A Shaggy Dog Tale About Karmic Justice. *

 

How you read your gas gauge depends on two factors, your current economic condition and your level of life experience. If your pockets are a little light in the change and folding money department you tend to read an analog fuel gauge, you know one with a needle that runs from E to F in nanometers. With a little jingle in your pockets, you tend to fill up at a quarter of tank as opposed to when you are running on vapors. How experience factors in is that if you have never run out of gas you may be willing to run a little closer to the E mark than you should. In early 1986 these two factors became a bit of a perfect storm for my wife and me, and for one officer the Wilmington Delaware police department as well.

On May 4, 1985 my wife and I were married in the cloudy moist South on the eastern coast of Florida. Rain and grey marked our day. However, the inclemency was not an omen or a portent of ill to come for we are still married 37 years later. By the fall of that year, we had pulled up stakes moving from Michigan for the Atlantic coast. Oh, we got married in Florida because it was neutral spot, our families lived respectively in Florida and New Jersey and our friends lived in Michigan. Two of the three groups would be travelling so why not make it a Florida vacation for those two groups. It was because of my desire to live closer to my recently widowed mother that we commenced living in Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington was about 10 miles as the crow flies from where I had grown up, 10 miles and a whole social stratum away from where my roots were.

Weird town Wilmington, the place is very obsessed with status and anything that carries the hallmark of old money. Remember Delaware is the place where someone one paid three quarters of a million dollars for a low license plate number because of the perceived high status owning such a plate carries. A lower number is found on an older plate, a plate colored black as opposed to blue and gold. A lower number implies a longer time in the state and more political and social standing. Three quarters of a million bucks so your car had a number of less than 10 on it, oh-my-gawd.

Wilmington was all abuzz with economic activity at the time. It was a boom town filled with yuppie scum. The feds had popped the cap off interest rates and Delaware long the bastion of corporate America had abolished usury limits completely. As the big money flowed in following these miraculous events Insurance companies and credit card companies were opening headquarters all over town. Walk into a bar like O’Friel’s on Delaware Avenue and throw a Heineken in any direction and you were sure to hit a young middle manager from one of these emerging powerhouses of capitalism squarely on one of their flat right leaning heads. In Brooks Brother’s suits with discrete tattoos over their buff upper torsos that said “Eat the Poor” they were going to rule the universe. Ugh.

Having moved back with the hope of being a good son, something that really didn’t work out well for me, a close relative had found me a job. With a little jostling here and there, I found myself working for an insurance company, Alico, one of the AIG Group of companies. I was a corporate attorney but I really didn’t fit in. I wasn’t making much money either for despite television depictions corporate lawyers working in house for financial companies don’t all make wheelbarrows of money. Maybe it was because I was just nuts, or maybe I didn’t have the desire for status or the overarching lust for power that seemed to be the hallmark of the place, I was always the odd person out. I so didn’t fit in to the corporate world that when I left the company I got a plaque that said, “Some men travel to the beat of a different drummer, you travel to the beat of a drummer from the Far Side.” I liked it.

While I was indentured in corporate servitude my wife was working as a freelance writer. She was drafting things like college catalogs for small Midwestern colleges. Freelance work required long hours just like being a corporate attorney. We both worked weekends and often we worked late into the night. We lived in first floor apartment that was carved out of an old row house. Row house that is what we called these three-story brick units as kids. By the time Francie and I moved in these buildings were being called townhomes. Status you must remember causes people to do weird things, even to rename building styles; Wilmington was all about status. Too bad we drove a Ford Escort.

When you are young and living in this environment you do foolish things. You go out and eat at four-star restaurants but you buy economy gas and have no furniture. You dash about always and you sleep very little but you very definitely try to go to the right places. Sometimes things just get away from you and so it did that night on hill in front of the Wilmington police station.

The start of the actual story was that my brother whom I had not seen in some time was in town. He and a mate were staying at the Hotel DuPont, a very gracious and grand hotel. The Hotel is at 11th and Market and takes up the entire city block. Many major corporations book the theatre in the hotel for their annual meetings. My brother, his friend, Francie and I had met and had dinner at the hotel in the Brandywine room. I always loved eating in the Brandywine room because we would often sit below an original N.C. Wyeth rendering of an island painted with the most exquisite of blue colors.

The dinner discussion was lively and surprising. While we were telling stories my brother’s friend and I discovered that we knew the same crazed liquor salesman from Detroit. It came about when he recounted a tale about a guy who was pissed off at being locked in a parking lot after hours. The gent missed curfew and the owner chained and locked the lot. The unhappy patron shot off the lock. I looked at Francie and noted that it sounded like our old friend Vern. The friend then said Vern’s last name and we knew it was the same guy. Hearty laughs all around at the small world aspects of this. 

Not wanting to end such a fun evening the decision was made after dinner to head out to Buckley’s Tavern just up the road inside Pennsylvania for a couple of mid-evening drinks. To pull this off Francie and I needed to get some things. First there was money to be obtained for drinking. This meant an ATM trip. Also, our old analog fuel gauge was not looking good. Its needle had recently made its bed on E and some gas was required. This meant we had to stop again at the nearest pump about 8 blocks away.

We went to the ATM first, which was just a short walk away from the hotel. Wilmington is a maze of one-way streets. Thus, there was no direct route between the hotel, the ATM and the gas station. After the ATM and a couple of turns we headed for the gas station. The street we ended up on took us past the front door of one of the city’s police precinct stations.

While not San Francisco the hill in front of the police station was substantial. You felt like you were on 10 per cent grade. The street was three lanes wide, all heading uphill. It was at the top of the grade that we needed to turn left onto another one-way street. Simple deal we were almost home free. I did say I was an entry-level attorney right? I did mention that my wife was a free-lance writer and that no money had come in lately, right? As we reached the top of the hill the mighty Ford Escort the plebian mobile made a muffled choking noise and died. Stone dead from petrol starvation it was.

So, to sum up what has happened so far, we are at the top of a steep hill, in the left lane waiting to turn. The car has died. With the engine’s demise due to a fuel deficient diet the power steering also died. Sitting in a dead car at the top of a steep hill your senses awaken. You become aware of things you never noticed before. In that moment of clarity, we both noticed that each side of the street was lined with either black and white police cruisers or with obviously unmarked police cars. And as we have no gas and as we have maybe some outstanding parking tickets, this is not a good situation all around.

I was the passenger and it seemed to me that the most reasonable idea was to park the car. We could then hike a few blocks down the street to the Arco station, get some gas and get out of there as fast as we could. However, we could not leave the car in the middle of the street. As luck would have it there was an open parking spot about two car lengths down the hill from us. This barren wasteland of blacktop was clearly visible in the midst of the unmarked cruisers lining the left side of the street. I got out of the Escort and prepared to direct Francie as she rolled the car back and into the spot. Easy right? Nayh.

As I noted at least once the Escort had power steering. When the power was out attempting to steer that car was like forcing limp spaghetti through the eye of a needle. It only took a yard or two of rolling to see that Francie would not clear the first unmarked cruiser. This is because she cut the wheel too tight. The tough box was getting tougher.

As luck would have it, a couple of detectives were coming out of the police station at that moment. As luck would not have it one of them screamed “Don’t hit my car”.

Trying to be polite I explained to the two guys who had not formally introduced themselves to us yet our predicament. I asked if they could have someone from inside the station to roll the first car back into the lower space. We could then roll into the upper space and go get gas and be on our way. One of the officers with his chest pumped up pulled keys out of his pocket and started to get into the first car. I said in what appeared to be a safe bet, “So you guys are police officers?” Detective braggadocio almost spat out the retort, “Nayh, we are thieves, the police just give us keys to make our jobs easier”.

In retrospect I can offer some opinions as to this officer's attitude. I spent twenty years getting to know many local police officers. In my daily routine, I’d listen to them tell their stories and gauge their demeanor and veracity. They, like any other group of people that hold power over another group of people, develop certain styles of exercising that power. Some people are calm and dispassionate and like that idealized parent exercise their power only when needed to correct a misguided course or when a firm hand is needed to curb just plain wrong actions. 

Others don’t seem to deal with the fact that they have power well. Maybe it is because they have never developed a stable sense of self-worth before acquiring power. Others are just dicks from the get-go. I think this officer was a dick from the beginning of his sucking air on earth. As I was standing there on the street humiliated by the lack of gas, and by the attitude of the cop, I wondered to myself how could this get worse? It only took a second to find out. 

After Fearless Fosdick jumped into the cruiser he without turning on the gas threw the car into neutral and began to roll the car back down the hill. He was watching the Escort and maybe me and I was watching him. Francie looked through the rear-view mirror. At about the same time I came to a realization that made me bite my lip. Francie came to the same moment of clarity and put her head down on the steering wheel so her facial expression would not be visible. Fosdick’s partner and I saw at about the same time what Fosdick did not. As the cop car gained backward momentum, the other officer screamed “Joe the doo……..r”. At the moment when I was drawing blood from my lip from biting it so not to laugh at all-not even a little bit, and the sound of crunching screaming metal came from the door of the cruiser crashing into the telephone pole.

The noises which included the whine of stretched metal, the pat pat pat of fragmented pelletized pieces of glass hitting the pavement and the crunch of wood from the telephone pole hung in space for a second. Then came the sound of a long bang as the driver’s side door hit the sidewalk. The unmarked car’s door was now attached to the vehicle by only one mangled barely connected hinge. Francie was banging her head on the wheel not to laugh. I was about to swallow my lower lip and the other officer was screaming, “You idiot” at officer dick.

It was awkward but in that particular maneuver, what Francie and I wanted had been accomplished. The police car moved one space down the hill. Sizing up the situation and thinking about what was the right course of action for Francie and I, my thought was I should ask if the two policemen minded if we moved into the space previously held by the now mangled cruiser. The clearly agitated driver more or less screamed “Why the hell would I care about what you two do?” So ever so gently, as the street was filling with other police officers (who were laughing their asses off as the non-driver was relating what had just happened) and with deftness motivated by fear and adrenaline, Francie pulled our little car against the curb and we skedaddled. As we jogged/ran to the gas station we laughed so hard we almost pee’d ourselves. Karmic justice is fun to watch.

Returning to the scene of the incident it was interesting to see all the police investigators combing the scene. There were tape measures out. People were taking pictures, lots and lots of pictures. Tablets were being jotted upon. Francie was required to produce her ID. The thing that was curious was that the cops took pictures of every angle of our car. When Francie asked why when he was shooting our car when we really had nothing to do with the actual accident, the photographer just walked away. Upon putting the gallon of gas I had just bought into our tank I asked the non-driving officer if we were free to go. He muttered an epithet so vile that I can’t repeat it here but pointed down the road. We turned the engine over and left. Given the way things were going that night we decided drinks and driving through Wilmington just didn’t add up. We cancelled the bar run. 

Before all his evil came to light, Bill Cosby did stand-up comedy. As a kid I listened to records with titles like “Why is There Air?" This was a riff based around the difficulty Mr. Cosby, who attended Temple University as a student aiming to be a physical education teacher, had dating a philosophy major. He in his ever fluid voice would get agitated and say she was always asking questions, “Why is there air?” He was always answering (in a hyper excited voice if the record was correct), “So we can blow up volleyballs and footballs and basketballs.” One of his riffs on this record, if I am remembering it right was something to the effect that parking tickets were sort of an inverse savings bond. In his case he came to this awareness when he hit a patch of ice and banged up his old beater of a car. A good Samaritan came by and lit flares up around the vehicle in his words “lighting it up like a birthday cake”, and he tried to blow them out so as not to have to go to jail over the glove box full of tickets.

Essentially, retribution was the root cause of the "doofus officer’s" scene investigation in our case. Wilmington had a parking ticket policy. If you had four tickets you were subject to the boot. If you had three or less tickets the parking authority would max them out quickly and wait for you to pay. We lived in an upcoming neighborhood where you had to buy a parking sticker; our permit was considered a hunting license for a parking space. If you found a slot in your zone that wasn’t otherwise prohibited you could park there all night. Our zone however ended right at our front door. We lived on the corner of a block so if the block was full you might have to park in the next zone. Depending on the meter maid's zeal you might or might not get a ticket for this. Well prior to the out of gas car/police car without a door, I had been holding three tickets for more than four months.

Not the following morning, but the next night after the door incident, the parking authority exacted Officer Fosdick’s revenge. We awoke to find the bright yellow boot of shame affixed to the driver's side wheel. It cost $125 in 1985 money to get that puppy removed and the folks at the parking office took their time about it. When we walked to the parking bureau no one would acknowledge the existence of the four-ticket policy or that it had been breached in our case. Additionally, no one was receptive to the, this was revenge, dialog I tried to engage in. Still, from the various eyes in the room focused on us, it was clear that ours was not a normal case.

Thinking back all these years to the incident makes me laugh. Yeah, it cost me $125 in difficult to find cash at the time. However, at least I am not the person whom for the rest of my police career would be known as "Crash" or "Door-less" or "Eagle eye." Sometimes arrogance gets its due, especially when it serves no purpose but to humiliate someone in need. WPD 0, Karmic Justice 1.

It is not my Sock Joao.

 

Nope, not my sock.  But I was kind 

enough to knock it down to the 

basement apartment.  The guy on andar 3

can knock on their door if he really

wants it.

Tuesday morning arrives in Lisboa. Bright sun today and the sky is clear.  A slight breeze brings smells through my apartment’s French windows from the snack bars and coffee shops scattered along the street below. When I move to my balcony table I see people starting to move. Young men in blue suits and women in blousy pants with backpacks are trickling off to work.  The morning has begun, and I want to see what this day holds.

Coffee time is over and I carry my cup into the kitchen. In the process of moving yesterday's dishes out of the dishwasher and into the cupboards, I think that if I don't start writing soon, my thoughts, my energy, and my focus will all drift away. Energy and ideas will fly from my mind with the speed of the parakeets abandoning Rua Pedro Nunes in the twilight. I stop for a moment and think of those wild spiraling birds flashing by in the near darkness to some unknown point of evening rest (I guess). So, to juice my mind I pick up my iPhone and pick a playlist; the time is now to hear the weekly Chill playlist for Jay Todd. Music makes kitchen chores easier and faster.

The first song up is Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones. And with that song’s soft but insightful words in my ears I realizedwhat I would like to write. I want to craft poetic prose whose soul lies just beyond the easily accessible. Prose that if you dig for it you will find joyfully delightful.  I want my words to flow off the page into a small number of people’s brains giving them joy or making them think or evoking true feelings. Ultimately, I hope to create stories that evoke emotion, inspire thought, and leave an impression for more than just a moment.

I mean there are papers I read that thrill me that never get into my Apple News feed, nor will they ever. The things I read aren’t about some actor’s secret illness hidden for twenty years. They aren't about a game of political chess that screws upreal people living real lives on the margins in America. The things I love most come to me through newsletters and mailing lists. As I pour over them they open rabbit holes into seams of cascading poems, songs, essays about life and all that it entails. In my reading I wrap myself in the words of folks just off center enough to be considered out of step but not subject to institutionalization.

As I read their paragraphs quickly, my thoughts bubble wildly and fire off in a hundred directions. Reading a short Simon Blackburn article on an esoteric philosophical debate or ingesting a sideways collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s thoughts on humanity’s propensity for destruction tucked in among some essays in a collection most will skip reminds me of the joy inwell-written but off-center works. And then there is a visceral feeling of loss when I hear a Tom Waits song like The Fall of Troy. Yeah, I want to write something that good.

Too bad I don’t have the tools. The truth is, I have a lot of words, big and small, and four letter words.  But what I lack arethe mechanics. Verb and noun agreement, yeah I could do better. Dangling pieces of sentences, participles, prepositions and gerunds all get me running. I think I lack these tools partly due to spending too much time stoned in my freshman and sophomore years of high school. 

Another part of the reason I don’t have the tools is because I believe the rigor of writing was lost on teachers in the era of the "new journalism" prevailing when I came through high school. Diagramming sentences, constructing paragraphs that were basically logical syllogisms, you know a premise, followed by a second premise, and then a conclusion fell by the wayside in those years. In 1970-1974 good writing consisted of word salad blasted out on a page in different fonts with italics and scribbled drawings tucked in amidst the text, e.g., Breakfast of Champions. Writing during the 1970s was distinctly unconventional and unstructured and a generation of public school students suffered because of it.

I still have a chance with these programs that promise to clean up grammar and clarify poorly constructed paragraphs and sentences.  In the next few years, maybe I'll write that novella. Five chapters will follow someone's journey from a small farm town in America to a large foreign capital. Dedication and time are all I lack. Giggles here.

Here is The Fall of Troy. It is one of Loren’s favorites. 

 

Rainy Saturday Lisboa, Sunny Friday Setubal

It's a bit before 9 in the morning and the rain has been steadily falling for about two to two and a half hours. Thepavement, the cobblestones and the calçadas (the polished stones) of the sidewalk are thoroughly wet. As a result, the city has moved into a slow space. This is the moment where time and motion are reduced to the speed of a ball bearing dropped through the most viscous of liquids. 

Looking up and down the street from my balcony not a person is moving. I can’t hear tires zinging past on wet roads as I would in an American city. One thing about America, the weather in all but the most severe cases is irrelevant to carrying out the activities of daily life. All in all, the slowness of the city in the rain has become an accepted part of life for us. Itdoesn't happen that often in the warmer months and so it is a break from the ususal, a time to recharge.

[Took a break here. Had to get the morning coffee pots going.  Always brew Francie’s first. Have to grind the Costa Rican beans, make sure the carafe is clean, and then get the whole water in the pot thing in motion.  Then I make myself a pot of the cheap stuff from the preground blend from our local supermercado, Pingo. Yes, I am drinking glorified dirty brown water, but decades of morning coffee rituals from back when I drank two pots of high test are not easily abandoned.]

Got to bed early last night. Awoke up early today. I heard the first thunder peal and realized I still had laundry on the line. There was a reason I left the clothing out last night but more on that below. I jumped up, opened the kitchen window and peeled the mildly damp jeans, undies and socks from the line. I took the load into our small dining room, put the dehumidifier on laundry and closed the room. I will check back in a few hours. If all works according to plan the clothing will be dry and the dehumidifier tank will need emptying.

Normally I would have had the laundry out on the line by ten on any given day and back in before dinner. Yesterday did not turn out as planned however. Francie planned to travel with some friends to Setubal and then to the Troia Peninsula for a day’s adventure. Being unsure of where the train platform was, and whether our monthly passes covered the journey, I rode up to the Sete Rios train station with her. I wanted to see if these issues could be easily sorted. We found the platform easily and her pass covered the trip.

Before we headed out, and it was early for us when we left the house, I started the wash. Our Bosch washer on the ecocycle takes three hours. I figured I could take Francie up to the station, grab a coffee, and have a pastry. I would still have plenty of time to get home and hang the laundry. 

Unfortunately Francie's group trip fell apart. Covid had touched one traveller's husband and with that the whole thing was ended by people dropping out. This is not a gripe. These people made wise and responsible choices. Covid still sucks. 

However, as far as we knew we had not been exposed to the virus. And there we were at the station and the train to Setubal would pull in within ten minutes. What does a flexible, active, and serendipity-oriented retiree do? Well he says, “What the heck? Let us go to Setubal.” Off we headed. (Note: I might have used a term a bit more profane than heck.)

I had been to Setubal before with my family in tow. It was Sunday or Monday because the mercado was closed. Also, it was misty and raining (at times). We wandered around, tried a local dish of note, choco frito, fried cuttlefish typicallyserved with potato chips or fries, salad, and a lemon wedge. It was okay but not a favorite. The thing I remember most from that visit was a group of bizarre statues set up in a park as part of a temporary installation. Also, the area around the train station was torn up and made getting around difficult.

Street repairs are done. The mercado was open. The mercado was great. Lots of vendors selling meats, vegetables, and of course seafood. There was a station where you could get an oyster and a shot of liquor for two dollars. The art in the entrance was just beautiful as were the azulejos on the back wall. Walked around the market for a bit and then got a coffee. I note the Setubal market is a real market and not the cleaned-up tourist affair that is the Porto market.

We decided to have a couple of galaos, think latte served in a glass cup and cheaper. We sat out in a lovely park, a park we had seen before on our last visit. However, after our coffees were done we walked to the end of the park and to the public beach. It was a lovely walk and the beach was nice. Apparently in high tourist season they have plenty of kiosks and wagons serving everything from caipirinhas (mojito with Brazilian cane liquor) to oysters on the half shell.

By the time we finished at the beach we were both peckish. What would a trip to a seaside town be without a stop for seafood? We consulted Google Maps, found a place with a 4.6 rating on more than a thousand reviews. It had only two $$s next to the entry. Both good and cheap, my favorites. I had seafood stew. Francie had three small, mild, grilled whitefish. Both meals were good. The lunch beer was tasty too but it made the ride back on the crowded train lessenjoyable. We wanted to sleep. Everyone else wanted to talk on their phones. Such is life.

After our exploring we took the Fertargus train back. Got home about four. I immediately hung the laundry out to dry but there was not enough daylight left to get the job done. I was so tired I just left the laundry out and headed to bed about ten thirty. And that brings us back to the beginning, me taking the laundry off the line in the early morning hours.

I am not sure what I thought of Setubal after my first visit. Maybe "meh". But after this second visit I recommend taking the train down to see the beach, walk the market, eat seafood stew, and enjoy the park while exploring the area. This is if you have time.

Watching the World

When you stand at the edge of the upper deck of the Miradouro De Sao Pedro De Alcantara you see the red roofs of old Lisboa mixing in with the bright, shining and new. You see the old buildings colored with green, pink and yellow pastels mixing in with chrome and glass things that popularity has brought to the city. The glitzy hotels, the Hard Rock Café, these are below you wedged in among the shops that still sell Gingina or tins of sardines or cork products of all descriptions. 

 

If you look across this valley, across this beating heart of Lisboa, you will see St. George’s Castle. It hasn’t always been called St. George’s. Pieces remain from the 6th century, when it was first fortified by the Romans and they obviously did not call it St. George’s. Eventually then they were replaced by Visgoths. Then came the Moors who used it as a royal Moorish residence. And then Portugal's first king, Afonso Henriques, captured the castelo in 1147 during the reconquista. Chances are that nobody before Alfonso Henriques thought naming the ramparts St. George’s made sense.

 

Looking down to the lower level of the miradouro you see busts of Greek and Roman heroes and gods. Here baking under the Iberian sun are Minerva and Ulysses. If you listen as the day draws down to sunset, you can hear leaves rustling in the trees filling this park. The evening breeze coming as it does most every night moves them. You can also hear the large beautiful white fountain running behind you as you scan the horizon in front of you. 

 

The setting of the sun casts a warm, golden light on the scene. You really don’t have to listen hard to hear the sound of parakeets chirping, sounding to all the world like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. You can also hear conversations from the people around you and on the deck below. A majority of these conversation fragments are in Portuguese, spoken fast and indecipherable to anglophones. The smells of sausages cooking at the various pop-up market stalls assembled here waft through the air. As the sun prepared to drop below the horizon and the crowds gathered to watch the sunset, this view of the city was exactly what he needed to restore his soul.

The obvious song to insert here is Saturday in the Park by Chicago but that just doesn't work for me.  I viscerally resist that song, don't know why.  Maybe something happened in another life that made that song not palatable to me.  Anyway I am inserting a Jimmie Dale Gilmore song because I can.

(What follows is part of the narrative that wraps around these interstitial pieces)

 

He came to this place and this moment at the tail end of his life. Cancer twice, heart disease, deteriorating vision, and hearing loss had all plagued him. Still, he had worked the drill for years in the legal factory. Like a child who had been promised there would be cake at the end of dinner he had expectations for his retirement.  As his work calendar moved toward the last few months he truly believed he had earned a beautiful reward.

When all his friends bought houses or lots in God’s Waiting Room he knew he had to find somewhere different. His people were southern, some of his people were so far to the right he could not see their position from where he stood.,But he was long gone from them and their values. Florida was the embodiment of everything he was not. He wanted a place that would not shake him daily because he was surrounded by hate and racist vitriol. 

 

Twenty years before he retired, he wanted to live out the end of his life in the Pacific Northwest. But the money he made would never get him a decent house up there. Ten years before retirement he dreamed of Asheville, NC. But as the world he believed in shattered, and red and blue sides were taken, he knew he was on the wrong side of most of North Carolina. This was clearly true as he read the headlines from the state. Despite the island of delicious food, laughter, art and intellectualism that is Asheville, he could not move to NC. Put simply, he didn’t like his choices because the north was too cold, the east and the west were too expensive and the south was too Trump.