Posts
We each live, basically, in two worlds...the tangible,"real world" of day to day existence, and the intangible world of the mind...and the percentage of time and effort we spend in each world varies from person to person. Most people are so busy dealing with the countless details and demands of the real world--work, going to and from it, eating, errands and chores and tasks, face-to-face interactions with family, friends, and coworkers--they have relatively little time available for the intangibles of the mind.
The intangibility of thoughts--except for those which can be directly expressed physically (a kiss, a thumbs-up, a punch in the nose, or some other universally-recognized gesture)--is why language was invented. Without words, most thoughts would be limited to the brain of the thinker.
Though words can be conveyed either verbally or through writing, I rely almost entirely upon writing as my means of communication. I write because I do not communicate well when speaking. In conversation, I seldom say what I want to say in the way I want to say it. My mind races ahead of my tongue, or falls behind it, or trips over it. My head is always full of words...finding the specific ones and putting them together the way I want them within the framework of the time available is the problem. By the time I think of just what I want to say, I've usually missed the window of time in which to say it. So rather than wait, I tend to blurt out the first thing that pops into my head.
I'm not alone in this, of course. Have you ever read a verbatim transcript of anyone speaking spontaneously without some sort of prepared script? Broken sentences, trail-offs, whiplash changes of subject; that we ever manage to understand one another is amazing.
And when someone so dependent upon communicating via the written word is deprived of the chance to do so, the results are disconcerting at the very least.
In the past week or so, I've found myself in that position. I've been submerged in the real, non-verbal world by the process of helping my friend Norm, who is currently in a nursing home with severe emphysema, move into a one bedroom apartment in an assisted living facility. He's lived in his 2-bedroom + den condo for more than 30 years. Because he is physically unable to do anything for himself, or even return to the condo, I've assumed the responsibility of managing all aspects of his move...selecting what to take, packing, arranging for a mover, then figuring what to do with everything left behind, putting the condo up for sale, selling his car, etc. I don't mind; I know Norm would do the same for me, but it is time consuming.
All this coincides with my own plans to move to a newly renovated building about a mile from my current apartment and four blocks from Lake Michigan--and also far from the constant roar of elevated trains running 500 feet from my window 24 hours a day. While I'm not sure of the exact date of my move...I haven't even gotten final authorization from the new building yet...I've been collecting and packing boxes in anticipation.
None of the above activities involve much in the way of written communication. But it has, regrettably, sharply limited my time available for writing. When I do manage to squeeze out a few minutes to write, I find it difficult to concentrate on what I'm trying to say. I start off to write a blog (and this one is a perfect example), get about one sentence and three words into it, and suddenly wonder if the box I have to pack my statue of Hamlet will be big enough? Or I'll be trying to thing of a "words" analogy that will make any sense and find myself wondering if we should try to carry some of Norm's paintings over to his new apartment rather than trust them to the movers.
Well, I take some consolation in the thought that this is temporary, and that things will eventually settle down and I can get back to writing. Exactly when, I'm not sure. And in the meantime, please bear with me.
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Happy Birthday, Kid
On the eve of my 76th birthday--my what birthday? Utterly impossible!--I thumbed through the letters I had written my parents while I was in the U.S. Navy so very, very years ago. I found the following, and thought you might not mind if I shared it with you. I was...I am!...aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ticonderoga, just approaching Europe and the entrance to the Mediterranean sea. It was a wonderful birthday present.
13 November 1955
Sunday, though you’d never know it; the major blessing of the day was that I got to sleep until nine o’clock. At that time, Gibraltar was only 167 miles away. We dock tomorrow morning. I hope to be able to get some photographs as we approach, if it is light enough.
The main social events of the day were the official opening of radio station WTIC (original, isn’t it?) and the evening’s Smoker. The radio station will operate from and for the ship all the time we’re in the Mediterranean area, playing Armed Forces Radio Service recordings of programs heard back home. I saw them in the library the other day—stacks of them all over and around the piano—everything from Judy Canova to interlude music.
While on the flight deck this afternoon, taking advantage of the clear but cool weather to take some pictures, someone had a little portable radio tuned in to some Spanish station—the music would not go over in the U.S., I’m afraid.
Let’s hope our mail has reached Gibraltar before us—they announced today that all mail being sent from the ship had to be in by 2400 this evening—I saw guys going up to the box with fistfuls of letters—there have been more letters written aboard this ship in the last ten days than in the last ten weeks!
Not being as expert at connected and logical step-by-step thought as I should be, I neglected to mention the Smoker. We used to have them once a month in Pensacola—we were told we would attend them , and we would enjoy ourselves—or else! It consists of several boxing and wrestling matches, which I’ve always classed in enjoyment on the same scale as flower arrangement, and the nocturnal habits of the double-breasted Bluejay.
So tomorrow I’ll be twenty-two years old. It is most likely that I won’t have time to write an “entry”, but I’ll catch up the next day, when we leave Gibraltar for Cannes.
Spent the evening playing Parcheesi and blackjack, with a little double solitaire thrown in.
Fred Kobel, another X-NavCad in my Pre-Flight class and now aboard the good old Big Ti has relatives in Switzerland whom he was planning to visit. We found out yesterday, however, that no one is permitted to wear a uniform in Switzerland (or Spain, or Sweden—who’d want to go to Sweden anyhow?). Let’s hope they make an exception in Spain, since we’re going to Barcelona, and it would be nice to get off the ship.
The Smoker has just let out, and the participants are coming down for steaks, which reminds me—I’m hungry.
Tomorrow Columbus arrives in Europe….
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
13 November 1955
Sunday, though you’d never know it; the major blessing of the day was that I got to sleep until nine o’clock. At that time, Gibraltar was only 167 miles away. We dock tomorrow morning. I hope to be able to get some photographs as we approach, if it is light enough.
The main social events of the day were the official opening of radio station WTIC (original, isn’t it?) and the evening’s Smoker. The radio station will operate from and for the ship all the time we’re in the Mediterranean area, playing Armed Forces Radio Service recordings of programs heard back home. I saw them in the library the other day—stacks of them all over and around the piano—everything from Judy Canova to interlude music.
While on the flight deck this afternoon, taking advantage of the clear but cool weather to take some pictures, someone had a little portable radio tuned in to some Spanish station—the music would not go over in the U.S., I’m afraid.
Let’s hope our mail has reached Gibraltar before us—they announced today that all mail being sent from the ship had to be in by 2400 this evening—I saw guys going up to the box with fistfuls of letters—there have been more letters written aboard this ship in the last ten days than in the last ten weeks!
Not being as expert at connected and logical step-by-step thought as I should be, I neglected to mention the Smoker. We used to have them once a month in Pensacola—we were told we would attend them , and we would enjoy ourselves—or else! It consists of several boxing and wrestling matches, which I’ve always classed in enjoyment on the same scale as flower arrangement, and the nocturnal habits of the double-breasted Bluejay.
So tomorrow I’ll be twenty-two years old. It is most likely that I won’t have time to write an “entry”, but I’ll catch up the next day, when we leave Gibraltar for Cannes.
Spent the evening playing Parcheesi and blackjack, with a little double solitaire thrown in.
Fred Kobel, another X-NavCad in my Pre-Flight class and now aboard the good old Big Ti has relatives in Switzerland whom he was planning to visit. We found out yesterday, however, that no one is permitted to wear a uniform in Switzerland (or Spain, or Sweden—who’d want to go to Sweden anyhow?). Let’s hope they make an exception in Spain, since we’re going to Barcelona, and it would be nice to get off the ship.
The Smoker has just let out, and the participants are coming down for steaks, which reminds me—I’m hungry.
Tomorrow Columbus arrives in Europe….
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Happy Birthday!
Since today, November 11, 2009, marks my mom's 100th (??!!) birthday, and the 41st anniversary of my dad's death, I hope you'll indulge a bit of reflection on the two most important people in my life.
Our parents give us birth and shape our lives, and leave us with a debt we can never fully repay --or, tragically for a very few, with scars that can never be healed. I was infinitely blessed with the former.
Each of us has (if you're very lucky, or had, if you're like me) our own parents, and our own memories. I hope you treasure yours as I do mine.
Though they've both been dead for far more time than is possible for me to comprehend, they are still with me in my heart and soul. The three of us are as interwoven as the threads in a blanket. I have only to close my eyes to see them and hear their voices. So there is no way I could cram 38 years worth of the warmth and love and happiness and sorrow I experienced with them into one blog entry, or a thousand. Still, I’d like to give you just the quickest of sketches of them, if I could.
Neither Mom (Odrae) nor Dad (Frank) graduated from high school. They met and married in 1929, when Mom was twenty and Dad was twenty-two. That they ever got together, or stayed together, is something of a miracle. Mom’s family, the Fearns, could have stepped out of the pages of a book on the All-American Family, even though Grandma Fearn was born in Norway. Think of a Norman Rockwell painting, and you’ve pretty much got it.
Dad’s family, the Margasons, was a study in dysfunction. His parents divorced when he was quite small, with the result that he spent some time in an orphanage, an event which left its own deep scars. His mother remarried several times. Margason family reunions inevitably ended in near brawls as members rehashed the same old real and perceived wrongs they’d rehashed at the previous reunion and would at the next one.
Both my parents worked hard all their lives. My mom held down a full-time job and managed to care for me and Dad and the house at the same time. Dad, I fear, was of the old school, in that cleaning, cooking, and housework were woman’s work, and Mom did it without complaint. (I remember distinctly that she always buttered his toast for him, and that she always took great pains to see that not one quarter inch of the surface was left unbuttered.)
Please don’t get me wrong, Dad wasn’t a tyrant: he was simply a man of his time, and that’s just the way things were. He was also, regrettably, something of a womanizer, which of course deeply hurt Mom. They fought (verbally) constantly and at one point Mom and I moved briefly out of our house to another small one my folks owned. They really, really should have divorced, but they didn’t. Mom loved Dad too much, and he loved her in his own way. In the last three years of his life, they grew much closer, and both were the happier for it.
The recognition of one's parents as being individual human beings apart from being "Mom" and "Dad" is, I've always held, the point at which one truly steps from childhood to adulthood. Mine were far from perfect: they were simply average, flawed human beings who did the very best they could. And despite my momentary fear of being sent to an orphanage (a threat Dad made on a couple of occasions when I was particularly incorrigible and without really realizing that, since I was just a child, I did not know he didn't mean it), and my numerous other self-imposed insecurities, I never had the slightest doubt that both my parents loved me more than anything else in the world. Dad tried very very hard to fit his own mental image of what a father should be, and I’m afraid I far too often treated him very badly. I would give the world if I could only go back and undo some of those hurts…but as you have noticed, life doesn’t work that way.
It was Mom, primarily, who gave me my love of words. She loved to read: O.Henry, Mark Twain, and Guy de Maupassant were her favorites. She had a great sense of humor and a surprisingly deep laugh for a woman of her size (5'2"). I don’t recall Dad reading much, but then I don’t think reading exactly fit his idea of what a real man should be. He worked. Work was what men did.
When I think back now on just how deeply and completely Dad loved me, though he found it so hard to express it other than by being what he saw as his “Father” persona, I truly ache with regret.
Dad died of a heart attack—his second within six or eight months—when he was 57 years old. Mom died a horrible and lingering death—partly because I refused to let her go when I should have told the doctors to stop treatment—from lung cancer at the age of 62. I have never forgiven myself for that, and never will. I am now 19 years older than Dad and 14 years older than Mom. Incomprehensible.
Should you wonder why I thought you might have any interest at all in people you never met, the primary reason for writing this blog is to remind you of your own parents and what they mean or meant to you, and establish a bridge between us, in hopes that we might meet in the middle of that bridge and, together, look down and watch our similar reflections in the waters of time.
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
Our parents give us birth and shape our lives, and leave us with a debt we can never fully repay --or, tragically for a very few, with scars that can never be healed. I was infinitely blessed with the former.
Each of us has (if you're very lucky, or had, if you're like me) our own parents, and our own memories. I hope you treasure yours as I do mine.
Though they've both been dead for far more time than is possible for me to comprehend, they are still with me in my heart and soul. The three of us are as interwoven as the threads in a blanket. I have only to close my eyes to see them and hear their voices. So there is no way I could cram 38 years worth of the warmth and love and happiness and sorrow I experienced with them into one blog entry, or a thousand. Still, I’d like to give you just the quickest of sketches of them, if I could.
Neither Mom (Odrae) nor Dad (Frank) graduated from high school. They met and married in 1929, when Mom was twenty and Dad was twenty-two. That they ever got together, or stayed together, is something of a miracle. Mom’s family, the Fearns, could have stepped out of the pages of a book on the All-American Family, even though Grandma Fearn was born in Norway. Think of a Norman Rockwell painting, and you’ve pretty much got it.
Dad’s family, the Margasons, was a study in dysfunction. His parents divorced when he was quite small, with the result that he spent some time in an orphanage, an event which left its own deep scars. His mother remarried several times. Margason family reunions inevitably ended in near brawls as members rehashed the same old real and perceived wrongs they’d rehashed at the previous reunion and would at the next one.
Both my parents worked hard all their lives. My mom held down a full-time job and managed to care for me and Dad and the house at the same time. Dad, I fear, was of the old school, in that cleaning, cooking, and housework were woman’s work, and Mom did it without complaint. (I remember distinctly that she always buttered his toast for him, and that she always took great pains to see that not one quarter inch of the surface was left unbuttered.)
Please don’t get me wrong, Dad wasn’t a tyrant: he was simply a man of his time, and that’s just the way things were. He was also, regrettably, something of a womanizer, which of course deeply hurt Mom. They fought (verbally) constantly and at one point Mom and I moved briefly out of our house to another small one my folks owned. They really, really should have divorced, but they didn’t. Mom loved Dad too much, and he loved her in his own way. In the last three years of his life, they grew much closer, and both were the happier for it.
The recognition of one's parents as being individual human beings apart from being "Mom" and "Dad" is, I've always held, the point at which one truly steps from childhood to adulthood. Mine were far from perfect: they were simply average, flawed human beings who did the very best they could. And despite my momentary fear of being sent to an orphanage (a threat Dad made on a couple of occasions when I was particularly incorrigible and without really realizing that, since I was just a child, I did not know he didn't mean it), and my numerous other self-imposed insecurities, I never had the slightest doubt that both my parents loved me more than anything else in the world. Dad tried very very hard to fit his own mental image of what a father should be, and I’m afraid I far too often treated him very badly. I would give the world if I could only go back and undo some of those hurts…but as you have noticed, life doesn’t work that way.
It was Mom, primarily, who gave me my love of words. She loved to read: O.Henry, Mark Twain, and Guy de Maupassant were her favorites. She had a great sense of humor and a surprisingly deep laugh for a woman of her size (5'2"). I don’t recall Dad reading much, but then I don’t think reading exactly fit his idea of what a real man should be. He worked. Work was what men did.
When I think back now on just how deeply and completely Dad loved me, though he found it so hard to express it other than by being what he saw as his “Father” persona, I truly ache with regret.
Dad died of a heart attack—his second within six or eight months—when he was 57 years old. Mom died a horrible and lingering death—partly because I refused to let her go when I should have told the doctors to stop treatment—from lung cancer at the age of 62. I have never forgiven myself for that, and never will. I am now 19 years older than Dad and 14 years older than Mom. Incomprehensible.
Should you wonder why I thought you might have any interest at all in people you never met, the primary reason for writing this blog is to remind you of your own parents and what they mean or meant to you, and establish a bridge between us, in hopes that we might meet in the middle of that bridge and, together, look down and watch our similar reflections in the waters of time.
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Things
God, how I hate endings! I can't help it, but every ending reminds me that my time on earth is not infinite, and endings, like the ticking of a clock, are a constant reminder of that fact.
Every day I have the same "lunch"...an 8 oz can of liquid nutritional supplement (350 calories), to which I add half cup of milk (60 calories?) to fill the glass, and a small cannister of Benecalorie nutritional supplement (320 calories, but containing the only essential vitamin not found in the 8 oz can). It never varies. I don't have other things for lunch partly because I'm too lazy to try to think of what else I might have of equal nutritional value, and partly because I probably wouldn't eat much of it if I did have it. I'm in it for the calories, and I know how many my standard "lunch" provides.
But this morning at the store, I bought some yogurt, with which I planned to vary my routine by adding it to the other ingredients and whipping it up in the blender. Which brings us to the subject of this blog.
My blender belonged to my mom. I have absolutely no idea how old it is, other than very. I'm sure mom had it at least since the '50s. I inherited it from her when she died in California in 1970, kept it with me through my various moves within Los Angeles and Pence and now Chicago.
So I prepared my smoothie--the blender working perfectly as it has for over half a century. Drank most of a glass, then went to pour the rest from the blender to the glass. I noticed as I did so that there were some flakes of black at the bottom of the blender. Investigating, I realized that the black rubber seal at the base of the pitcher part of the blender was crumbling. Not knowing how much of it I'd already swallowed in what I'd just drunk, I dumped out the remainder of my smoothie.
And here I am, facing yet another intimation of mortality. The very thought of having to throw the blender away is anathema. It was my mom's! It was in my two L.A. homes, and my two Pence homes, and my Chicago apartment. It did everything I ever asked of it, and did it well and without complaint. How can I possibly repay its loyalty and so cavalierly discard everything I associate with it by throwing it in the trash? It still works. It's not its fault the rubber seal has failed. I was certain, the blender being...what...50 years old or more?...that it couldn't be replaced. It turned out I was wrong: parts are still available, and I ordered everything but the base/motor. So while it is no longer the same as it was--but neither, then, am I--its link to my past is not totally broken.
I know, I know, things are just things. They have no awareness, no feelings. But I do, and rightly or wrongly, things make up the fabric of my life. They are tangible memories. I touch them, and knowing that others I have loved and who were so much a part of my life also touched them means they are not really gone...just away for a while.
As I understand it, Eastern cultures espouse the meaningless of things, and I in fact have friends who hold to that belief. And I agree that things can be a burden...carting them around from place to place when they can easily be replaced by newer and better things. But they are not and can never be the same things. They do not have, on their surfaces, the tiny residual atoms of those people who once held or touched or sat on them so long ago.
I have stuffed animals I bought for Ray, or Ray bought for me; I have the end tables my mom bought at an unpainted furniture warehouse and varnished herself when she first moved to L.A., and the chair she bought. I have the delicate cocoa set which belonged to my grandmother Fearn (who died many years before I was born), and pocket watches belonging to both my grandfather and grandmother Fearn. I have a wooden buddha given me by my friend "Uncle Bob" to welcome visitors, and an artillery shell brought home from WWI by my Uncle Buck.
Do I need them? No. But do I need them? Oh, my yes, for they are as much a part of me as my fingerprints, or my soul.
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
Every day I have the same "lunch"...an 8 oz can of liquid nutritional supplement (350 calories), to which I add half cup of milk (60 calories?) to fill the glass, and a small cannister of Benecalorie nutritional supplement (320 calories, but containing the only essential vitamin not found in the 8 oz can). It never varies. I don't have other things for lunch partly because I'm too lazy to try to think of what else I might have of equal nutritional value, and partly because I probably wouldn't eat much of it if I did have it. I'm in it for the calories, and I know how many my standard "lunch" provides.
But this morning at the store, I bought some yogurt, with which I planned to vary my routine by adding it to the other ingredients and whipping it up in the blender. Which brings us to the subject of this blog.
My blender belonged to my mom. I have absolutely no idea how old it is, other than very. I'm sure mom had it at least since the '50s. I inherited it from her when she died in California in 1970, kept it with me through my various moves within Los Angeles and Pence and now Chicago.
So I prepared my smoothie--the blender working perfectly as it has for over half a century. Drank most of a glass, then went to pour the rest from the blender to the glass. I noticed as I did so that there were some flakes of black at the bottom of the blender. Investigating, I realized that the black rubber seal at the base of the pitcher part of the blender was crumbling. Not knowing how much of it I'd already swallowed in what I'd just drunk, I dumped out the remainder of my smoothie.
And here I am, facing yet another intimation of mortality. The very thought of having to throw the blender away is anathema. It was my mom's! It was in my two L.A. homes, and my two Pence homes, and my Chicago apartment. It did everything I ever asked of it, and did it well and without complaint. How can I possibly repay its loyalty and so cavalierly discard everything I associate with it by throwing it in the trash? It still works. It's not its fault the rubber seal has failed. I was certain, the blender being...what...50 years old or more?...that it couldn't be replaced. It turned out I was wrong: parts are still available, and I ordered everything but the base/motor. So while it is no longer the same as it was--but neither, then, am I--its link to my past is not totally broken.
I know, I know, things are just things. They have no awareness, no feelings. But I do, and rightly or wrongly, things make up the fabric of my life. They are tangible memories. I touch them, and knowing that others I have loved and who were so much a part of my life also touched them means they are not really gone...just away for a while.
As I understand it, Eastern cultures espouse the meaningless of things, and I in fact have friends who hold to that belief. And I agree that things can be a burden...carting them around from place to place when they can easily be replaced by newer and better things. But they are not and can never be the same things. They do not have, on their surfaces, the tiny residual atoms of those people who once held or touched or sat on them so long ago.
I have stuffed animals I bought for Ray, or Ray bought for me; I have the end tables my mom bought at an unpainted furniture warehouse and varnished herself when she first moved to L.A., and the chair she bought. I have the delicate cocoa set which belonged to my grandmother Fearn (who died many years before I was born), and pocket watches belonging to both my grandfather and grandmother Fearn. I have a wooden buddha given me by my friend "Uncle Bob" to welcome visitors, and an artillery shell brought home from WWI by my Uncle Buck.
Do I need them? No. But do I need them? Oh, my yes, for they are as much a part of me as my fingerprints, or my soul.
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
Friday, November 06, 2009
First Jobs
All my life I have considered work to be a necessary evil, and I was reflecting the other day on my earliest adventures in the working world. For me, that began in 1958, when I graduated from Northern Illinois University with a B.A. in English--one of the most economically worthless degrees known to man, unless one plans to teach. I did not plan to teach. I immediately moved to Chicago to take on the world.
My very first after-college job was with the Olson Rug Company, whose triple claim to fame was: 1) “Olson Rugs are reversible”; 2) “We use your own wool”...which meant if you sent in a sack of wool from your pet sheep, Olson would supposedly use it in making your new rug...a bit impractical, but people actually would send in hair from their beloved dog, and Olson would accept it; and 3) “Olson Rugs Do Not Burn”....but they did smolder.
The Olson Rug Factory was something of a Chicago landmark. It was huge, and it featured on one corner of its property, a really beautiful garden with waterfalls which was a great tourist attraction...a precursor of the much larger Bush Gardens which came later. It attracted people from all over the area, and my folks and I had come all the way from Rockford when I was a kid to see it.
I was assigned to a two man department devoted to responding to customer inquiries, some of which I’ll get to in a moment. This was in the days long before what we now recognize as computers, but we did have available to us an absolutely-state-of-the-art behemoth of a machine which could seat two people, as I recall and which was, in effect, a great-great-grand-uncle of a computer. It contained probably 25 “stock” paragraphs dealing with the most common questions sent in. So I would sit at there and type in: “Dear Mrs. Smith: #1, #14, #8, #4, Type” (yes, type, as on a built-in automatic typewriter). Very rarely I’d have to actually compose a paragraph for which there was no stock response.
Several things kept me amused. One was collecting the names of some of the people who wrote in. There was Peachy Poff, Mitzpah Frau, Quo Vadis Cone, and Placenta Palmer...and I swear I did not make those names up. Who could?
And the inquiry letters were often a delight. We received many along the lines of the following:
Dear Olson Rug Company:
My wife and I entertain a lot, and if you will provide rugs for our home, we will tell everyone they are Olson Rugs, and your company will benefit greatly from increased sales.
Uh huh.
But my favorite letter was from a woman also asking for free rugs, in exchange for which she would give us THE SECRET. She had, she explained, “tried to give it to the Sheriff, but he was sitting on two chairs.”
We passed, though I always did rather wonder what THE SECRET might have been.
I lasted at Olson for approximately a year, then found a job—probably because I could clearly read the “Dead End” signs with Olson—with an insurance company in the Loop where I was, inexplicably, some sort of insurance adjuster. I have absolutely no recollection now of what I did or why I even thought I might have any interest in being an insurance adjuster (which, as it turns out, I did not). But it did get me started as an editor, when I suggested that the company really needed an in-house monthly newsletter, and they agreed. It was called “Hear Ye” and was an incredibly amateurish affair with a hand-lettered title, and produced by mimeographing on regular 8 ½ x 11 paper...but at least it was white paper, and not the yellow lined notepaper. I did have my standards.
I was with the insurance company for probably a year and a half, then moved onward and upward to Duraclean International, a rug and upholstery cleaning organization which sold cleaning franchises in several countries, where I was associate editor for their house organ, the Duraclean Journal. (Probably my sterling service with Olson rugs may have influenced their decision to hire me.)
I really found a home there. Very nice people, and I had the opportunity to travel around the country to conduct seminars for groups of franchisees.
The only drawback was that I lived on Chicago’s near north side, and Duraclean was located in the suburb of Deerfield, which was quite a trek. Even that would not have been too bad, but I had to cross, as I neared my work, the Illinois Central’s commuter rail tracks. And every single morning, no matter if I was 10 minutes early or 13 minutes behind schedule, a commuter train would wait until it saw me coming, then race down the tracks just in time for the gates to lower before I reached them. (A coincidence, you say? I don’t think so.)
I was with Duraclean for six years…actually the longest time I ever spent on any single job…and I left only when my partner and I broke up and I decided to move to California. But that’s quite another story, which we shall get to anon.
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
My very first after-college job was with the Olson Rug Company, whose triple claim to fame was: 1) “Olson Rugs are reversible”; 2) “We use your own wool”...which meant if you sent in a sack of wool from your pet sheep, Olson would supposedly use it in making your new rug...a bit impractical, but people actually would send in hair from their beloved dog, and Olson would accept it; and 3) “Olson Rugs Do Not Burn”....but they did smolder.
The Olson Rug Factory was something of a Chicago landmark. It was huge, and it featured on one corner of its property, a really beautiful garden with waterfalls which was a great tourist attraction...a precursor of the much larger Bush Gardens which came later. It attracted people from all over the area, and my folks and I had come all the way from Rockford when I was a kid to see it.
I was assigned to a two man department devoted to responding to customer inquiries, some of which I’ll get to in a moment. This was in the days long before what we now recognize as computers, but we did have available to us an absolutely-state-of-the-art behemoth of a machine which could seat two people, as I recall and which was, in effect, a great-great-grand-uncle of a computer. It contained probably 25 “stock” paragraphs dealing with the most common questions sent in. So I would sit at there and type in: “Dear Mrs. Smith: #1, #14, #8, #4, Type” (yes, type, as on a built-in automatic typewriter). Very rarely I’d have to actually compose a paragraph for which there was no stock response.
Several things kept me amused. One was collecting the names of some of the people who wrote in. There was Peachy Poff, Mitzpah Frau, Quo Vadis Cone, and Placenta Palmer...and I swear I did not make those names up. Who could?
And the inquiry letters were often a delight. We received many along the lines of the following:
Dear Olson Rug Company:
My wife and I entertain a lot, and if you will provide rugs for our home, we will tell everyone they are Olson Rugs, and your company will benefit greatly from increased sales.
Uh huh.
But my favorite letter was from a woman also asking for free rugs, in exchange for which she would give us THE SECRET. She had, she explained, “tried to give it to the Sheriff, but he was sitting on two chairs.”
We passed, though I always did rather wonder what THE SECRET might have been.
I lasted at Olson for approximately a year, then found a job—probably because I could clearly read the “Dead End” signs with Olson—with an insurance company in the Loop where I was, inexplicably, some sort of insurance adjuster. I have absolutely no recollection now of what I did or why I even thought I might have any interest in being an insurance adjuster (which, as it turns out, I did not). But it did get me started as an editor, when I suggested that the company really needed an in-house monthly newsletter, and they agreed. It was called “Hear Ye” and was an incredibly amateurish affair with a hand-lettered title, and produced by mimeographing on regular 8 ½ x 11 paper...but at least it was white paper, and not the yellow lined notepaper. I did have my standards.
I was with the insurance company for probably a year and a half, then moved onward and upward to Duraclean International, a rug and upholstery cleaning organization which sold cleaning franchises in several countries, where I was associate editor for their house organ, the Duraclean Journal. (Probably my sterling service with Olson rugs may have influenced their decision to hire me.)
I really found a home there. Very nice people, and I had the opportunity to travel around the country to conduct seminars for groups of franchisees.
The only drawback was that I lived on Chicago’s near north side, and Duraclean was located in the suburb of Deerfield, which was quite a trek. Even that would not have been too bad, but I had to cross, as I neared my work, the Illinois Central’s commuter rail tracks. And every single morning, no matter if I was 10 minutes early or 13 minutes behind schedule, a commuter train would wait until it saw me coming, then race down the tracks just in time for the gates to lower before I reached them. (A coincidence, you say? I don’t think so.)
I was with Duraclean for six years…actually the longest time I ever spent on any single job…and I left only when my partner and I broke up and I decided to move to California. But that’s quite another story, which we shall get to anon.
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Shaping Clay
Some primitive cultures believe that the gods shaped Man from clay before breathing life into him.
I think there also might be something to be said for the idea that we are also, when we’re born, the equivalent of cosmic Play-Doh, and who we turn out to be is the result of how we are shaped by the events and circumstances of our lives.
Looking back, I can remember a number of incidents from my childhood which, simply because they’re still remembered after all these years, mean they had to have contributed to who Roger and Dorien are today.
Not surprisingly, most of them took place when I was very young, though I have difficulty now pinning down exactly how old I might have been at the time of each incident. The earliest was when I was old enough to have a tricycle. My parents had called me in for supper (we had “supper” in those days…“dinner” only came with sophistication). I left my tricycle on the sidewalk, and as we were eating, I heard the little bell on the handlebars ringing. I told my dad that someone was stealing my tricycle, but he had not heard the bell and refused to let me go outside to check on it. When I was able to go out, of course the tricycle was gone, and I resented my dad deeply for not having let me go out and save it. And I am ashamed to say that I think this single incident influenced my relationship with my dad from that moment on.
A second incident, about the same time, occurred while I was visiting my grandmother, who lived near a city park. While no one was watching me, I decided to go to the park alone. As I was walking through an underpass beneath the street on which my grandmother lived, I was approached by a man (which at my age could have been any male 15 years old or older) To this day I remember what he said to me, and though it is admittedly rather embarrassing to repeat, it has stuck with me all these years. (A word of caution here: I’m not going to sugar-coat this, so you can skip to the next paragraph if you’re easily offended.) He said “Let me put my weenie in your can.” It wasn’t until years later that I understood what he was saying, but I remember thinking it was a very strange thing to say. At any rate, I ran off and don’t know if I told my parents or not. But I remembered it. I still remember it, possibly because it was the first time I was aware that there were others like me: males who liked males. He was not the kind of man of whom homosexuals can be proud and, like most pedophiles, it’s unlikely that he was in fact gay.
One incident which strongly did have an effect on the formation of my character occurred when, maybe about 7 years old, I was walking down the sidewalk, happily singing Christmas carols at the top of my voice. A passerby said: “Why are you singing Christmas Carols? It’s summer.” I don’t know why, but that comment so shamed me that I have never since sung aloud other than as part of a group and been extremely uncomfortable when singled out under any circumstances where others are present.
Probably one of the most significant of my character-developing incidents happened when I was five, and my parents and I were living in a 14-foot trailer in Gary, Indiana. The trailer park was located next to a railroad track, but separated by a sloping ditch. Whenever we kids would hear a train coming, we’d run to the embankment to wave at the engineer, who always waved back. One day I heard the train coming before the other kids did, and I ran to the ditch and plopped down on the ground just below the rim of the embankment. I had my left leg out to one side and watching for the train.
A little girl from the park came running up and, not seeing me, jumped down the embankment, landing on my extended leg, breaking it severely just below the hip. I of course immediately began screaming and the little girl, terrified, ran off. My mother, hearing me, came running over. And seeing me all by myself maybe three feet down the side of a grassy embankment, she naturally assumed I had merely fallen and was being my own melodramatic self. She knelt down and scooped me up, one arm around shoulders and the other under my rear end. Unfortunately, in so doing, the weight of my unsupported left leg forced the broken bone out through my skin.
The doctors at the hospital to which I was taken told my parents that the break was so severe that my left leg would probably be several inches shorter than the right. However, they said, a visiting specialist from Germany was in town. He was scheduled to return to Germany the next day, but he came in and operated, and while I have a long and very noticeable scar, there was no shortening. The doctor left for Germany the next day. This was September of 1938. The doctor was Jewish.
I don’t think that the fact that it was a little girl who had jumped on me influenced my being gay, but it certainly did make me far more cautious of any activity or anything at all that might conceivably cause me physical pain.
Well, there are many more character-shapers in my life, and I may do another blog or two on them in future. But this, I’m sure you’ll agree, is enough for now.
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
I think there also might be something to be said for the idea that we are also, when we’re born, the equivalent of cosmic Play-Doh, and who we turn out to be is the result of how we are shaped by the events and circumstances of our lives.
Looking back, I can remember a number of incidents from my childhood which, simply because they’re still remembered after all these years, mean they had to have contributed to who Roger and Dorien are today.
Not surprisingly, most of them took place when I was very young, though I have difficulty now pinning down exactly how old I might have been at the time of each incident. The earliest was when I was old enough to have a tricycle. My parents had called me in for supper (we had “supper” in those days…“dinner” only came with sophistication). I left my tricycle on the sidewalk, and as we were eating, I heard the little bell on the handlebars ringing. I told my dad that someone was stealing my tricycle, but he had not heard the bell and refused to let me go outside to check on it. When I was able to go out, of course the tricycle was gone, and I resented my dad deeply for not having let me go out and save it. And I am ashamed to say that I think this single incident influenced my relationship with my dad from that moment on.
A second incident, about the same time, occurred while I was visiting my grandmother, who lived near a city park. While no one was watching me, I decided to go to the park alone. As I was walking through an underpass beneath the street on which my grandmother lived, I was approached by a man (which at my age could have been any male 15 years old or older) To this day I remember what he said to me, and though it is admittedly rather embarrassing to repeat, it has stuck with me all these years. (A word of caution here: I’m not going to sugar-coat this, so you can skip to the next paragraph if you’re easily offended.) He said “Let me put my weenie in your can.” It wasn’t until years later that I understood what he was saying, but I remember thinking it was a very strange thing to say. At any rate, I ran off and don’t know if I told my parents or not. But I remembered it. I still remember it, possibly because it was the first time I was aware that there were others like me: males who liked males. He was not the kind of man of whom homosexuals can be proud and, like most pedophiles, it’s unlikely that he was in fact gay.
One incident which strongly did have an effect on the formation of my character occurred when, maybe about 7 years old, I was walking down the sidewalk, happily singing Christmas carols at the top of my voice. A passerby said: “Why are you singing Christmas Carols? It’s summer.” I don’t know why, but that comment so shamed me that I have never since sung aloud other than as part of a group and been extremely uncomfortable when singled out under any circumstances where others are present.
Probably one of the most significant of my character-developing incidents happened when I was five, and my parents and I were living in a 14-foot trailer in Gary, Indiana. The trailer park was located next to a railroad track, but separated by a sloping ditch. Whenever we kids would hear a train coming, we’d run to the embankment to wave at the engineer, who always waved back. One day I heard the train coming before the other kids did, and I ran to the ditch and plopped down on the ground just below the rim of the embankment. I had my left leg out to one side and watching for the train.
A little girl from the park came running up and, not seeing me, jumped down the embankment, landing on my extended leg, breaking it severely just below the hip. I of course immediately began screaming and the little girl, terrified, ran off. My mother, hearing me, came running over. And seeing me all by myself maybe three feet down the side of a grassy embankment, she naturally assumed I had merely fallen and was being my own melodramatic self. She knelt down and scooped me up, one arm around shoulders and the other under my rear end. Unfortunately, in so doing, the weight of my unsupported left leg forced the broken bone out through my skin.
The doctors at the hospital to which I was taken told my parents that the break was so severe that my left leg would probably be several inches shorter than the right. However, they said, a visiting specialist from Germany was in town. He was scheduled to return to Germany the next day, but he came in and operated, and while I have a long and very noticeable scar, there was no shortening. The doctor left for Germany the next day. This was September of 1938. The doctor was Jewish.
I don’t think that the fact that it was a little girl who had jumped on me influenced my being gay, but it certainly did make me far more cautious of any activity or anything at all that might conceivably cause me physical pain.
Well, there are many more character-shapers in my life, and I may do another blog or two on them in future. But this, I’m sure you’ll agree, is enough for now.
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Oh, Spam!
I don't want to look. Really, I don't. But every now and then something that is not spam ends up in my spam folder, necessitating an always-intended-to-be quick scan of the effluvia contained therein to be sure I'm not throwing away something I shouldn't. And try though I might, I cannot resist knee-jerk responding to the come-on phrases intended to get suckers to open the message (the equivalent of unwrapping a soiled baby diaper).
So here, yet again, are a few noble examples of the spammer's art, and my reaction to them.
"Re: sending you what you wanted" (Since there was neither a check nor a copy of your suicide note, you didn't.)
"Millionaire wants you to cash in!" (No, millionaire wants to make more money...from anyone stupid enough to open the message.)
"A miracle took place" (Oh? You mean someone actually did open your message?)
"I made a blog." (Good for you! Now if we can just get you potty-trained....)
"She loves it when I go this much deeper, she gets overwhelmed by her orgasm...." (Oh please, please TRY to imagine how little I care!)
"Just read your letter." (Suuuure you did. But I have no intention of reading yours.)
"My fingers fidget like ten idle brats..." (While mine race to find the "delete" key.)
"Vitaminize your desire! Recipe of hotter lust" (Yessirreee, I'm always looking for new ways to vitaminze my desire. Does the recipe include Tabasco sauce and jalepenos?)
ncortes: "Sea-gull - mevo. -- In 1560 mendoza was abruptly ordered by king philip ii. Hello, I am Allegra Henstridge...." (Whoa! I'm getting whiplash, here! What are you talking about? You're Alegra Henstridge? Then who the hell is "ncortes"? Who's mendoza? What's he got to do with King Philip II? Philip ordered Mendoza to do what? And you...whoever you are...actually expect anyone in their right mind to buy something from you? Good luck with that one, Charlie...or ncortes, or Alegra, or mendoza, or philip, or....Sigh. I think I'll go lie down for a bit.)
"Get an omnipotent porksword!" (What a lovely, lovely mental picture you conjure up. Please, let me have a dozen of whatever it is you're selling, you silver-tongued rascal, you.)
Flossie Cortez - "女性からのお願いを聞いてもらえませんか?" (Oh, Flossie! You're such a card! Of course 願いを聞いてもらえませんか!)
"Did you call me?" (Take a wild guess.)
"What does Bessie say I've done?" (Other than bug the crap out of me? I neither know nor care.)
"Cheap Fashion Accessories." (Ah, yes....sweets to the sweet, I always say.)
"Afraid of being caught sleeping?" (Uh, not between 10:30 p.m. and 6 a.m., no.)
"Did you suffer a Gallbladder injury while using Birth Control?" (My God! However did you know?)
"Get ready to tough day." (Ok, as soon as I figure out how "to tough day" became a verb.)
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
So here, yet again, are a few noble examples of the spammer's art, and my reaction to them.
"Re: sending you what you wanted" (Since there was neither a check nor a copy of your suicide note, you didn't.)
"Millionaire wants you to cash in!" (No, millionaire wants to make more money...from anyone stupid enough to open the message.)
"A miracle took place" (Oh? You mean someone actually did open your message?)
"I made a blog." (Good for you! Now if we can just get you potty-trained....)
"She loves it when I go this much deeper, she gets overwhelmed by her orgasm...." (Oh please, please TRY to imagine how little I care!)
"Just read your letter." (Suuuure you did. But I have no intention of reading yours.)
"My fingers fidget like ten idle brats..." (While mine race to find the "delete" key.)
"Vitaminize your desire! Recipe of hotter lust" (Yessirreee, I'm always looking for new ways to vitaminze my desire. Does the recipe include Tabasco sauce and jalepenos?)
ncortes: "Sea-gull - mevo. -- In 1560 mendoza was abruptly ordered by king philip ii. Hello, I am Allegra Henstridge...." (Whoa! I'm getting whiplash, here! What are you talking about? You're Alegra Henstridge? Then who the hell is "ncortes"? Who's mendoza? What's he got to do with King Philip II? Philip ordered Mendoza to do what? And you...whoever you are...actually expect anyone in their right mind to buy something from you? Good luck with that one, Charlie...or ncortes, or Alegra, or mendoza, or philip, or....Sigh. I think I'll go lie down for a bit.)
"Get an omnipotent porksword!" (What a lovely, lovely mental picture you conjure up. Please, let me have a dozen of whatever it is you're selling, you silver-tongued rascal, you.)
Flossie Cortez - "女性からのお願いを聞いてもらえませんか?" (Oh, Flossie! You're such a card! Of course 願いを聞いてもらえませんか!)
"Did you call me?" (Take a wild guess.)
"What does Bessie say I've done?" (Other than bug the crap out of me? I neither know nor care.)
"Cheap Fashion Accessories." (Ah, yes....sweets to the sweet, I always say.)
"Afraid of being caught sleeping?" (Uh, not between 10:30 p.m. and 6 a.m., no.)
"Did you suffer a Gallbladder injury while using Birth Control?" (My God! However did you know?)
"Get ready to tough day." (Ok, as soon as I figure out how "to tough day" became a verb.)
New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.
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