sign on it, but even the city won’t cart it away. One night you dream of attaching hundreds of balloons to it and floating it away, but it crashlands in a neighbors yard, and the police ticket you for littering.

At last, you take a sledgehammer to it and place it in a dumpster, carefully concealing it beneath old wallboard and flooring. Take it from me; this last approach is desperate but works.