Tag: Word of the Day Challenge

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Healing

It was the summer of 1995. I was back working a boatyard. My last stint doing bottom paint, wooding old varnish, was almost exactly twenty years prior. I was a few hundred miles south of Spinney’s yard, but little had changed. Bottom paint was better for the marine environment but still a mess to apply. The chief varnisher was a different woman, but just as hard to satisfy on the prep.
I rejoiced in the sameness.
The Clinton-Gore reinvention of government deep-sixed my government job as an anthropologist. I was not sorry. Working in the boatyard was therapeutic. Within days there was a lessening of the stress symptoms that had troubled me for most of five years. I stopped grinding my teeth, the twitch in my left eyelid went away. By the end of the second week, the sores in my mouth disappeared.
I began to look upon the detour into my history as healing summer fun.
Then I got a call from an old associate at work wanting me to return as a consultant. I looked around the boatyard, then told her that there was too much work for me to leave just then, call me in the fall.

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Folk Guitar

As an experienced folk guitarist, I’d thought that teaching guitar would be easy. But of course, teaching is different than doing.
The pastor of the church, my fiance, and I attended talked me into it. He desired a non-religious community outreach program for youth. Folk guitar classes, he felt, would be ideal. Donations partially covered tuition keeping the expense to student low. I needed additional income with a wedding looming in my future. I agreed to teach the class.
I started with five students, but things did not go smoothly. My nemesis of the guitar class were the “Twins,” Hugo and Elise. I had assigned an old classic as the text we’d use. It was the book I’d used years ago to introduce myself to the guitar. I was familiar with it and understood that even years later, it could teach me new things. The problem was that to the Twins; it was boring. Rather than complete the assignment of the week, they’d get bored, not learn it thoroughly and skip on to the next technique or song. To a degree, I had sympathy with this approach. My dark secret was that I did this, too, when I was learning.
But as a teacher, it was disruptive to the other three students. The three “pluggers” would never be Dylans but worked hard at becoming technically proficient with the instrument. It was satisfying to work with students who, if not exceptionally talented, would learn and enjoy the instrument.
After a while, I feared the pluggers would become frustrated and drop out of lessons. That would leave me with less income and the Twins. Speaking one evening to a fellow guitarist who also gave instruction, he suggested giving in to the Twin’s desire to forge ahead and let them go until they succeeded, fell back into line with the class, or left. As a matter of technique, he also showed me some finger mobility exercises I could incorporate into study and practice time.
The pluggers found the mobility exercises entertaining and useful the twins baulked; they were not challenging. It was Paul, who had suggested the mobility exercises that came to the rescue. Paul had been my teacher when I had attempted to take up classical guitar several years earlier. Paul’s plot was to take on the twins for a genuinely challenging course of instruction.
Next class, I had a conversation with the twins and pointed out that such advanced students needed more challenging instruction. They preened. I suggested that Paul was always looking for promising talent and that I’d speak to him on their behalf if they wished. The following class, the twins were absent, but I followed their progress, or lack of it, during conversations with Paul. Paul told me that he had them practicing the Segovia Scales; I shuddered. Several weeks later, he assigned them some challenging Guitarra Rasconada exercises of Emilio Pujol. I groaned at this; it was the Pujol material that drove me crazy. Paul’s plot was simple – toss the Twin’s right into an accelerated course that included the hated mobility exercises, music theory, many many scales with variations, and challenging exercises.
About five weeks later, the Twins returned to my class eager to return to the beginning folk guitar’s less complicated world.

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Good Grades

Louis N Carreras photo

The line between a rogue and a bastard can be razor-thin. In younger days, friends had schooled me on the finer points. No overt cruelty. No severe damage to the other person. A sense of humor in what you did and how you achieved it. And importantly – enjoying yourself. The preferred term for these activities was “tying a knot in the Devil’s tail.”
Sometimes this happened unintentionally.
One fall, I was teaching an introductory level anthropology course for nursing students. One of the assignments was a research paper. It was a large class, and after collecting papers, I had a good-sized box of documents to read through and grade. Well, after getting home, I had other work to do helping my wife with curtain rods. The box sat in the corner that entire weekend. When I started reading and grading, I saw that my two-year-old son, Nick, had started for me. He knew three letters and loved crayon drawings of horses. Erasing the crayon was impossible, so I just continued grading.


Next week I had forgotten about the crayon scrawlings and distributed the papers to the students. Victoria was the first to stand up and exclaim: ” Mr. Carreras, I have an F! and a drawing of a horse in red crayon.” so it went around the room.
Sensing an opportunity to have a bit of fun, I addressed the class. “Well, the class is large. I felt the need to enlist the aid of my two-year-old in grading your papers. Nick has soaked in anthropology through living with me for two entire years. He’s a consummate professional in all regards except age. You may not be aware, but the “baby system” of grading has been around for years and is well regarded in professional circles.” Silence. ” Of course, for those of you dissatisfied with your “baby grade” evaluation there is an alternate system available.” What’s that, Mr. Carreras?” Waiting for the moment just a bit…I replied, ” Well, there is the staircase method. I take your papers to the nearest stairwell and toss them down the stairs. The further down I go, the lower your grade is. Frankly, Nicky is a safer bet. He only knows three letters – A, B, and C, so you can’t fail.”
By now, the class was in on the joke and showing each other their Nicky grades. One lucky student had an A and three blue horses, which was a good thing because she needed the grade.
When final exam time rolled around, most of the papers had a note written at the top: Hi Nicky!!! Please give me a good grade.
My son will never make it in Academia. He’s much too lenient a grader, and his horses need improvement.

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Subtle

Juggling three jobs was not easy. There was a full-time job on the rock pile breaking stone for Joltin’ Joe, the Endowment consulting assignments researching curricula, and teaching guitar in the evening at the church hall. I needed all three to keep up payments on educational loans, pay the rent, and have some money to take my fiancé out once in a while. Since my fiance left to go to nursing school, a new hire had taken her place. The new hire, Sandy, was my first experience with a political hire. She had been engaged by my bosses to keep someone in City Hall happy. Knowing that she had a safe appointment, it was nearly impossible to get her to do anything beyond staring at the wall or granting me the occasional moue of distaste or displeasure. I was sure that part of her duties included tattling on me to Joltin’ Joe. I tested this early in the game by feeding her a tidbit and waiting till it came home.
I was saved by my advisory panel members – locals with interests in the programs we were producing and the research we carried out. Julia, a group member, was a veteran of many volunteer organizations. She advised that I “leave Sandy to us.”
Over months, the advisory panel members allowed Sandy to overhear snippets of gossip and fed her as much misinformation as she could absorb. One Portuguese liqueur store owner let slip that I was so desperate for money that I was clerking evenings behind the counter at his store. An Italian restaurant owner let slip that I was working at her restaurant in the afternoons when I was not in my office. Sandy had no filters and dutifully reported these fantasies to Joltin’ Joe.
Joltin’ Joe showed up for lunch several times at the restaurant and made purchases at the liquor store. Some of his sycophants followed up on other stories. Sandy lost credibility and was suspected of disloyalty. The one thing that a political hire cannot do is prove disloyal. Joe began to threaten her job.
Sandy was nearing the end of her ninety-day probationary period and was very likely to be fired. She truly needed the job, had no marketable skills and was pretty clueless. So I was surprised when my advisory panel suggested that we save Sandy from Joltin’ Joe- “she’s so much fun!” Julia quipped. The liqueur store owner concurred. The owner of the Italian restaurant was laughing in the corner. Joltin’ Joe had no friends in this group. Julia suggested that a few of them contact Margery, the assistant director. Unlike Joe, Margery had fans among my advisory panel. Calls got made, and Sandy retained her job. Subtly, it was suggested to Sandy how and who had saved her job. The blank stares continued, but there was many fewer Sarcastic Moue.

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Evil Santa

I met my wife at work. Over about half a year, a comfortable working relationship began to evolve into an even more comfortable partnership. Not long following that, I conceded that it was much more. She had made it to that finish line before me, but considering my rocky past, that was not surprising. What took me by surprise was the suggestion from the assistant director of the system I was working for that she “might want to look around for something else.”


Margery had not been a great intermediary between Joltin’ Joe and me. Life with him as a boss was like trench warfare, and when the big guns were shooting, you hid in the trench. Margery hid well and could be someplace else whenever Joe was about to explode. Typically, at his right hand, you could tell that something nasty was in the offing when she was absent.

So when she offered grandmotherly advice over a surprise lunch, I was taken aback. She explained that couples did not fare well with Joltin’ Joe. While we had been exceptionally discreet, she knew it was only a matter of time before Joe found out and exploited the budding relationship. At that point, there were no guidelines in the personnel handbook forbidding my girlfriend and me from dating. I pointed this out to Margery. She smiled and said, ” When has the handbook ever stopped him from doing whatever he wanted?” The conversation then glided effortlessly from my personal life to our current program initiatives.


I knew that Margery’s advice was on target. Joe could flip out at a misplaced pen on a desk. He wandered the corridors and offices, shrouded in a haze of Lucky Strike smoke, bringing chaos wherever he entered. One hapless coworker had his desk flipped during a full-fledged Joe harangue. You might lawyer up these days and bring suit for his creating a hostile workplace; then, you worked as hard at staying out of his way as you did in trying to get your work done. Just getting through a week was a triumph.
It took time to arrange an exit, but my now fiancé was in nursing school within a year. At the end of that year, we decided to attend a staff Christmas party. We hadn’t been there long before in walked Santa. Joe made his entry in full Santa regalia, a bag of presents over his left shoulder, and a Lucky Strike smoking from the right hand’s fingers. Sort of a tough guy Santa. Behind him to the right came Margery, dressed as an elf. Most of the attendees stood there, stunned. Knowing Joe, we wondered what sort of presents could be in the sack. Cartons of Luckies’ for his few favorites, and coal for the rest? A prolonged smoker’s cough succeeded the Ho-Ho-Ho that pealed out. “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!!”


Margery then began to lead Santa around to spread Christmas cheer to all. Eventually, Santa arrived at the little knot of people that included my fiancé and me. I introduced her to Joe using her full first name, not the shortened version she had used at work. If you hadn’t known her at work, you might not have recognized the elegantly attired, perfectly coiffed young woman at my side that evening. Josh, a coworker, started talking to her about work, only to be interrupted by Margery, who gently but firmly took his elbow and guided him away. “Josh? Have you met my husband?”


After a moment, Joe moved on but kept looking back at us. He knew that he had missed something, but couldn’t quite place what it was.
Margery soon came back to attend to Santa, leading him to his throne at one side of the room. He glanced our way several times, speaking intently to Margery, whose body language and facial expressions implied that she had no idea what he was going on about.
The staff began to enjoy the event. We all made an effort to ignore the smoke-shrouded, grim Grinch dressed as Santa that sat in the corner. Periodically, Santa sent questioning glares my way. To the right of the grim Santa stood Margery. Margery gave me a broad grin, patted Santa, and seemed to enjoy having put one over on Joltin’ Joe.

For more on Joe see: Joltin’ Joe

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Venus Callipygea

How to put this delicately; my wife resembled the Venus Callipygea. Poised and posed, one heel raised, glancing back to examine her stockings. Breaking the suspense, she glanced up at me and demurely asked: “Lou, do you want the casserole tomorrow or the turkey empanadas?”
Gazing at my wife of thirty-some-odd years, I diverted my attention from her graceful form and replied: “Ummm, the turkey?”
Marriage – that great compromise between desire and practicality.

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What Jerry Did

Halloween week can be an iffy time of the year to be on the road. Sometimes it’s like late summer, and others its almost full-on winter. I never particularly liked hitching during this holiday week. Too many cruel people hide among merrymakers dressed as ghosts, goblins, and political figures.
This particular year I was strongly motivated by the economic need to be in a different state to make money at a new job. It was my bad luck to be stuck on the road on Halloween. It’s trite to say that it was dark, windy, and damp, with the clouds scudding rapidly like clippers before a storm. But it was. A low bank of fog was forming, and visibility on the road was becoming non-existent. I needed to get off the highway and into shelter soon.
I stumbled through the woods adjacent to the highway until I found myself in a clearing. The sort of clearing it was wasn’t apparent until I collided with a half toppled tombstone. Finding the aisle between the graves, I proceeded to walk through the graveyard until I came upon a massive and ornate crypt. I walked up onto the covered portico looking for shelter. There was not much. Looking at the ornate ironwork gate and the door behind it, I noticed that the locks had been broken. This was not my idea of a great refuge from the weather, but I wasn’t about to go too much farther without any alternative shelter.
As I entered, I noted the small podium with an open ledger book on it. To the right was a carved stone bench, and on the opposite wall was a weeping angel with her face covered. Creepy; it reminded me of the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who. I didn’t think I would do much sleeping tonight. Behind me were a double row of unused stone benches that I assumed were meant for the crypt’s owners’ coffins—never used. I shut off my flashlight and reclined on the stone bench opposite the angel – “I’m keeping my eyes on you, sweetheart.”
I guess that I did sleep for a while. On waking, I nervously checked the angel -” glad you behaved darling.” from outside came the sounds of teens taunting a member of their group. ” come on, you said you’d go in. All you do is lie down on where the coffins go, and stay there till midnight. I’ve done it lots of times!” ” but Jerry, it’s a tomb. I don’t want to!” ” look, Sal, I’ll show you how to do it, then you do it. OK?”
Jerry and his friends surrounded Sal, who looked like someone’s younger sister about to be victimized by her older brother and his friends. They were nervously capering around, seeming to be caught between anticipation of a good joke and outright fright.
Jerry strode up the steps to the entrance and eased open the gate with a big grin on his face. Seeing my chance to turn the tables on a bully, I pulled up my hood and grabbed my flashlight. As Jerry stepped inside, I lit the flashlight directly below my chin, placed a hand on his shoulder, and in my worst Boris Karloff voice, said: “Jerry, we have been expecting your arrival…welcome!” Jerry screamed, ran out, fell flat on his face at the end of the stairs, got up, and ran away. The entire gang joined him, running away in panic. I stood in darkness on the steps, hood drawn up, and light under my chin.
I gathered up my pack and guitar and headed downhill towards the highway. I’d had enough Halloween for this year.

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In Between

My life has been full of little interludes. Those are spaces of time that are interim between phases of full-on activity. Sometimes they are restful, and I’ve carefully planned them for recharging. Others have been dry spells. I refer to those times as being on the beach, or being on the hard; both terms I picked up from my father and his former merchant marine buddies. To them, very little could be worse than being on the hard – between ships.
I am pretty much the same way. A few months into an interim period, and I begin to get itchy and feel trapped. I’ve seen friends get stuck in a sort of frenzy when this happens. It’s best to compare it to getting your car stuck in mud or on ice. Some people sit there and continue to spin their wheels endlessly. Others calm down, get out to the trunk, and pick through the material that some thought you should have taken to the dump. You find those muddy old boards you’ve been saving just for this instance. Out they go under the wheel, and away you go.
Career-wise, this approach has life implications. Most people depend on plan A to the exclusion of all else. Despite having periods of being on the beach career-wise. I’ve moved on to new careers because I can rummage around and find something else to do when I’m stuck.
Here are some examples. When I left grad school, there were no anthropology jobs to be found. I returned to an earlier trade as a surgical technician until a job came up. Later, while working as an anthropologist, I learned some additional skills as a journalist and a videographer. Subsequently, I worked as a newspaper editor and currently work as a videographer.
I like to sum it up this way: while living in plan A, work on plan B, and have plans C and D on the back burners. Friends I’ve known waited until Plan A ran aground hard on a reef and sank. Then they started education programs as their benefits ran out. They wind up looking squarely into the face of a phantasm of their creation. Not that my plan will avoid the sort of tragedy that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused, but it may help in normal times.

On a final note, I would like you to consider hobbies. Hobbies can become career choices. My carving began as a hobby, and a friend who makes musical instruments started his business as a hobby. If the pursuit does nothing more than providing emotional support when you are on the hard, you are way ahead of many of your peers.

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Cat About Town

Better known as Clancy, the grey devil cat, or the Gray Menace, he was twenty pounds of lean muscle. The photo shows a softer, more sophisticated side of Clancy J. Bumps. Here he is pictured with one of his inamorata’s.
Clancy was hell with four clawed paws when piqued, but loyal to those he appreciated. He was not an average cat. Capable of scaring cats into running rapidly away. He had a softer side.
Clancy had numerous male cat friends and several female associates. He is entertaining in our apartment one evening in the photo, grooming one of his regular female companions.
It’s sad to say, but around the time this picture was taken in 1978, Clancy was having better luck with girlfriends than I was. Perhaps it was his sophisticated pickup technique ” Here, let me groom you a bit.”, or ” Come up to my place, my chef will prepare some roast beef for us.”
His favorite meal was half a roast beef sub. Hold the pickles, but don’t forget the hots! Afterward, there was nothing as extraordinary as a good catnip toot. Make sure that you let him sleep it off, or there’d be an awful ruckus.

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Light Air

<p class="has-drop-cap" value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80"><a href="https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2020/10/10/sultry/">Sultry</a&gt; is not the usual term used for days on the coast. The realtors, tourist industry, and boat brokers want you to think about cooling breezes, glorious summer sunsets on the beach, and romantic dinners at outside venues. None of these folks have spent a windless, sun raked day sanding varnish at a boatyard. Now that's sultry.Sultry is not the usual term used for days on the coast. The realtors, tourist industry, and boat brokers want you to think about cooling breezes, glorious summer sunsets on the beach, and romantic dinners at outside venues. None of these folks have spent a windless, sun raked day sanding varnish at a boatyard. Now that’s sultry.

Hot, dry, and no wind. Perfect for the varnisher. I had just finished the Barnaby boat, so Peggy, the yard varnisher, could start. She was very particular, so I took a break in the shade of a sloop hull while she double and triple checked my work. I was low man at Spinney’s boatyard and not quite trusted yet. At last, she gave the nod, and off I was to my next assignment. Another great job; applying bottom paint to another sloop.

Spinney decided that the bottom could wait and called me over. “Wes, can you take Miss Talbot and her friend out on Prism? Her dad’s thinking of buying it, and it’ll be her boat. Let her see how it sails.”

“Sure, boss, but there is barely light air out there. I’m not sure it’ll be much of a sail.” Now, light air is a sailor’s term for air movement of roughly one and a half to three miles per hour. You can’t call it wind, and it’s not even breeze. At best, you ghost along. If it’s not too hot, it can be relaxing.

Spinney, not wanting me to lose him a sale, told me to get going and sail. So it was down to the float to collect Miss Talbot, her friend, and Prism.

Prism was an old one design sloop of about sixteen feet. In the twenties and thirties, dozens of these designs had gotten popped out like toast from a toaster. They had been purchased in the thousands by boating and yacht clubs all over the coast for racing. Many were built, but few remained. Prism was the last of her type around here, making it impossible to sail as part of a class of similar boats. A long string of owners had neglected her, delegating her to entertaining bored “Summer Complaint” teens. In a few years, Prism would be lovingly restored by newly appreciative owners, and have a featured article in one of the boating magazines. But for now, she was a tired old boat that Spinney was trying to dump.

At the float, Miss Talbot was waiting with her friend. I showed them aboard and got ready to shove off the float while assessing their boating knowledge, meager. Taking advantage of the light air to teach them the rudiments of sailing, I soon had one on the tiller and mainsheet, and the other handling the jib sheet. It was “flat” sailing, no heeling, no rush of water beneath the hull, and no wind rushing in your hair. It was just what was ordered to sell the boat. Or so I thought. Miss Talbot grew bored. “Can’t we get this thing to go faster?”

I was interested in going faster as well. Off to the northwest, I could see thunderheads developing, and had no desire to be caught on the water in a sudden blow. I began to teach them light air sailing tricks: dowsing the mainsail with water to create a bit of a belly for catching the wind, and repositioning crew to create a bit of a heel. None of it worked.

All of a sudden, the wind picked up, and I hurried to take advantage of it to get us back to Spinney’s. Not in a panic, yet, but I expected that anytime soon, the wind would back and veer rapidly ( suddenly shift directions), and then we’d be caught in the storm. By now, Prism was sailing as close to the wind as I could get her, and the little sloop was heeled over almost so much that green water was sloshing aboard. All pretension of teaching was now gone as I raced against the storm. Then I noticed that Miss Talbot and friend were shrieking in excitement – “Faster – Faster!” The rain started about a hundred yards off the float, and it was not long before we were all soaked to our skins. I could see Spinney getting the launch prepared to go get us should we capsize. Coming up on the float I killed Prism’s momentum and tossed the mooring line to Spinney. Flopping down onto the boat, I was exhausted. The two excited young women were standing there, shouting, ” Let’s go out again!” Spinney looked me and made a gesture of thumb and fingers of his right hand rubbing together. Sale made. ” Good work Wes, but that was close. Don’t hot dog out there that much next time.”

Some father was going to regret his decision to set these two loose on the Harbor; very soon.