Author: genenewman

On VJDay in ’45 I stood on a rooftop with my high school pal Frankie watching our Fairview neighbors on the street below celebrate Japan’s surrender. I suddenly realized World War II was over and my brother Jim, a battle weary Purple Heart G.I. in liberated Europe, would be coming home instead of going into a bloody campaign inside Japan.

Fairview NJ is about five bird miles from Manhattan. We could see the tops of its skyscrapers across the Hudson. “Let’s go to Times Square!” Frankie shouted. “There’ll be a big happy celebration!” So we hopped on a bus and were on the West Side in less than an hour, trotting towards the roar of the crowd.

The New York Times reported 750,000 happy people gathered that day in Times Square. I’m sure you’d see Frankie and me in a lot of the news photos if they were greatly enlarged.

Very soon, we saw a sailor kissing a girl in a white dress. Maybe it was the kiss that was photographed and widely circulated in newspapers . But there were many happy and tipsy G.I.’s kissing girls there that day. I could tell hot-blooded Frankie wanted to get into the act. He was a wolf on the prowl. One or two quick kisses in this crowd wouldn’t be difficult for a determined, quick-footed teen age boy.

“You’re going to get us in trouble,” I shouted. “You should have worn your Scout uniform. Then people might have thought you’re a foreign G.I., like from India, with the short pants and sleeves.”

Frankie wasn’t listening, too busy scanning the crowd. Suddenly I saw him stiffen. A pretty girl, about our age, was approaching. Frankie made his move, a rather awkward lunge while reaching out with puckered lips and grasping the surprised girls shoulders.

But suddenly without warning and before he could make osculatory contact, his lips were intercepted by the target’s mother (?) using her anti-kissing weapon, a very heavy purse.

On the bus ride home, Frankie complained through his swollen lips, “You should have helped me, you know. I could tell that girl was just waiting to be kissed.”

“But, Frankie,” I said. “Maybe she was just the bait. Maybe that woman was out to slug someone in Times Square as part of the celebration. Your picture might be in the Times tomorrow.”

“Listen to your body. It rarely lies,” the experts tell us. Sorry, but I don’t enjoy listening to my body. I can’t stand all the constant complaints, excuses and the undeserved accusations. 

Of course I don’t engage in actual verbal conversations with my body parts although Microsoft is probably creating an app right now that will provide them with vocabularies in several languages, making it possible for our joints, organs and bones to nag us more fluently.

I can imagine what it will be like. My right knee would have asked me this morning, “Can’t you feel my spasms? I’ve been talking to Lefty and he agrees, we’ve got to get some real exercise soon or we’ll seize up!”

So I’d decide on a long walk, but around the half-mile point, both feet would start yapping: ”Are you still wearing those cheap sneakers? We’re just getting over the silly flip-flops you wore all summer. The toes told us if you don’t shell out for some decent walking shoes you’re going to get a large painful corn crop.”

My toes, even the pinkies, have always been cranky and mean. They’re quite callous.

One day I’d be reaching up for a top shelf book at the library when my right shoulder would shout, “Ouch! That really hurts! You’d better stick to the lower shelf books and please have me looked at or at least spring for some Advil. And is all that head-scratching necessary? That hurts too, you know!

About then my head would butt in: ”And don’t stoop down to the bottom shelf books either. You know how dizzy it makes me when you stand up fast.”

This kind of talk could really limit my reading selections. Maybe, for instance , I wouldn’t be allowed to read books by some authors whose names begin with S, from  George Sands to the Szabo’s.

“Trust your gut,” the experts say, but sometimes my gut gets voted down. I’d be in the frozen dessert section of the supermarket intending to buy some low fat yogurt, but with the new app I’d be second-guessed.

My eyes would cry out, ”Wow! Look at that! a half-price sale on banana split royale ice cream with genuine milk chocolate syrup!”

“Yes, buy that! Buy that!” my salivating mouth would shout, dribbling on my hoody.

“Where am I supposed to put that stuff?” my intruding and protruding stomach will ask.”You’d better talk this over with the gall bladder and the arteries first.” It would be much too difficult to get a consensus of opinion in this type of situation.

I’ll  have to end this futuristic report soon. My right wrist, the one with the carpal tunnel problem is reminding me, the old-fashioned way, that it needs a rest and my arthritic thumbs are signaling that if I continue to type, therewillbenospacesbetweenthewordsfromthispointon 

This blog is based on the strange story a man recited to me years ago when I was a reporter. Here is a dramatization of the details captured by my answering machine.

The tale begins before sunrise on an August day. A groggy woman reaches from her bed to answer the phone. ”Hullo?” she mumbles, “Who is this?”

“Martha, it’s me, Ollie. You’ll never believe this!”

“You’re right, Ollie, I don’t believe this. Are you calling from the bathroom? I remember you were headed there to brush your teeth not long ago. This had better be good!”

“It’s very good, Martha. It’s wonderful! Let me tell you all about it.”

“Harumph!” said Martha.

“About 10 o’clock I turned off the TV and told you I was going to brush my teeth. You were almost asleep.”

“I’m wide awake now, Ollie. Keep talking.”

“You’ll never believe this, Martha.”

“For your sake and the children’s, Ollie, I’ll try.”

“On my way to the bathroom I remembered to lock up the house and noticed the basement light was on. Just before I turned it off, I saw Junior’s 10-speed through the window. So I went out to get it.

That’s when I noticed Charlie Otis working on his car next door and I went to see if I could help. You know how helpless Charlie is.”

“Ollie, are you at a party? I hear a Frank Sinatra record.”

“That’s not a record, Martha. That’s Frank Sinatra. I’m in Las Vegas.”

“How did you get to Las Vegas? You’ll max out our credit card flying back!”

“I’m trying to tell you how I got here, Martha and don’t worry about money. I happen to have a small fortune. Now where was I?

When I got Charlie’s car started he told me he had to get a very important package to Newark Airport. His job depended on getting it to his boss, Mr Ogilvie. He asked me to go with him in case his car broke down again.

Poor Charlie. I couldn’t say no. His old Pinto was unreliable and he was too upset to drive so I drove him to the airport in our car. 

We got to the terminal in good time, but as we entered we could hear Charlie being paged to report to Gate 25 immediately. We were jogging to the gate when Charlie’s bad knee gave out and he lateraled the package to me.

The gate was closing but they let me run down the ramp after I explained the emergency. I located Mr. Ogilvie in first class, gave him the package and told him about valiant Charlie’s injury. He was extremely grateful and went on at length explaining why. I tried to interrupt him but it was too late. We were taxiing down the runway.”

“And that’s how you got to Las Vegas?”

“Yes, in my corduroy slacks, hoody and slippers.”

“You’re in a Las Vegas casino wearing slippers?”

“It’s okay. I’ve affected a convincing limp to explain them. Mr. Ogilvie paid for my round trip and I had a four-hour wait for the next plane and about twenty dollars in my wallet so I started playing the slots. I did prettty well, pretty darned well. Then I tried the black jack table and I just walked away winners again from roulette. What a streak!”

“Winners, Ollie? How much?” Martha’s tone was softening.

“I don’t know, exactly, but it’s around $12,000 altogether.”

“Come right home, Ollie dear. I miss you.”

“I’ll be taking a limo to the airport soon, but I have something to do first, Martha.”

“No more gambling, Ollie. Quit while we’re ahead.”

“Don’t worry about that, Martha. I just have to find a place to brush my teeth.”

My part-time reporter job many years ago added spice to my rather routine life, sometimes scary spice. My full-time engineering job was interesting, sometimes challenging, but never spicy. It was a nice mix.

Editor Gordon Glover, a former World War II bomber pilot and a reporter who’d covered President John Kennedy for the Associated Press, for some reason always chose me for what I considered hazardous assignments.

“It’ll be a lot of fun,” he’d say and send me off trembling for my very first lessons at a riding academys, ski resort or flying school, believing, if I survived, it would make interesting copy.

He was a veteran four-engine pilot, but when he became interested in zero-engine flying, he sent me to check that out. So off I went for my first (and last) glider flight, soaring five thousand feet above Sussex County, helping my instructor spot circling hawks to find the necessary updrafts to keep us from plummeting into the forest or the Delaware River.

I was more comfortable during my single engine flying lesson assignment until the instructor said, “Okay, start climbing and get her into a stall.” A stall?!  I thought. I’ve had cars stall on me, but then you just got out and walked home. “What do I do when it stalls?” I shouted.

“No problem, just put her into a dive.”……”A dive?!”

Another aeronautical assignment had me up in a Piper Cub with a very recently licensed young pilot who made several failed attempts at a safe landing and finally acheived one that was successful, but cost the lives of several ducks splattered across our windshield.

Gordon, from Maine, was a veteran skier and sent me to check out a new resort. I wanted to bring my Flexible Flyer, but he insisted I take my first ski lesson. After several scary falls, Olaf, the kindly instructor said, “You’re learning fast. Let’s go to the T-bar. ”I’d prefer coffee,” I said.

I got half way down the beginners hill before I wiped out . “You were doing very well until you hit the mogul,” Olaf said as he helped me find my left ski. ”I hit a rich guy?” I said. ” Is he okay?”

My instructor at the new riding academy, a former Polish cavalry officer, insisted he could quickly turn me into a saddle bum. And in just a few minutes I was trotting in a wide circle on gentle Ginger with my arms extended and hoping Ginger wasn’t going to suddenly throw me like that nasty pony did in 1935.

At the Pocono Mountains lodge for my trail-riding assignment, the group was already trotting off when I arrived. There was only one empty horse left and I was happy to hear her name was Violet. 

“You heared that wrong, Mister,” the wrangler said. ”This here horse’s name is ’Violent’. Now don’t get her riled!” Violent and I quickly caught up and passed the others. In about five minutes, with Violent trying to brush me off using the lower tree branches, she decided to get back to the barn as soon as possible, empty-saddled if necessary.

When I told Gordon I was going to Bermuda, he said, “That’s great! I’ll give you two assignments that’ll help pay for your trip.”

As I was clinging to the stubborn steed who insisted on tiptoeing on the very edges of the dune overlooking the Atlantic 200 feet below us, I thought “If I survive this ride, I’ll have to get back on that perilous motor skooter again and drive five miles in the left lane back to the motel and then write about it later as if it was all a lot of fun.

“I’m glad to see you had a good time in Bermuda, ” Gordon said when I turned in the two stories. ”And I like the way you pretended they were dangerous experiences..”

“Pretended?”

It was the week before Christmas many years ago. I came home from school to an empty house one afternoon, anxious to see the live, sweetsmelling tree our family had put up the night before and decorated it with ornaments old and new, some left by grandparents, lacey gems not so pretty by then, but with memories and stories of Christmases Past.

There had been the usual tinsel debates about precise hanging versus random tosses and the stringing of lights. Back then one dying bulb would extinguish an entire string. I was in the replacement bulb squad.

Often, as we worked, we would join Kate Smith in the carol she was singing on the parlor radio . We were always a close family, but on Christms tree night we were even closer.

I came home from school to an empty house the next afternoon, anxious to visit the sweetsmelling tree we’d put up and sang to the night before. I walked briskly through the house toward the living room and swung open the door.

THE TREE WAS DOWN! I couldn’t have been more shocked even if Santa was lying there unconscious on Mom’s new oriental rug. I thought, ”This could be the year the tipsy tree ruined Christmas.”

Somehow I got the fallen fir vertical again, removed a few broken ornaments and twisted it around so, if it decided to topple again, the wall might hold it up. Then I left. I didn’t want to tell the tale of the fallen tree just then. Some others might feel it was a sad omen.

I thought it might be okay to fess up late on Christmas Day after we’d oohed and aahed at the brilliantly lit symbol and the thoughtful presents.

When Dad began to carve the turkey and Mom was sqeezing the last big dishes of dressing and cranberries onto the table, I blurted out, “I saved Christmas this year!” Which, of course, turned heads in my direction.

“Our tree, that beautiful tree, fell down the day after we’d decorated it. I found it on the floor and got it back up quickly before anyone else saw it or it might have ruined Christmas for us.” I confessed.

There was a moment of shocked silence and then my older brother Jim, the quiet one, spoke. ”I raised it off the floor the day after that and didn’t want to mention it either,” he confessed.

Dad put down his carving knife.”When I picked it up yesterday morning,” he confessed, ”I nailed the stand to the floor, right through the oriental rug.”

“I thought something was going on,” my sister Anne said, “I’ve been straightening tinsel all week.”

“And I’ve been sweeping up broken ornaments every day,” Mom said. I was going to write a complaint letter to a clumsy Santa. And what’s this about nails through my new oriental rug?”

.

Pre Christmas Gene gets kind of nervous this time of year thinking about what’s ahead. Not the wonderful celebration of Christ’s birthday, but just knowing he will have to deal with the awful mess that Post Christmas Gene left last January.

Pre Christmas Gene has great plans for decorating the house in and out to celebrate the holiday. The difficult tasks will be well worth the effort. Post Christmas Gene will eventually feel like the hired help who has to clean up after the celebration. His efforts will be less eager and less precise.

Pre Christmas Gene will be decorating the tree, putting up the Nativity scene and hanging Yuletide items like the grandkids’ hand-drawn cards and the mistletoe. The outside lights will have their technical and physical problems, but when the switch is finally thrown, all the aches, pains, electric shocks and ladder falls will be forgotten. An occasional passerby’s “Ooh!” or “Aah!” is all that will be needed.

Act II begins in early January. Post Christmas Gene will be reminded that all the decorations have to be promptly removed, boxed, labeled correctly and carried to the attic. They cannot be left until Easter when their message will be confusing.

Post Christmas Gene will do his best, but there will be very strong temptations and diversions to overcome. The Rose Parade will cause a long interruption, followed by a dozen Bowl games. Post Gene will work swiftly, but not accurately, during the time outs and the half time shows. Helter-skelter will be the most accurate description of his efforts.

Early next December, Pre Christmas Gene will find six boxes in the attic, all marked “Christmas Decorations Miscellaneous”. He will say to Post Christmas Gene, “Have a Merry Christmas! I know you did your best.”

When we first moved out here, far from the urban sprawl, I soon found that bakeries were scarce and I began to sorely miss fresh-baked bread. I felt the same way then about mass-produced loaves as Julia Child who once asked, “How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?” So I checked out a few recipe books and gave bread-baking a try.

After all, something like modern bread was produced 30,000 years ago by cave dwellers. I’d recently had my DNA checked and found I’m almost one percent Neanderthal so I hoped I possessed the necessary ancient instincts.

My first home-baked loaf turned out quite well, not as food, but as a doorstop or a catapult missle. I could have entered it in an amateur art contest with the title, “Seeded Rye Sculpture”. Three more failures almost convinced me to throw in the dough trowel.

My family encouraged my efforts at first, but eventually began to hint they’d like to be replaced by others in the testing group . My son suggested lab rats. One daughter’s chipped bicuspid may have been caused while testing my first marble rye. Little Carolyn told me it felt like she’d bitten a marble.

After discovering an old box of raisins in the back of a kitchen cabinet, I managed to turn out a reasonably edible loaf of raisin bread. As we sat around the kitchen table enyoying the still warm loaf, my wife suddenly shouted, “Everybody stop eating! One of the raisins just crawled out of my slice!

I finally tossed out my loaf pans. My Neanderthal craving for home-baked bread persisted, but I began to get used to the off-the-shelf brands, even deciding on a couple of favorites. Back in the city one day on business, I stopped for lunch in a famous deli and ordered their prize-winning pastrami sandwich. “On what bread, Sir?” the waiter asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered without thinking. “I guess I’ll have it on Wonder Bread.” The manager was summoned and I was asked to leave.

I’m a home alone old guy now and I’m beginning to worry that sometimes I might not actually be home alone. It always gets worse around Halloween when the nights get longer and ghosts and goblins get a lot of play in the media.

It was different way back when I had to pretend to the family, especially the little ones, that it was silly to jump at every odd sound up in the attic. I think that also helped me then, but now I don’t have to put up a brave front. I know there really are some odd sounds in the attic most nights. The rest of this old house isn’t all that quiet either. And what about my spooky sightings?

I’m a little deaf now but I still hear too much. Right now, close to midnight, I can hear two or three people moving around up there. Well, maybe not people, but something…..

And those are not random noises. It’s not just the fluttering of a loose shutter. There’s a definite tempo, almost rhythmical. I’ve avoided watching the TV episodes of the “Walking Dead”, but do they also dance?

Ever since boyhood I’ve been able to hear and sometimes see spooky things more sharply than others, maybe because I’m 100% Irish. I would really rather not have this finely-tuned reception.

“Nonsense,” I would say to my wife and the kids back then. “That’s only the creaking of the house cooling off at night.” But down deep I wondered who or what was dragging chains across the attic floor.

Sometimes they’d beg me to go up and investigate “just to be sure” and I would answer nonchalantly, “Well, if it makes you feel better” and I’d climb the attic stairs trembling . Once, I almost fainted up there when I was “attacked” by my old army overcoat as it fell off the rack. I don’t think they fully believed my blood-curdling scream was a joke.

The things I see are not as clearly defined as the things I hear. Last night I had a half-second glimpse of something long and purple that raced along the living room wall and ducked under the couch. It was just a blur, something my ophthalmologist might explain away, but I’ll avoid the living room for a day or two.

I once had a dog to keep me company and to look under the furniture from time to time, but Twitchy heard twice as much as I did and was always growling at dark corners. He ran off one night during an electrical storm and I really miss him. Sometimes I think I hear him gnawing a bone in the back bedroom, but that can’t be him under the couch. He’s short and mostly white with black spots and not a trace of purple.

If you spot a stray dog answering to “Twitchy”, I’d appreciate if you’d get him back here somehow. When it comes to hysteria, two’s company.

Pictures of families lounging before their fireplaces, mesmerized by the dancing flames always made me envious. “So get one for us, Dear,” my wife suggested . So I did.

I knew I’d have to feed my new fireplace with wood, but thought I had almost a cordsworth of scrap lumber lying around my workbench and there were the fallen branches that’d been cluttering our yard since last year’s big storm.

(“That storm was three years ago, Dear”, my wife just reminded me. I wish she wouldn’t look over my shoulder while I was blogging.”)

Anyway, I gathered and loaded the flotsam on a sturdy oak rack I’d built and thought it looked like a month’s worth of fireplace fodder. One Saturday afternoon I struck the very first match while the family stood by expectantly, some brandishing long forks loaded with marshmallows.

Three hours later I discovered I’d burned all the flotsam and tinder, including my new oak rack. And I was exhausted. It was like being the only stoker on an endangered steam boat caught in a typhoon.

All my spare time since then has been devoted to gathering fuel to appease the appetite of my hungry hearth and to avoid the budget-breaking price of store-bought firewood.

I decided to prune my trees, something they’d needed for years. I lopped off dead branches and removed others that were invading neighbors’ clotheslines and decks. I admit I was overzealous. It took a concerned neighbor to point that out.

“You #%!* idiot!”, he shouted, “Don’t you know it’s almost midnight?”

He was right, of course. High level chainsaw tree-trimming should be done in daylight so you can occasionally count your fingers and also see where you’re falling.

I had a system. First I cut off the dead limbs, then the probably and possibly unhealthy ones. As my gardening books suggested, I chainsawed the “interfering branches”, the “narrow joints”, the “crowding structures” and anything that disrupted the “clean tree contour”.

My wood pile runneth over, but my yard looked like a training camp for a power company’s pole climbers. Each tree’s shadow was a narrow line across the lawn.

As the temperature dropped, the insatiable fireplace demanded more and more combustibles. I created excuses to condemn things to the flames. The picnic table was too rickety. The basketweave fence was obstructing our view of the neighbor’s garbage cans. Nothing was safe. Baseball bats, skis, my leaky rowboat, sagging bookshelves. My son refused to surrender his homemade stilts.

“This is madness!” I shouted one day when I realized I was wrenching off a porch railing. “What’s the good of having a fireplace if you don’t have time to enjoy it? I’m going to stop chopping and sit down in my inglenook!”

“Sit down?” my wife asked. “Sit down on what?”

Glass was invented by an anonymous volcano many centuries ago, even before calendars, so we don’t know exactly when some molten rock flowed down the side of that volcano, was cooled when it hit the nearby ocean and a crude type of glass was created. That particular process was never patented so you can make your own glass now if you live near an active volcano and have ocean beach priveleges. But please be careful and use potholders, very thick ones.

Thank God for giving us that volcanic hint. Who would have thought of making something transparent out of rocks? And thank the Egyptians and Romans for greatly improving the recipe later or the world would be a lot different now than it is. Without glass windows our electric billls would be sky high and what would our light bulbs be made of? And if there were no drinking glasses our beer would have to be sipped directly from the kegs. I tried that once during my reckless youth. It can be quite strenuous and messy.

Our ancestors perfected glass and started working on mirrors. Imagine a world without mirrors. Stone Age people would get glimpses of their faces in ponds or rivers on calm days. Who did they think that was mimicking them down there? And once they got used to the miracle, did these cave people take advantage of it, managing to adapt to the reverse images like we do when we shave or put on lipstick?

Horsepower would probably still be our main source of transportation. How could we speed down our superhighways without windshields and rearview mirrors? No, goggles wouldn’t be available either.

Take a moment to think about the wonders of glass and how we would live without it. Reflect on that!