Watch what you say

In our family we love words. And the misuse of them. One of our all-time favorites is the one our kids brought home from seminary many years ago. Their teacher, a fine fellow, was talking about something hard to understand and said, "I just can't phantom that."

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Sunday I heard a couple of good ones, both from Lola.

Jeff has gone back to school. He's in English 102, a freshmen writing class. They were to write an analysis of a particular Star Wars movie, which Jeff did. In their group discussion of the essays, Jeff read his paper and came to a part where he spoke of the Light Saber. As soon as he read it, another student in the group said, "What did you say?"

Jeff said, "What?"

"What did you call that thing?"

"Oh," said Jeff, "Light Saber."

"Light Saber? Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'm sure. Light Saber."

"Oh man," said the other student, "all through my paper I'm calling it the Light Saver."

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Overheard in a doctor's waiting room.

Two men talking.

First man: So what do you do for a living?

Second man: I used to drive a bus, but now I'm retired. Medically retired.

First man: Oh. Bummer.

Second man: No it's good, really. Now I don't have to put up with all that rigor mortis of driving the bus.

What do you think of this?

My grandson works at Fred Meyer, in the meat department. He used to work in the Deli.

At our family dinner Sunday he was telling us that the Fred Meyer Deli does not make its own bread/buns for the deli sandwiches. In fact, the in-store bakery doesn't really bake anything.

All breads, cookies, cakes, and donuts come already made and baked, he told us. The donuts come in a box. The cakes come in boxes. And so on. He did not know where they come from.

Yesterday I was at Walmart. A young woman was setting out baked goods, so I asked her if the bakery there bakes them.

No. The bakery there bakes nothing. Everything comes in boxes, already baked. The French bread, hoagie buns, cakes, donuts (I know, it's really doughnuts), cookies, everything baked comes already baked. Or as we say in today's culture, pre-baked.

They do warm up the donuts before setting them out for sale, she told me.

"Where does it all come from?" I asked.

"Arkansas," she said.

"That's pretty far away," I said.

"I know," she said.

And then I remembered that Walmart's headquarters are in Arkansas.

"Hmmm," I said.

"Only Krispie Kream is doing the fresh donut baking. It's disappointing, isn't it." She said it. I agreed.

Now that I think of it, I'm sure it's the same story at Albertsons and Winco.

And so I wonder about eating out. Where does that stuff come from? I mean, we already know that most salads restaurants serve come out of a bag and taste of the stuff they treat the bag with.

Maybe we should just stay home and make our own food, most of it, anyway. That's what we used to do.

Picking at words

I walked to the bank today. It's open until 2 o'clock on Saturday. As I waited for a teller, I looked at one of the windows--it's not really a window; I suppose at one time it might have been more of a window; these days it's just the place the teller stands behind to help the customer, who stands in front of the "window."

It was closed, but the small name plate said,               Jane
                                                                           Head Teller

If you didn't know what it meant, you might think Jane had something to do with heads, like feeling the bumps on them, heads, and foretelling a person's future. Or maybe like just telling people they have heads.

That's not what it means.

     *     *     *

In a recent poem I wrote this phrase: some high-minded idea we have come up with.

So today I got to wondering where we get that phrase, come up with. What exactly does it mean? Do you know?

Out There in My Wild Front Yard

Two snakes in my front yard this afternoon. One, perhaps, the mother of the other, out showing her son how to navigate the yard.

They were not exactly together. At least I did not see them at the same time, but each time nearly stepped on them. The first one, bigger, wanted to bite me, if that's what the quick and repeated thrusting of the tongue means. And I think it is. I began walking right close to it, chasing it, sort of, and telling it whose yard this really is.

No. I don't know what I would have done if I'd cornered him/her. She finally got away by slipping into a hole in the concrete under my front porch.

That was not comforting to me. I said, "Swell. How many of you are in there?" and headed toward my front door.

And that's when I nearly stepped on the smaller one. No tongue thrusting and, if I can be sure of this, the little snake was scared. I chased him to the chain link fence and finally into my neighbor's yard. He sought refuge from the big person--me--by hiding under some of their extensive ground cover. I figure as soon as I was in the house and the little snake felt safe, it joined the bigger one under my porch.

I don't like snakes. Really a lot I don't like them.

I especially don't like them on my property, although outside is much better than inside.

My neighbors, the ones whose yard is where the little snake escaped to, are the folks who say it's good to have these little snakes around because they eat mice.

Believe me, there is no way these snakes could get their mouths around a mouse. Grass hopper, maybe.

Peachy, Sort of

I worked at the cannery yesterday. On the line. Usually I work elsewhere, which I prefer. I prefer elsewhere. Like with the cans or whatever. But, no, not yesterday. No elsewhere for me. Right on the line, where the peaches come and come and keep on coming. I mean, in the four hours of our shift, they never stopped coming.

There is this about working on the line. You can get sick, as in dizzy, vertigo, which means you have to step back or look somewhere other than at the constantly moving whatever you call that belt. Or belts, as the case is.

Yes, a few times I had to step back so I wouldn't fall back. Or forward into the peaches, which would have been really bad.

One woman, probably my age or older, on the other side of the line never moved. She had a stool, and there she sat for all four hours, working on the peaches. I spoke to her about it afterward--which was maybe the high point of the morning. Not speaking to her, necessarily, but the afterward part. You know, it meant we were done.

I said, "You work hard. And I never saw you move." She did look at the clock once that I saw, but hey, I looked at the clock more than once.

She said, "I used to work on a production line. I like it." Which made people nearby say things like, "You like it?!" And so on.

All of this is not the main thing. The main thing is the peaches. They tumble down onto both sides of the belt where we, with our aprons, gloves, and hairnets--and beard nets where needed--await them. We pick up the ones to discard, and we work on the ones that have bits of skin on them or too much red where the seed was or even bits of seed. We don't have knives. We have little scoopy things. It's tedious. Okay?

Now, the peaches. I don't quite know how to speak of them. Let me just say--or begin by saying--I will not be buying any of them.

This does not mean that all of us on the line were less than careful and thorough, letting a few bad peaches slide by. No. It has do to with the quality of the peaches. We were instructed at the beginning to discard, put on the trash belt, peaches that were a) too green, as in green as a lime; b) peaches whose texture was mealy or mushy; c) peaches that just looked really bad. There were more than a few of each.

We were not allowed to eat any peach or any part of a peach. Not a problem. Trust me. If there is such  a thing as No. 1 peaches, these were not they. I'm sorry to say it.

Not to say all the peaches were bad. No. Not to say that.

And here's the deal. This reads like a complaint. Well, it isn't exactly, because I went, I worked, I helped, and I'm glad.

About My Dad

When my dad was 88, he did not take walks anymore. His cane stood idle by the front door. He mostly sat. My mother helped him into his chair and out of it, my mother, all 4'9" of her.

He'd call to her. "Lola." She'd come to pull and steady him, help him to the bathroom, help him to the kitchen, to the bedroom, help him into his clothes and out of them.

When I visited the last time before she died, I tried to get Daddy outside to walk. He said he couldn't. I said he needed the exercise.

He said the sidewalk was uneven; he couldn't see; he'd already fallen once on the front steps. It was all true.

I still see him buckling his belt that day, nearly weeping, shaking his head that he couldn't do it. I said sure he could. He was right, you know. He just couldn't do it. But I thought I could fix it, make him get outside and walk.

What did I know? I was trying to save my mother.

That is one moment I would like to have back. I would do it better.

The Truth At Last

Michael Sklarski smoked in fifth grade. I mean, by then he was a smoker, or so he insisted. I suppose it must have been true.

Michael consistently carried his pencil like a cigarette, and, unless Miss Meister was watching, frequently put the eraser end to his lips for an imaginary drag, then inhaled with a hiss and blew out the pretend smoke. Frequently.

He did these things so comfortable, so knowingly. And somebody said he had been seen somewhere away from school actually smoking.

Fifth grade is inhabited by 10-years-olds, as you know. I suspect that Michael, if he continued to smoke and is living, has lung or heart disease.

My diseases have not come from smoking. Or, I'll put it this way. My "diseases" did not come from smoking, although I did try it at around age 10. Maybe Michael's influence. Maybe not.

In the vacant lot across the street from our house, concealed by bushes, I smoked a Lucky Strike, or some of it. I know. It's shocking. But to continue the story . . .

Children are innocent, in my case ignorant, of many things, and I gathered a startling bit of knowledge from those few moments I spent in the hands of the L.S.M.F.T. people.

The smoke was hot in my mouth. I never expected that.

P.S. I have no idea how I came to possess a cigarette.

In Daddy's Office

I never knew anyone who could type faster than my dad. When he was gone, off selling life insurance, I'd sit at his little black L.C. Smith and let fly my fingers, typing as fast as I could, now and then hitting the space bar the way he did, and usually without paper, although I had been told not to type on the roller.

I always looked for paper on his desk but rarely found a piece that appeared unimportant. Everything my dad did seemed important.

Once I took a clean white letterhead (I should not have done that) and carbon paper and the yellow copy paper Daddy used. I stacked them together and typed out a letter. I could have typed a few real words by then, like cat and snow and soap and dog and Carol, and some others, but I was trying for speed, like my dad, for something important, like my dad, trying for the fast click clack sound my dad could make.

I couldn't do it. I could never do it.

The keys would jam together, and if I couldn't get them untangled, I'd have to sneak away, and hope Daddy didn't know who had been playing in his office.

Now I can type fast, but I use a computer, and the keys fairly fall down for me. Not like his old typewriter.

I wonder what my dad would think of that.

Back in 1945 Again

It isn't much of a story. I got lost at the beach. If I'd never been found, like the Lindbergh baby,* that would be a story. But I was found. Glad I am of it.

For my mother it was a story and, as far as she knew for that hour or so, this story might end as the more famous one had ended. Her little blond girl, a four-year-old, lost among the thousands of people celebrating the 4th of July that year, 1945, at the Santa Monica beach.

For me, I guess it was a matter of dress hems and pant legs and which to hold on to, a matter of walking along and feeling happy. That's what we were doing, and that's what I was feeling, happy. I do remember discovering that the pant legs I was holding on to were not my dad's. I don't know how that happened, but it did. Still, I don't remember feeling very frightened. Maybe I just knew they would find me.

For Mama, it was retracing steps, looking into the faces of people, asking strangers, sending Daddy running to the water's edge, more than once. This part I know from my older sister.

If I had been the mother, I would have argued against going to the beach that day. So many people. Hard enough to manage five children, one a four-year-old and one in a baby carriage, let alone keep track of another family. But my dad's brother Clyde had come from Utah, brought his wife, Fauntella, and their six kids. They would have coaxed to go to the beach, and the West Los Angeles Brimley kids, their cousins, wouldn't need much coaxing.

I'm guessing that Mama extracted promises from my older brothers and sister to look out for Carol. Maybe they forgot.

But here I am, so many years later, telling about it. See, I told you. Not much of a story.

* The kidnapping that shook the world and frightened parents. Even though it happened in 1932, it was still talked about and was still used by parents--like my mother--to warn and, yes, frighten their children. I was told many times not to talk to strangers, never to get into a car with someone I didn't know. I could be kidnapped. It did scare me, but not that day at the beach.