The Soda Jerk

The McCrory’s Five and Dime in the Cameron section of Alexandria, Virginia was in a gradual economic decline. Even in the early 1950’s it was becoming anachronistic. Its sales-atolls of fabrics, notions, candies, hardware, toys, and such .... with a clerk centered in each lagoon ... were lapsing due to changing business economics -- to be replaced in the years ahead by shopping carts and check-out counters. Even its high, tinned ceiling and its rotating wooden fans would soon succumb to air conditioning. Along its entire left wall stood an old-fashioned soda fountain with chrome and red-plastic-covered stools and a long burnished-brown Formica counter.

Into this merchandising museum stepping Gregory Tyro to interview for an advertised job as a soda-fountain server. He was a sophomore at nearby George Washington High School and, since he was the only person to apply for this position in three days, was immediately hired. He was to work Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 3:00 until 6:00 and all day Saturday ... for 75 cents an hour (from which he had to pay for his lunch on Saturdays.) Gregory’s customers tended to be gray, mousy saleswomen from McCrory’s and the other modest emporia of this small village. They would invariably order the daily special, such as a grilled cheese sandwich, a small drink, and Campbell’s tomato soup (with a sweet pickle) for 70¢. They generally were a very persnickety sort. A smudged plate, a dirty knife (which they probably wouldn’t use anyway), or unevenly-toasted bread would send them into spasms of grousing. Once satisfied, they would then nibble at the corners of their sandwich and slowly sip their soup until their half-hour break was consumed. Then they would leave three quarters on the counter, netting Gregory a whole nickel for the abuse.

Sometimes, his customers would be a local banker or a gas station owner who would eat fast and leave a bigger tip ... or retirees who would come in for a cherry or a vanilla Coke and then douse it with ammoniate and phosphate from a cruet on the counter (indicated to be "for their nerves"). In his six months there, Gregory did get pretty adept at this job.  He could fry a burger or make a malted milk with ease.  The one hitch was that the malted milk machine invariable gave him a small shock when he pushed the steel contained into its harness.  And the half-hour cleaning-up of his workspace at the end of the day wasn't his favorite either.  Only rarely did someone of Gregory’s own age penetrate the blue-veined veil of this eatery and give him someone to talk to. But, because he was young and usually shy, and because such novelty almost always swamped his vocal synapses; Gregory would generally open by saying something stupid like, “Ghat can I wet you?”

This was the first of many customer-service jobs that Gregory had during his salad years. And he learned from these experiences that working almost always tends to be work. (If you haven’t figured it out by now, Gregory was yours truly.)

© Copyright,   George W. Potts

The Boston Marathon

(stock photo)

Rosie Dispozishen laced and re-laced her sneaker as she edged closer to the starting line of the 53rd Boston Marathon. At this time, the departure point of this increasingly-famous race was not a very big berg ... only about 4,000 souls. However, on Patriots’ Day every Spring, it more than doubled in size as runners from around the world assemble there for this great grandmother of all long-distance races.

Rosie knew that she was in for a tough race. She had competed against all of her low-number rivals at least once before and fully realized that they had the tremendous edge ... they all had two legs. Not that one leg hadn’t served Rosie well in the past. She and her two-legged partner, Butch Dykstra, had won almost every three-legged race in the country. She also did extremely well in foot races as opposed to feet races. But two legs just always seemed to work out better in a marathon, and Rosie knew that her work was cut out for her. So she sidled up to the starting line by leaning on, and then elbowing out of the way anyone who showed her the slightest sympathy. By the time the gun sounded, a beaming Rosie was leaning on her crutches in the front row of runners, somewhat incongruous with her four-digit seeding number pinned to her chest.

The race was on! Rosie quickly dropped her crutches and bounced along on one leg for about a mile before she could go no further in that mode. Then she plopped to the ground and started rolling. Since all the other runners had, by this time, passed her by; this was not the hazard it otherwise might have been. Other than making her extremely dizzy, this method of propulsion was relatively untaxing for Rosie. She had progressed for about another half mile this way before she rolled onto her rump and, putting her arms behind her, began to crab walk. However, her vertigo was, by then, so advanced that she waddled around in circles for a full five minutes before she was back on the bee-line toward Boston (where the race winner was just then crossing the finish line).

So it went for Rosie, alternatively springing forward on one leg, then rotating her torso, and then crab walking. By night fall she had reached Framingham and had acquired a police escort lest she be run over in the dark during her supine or prone race phases. And by early the next morning, a scratched and bruised Rosie was bouncing her way through Wellesley, almost unnoticed by the college coeds on their way to class. Then, she delayed rush-hour traffic in Newton for about two hours as she tried to revolve her way up Heartbreak Hill ... but kept rolling back down. Finally, around eleven PM that night, almost 36 hours after she had crossed the starting line, a thoroughly battered and humbled Rosie finished her most grueling marathon. However, by then she had been noticed by the press and the public. She was said by many to have had more courage than even Amelia Earhart.

And so to honor her one-legged spunk, the small town at the start of this great race rechristened itself as “Hopkinton.”

© Copyright   George W. Potts

Topiary

A boxwood  llama perpetually grazed one spot on a former hay field, now populated with a plethora of other leafy-coifed biota ... a cypress elephant, a rosemary pig, a cedar lion, a blue-spruce giraffe, a hemlock hippopotamus, and a juniper horse ... all seemingly like the hemp-induced chimeras of a gene-splice between Salvador Dali and Edward Sissorhands. But they weren’t. These topiaries had been carefully nurtured and tonsured by Amos Roosevelt, a overly-shy car mechanic, who was brideless, parentless, and childless ... and, therefore, able to spend all of his spare time and most of his salary on these organic origami.

Throughout the spring, summer, and fall; Amos was up at six A.M. pruning, plucking, and fussing over his children, as he called them, before he donned his impeccably clean overalls and went off to the mechanic's garage. Again, in the evening, Amos would lovingly tend his progeny until encroaching darkness would force him into his modest home where he ate his frugal meal, and, after sketching a few new ideas, would retire to his lumpy bed. This bush-artist was the grand master of his craft. He even went so far as to cause fern eyelashes to sprout on the giraffe’s doe-eyes; monster cactus teeth to root in the gaping mouth of the hippo, and gigantic ears to grow on the elephant’s head out of ... what else? ... elephant-ear plants.

Amos was an extremely private person. He was not an old man, probably no more than thirty-five, but he seemed as celibate as the Pope. This was as much due to his compulsions as it was to any testosterone deficiency. But, at the furthest-reaches of this acreage, in the center of a tall privet maze ... far from the prying eyes of the occasional tourist ... was a topiary that no one else had ever seen. It was an evergreen Aphrodite ... hedge-manicured to the finest detail by Amos. She had an aquiline nose, pouting lips, and cascading tresses that reached halfway down her sculpted back. She was standing on tiptoe and the resulting muscular tension reached all the way up her thin legs to her well-trimmed mons Venus. Her taut stomach arched up to two perky breasts crafted to perfection, even down to the aureoles around the nipples. Nothing was left to the imagination.

This was Amos’ one and only diversion. On most sunny Saturday afternoons he would casually wander to the back of his field, enter and traverse the hedge maze, and then, gazing longingly at his creation, he would disrobe, grab his pruning shears, climb his tripod orchard ladder, and hoarsely whisper to his shrubbery fetish, “I love yew.”

© Copyright, George W. Potts

Good & Plenty

As a nine-year old in the late 1940’s, heaven to me was a Saturday matinee at the Manos Theater or the Strand Theater or the Grand Theater in my Pennsylvania hometown, Greensburg. The Grand, behind the courthouse, was the seedier of the three and, therefore, the favorite of the munchkin set. With our silver quarter clutched tightly in our fists, it lured us onto its boisterous ticket queue with a western, a serial, a B-film (generally a comedy or a mystery), and a cartoon. One would enter this cavern of delights after lunch on Saturday and emerge squinting into the late afternoon sun. We never begrudged the squandering of our allowance and much of our Saturday on such frivolity. We were innocents ... we knew not of television or VCRs or Dolby sound systems or the Internet.

Invariably, we spent our whole quarter ... 15 cents to get into the magic shadow show and the rest for such nickel treats as Dots, JuJu Bees, Necco Wafers, Good & Plenty, Red Hots, and that requisite bag of popcorn. Good & Plenty was a favorite since the empty box made the best mouth-tooter to blow in between the features. If one sat in the balcony, half of your popcorn was generally showered on your screaming peers below. Too much popcorn or tooting invariably brought the matron usherette with her ill-fitting brown uniform and massive flashlight. The faded purple braid on her left shoulder rewarded her for what we knew not ... perhaps scowling.

The western proffered usually starred William Boyd (as Hopalong Cassidy) or Gene Autry (and his side-kick, Cannonball) or Lash LaRue or Roy Rogers (and Gabby Hayes). There was always a big posse chase, lots of ricocheting bullets and horse prat falls, but no kissing. If there were western songs, we usually hooted and hollered until the last stanza. The serial would be something like The Perils of Pauline (with Betty Hutton) or Flash Gordon (with Buster Crabb) or Red Ryder (and Little Beaver) or the Lone Ranger or Johnny Weismiller’s Tarzan. Then the main feature could be Charley Chan or Abbott & Costello (meeting Frankenstein or the Wolf Man or the Invisible Man) or Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (on the road to Rio or Bali or Morocco) or Errol Flynn as Robin Hood or Laurel and Hardy in the French Foreign Legion.

Often there was also a Movietone News short which highlighted recent world events in sports, entertainment, and of course, the reconstruction from the war in Europe or the Pacific. But it was the cartoon that took our breath away. Porkie Pig and all his friends coming out of that rainbow bulls-eye was our thrill of the week. And, if perchance there was a second cartoon, we squealed ... for we knew we had been gifted by the gods.

© Copyright George W. Potts

The Master Put Down

Eunice sadly decided that it was time. Not that Fluffy was particularly old. Her adorable little miniature poodle was only a little over eight and might be expected to live another eight or ten years. It was more that Eunice herself was getting on in years and could no longer take Fluffy for her numerous walks. Nor could her increasing delicate psyche take Fluffy’s nervous vigor. This over-energetic dog was constantly running to the front window to bark at passer-bys or delivery men. Fluffy also frequently browsed and selected a squeaking dog toy from her basket and chewed on it for hours until it finally gave up its squeaker … only to be quickly replaced by another rubber fire hydrant or stuffed mailman by one of Eunice’s numerous grandchildren or neighbors.

It was all getting to be too much, so Eunice called the vet and made that auspicious appointment for the very next day to put Fluffy “to sleep”. She tossed and turned all that night worrying how she could go through with this fateful decision. But, through a vale of tears, she drove Fluffy to the veterinarian in plenty of time to meet their three-fifteen appointment with destiny. She parked her sensible hybrid vehicle where it said “visitors” and put Fluffy on her sequined leash. As they were walking into the vets’ office there was a cacophony of barking coming from the next-door kennels. Fluffy responded with her own vigorous series of yaps and yips.

Once in the vets’ office Eunice and Fluffy were escorted into a room that had already been prepared for their visit. There was a thick blanket on the floor and a series of scary implements on the examining table … a syringe, an electric razor, and a series of liquid-filled vials. Eunice was told how this “procedure” would go. She was asked if she wanted to have Fluffy cremated and put in a monogrammed brass urn. She nodded assent.  Finally, she opted to have a plaster cast of Eunice’s paw made and sent to her. Eunice was then instructed by the attendant to sit with Fluffy on the blanket and try to keep her calm while her credit card was hit for $568 for a long series of these and other manufactured charges. Finally Eunice was given a box of Kleenex and told that the “doctor” would be in shortly to “see” Fluffy and that Eunice could then leave by the back door.

Eunice had a good cry and stroked Fluffy and told her how much she loved her and how much she would be missed. After what seemed like an eternity there was a soft knock at the door. Eunice sobbed, “Come in.” When the door opened, instead of a white-coated veterinarian, there, standing on their haunches, were three gigantic dogs – an Irish wolfhound, a mastiff, and a Great Dane that together must have weighed five hundred pounds.

Fluffy gave a yelp of friendly recognition. Then, as the mastiff reached for the syringe, Eunice realized what was to take place next. She screamed and fainted dead away.

© Copyright George W. Potts

The Chocolate Angel

I was “on the beach” during one raw December in New York City. It wasn’t pleasant. My start-up company had run out of money earlier that fall and I was looking at my prospects with a fair dollop of pessimism. Christmas was rapidly approaching ... at about the same speed that my family’s checking account was diminishing. We had told our children of our predicament, but we couched it with enough optimism that the kids did not seem concerned. Moreover, there still were credit cards, department store charge accounts, and a few more unemployment checks; so my wife, Jeanette and I were still able to indulge ourselves almost everything we needed to make Georgie’s and Becca’s Christmas morning all that they had come to expect.

Christmas eve came and its bourbon had erased any residual angst I was still suffering. Our apartment in Stuyvesant Town was festooned with mistletoe, holly, and a multitude of other Yuletide decorations. The Christmas tree was a beautiful blue spruce -- lit, garlanded, and icicled into a fairyland icon. Gaily wrapped presents were spread out around the tree like supplicants around an emir. They extended so far out that there was little room left for our gaggle of guests to put their snowy feet. They were enjoying eggnog, old fashions, Christmas cookies, and milk punch to the strains of Johnny Mathas’ “I’ll be Home for Christmas.” The conversation drifted from the U.S. departure from Viet Nam to the minute details of our respective morrow’s menu. Our children were asleep in their bunk beds after I had read them their traditional “A Visit from St. Nicholas” story.

In the midst of all this celebrating, the “ding dong” of our apartment door intruded itself. I thought it was just another neighbor, so I opened the door with an expectant smile. Standing there was a well-dressed black lady with two large shopping bags ... apparently full of Yule-wrapped packages. She said, “Is this the Potts’ apartment?” Taken aback, I replied that it was. Then it was her visage’s turn to register surprise. But she was undaunted. She thrust these two shopping bags upon me and then handed me a letter that was addressed: “Santa Clause, North Pole.” I stood there grasping these two holiday sacks ... with my jaw sagging onto my ski sweater. I was too chagrined to invite her into our apartment ... lest she notice the sea of largess half-covering the living room floor. But I did stammer out a syntactically-fractured “thank you.” Then, after an embarrassed pause, this chocolate angel turned on her heels and fled onto the elevator.

When she was gone and I had retreated into our apartment, I emptied out these shopping bags. They contained red and green wrapped presents addressed alternately to Rebecca and George; and a few unwrapped toys ... I think a fire truck and a doll. Then I opened the crayoned letter. It contained a plea from Georgie to Santa Claus for some presents since “his Daddy was out of work and there would be no money for Christmas for my sister Rebecca and me.” It was indeed one of life’s precious, bitter-sweet moments.

© Copyright  George W. Potts