I am probably not the only one who learned the hard way that, when you combine yourself and another person in a compound subject or object, you have to list your friend first. It's polite to ask if your friend and you may go to the shore in Mom's car, not the other way around.
I learned this when, in fourth grade, Anthony V____ asked, "May I and Ho Jun go to the library?" of Mrs. Bramer. Nope. Though he got the correct auxilliary verb, he blew the order of the subjects. He had to sit down and write, 100 times, "May Hojun and I go to the library?"
It seems a lot of people learned this order the hard way and then had it beaten into them that not only the order was important, but that any time there was a compound noun you had to use the subjective first person pronoun. So, some people erroneously think that they should ask questions like, "Would you give the pitcher to Chip and I?"
That doesn't work; 'I' is not an object and can't have anything given to it (though Paula Cole took some poetic license with it, once). The correct way to phrase it would be, "Would you give the pitcher to Chip and me." Order is polite, and both atomic components of the compound object are now themselves objects.
Another way to think of it is to break the sentence into two requests:
"Would you give the pitcher to Chip?"
"Would you give the pitcher to I?"
That doesn't sound right, does it? No, it doesn't, because 'I' is not an object.
Another often misused object is 'myself.' I can give myself some things, but you can only give me some things. What's that mean? The word 'myself' is a special object called a reflexive object. It must be preceded by the subject to which it refers.
"I gave myself a shower."
or
"I owe it to myself to stay sober."
But you shouldn't write, "If you have any questions, please contact myself or another member of the team." You must say, "If you have any questions, please contact me or another member of the team."
So I can touch you or myself, and you can touch yourself or me, but I can't touch 'yourself' and you can't touch 'myself'. Now give me a quarter or I'll touch you.
Here is another explanation:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/myself.html.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Domesticating Squirrels
Jennifer, early this morning, trying to feed one of the squirrels by hand. Cara has named them all; I think this one is Chuck.
Chuck resting in a tree. It is hot for an early May day and he's sprawled out to cool off.
Chuck resting in a tree. It is hot for an early May day and he's sprawled out to cool off.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
May Day
It hit about 90F here, so Finn wanted to play with the water. That attracted his friends.
Before all this fun, Jennifer and I decided to get our first acute case of UVR poisoning of the season, so we overworked ourselves in the garden. Here's our raised bed of salad greens...
...Jennifer's cukes from seed...
...artichoke...
...and tomato.
We have a lot of room left for peppers, hot peppers, more tomatoes, and a few more frames for raised beds.
Here's to my shoulders cooling off and my headache going away by tomorrow so we can plant more.
Before all this fun, Jennifer and I decided to get our first acute case of UVR poisoning of the season, so we overworked ourselves in the garden. Here's our raised bed of salad greens...
...Jennifer's cukes from seed...
...artichoke...
...and tomato.
We have a lot of room left for peppers, hot peppers, more tomatoes, and a few more frames for raised beds.
Here's to my shoulders cooling off and my headache going away by tomorrow so we can plant more.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Flowers and Children
Some pictures from the end of a beautiful day.
The grapevines
Finn on his friend David's shoulders, with Emily (can you believe there are still girls named Emily? I like that.)
The grapevines
Finn on his friend David's shoulders, with Emily (can you believe there are still girls named Emily? I like that.)
Monday, April 12, 2010
Ken, Part 1
He is otherwise known as Arfie, these days. He is my best friend. Our inauspicious start was in December, 1988, at Annette Mendola's apartment in Oswego. She had invited the two of us to dinner, so we could meet each other before becoming her housemates.
Annette had lived off campus the previous semester, taking a rest from school. I don't know or remember how she and Ken met, but I met her in my philosophy classes, and we had studied together on several occasions.
Before the dinner, she described Ken to me as 'a quiet sociology major'. It was spot on, but I would soon find the description was lacking and incomplete, rather like describing a rave as a dance party.
Dinner went well enough. I was concerned about one thing: moving in the next semester so I could get the fuck off of campus and away from George and Seth, the two downstate weirdos who were driving me nuts. Ken could have been a serial killer, but as long as I did not have to share a room with him and he only murdered Annette, I was fine with him.
To this day he describes the spring semester of 1989, when we all started living under one roof, as "our long dance." I thought that was faggy sociological or beatnik bullshit, and I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Some 19 years later I conceded that there was some awkward walk around each other - he went about some ritual of discovery but I, like in many relationships in my life, blindly fell into whatever was happening around me. Here's a note I sent to him about it just this year:
Annette had lived off campus the previous semester, taking a rest from school. I don't know or remember how she and Ken met, but I met her in my philosophy classes, and we had studied together on several occasions.
Before the dinner, she described Ken to me as 'a quiet sociology major'. It was spot on, but I would soon find the description was lacking and incomplete, rather like describing a rave as a dance party.
Dinner went well enough. I was concerned about one thing: moving in the next semester so I could get the fuck off of campus and away from George and Seth, the two downstate weirdos who were driving me nuts. Ken could have been a serial killer, but as long as I did not have to share a room with him and he only murdered Annette, I was fine with him.
To this day he describes the spring semester of 1989, when we all started living under one roof, as "our long dance." I thought that was faggy sociological or beatnik bullshit, and I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Some 19 years later I conceded that there was some awkward walk around each other - he went about some ritual of discovery but I, like in many relationships in my life, blindly fell into whatever was happening around me. Here's a note I sent to him about it just this year:
I never wanted to accept your story of us "doing a dance around each other" when
we first met. First, it sounds faggy (not that there's anything wrong with that
. . .). Second, it sounds like mushrooms blooming in the dark yet fecund mind of
a quiet sociology major.
I never thought about it more than enough was
necessary to dismiss it. But today I accepted it long enough to come up with
this theory: You were dancing, i wasn't. I was running around like an airhead
letting chance rule my day, and whatever steps I took that looked like a dance
were purely coincidental. You were more deliberate, I was haphazard.
If that
makes sense to you, you really might be my best friend and I henceforth fear for
your sanity - unless I am making the same mistake all over again. Ad infinitum:
the story repeats.
I concede the Big C was always yours. But I did control
your mind a few times.
I suck and you love me. Admit it.
So. Whatever. However it progressed, I remember a few seminal moments. I kept a small refrigerator next to my bed, usually with a plastic pitcher full of iced tea - the sugary crap that you make with a powder and water - mostly sugar. One night about 2am, everyone was sound asleep and I heard a loud THUD outside my door. I turned on the light and opened my door (ok, it was a curtain) and found Ken, on the floor in front of the bathroom, which he had just exited.
What happened? I fainted, he said. Got up to go to the bathroom and got lightheaded after I got up from the toilet.
Annette came into the scene to see what was going on, and I got a cup and poured him some iced tea. You're probably low on blood sugar or something. Drink this. It will make you feel better.
We stared at each other awhile, Ken pretty much still on the floor, looking up at us. (Yes, it is possible to look up at Annette). Just about when the silence was getting uncomfortable, Ken said something trite like, This is good iced tea. Where'd you get it? Price Chopper, I said. Really? Yeah, I responded. You make it with water, you know? We stared at each other awhile longer, pulled him off the floor, and sent him back downstairs to his room.
Next came the Skunk. It was early one morning - before dawn on a cold April day. Katie Bouse, a friend of Annette's was staying with her. I had my girlfriend in my room, and Ken was downstairs in his lair. I was awake, my girlfriend was in my arms. She was scared of ghosts, she said. She had seen two alleged "ghost busters" give a speech the night before at the Union. It was all frogwash I said. What is the image on the blank TV screen then? Here, I said, it's static glow. I wiped my hand across the screen and gathered a static charge that lit the small B&W's screen. Just then, a commotion started in Annette's room. I ignored it at first, until I could smell it.
What is that? my girlfriend asked. Smells like gas or something. We had better get up. The commotion got louder. Katie was rambling on about something as if in a trance. Annette came into the room. "We gotta find out what this is," she says. Smells like gas, I said. Katie got louder. I could hear Ken coming up the steps.
"...just come with me into the arms of Jesus, everyone, it's OK!" This freaked out my girlfriend, so she left. Annette rolled her eyes, and when Ken came to my door, she said she was taking Katie to Dot's house, and she wanted the two of us to figure out what was wrong.
I stared at the quiet sociology major, he stared back. About then we figured out that a skunk had blown his bladder somewhere near, if not in, the house. We decided to search the perimeter for holes and plug them up. We were on the roof at 6am, hammering makeshift boards into holes in the crappy little house.
Everything smelled like skunk. There was no escaping it. Unaware of how bad it might have got my clothes, I put on a long wool coat and went to my job at the radio station. I saw the DJ who went before me there, and he immediately turned around and looked at me. "get hit by a skunk or something?" I think I skipped all my classes that day.
Probably the third event was the day I was walking home from the bus. It was a beautiful April afternoon - warm, slighly humid, smelling of chlorophyll and flowers everywhere. I turned up the small alley that is NW 9th street, and toward the house. I could hear the Stones blaring. Ken moved his couch or an easy chair on to the front lawn. He was sitting like the guy in the Memorex ad - laid back in the chair, sunglasses and all - drinking a beer and slowly bopping his head to some song that I can't remember but I am sure has become a favorite of mine. Somehow or another we scrounged up for more beer and continued the ruckus on our own until nightfall.
After that it was stuff like cleaning out the koi ponds, filling them with water, turning on the nice lights, and then - not being satisfied with that - dumping kerosene ont he water and lighting it. Chernobyl Pond, we called it, that event being recent enough for us to know about it.
There was also many a night when we lay on the floor in or near my room, making fun of Annette. We three had some sick little inside joke running and it used to piss my girlfriend off. One night as we started into it, she got mad and left. I made a tape one night, and there are such incidents as me misconstruing something that Ken said to Annette as her being the "fuck of the month" when what he really called her was "fuck of the mountain. Or vice-versa. My memory and my hearing problem, put together, make interesting stories.
That semester ended with me graduating and driving the big orange VM microbus away the day after we got loaded and partied on Water Street. I was down there with some other friends when Ken and Annette showed up. I was thrilled out of my mind and I think I showered them both with beer. I lost a shirt that night, as I would many other times.
Post-graduate Ken stories to come later.
The Crumby Chateauguay Valley.: The Road From Connecticut to New York Via Quebec Province
I can’t remember if I let Ken drive on this trip. He had a permit, was not too swift with a stick. It was my father’s Tercel, standard shift. I may have got the car going, then we switched seats while driving. I had done this once before on the road to Montreal with another person who could not drive stick – Karen Riccardi, an old girlfriend…more about her some other day.
One way or another we got to CT. I recall taking a picture of the woman at the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge tollbooth. A redhead who shut her eyes as the flash popped. She was handing me my receipt. Had to keep receipts of everything, so I could get the money back. I did not have much.
We got to Danbury early in the afternoon. I don’t remember what day of the week it was anymore. A weekday, that’s all. Once there, we checked in to the Ethan Allen hotel. IBM put up potential recruits in nice spots back then. I don’t know what they do these days. Last I heard, kids get signing bonuses and three weeks of vacation. But they also have better grades than I ever did. I don’t think I could even get accepted at my alma mater anymore.
Once checked in, we checked out the amenities. There was a racquetball court, so we got my lacrosse sticks and tried throwing the ball around in there. Several bruises later, we gave up. Hotel patrons waiting to use the court for its intended purpose stared.
Dying for something to do, we went to the downtown Danbury area. All we could find of interest was a place called The Brass Jail. We went in for a few drinks. I told the barmaid I might be moving here and she probably said some nice things about the area that I don’t remember. I learned later that this was a place where IBMers don’t hang out.
Uninspired by Danbury, we decided we had to see salt water, so we headed to Norwalk down route 7. Late day traffic was heading north, so we got there easily. We asked where we could find the waterfront from an immigrant grocer who pointed a lot but did not say much we could understand. We got two travel mugs, filled them with alcohol of some sort, and drove to the first marina we could find. Turns out it was a private place, so we parked our car in a reserved spot and headed for the docks.
It was located deep in some estuary or inlet – we could not see Long Island Sound from there. But we walked the docks and admired the boats, and Ken snapped picture after picture with a point-and-shoot 35MM.
Soon we were confronted by a boat owner or perhaps an officer of the club. He asked what we were doing. We made up some lame excuses and he explained this was private property and we were not invited. He then asked what Ken had in his hand. Ken explained it was a camera. The man asked to see it, so Ken handed it over. He inspected it like it was a transmitter or a bomb, and then handed it back, repeating the innuendo that we should leave right away. We did.
Now unimpressed with two spots in CT, we went back to Danbury. We ate dinner and then retired for the night. I met with an IBM employee for breakfast and then followed her to the IBM offices for my interview. Ken walked downtown and then to the Brass Jail where I met him after my interview.
We decided then that instead of returning to Syracuse right away, we would go to Montreal, perhaps spend the night in a hotel near the border. Plan hatched, we hit the road with a bottle of vodka. We didn’t need much back then.
On route 84, going west, we were approaching the Taconic State Parkway. Ken had heard of this or been on it before in his roving and hitchhiking and said we should take it. I knew nothing about it and decided against it, which pissed him off. He said I was unadventurous. For a guy who never drove, he sure knew a lot about highways in a part of the state that he had scarcely been to.
Instead we crossed the Hudson and got on the NYS Thruway. The plan was to take it all the way to Montreal, which is what the road did. When the road became the Northway, near Albany, we were getting hungry. Karen Riccardi still lived in the area, so I posited that if we visited her, her mother would glady feed us. Olympia Riccardi loved me. Karen didn’t anymore – or so I thought (like I said, details later) – but her parents thought I was the same polite 15 year old that visited years ago.
We exited into Clifton Park, where the Riccardis lived, and I managed to find 31 Garrison Lane (yes, I still remember the address, and probably even the phone number – 518 899 4842). We pulled into the right driveway by sheer luck – orienteering is NOT my forte. A rap on the door got hugs all around. I explained we were just passing through from an INTERVIEW WITH IBM and we were on our way to Montreal. This impressed the hell out of Olympia and Richard Riccardi, so they insisted we have dinner. Even the long-haired hippie freak that was with me was allowed to come in. Any friend of Paul’s was a friend of theirs.
It was some kind of roasted chicken dinner with veggies and potatoes. It was delicious and it hit the spot. Karen was glad to see me, and envious that I was going to Montreal without her. I had gone only the year before, with her, on a whim (more later, ok? More later….). She and her brother helped us find an ATM. We got back on our way before sunset.
As a black, cold, August Adirondack night settled in, my eyes got tired and we needed to stop. The Northway was all oncoming white light and passing red lights. I proposed we stop at a rest stop and park between two tractor trailers and sleep. We went as far as parking between two such beasts, and I reasoned some trucker would pull in later that night or early the next morning, thinking the spot was unoccupied, and handily flatten the Toyota, with us asleep in it. We decided to drive on.
We reached Plattsburgh. I had some $60 in my pocket and I figured I could get a room and sneak Ken in. I’ll spare you the details, but at the first hotel with no vacancy I determined that there were no rooms to be had in the entire town. The front desk manager suggested I park at the edge of the large parking lot where the tractor trailers parked for the night.
I told Ken about it and we figured that, not being on the highway, it would be safer than the rest stop. We parked between two huge Frito-Lay trucks, polished off the bottle of vodka, and passed out. We were so wrecked that we did not hear both vehicles fire up and leave in the morning. We woke to empty space all around us. And splitting headaches.
We went to an IHOP where we ate pancakes and I got some aspirin. We headed north after that and stopped at the border, where I was ordered to park the car and walk into an office to be interrogated. Why, I thought. I cut my damn hair!!! I was tired of this happening to me (more on that, later). I went into the office. Ken was told to stay in the car.
In the office a French Canadian official asked to see my license. He reviewed it and supposedly looked up some info on me. “You have had no DWIs?” he asked, in his accent. No, I have not. “None?” No, I repeated. “Not one at all? That is remarkable.” I stared at him, wondering WHAT in the hell he was trying to get at – when did I ever have the time to get one? I was 21! Oh, the night before….well anway, I was sober, with a clean record as I stood there. He played with my license in his hand, staring at me, pursing his lips. He handed it back to me.
Foolishly, I had to ask a question. I held up my ATM card. Can I use this in Canada, I asked. He took it from me and walked away. HEY, GET BACK HERE, I said. He smiled at me and laughed. He came back and said yes, they had ATM machines in Canada. Wasn’t what I asked, but I wasn’t going to hone the question down to whether the NYCE or STAR network also existed in French Canada. I was tired of border officials, again.
Back on the highway, we reached Montreal before noon and walked around for about an hour. I kept trying to ask for a bathroom in my best attempt at what little French I remembered from Mme. DiVico, and after many attempts, one kind person took pity on us.
Once the loaf was pinched, we left. We were not impressed with Montreal, either.
We chose a route that would take us across the SW part of Quebec province to Massena, NY, roughly – a port of entry called Trout River. We would pass across what I was told are the Plains Of Abraham (but aren’t; it's the Chateauguay Valley). It was flat, with a distant view of a ridge or plateau to the north.
We got hungry midway home and stopped at Ormstown. I forgot 1)we were in Canada and 2)we were in Canada. We entered a nondescript grocery store in this town of 10,000 people. I grabbed some drinks and a candy bar, and Ken got cookies. When the cashier spoke to me, I remembered: we’re in Canada. I tried to remember my French. I stared at here as the gears in the back of my head slowy cranked up. Video of Mme DiVico reciting numbers, and then I got it: she wanted me to fork over something like $5. Then I remembered, we’re in Canada. She stared at the greenbacks, sighed, and called for a manager, or so I gather. One came over with a calculator and a newspaper. She looked up the exchange rate, calculated what we owed, and repeated it to me. I held out the money as if to say please be honest and take what you need and please give me my change. They took US $5 and returned some coins in Canadian. I apologized, in French, and we left.
The town was close enough to the border that they occasionally got someone like me, but not enough.
Back on the road to NY state, we started eating the cookies. They tasted like shit. Ken kept bitching about them but also eating them. I got tired o of listening to him because it was intefering with the Zappa music playing on my boom box, so I grabbed the entire package and threw it out the window.
We were generally pissed off about Quebec. Not Canada, just Quebec. We arrived, gratefully, in NY at Trout River and pulled into the US port of entry. Off to the side, I saw a carload of students standing outside their car with all their luggage. A customs official was removing a wheel. I feared the worst, but I just wasn’t going to take it.
A female officer approached the car. Where have we been, where are we going? How long were we in Canada? What did we buy. I explained the following:
“I just came from an interview with IBM (drop a name!) in Danbury, CT. We decided yesterday afternoon to drive to Montreal on our way home to Syracuse (kind of like going to Miami on your way from NY to LA, proportionately). We spent the night in Plattsburgh, drove to Montreal this morning, left after going to the bathroom, and stopped in Ormstown.”
What did you buy? I held up an empty Snickers wrapper and Ken said he ate all of his cookies.
She was dumbfounded. “You drove to Montreal to go to the bathroom on your way home to Syracuse from CT?
I was certain we were gonna get waylaid, the car inspected inside and out, and we’d do a lot of standing and answering of questions. Here goes:
Yep.
She shook her head. “Move on gentlemen. Just go.”
So we did, wending our way through Massena, Potsdam, Watertown. We stopped at the Salmon Run Mall where Ken had to show me a huge piece of kinetic art on display there. We made it to Oswego before sunset and I was home by dark. I got the job. I don’t remember much about the interview, but I sure remember the rest of the trip.
One way or another we got to CT. I recall taking a picture of the woman at the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge tollbooth. A redhead who shut her eyes as the flash popped. She was handing me my receipt. Had to keep receipts of everything, so I could get the money back. I did not have much.
We got to Danbury early in the afternoon. I don’t remember what day of the week it was anymore. A weekday, that’s all. Once there, we checked in to the Ethan Allen hotel. IBM put up potential recruits in nice spots back then. I don’t know what they do these days. Last I heard, kids get signing bonuses and three weeks of vacation. But they also have better grades than I ever did. I don’t think I could even get accepted at my alma mater anymore.
Once checked in, we checked out the amenities. There was a racquetball court, so we got my lacrosse sticks and tried throwing the ball around in there. Several bruises later, we gave up. Hotel patrons waiting to use the court for its intended purpose stared.
Dying for something to do, we went to the downtown Danbury area. All we could find of interest was a place called The Brass Jail. We went in for a few drinks. I told the barmaid I might be moving here and she probably said some nice things about the area that I don’t remember. I learned later that this was a place where IBMers don’t hang out.
Uninspired by Danbury, we decided we had to see salt water, so we headed to Norwalk down route 7. Late day traffic was heading north, so we got there easily. We asked where we could find the waterfront from an immigrant grocer who pointed a lot but did not say much we could understand. We got two travel mugs, filled them with alcohol of some sort, and drove to the first marina we could find. Turns out it was a private place, so we parked our car in a reserved spot and headed for the docks.
It was located deep in some estuary or inlet – we could not see Long Island Sound from there. But we walked the docks and admired the boats, and Ken snapped picture after picture with a point-and-shoot 35MM.
Soon we were confronted by a boat owner or perhaps an officer of the club. He asked what we were doing. We made up some lame excuses and he explained this was private property and we were not invited. He then asked what Ken had in his hand. Ken explained it was a camera. The man asked to see it, so Ken handed it over. He inspected it like it was a transmitter or a bomb, and then handed it back, repeating the innuendo that we should leave right away. We did.
Now unimpressed with two spots in CT, we went back to Danbury. We ate dinner and then retired for the night. I met with an IBM employee for breakfast and then followed her to the IBM offices for my interview. Ken walked downtown and then to the Brass Jail where I met him after my interview.
We decided then that instead of returning to Syracuse right away, we would go to Montreal, perhaps spend the night in a hotel near the border. Plan hatched, we hit the road with a bottle of vodka. We didn’t need much back then.
On route 84, going west, we were approaching the Taconic State Parkway. Ken had heard of this or been on it before in his roving and hitchhiking and said we should take it. I knew nothing about it and decided against it, which pissed him off. He said I was unadventurous. For a guy who never drove, he sure knew a lot about highways in a part of the state that he had scarcely been to.
Instead we crossed the Hudson and got on the NYS Thruway. The plan was to take it all the way to Montreal, which is what the road did. When the road became the Northway, near Albany, we were getting hungry. Karen Riccardi still lived in the area, so I posited that if we visited her, her mother would glady feed us. Olympia Riccardi loved me. Karen didn’t anymore – or so I thought (like I said, details later) – but her parents thought I was the same polite 15 year old that visited years ago.
We exited into Clifton Park, where the Riccardis lived, and I managed to find 31 Garrison Lane (yes, I still remember the address, and probably even the phone number – 518 899 4842). We pulled into the right driveway by sheer luck – orienteering is NOT my forte. A rap on the door got hugs all around. I explained we were just passing through from an INTERVIEW WITH IBM and we were on our way to Montreal. This impressed the hell out of Olympia and Richard Riccardi, so they insisted we have dinner. Even the long-haired hippie freak that was with me was allowed to come in. Any friend of Paul’s was a friend of theirs.
It was some kind of roasted chicken dinner with veggies and potatoes. It was delicious and it hit the spot. Karen was glad to see me, and envious that I was going to Montreal without her. I had gone only the year before, with her, on a whim (more later, ok? More later….). She and her brother helped us find an ATM. We got back on our way before sunset.
As a black, cold, August Adirondack night settled in, my eyes got tired and we needed to stop. The Northway was all oncoming white light and passing red lights. I proposed we stop at a rest stop and park between two tractor trailers and sleep. We went as far as parking between two such beasts, and I reasoned some trucker would pull in later that night or early the next morning, thinking the spot was unoccupied, and handily flatten the Toyota, with us asleep in it. We decided to drive on.
We reached Plattsburgh. I had some $60 in my pocket and I figured I could get a room and sneak Ken in. I’ll spare you the details, but at the first hotel with no vacancy I determined that there were no rooms to be had in the entire town. The front desk manager suggested I park at the edge of the large parking lot where the tractor trailers parked for the night.
I told Ken about it and we figured that, not being on the highway, it would be safer than the rest stop. We parked between two huge Frito-Lay trucks, polished off the bottle of vodka, and passed out. We were so wrecked that we did not hear both vehicles fire up and leave in the morning. We woke to empty space all around us. And splitting headaches.
We went to an IHOP where we ate pancakes and I got some aspirin. We headed north after that and stopped at the border, where I was ordered to park the car and walk into an office to be interrogated. Why, I thought. I cut my damn hair!!! I was tired of this happening to me (more on that, later). I went into the office. Ken was told to stay in the car.
In the office a French Canadian official asked to see my license. He reviewed it and supposedly looked up some info on me. “You have had no DWIs?” he asked, in his accent. No, I have not. “None?” No, I repeated. “Not one at all? That is remarkable.” I stared at him, wondering WHAT in the hell he was trying to get at – when did I ever have the time to get one? I was 21! Oh, the night before….well anway, I was sober, with a clean record as I stood there. He played with my license in his hand, staring at me, pursing his lips. He handed it back to me.
Foolishly, I had to ask a question. I held up my ATM card. Can I use this in Canada, I asked. He took it from me and walked away. HEY, GET BACK HERE, I said. He smiled at me and laughed. He came back and said yes, they had ATM machines in Canada. Wasn’t what I asked, but I wasn’t going to hone the question down to whether the NYCE or STAR network also existed in French Canada. I was tired of border officials, again.
Back on the highway, we reached Montreal before noon and walked around for about an hour. I kept trying to ask for a bathroom in my best attempt at what little French I remembered from Mme. DiVico, and after many attempts, one kind person took pity on us.
Once the loaf was pinched, we left. We were not impressed with Montreal, either.
We chose a route that would take us across the SW part of Quebec province to Massena, NY, roughly – a port of entry called Trout River. We would pass across what I was told are the Plains Of Abraham (but aren’t; it's the Chateauguay Valley). It was flat, with a distant view of a ridge or plateau to the north.
We got hungry midway home and stopped at Ormstown. I forgot 1)we were in Canada and 2)we were in Canada. We entered a nondescript grocery store in this town of 10,000 people. I grabbed some drinks and a candy bar, and Ken got cookies. When the cashier spoke to me, I remembered: we’re in Canada. I tried to remember my French. I stared at here as the gears in the back of my head slowy cranked up. Video of Mme DiVico reciting numbers, and then I got it: she wanted me to fork over something like $5. Then I remembered, we’re in Canada. She stared at the greenbacks, sighed, and called for a manager, or so I gather. One came over with a calculator and a newspaper. She looked up the exchange rate, calculated what we owed, and repeated it to me. I held out the money as if to say please be honest and take what you need and please give me my change. They took US $5 and returned some coins in Canadian. I apologized, in French, and we left.
The town was close enough to the border that they occasionally got someone like me, but not enough.
Back on the road to NY state, we started eating the cookies. They tasted like shit. Ken kept bitching about them but also eating them. I got tired o of listening to him because it was intefering with the Zappa music playing on my boom box, so I grabbed the entire package and threw it out the window.
We were generally pissed off about Quebec. Not Canada, just Quebec. We arrived, gratefully, in NY at Trout River and pulled into the US port of entry. Off to the side, I saw a carload of students standing outside their car with all their luggage. A customs official was removing a wheel. I feared the worst, but I just wasn’t going to take it.
A female officer approached the car. Where have we been, where are we going? How long were we in Canada? What did we buy. I explained the following:
“I just came from an interview with IBM (drop a name!) in Danbury, CT. We decided yesterday afternoon to drive to Montreal on our way home to Syracuse (kind of like going to Miami on your way from NY to LA, proportionately). We spent the night in Plattsburgh, drove to Montreal this morning, left after going to the bathroom, and stopped in Ormstown.”
What did you buy? I held up an empty Snickers wrapper and Ken said he ate all of his cookies.
She was dumbfounded. “You drove to Montreal to go to the bathroom on your way home to Syracuse from CT?
I was certain we were gonna get waylaid, the car inspected inside and out, and we’d do a lot of standing and answering of questions. Here goes:
Yep.
She shook her head. “Move on gentlemen. Just go.”
So we did, wending our way through Massena, Potsdam, Watertown. We stopped at the Salmon Run Mall where Ken had to show me a huge piece of kinetic art on display there. We made it to Oswego before sunset and I was home by dark. I got the job. I don’t remember much about the interview, but I sure remember the rest of the trip.
The Wolf
The Wolf was a very tall guy with Sammy Hagar hair on the other side of the atrium (courtyard) in my dorm. I think he had vision problems because he always wore glasses and had trouble fiding the person talking him. No mater - he was one of the big party animal types that everyone knew of but few people knew. People yelled his nickname (WOLF!!!) whenever they saw him, exchanged a few trite lines (You gonna be at the TKE thing this weekend? YEAH!) and that was all I ever saw or knew of him. Except for when he discovered or was told I had a talent for burping loudly. I was challenged to face him some night in the future he said, so I agreed.
It was late one night when the duel was called, impromptu. I was in my room, and across the atrium there was a party, probably in Wolf's room. I heard my name being called so I went to the window. A few of Wolf's handlers told me it was time. I said fine. They went inside and dragged Wolf to the window. He told me to go first, probably so he could finish me off with a finale.
I let my best burp go. There is not to describe here - it was just a long, loud, deep burp that made my chest and a few windows rattle. I can't get into Mark Twain tall-tale like descriptions of how it woke earthworms in the February soil or anything like that. Let's just say it iwas long, loud and deep.
Once the echoes subsided, I looked back down to where Wolf and his handlers were. Wolf had a beer in one of those big plastic, dixie cups, and his other arm draped limply to his side. For the first time, it seemed as if his usual blank stare really was a blank stare, and his jaw was dropped.
"You win," He said. "I can't compete with that." He went back inside and one of his handlers patted him on the back. The noise from the party did not seem as loud as before as the pall of defeat settled across the atrium. It's not nice to defeat a well-loved legend, and I did not suddenly earn all the respect and love he got from his friends.
It was late one night when the duel was called, impromptu. I was in my room, and across the atrium there was a party, probably in Wolf's room. I heard my name being called so I went to the window. A few of Wolf's handlers told me it was time. I said fine. They went inside and dragged Wolf to the window. He told me to go first, probably so he could finish me off with a finale.
I let my best burp go. There is not to describe here - it was just a long, loud, deep burp that made my chest and a few windows rattle. I can't get into Mark Twain tall-tale like descriptions of how it woke earthworms in the February soil or anything like that. Let's just say it iwas long, loud and deep.
Once the echoes subsided, I looked back down to where Wolf and his handlers were. Wolf had a beer in one of those big plastic, dixie cups, and his other arm draped limply to his side. For the first time, it seemed as if his usual blank stare really was a blank stare, and his jaw was dropped.
"You win," He said. "I can't compete with that." He went back inside and one of his handlers patted him on the back. The noise from the party did not seem as loud as before as the pall of defeat settled across the atrium. It's not nice to defeat a well-loved legend, and I did not suddenly earn all the respect and love he got from his friends.
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