Read More Shakespeare (or For All Time)

 

              I first met this chap in high school English class.  Clever, witty, glib of tongue but thoughtful, his existence barely registered with me.  I found him a naughty varlet, an ass.  Then, I met this fellow again in my first semester of graduate school.  This time, I flamed amazement.  I fell immediately and completely love, to the point of obsession.  I did love nothing in the world so well as him.  When he spoke, the voice of all the gods made heaven drowsy with their harmony.  So was he to my thoughts as food to my life.  I did not wish any companion in the world but him.  He I loved and with him led my life.  His name--William.  William Shakespeare.

              On weekends, I would check out VCR tapes and inundate my daughter with various Shakespeare plays.  As we walked places together, I would recite Shakespearean soliloquies.  I named most of my pets after Shakespearean characters.  Later, my daughter told me she was thankful that I came to my love of Shakespeare after she was born, as she feared the name I might have given her.

              I adopted the motto, “Read More Shakespeare.”  Surreptitiously, I inscribed it in the dust on cars, on public message boards, on any surface that offered a suitable canvas.  When I would visit my daughter at college, she would take me on a tour of her classrooms.  Inevitably, I would write, “Read More Shakespeare” in the corners of the chalkboards.  Laura got a giggle if my message remained for her next class.

     

I used to drive a red 2011 Subaru Forester with a manual transmission.  My husband and I began to worry about its mechanical stamina when time came for us to migrate between South Carolina and Upstate New York.  I had local mechanics check her the last few times we made that trek, as I had no desire to break down on I-95 with a cat in the car.  While my husband and I raised the unavoidable prospect of getting a new car, for several reasons, we hung on to that Forester.

              Then, at the end of February, 2023, an almost new Subaru Crosstrek pushed its nose under my tent.  It had almost everything I wanted in a new car—manageable electronics, heated seats, but most importantly a manual transmission.  The rub—it was white.  The color did not dampen my ardor too much, and I drove the car home in early March.  When I told a friend I had bought a white Crosstrek, she pointed out that many people drive white Crosstreks, so how would I find my car in a parking lot.  When presented with this dilemma, a different friend suggested pinstriping.  Forehead slap!  Major duh!  How could I, the Queen of Bumper Stickers, not think of gussying up my car?!?  Now my white Crosstrek sports red, orange, and yellow racing stripes, with “Read More Shakespeare” in black cursive letters across the back bumper.  I have no trouble at all spotting my car anywhere.  

            While I have noticed curious glances in my rearview mirror, or in parking lots as I approach my car, I have had some fun personal interactions, as well.  One day I got into my car at our condo parking lot.  A fellow had been washing something at a spigot near the building.  The next thing I knew, he appeared by my open door, held out his hand, and began, “Is this a dagger that I see before me?”  He proceeded to recite most of that soliloquy and then ran back to the spigot, leaving me laughing.  Clearly, he had played Macbeth previously.

              Rich and I walked into our dentist’s office a few weeks ago.  The dentist and his technician greeted us, with the dentist commenting, “We watched you drive up and don’t think we have ever seen a car with racing stripes and ‘Read More Shakespeare’ on the back.”

              During our recent trip north, we stopped in New Jersey for gas.  While the gas pumped, Rich went into the mart.  Then, I heard behind me an excited chant, “Read More Shakespeare!  Read More Shakespeare!”  A very delighted young guy appeared at the passenger side window.  He said he just clocked out, but he finished up the gas transaction, as the guy who set us up was busy.  He talked about how much he enjoyed reading.  I asked if he was going to go home and read.  He lives next to a library, so he said he just might.

              Our apartment in Glens Falls shares a building with a surgical office.  One day, people were leaving the office as I was unloading groceries.  A middle-aged man commented in passing, “I like your bumper message.  The ‘Read More’ part, not necessarily the ‘Shakespeare’ part.  People need to read more.”  I took no offense.

              Rich and I needed more storage space in our bedroom, so we went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore, where we found a beautiful dresser.  Two guys carted it to the car for us.  When they saw the bumper message, one told me that in high school, they had to learn the balcony speech from Romeo and Juliet and then he started reciting it.  The other fellow managed to muster an “Ettu Brute.”

              I did not expect these interactions when I had “Read More Shakespeare” written on my bumper, but I have enjoyed them.  They have brightened my days, which more frequently than not need brightening.  They come from a cross-section of people, which indicates that even 407 years after Shakespeare’s death, he still holds up.  As Ben Jonson writes in the forward to the First Folio, “He was not for an age, but for all time.”

             

In Memory of Daddy: A Tale of One Golf Ball

 

Daddy began playing golf in the mid-1960s after he went to work for Dow Chemical.  An abiding story in our family involves Daddy making a hole-in-one at a Dow Chemical golf tournament.  Daddy came home with a hole-in-one trophy.  It was a big deal—Daddy made a hole-in-one and came home with a trophy.  I related that legendary story—Daddy shot a hole-in-one, Daddy came home with a trophy--when talking with golf players for the decades after it happened.  I still tell it. 

However, the larger story only came to light to us children after Daddy went to the great golf course in the sky on January 16, 2022.  In going through his stuff, his wife found the publicity associated with that famous hole-in-one.  It included a newspaper clipping which we had never seen, or remember seeing.  The clipping includes a clearly posed picture of Daddy beside the hole scratching his head as if in bemusement.  As it turns out, one hole was designated as the prize hole, and no one had made a hole-in-one on the prize hole before Daddy.  A few years ago, Daddy related that he hit the ball and his partner said that he thought the ball went in the hole.  Understandably, Daddy was skeptical.  Yet indeed, he did score that hole-in-one and brought home a trophy!

Daddy played golf until his eyesight failed.  When we visited home, we would ride in the cart with Daddy.  Depending on how well he hit the ball, he might even let us keep score.

The Art of Slinging Cat Vomit

         How many of us can tell woeful stories from childhood of parents—in my case my mother—who would not allow pets?  We tried all the tricks we could think of.  At one time, I left notes under my mother’s pillow begging to adopt a basset hound.  Not surprisingly, Mama won.

          How many of us can tell the childhood martyr’s tale of sending recently adopted proxy-pet goldfish to swim in the sewer with the gators?  (We turned our goldfish into fertilizer for the rose bushes.  To this day, I do not like rose bushes.)

          How many of us adopted a pet as soon as we set up housekeeping on our own?  At that rite of passage, we made the pet policy, so there, Mama.  As much as I longed to live with a basset hound, my first pet, for reasons of practicality, was an orange domestic short hair tabby. Thus began my decades long familiarity with cat vomit.  My then husband gave the cat the ironic name of Rochester, after Jack Benny’s manservant.  (As it turns out, Mama was allergic to cats.  After she forgave me for other indiscretions, she would take an allergy pill and come to visit.)  I had died and gone to pet heaven!  After a move, Rochester did not abide the new abode and found himself a new one.

          Over the following decades, I lived with cats and their vomit, as well as the basset hounds I finally was able to adopt.  Frequently, I lived with multiple cats, meaning even more vomit.  I became familiar with the hairball vomit that looked like a hairy turd.  I learned not to appreciate the stringy, mucous vomit in slug-like trails, sometimes involving half-digested vegetation.  And, of course, the regular vomit, a nice ball of kitty kibble held together with the Karo syrup of digestive juices.

In graduate school, I adopted a Calico kitten from a fellow student who looking to place Cassie the cat because Cassie kept batting at her pen when she tried to write.  Clearly, the woman did not know cats.  It made me want to vomit, but I loved Cassie and she gave me a good home.

Another notable cat was Clawdio, an adult cat from a shelter, named after a Shakespearean character, Claudio.  I tried my best to teach him Shakespearean speeches, but I learned, much to my dismay, that I could not teach an old cat mew tricks.  Ultimately, Clawdio adopted a different family.  I don’t know why he left us, but his new family loved him.

My life with cats took a hiatus in 2009 when Katie the meatloaf cat, nicknamed after a Kliban cartoon cat, went to the Rainbow Bridge.  At that point in my life, I needed to take a pet break, partially because my living circumstances had changed and I needed to focus on me for a while.  Then I met Rich.  Early in our relationship, we agreed to adopt a cat, and even agreed on our cat philosophy.  Our cat would be an indoor/outdoor cat and we would not dress the cat in costumes.  However, Rich’s son is terribly allergic to cats, so the cat adoption plan quickly met the kibosh.

Recently, I convinced Rich that we truly needed to adopt a cat and we could work around his son’s allergies.  Enter Frida, a gray tiger stripe domestic short hair.

Our snowbird lifestyle presented a challenge.  How well would Frida travel between Folly Beach, SC, and Upstate New York, and between Glens Falls and Schroon Lake?  Friends who frequently travel distances with cats said they let the cats roam free in the car, so we went with that plan.

Frida fared well on the drive from Folly Beach to Glens Falls.  Our route involved mostly major, straight flat roads.  However, the route from Glens Falls to Schroon Lake involves several miles of narrow, curvy, hilly roads.  As it turns out, Frida gets car sick on backroads.  On our first trip to Schroon Lake, Frida lolled on the seat behind me.  As I clutched and downshifted when taking a curve, I heard that tell-tale heaving and yowling that precedes epic cat vomiting.  Without thinking, I gripped the steering wheel with my left hand.  I cupped my right hand and reached behind me, catching most of Frida’s regular ball of kitty kibble vomit.  Instinctively, I let go of the steering wheel briefly enough to hit the button to lower my window, and with a movement that would make Greg Maddox (star Cubbies pitcher of yesteryear) proud, I heaved the ball of vomit out the window.

Unfortunately, I passed a group of pedestrians as I executed this maneuver.  One of them lifted hands in a reflexive deflective movement, breaking the ball of vomit into bits which showered down on other pedestrians.  As in the story of Chicken Little, someone yelled, “The sky is falling!” except sodden kitty kibble fell instead of an acorn.  Confusion reigned as cat vomit rained.  Umbrellas unfurled, further deflecting the cat vomit.  By this time, we were well down the road.

Now that my Walter Mitty moment has passed, here is what really happened.  I did reach behind my seat with cupped hand, caught most of the vomit, lowered the window, and tossed the ball of vomit out the window where it fell harmlessly beside the road.  I am quite proud of my instincts and quick reflexes in pitching that vomit out of the window, leaving little mess to clean in the car.

Now, we keep Frida in her kitty crate when we are on the back roads and give her run of the car on the interstate. 

Thank you, Miss Bueto!

 

 

Recently, I had the thrilling challenge of teaching my 16-year-old grandson to drive a manual transmission.  When approaching an intersection, he struggled to find the right choreography between clutch, brake, and shifting.  To ease his way, I gave him the pattern, like a dance step chart, of clutch, brake, shift.  He asked if that pattern always held.  I hesitated as my high school Home Economics teacher, Miss Bueto, appeared on my shoulder, and then said, “Yes.”

I remembered one of the many lessons Miss Bueto emphasized in cooking class:  never, ever put flour down a sink drain.  She swore to us it would stop up the drain and we would have monumental plumbing bills as a result, and regret it for the rest of our lives.  I thought she had the best interests of harried plumbers in mind.  A conscientious student, I took her warning to heart and never, ever put flour down a sink drain . . . until . . .

I took a college level cooking class.  Early in the semester, I watched in horror as the professor washed flour down the sink drain.  I threw myself in front of the sink and urgently relayed to her the lesson from Miss Bueto about the damages flour would wreak when washed down the drain.  I informed the professor that in the best interests of individual kitchen drainage systems, especially the one in the Home Economics building, and the sewer system at large, One.  Must.  Never.  Wash.  Flour.  Down.  The.  Drain.  Ever. The instructor gave me a fondly patronizing look and informed me that flour will only clog a drain if one uses hot water to wash it down.  Hot water turns flour into glue, hence clogging the pipes.  Cold water is safe, however.  Cold water will wash the flour down the drain and into the sewer with no sticky mess, relieving plumbers of gluey overtime.

I stood in stunned silence.  I felt that Miss Bueto, whom I had trusted explicitly, had betrayed us by giving us misinformation.  One could wash flour down the sink with no ill effects, after all . . . IF it was done correctly.  The penny dropped.  Miss Bueto gave us partial information because that is what we could understand at that point.  Better safe than pipes clogged by teenaged girls who can’t remember which temperature of water to use.  Keep it simple.  (As an added bonus, I also realized that pots used to cook anything starchy—grits, rice, potatoes—will clean much easier in cold water as the residue will not stick to the pot.)

In that moment of hesitation, when my grandson asked about order of clutch, brake, shift, I realized that as a beginning shifter, he needed the partial, simple answer.  Once he has more experience shifting, he will learn that the order of clutch, brake, shift can vary, like dance steps.  Thank you, Miss Bueto, for this lesson in life!

I had been writing the above piece in my head for a few weeks when I found out that Miss Bueto died recently at the age of 83.  All three years of high school, I took a Home Economics class with Miss Bueto.  She had fun while teaching and had a mischievous side, as well.  One day during a sewing class, we were learning to pound certain seams to flatten them.  She held the pounding block and with a twinkle in her eye, asked two students to put their fingers on the seam to hold it in place.  They looked at her uncertainly.  She was the teacher but they did not want their fingers smashed.  Hesitantly, they shook their heads no.  Miss Bueto’s eyes glimmered as she laughed and pounded the seam, minus student fingers.  Thank you, Miss Bueto, for this lesson in laughter!

Cooking class involved more than simply cooking food.  It also involved niceties such as table setting.  One class, my fellow students and I set our table—place mats, cutlery, napkins, glassware—and took our seats.  Miss Bueto appeared and asked us where our napkins belonged.  Aghast, we moved them from the left side of the plate to every possible location—right side, top of plate, middle of plate.  She kept saying, “No, no, no.”  Finally, again with a mischievous sparkle in her eye she said, “In your lap.”  Of course, we all hastily unfolded our napkins and thrust them into our laps.  To this day, almost without thinking, I put my napkin in my lap when I sit down at the table.  Thank you, Miss Bueto, for the lesson in etiquette!

After I graduated from high school, I did not keep up with Miss Bueto although I have thought of her many times over the years.  However, she remains among my favorite teachers, one of those from whom I not only learned book lessons, but lessons in the dance of life, also.  Thank you, Miss Bueto!  Cha!  Cha!  Cha!

NOTE:  I believe the photo is from an old yearbook.

My Life of Walking

            If I were Groucho Marx or Yogi Berra, I would say that I have been walking ever since I learned how. What I really mean is I have been using walking as more than a means of locomotion since I learned how. Over my lifetime, I have walked to explore, to relieve boredom, and to relieve tension, as well as to get places.

            Until I was about ten years old, my paternal grandmother lived in Fernwood, Mississippi, a very rural settlement outside of McComb. My father worked shift work, and on his monthly long weekends, we would drive the two hours from Baton Rouge to visit Mama Prescott in Fernwood. My two siblings and I would explore the pasture and woods around the house on these visits. As young kids, we knew we had had a good day exploring when red clay obscured the drain in the bath tub at bath time.

            I particularly remember going back to the tree that blew down in one of the hurricanes—Hilda or Betsy. That place was a favorite of ours because we wee ones could crawl all over it. As many times as we walked back there, the experience was always new and exciting. On one rare cold morning, Daddy took us three young’uns out to crawl on the tree. Daddy sat and shivered while we swarmed all over the tree, as if we were wind-up toys. Later, I realized that Daddy faced the cold weather to get us three energetic kids out of the house so we could burn off some energy.

            After Mama Prescott moved from Fernwood to Lexie, a little less rural town, I began walking to ease boredom. We still had woods to explore, but I mainly walked down the different roads in the area, just for the fun of it. One day, I decided to gather litter and armed myself with a paper bag. There was much more litter than I expected and I quickly filled the bag. I stopped at a house to see if I could leave the full bag and maybe get an empty one. The people were so impressed with my project that they fed me cake.

            Once I reached adolescence, I found walking in general as a means of dealing with life. I remember walking in the rain in my pepster poncho to sort out girlfriend problems or boyfriend problems or simply to contemplate the meaning of life. Our neighborhood was very walkable with long streets and sidewalks. Rarely did I see anything new or scandalous as I walked and thought.

            When I was in graduate school in Southern Illinois, I walked the fifteen minutes to campus rather than hassle with a parking sticker and parking problems. In the time it took to drive to campus, park, and walk to my classroom building, I could have walked, anyway. Those were enjoyable walks. I had a variety of routes to keep the walk interesting, with a lot of people watching and dog watching and traffic watching to do on the way. Unlike South Louisiana, Southern Illinois has four seasons, quite a revelation to me at the time. One fall, as I walked and watched the leaves change color and drift from the branches, I composed a poem: Nude to scrutiny/ Tattered remnants cling/ To cracked limbs. The poem has a good beat and is walkable.

            As an adult, I walked to explore and to ease boredom, but I also began walking when I was upset. To this day, when dealing with distressing news or situations, I pace. People know when I pace to stay out of my path. One day, after watching me pace during a particularly distressing phone call, my husband hid like a scolded puppy.

            One summer, I realized that I needed to lose some weight or buy bigger clothes. Instead of buying bigger clothes, I decided to buy a pair of walking shoes—an inexpensive and fun solution to that problem.

            For much of my adult life, I lived with basset hounds. Those of you who live with dogs know the walking routine. One of my bassets was so glad to go out for his walk that when we left the yard, we looked like cartoon characters with me flying from his leash behind him. The neighbors were amused. During one annual physical, my physician asked what I did for exercise. I replied that I walked my dogs. The physician was satisfied with that response.

            In South Carolina, I live on Folly Beach. Folly Beach is so small that to go to the post office or library or a restaurant in town, it is shorter to walk than to try to drive and park. In Upstate New York, our home is in a very isolated, rural area. The roads are narrow, hilly, curvy, and in bad repair, not particularly safe for walking. Plus, bears have been spotted in our area, and I am pretty sure that they are not the tame bears of the tale of Goldilocks. To take a walk, we have to get in the car and drive somewhere, which takes some planning. Spontaneous walks almost never happen. In the summer when I am in New York, I miss the ability to walk freely whenever the spirit moves me.

            I thought a deity of walking might exist whom I could invoke to facilitate my walks in Upstate New York. A Google search of “god of walking” yielded references to Bible verses about walking. A Google search of “deity of walking” produced references to deities of travel. The Norse pagan god, Meili, a.k.a. “the lovely one,” is portrayed wearing a traveler’s coat and carrying a walking stick. When I want to take a walk in Upstate New York, I will have to be content entreating Meili for happy walking.

LAGNIAPPE: See “Be-Worded” for musings, “Taking a Walk.”

Me after a walk--really a hike, but it is a good picture for this blog post. Maybe the difference between a walk and a hike is fodder for another blog!