My Brain Refuses its Reflection!

I remember a time, let’s say around 20 plus years ago, when I worked for the Worlds Largest Food company as a Senior Account Executive. Walking from their huge parking lot towards the headquarters for then, our countries fourth largest grocery supermarket purveyor, something happened to me. I was carrying my samples bag, heavy with something new we were presenting at the time. Don’t ask me what product, there’s been so many we’ve introduced over the years. However, it’s not important to my story anyway. But I must mention though, something that is important to the story; the huge beautiful headquarters structure had a wall of perfect mirrored glass on a good portion of the facade and entrance to the building. It happened there.

I had been to that building every couple of weeks for over a year and never had the epiphany I had this day. How did it happen you ask? Well, I for the first time actually looked up from the ground and noticed this guy walking towards the building in the mirrored glass, he had on a nicely pressed suit, navy pin-stripe I believe; kind of looked like a sales rep from Proctor and Gambol. He had a gray beard, very well-trimmed, I must say, and what looked like the start of the down-hill slide to a balding pate. His glasses darkened from the bright sun, probably the kind that darken automatically. Everything looked pretty good except for one thing, he looked so very much older than me, probably an old professional sales rep, I thought, it might be me someday!

As I got closer to the building and those sparkling mirrored windows, I noticed something peculiar, there was only one persons reflection. What the hell? Were was my reflection? I was certain that I hadn’t turned vampire on myself, besides it was a bright sunny day, not good for vampires, right? And then it happened, only a few feet away from the reflection, the epiphany, the guy in the mirror was me, it had to be me, no one else around to claim the reflection, though my brain certainly refused any claim to the reflection.

Now you probably think I’m a crazy old man for writing such dribble, but you have to believe that every morning, in my steamy bathroom mirror appears a much younger man than me, he has looked the same for many years now. His face, chin, neck, and hair without age affectation, and the gray, well it’s actually silver you know, and very attractive, and somehow, the bald spots never seems to appear to these jaundiced eyes. Amazing, but this seventy year old guy still sees a thirty-five year old in the reflection, and why not, that’s the age his brain picked! And, I’ll tell you another thing, as much grief this old body has heaped upon me over the decades, my brain refuses to believe the reality of it all. It’s an absolute mutiny with the body; brain refuses to give in to the writing on the wall, or was it the reflection on the mirrored glass wall?

So how did it all turn out? Easy, for the balance of the trips past the mirrored facade, this old sales executive just kept his eye on the ground for things that might cause him to trip and break a hip; there just wasn’t an opportunity to look at the reflection any longer, bingo the brain wins!

Parmigiano Reggiano In The Trunk For Nine Days

The cheese already cut, unfortunately, and the trunk was not insulated! Will I say more about this? I’ll try.

I have told this story before, more than a couple of times too, however, I don’t know if I have it in me to write about it properly. So here I am, I’m going to give it a try now… well, we will soon see if I can follow through.

It was on our trip to California back in ’51, six of us, crammed into a brand new Fraser automobile, Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Nana, and us two kids. Surprisingly, we all fit, the car was a really big sedan and had that new car smell. Well, not for very long!

You see, Grandpa was the owner of a grocery store in the Little Italy part of our home town, and he had lots and lots of business friends in the area. There was the fresh Chicken store, the Deli and Bakery stores, and the Cheese store too. I think the owner of the Cheese store was a very good friend of Grandpa because he gave him a really big round wheel of cheese, probably was the Parmigiano Reggiano kind. Covered in black wax to protect it I guess, however, something drove Grandpa to cut it open for a taste test, or maybe he gave a small chunk to a friend of his, I don’t know, and why is not really important to the story anyway.

The trip took nine days in August to get to California from Massachusetts; you saw that it was August, right? Hot August, sometimes humid August, sometimes dry August, but always HOT August! Did I mention that air conditioners were not a normal part of cars back then, no I don’t think I did. Did I mention that it wasn’t really considered important to insulate the trunk of a car back then? Nope, I didn’t mention it until now. Can you imagine the combination of hot, enclosed spaces, and opened Italian cheese? No I don’t think anyone can ever come even somewhat close to what that smell could be.

This is where the story gets difficult to write, I don’t think I have it in me to try to remember that hideous smell again. I don’t even want you to even attempt to imagine the aroma! However, I’m letting you off easy, you see, whatever chemical reaction transpired with the hot August heat, enclosed space, and smelly cheese, was permanent! Imagine, our clothes packed in the truck, stunk, however after a few months of washing the odor subsided, but the poor brand new car never did overcome that unmentionable odor. Three years later, Dad bought us a brand new ’54 Buick, but only after complaining over and over from us. Just how long that odor remained in the car is unknown. But it’s a good bet the person buying the used Fraser, that was in otherwise great condition, had to have the stuffiest nose in the world. I pity his poor family! Really, I do!

What’s a Hoss Fish?

When I first arrived in San Jose, CA, I attended Peter Burnett Junior High School. As things go in California, it’s probably a condo area or parking lot now! But, I digress, as usual.
Fresh from New England, with a Boston accent thick enough for a steak knife to cut through, arrived at school wearing a dress-shirt, tie, pressed slacks and jacket; and that’s a whole new story by itself! The pain!

Most of the students had never heard such an accent yet, (President Kennedy where are you?), and took no time in mocking my thick accent, and sounding far worse than I could ever do on my own. Of course, the laughter was always at my expense, young pre-teenagers will be the cruelest species on earth anyway!

One day after few months in attendance at the school, and after some of the newness of my accent wore off, I did the unforgivable, I fell-back on my thickest accent ever. It was in a seventh grade Biology class, or at least a section of a class dealing with that subject. Our teacher liked to call upon students that looked like they were not paying attention, or perhaps had a glazed expression in their eyes. Guess who’s turn it was for that call, yup, you’re right, me! Apparently, we were studying animals from the sea at the time. The subject being discussed at that moment was the nature of the little male sea-horses ability to protect its young. I found the subject fascinating, and was really paying attention, but just must have day dreamed for a few catch worthy seconds. And there it was, Alfred, would you please tell us what you’ve learned about this little animal?

Well, I could, like I said, it’s a fascinating animal, however, I just blocked on its name. See that was probably part of the not paying attention at 100%, or just getting tongue-tied for a moment. So I started my recall of what I learnt about the animal, down to the last little detail, and it amazed the teacher, I’m sure of that! All but the part of what the little animal was call, what was its name Alfred?

Doggone it, what was that name, all I could come up with was a little New England description, “you know, it’s a hoss fish!” It took a devastating five minutes for the teacher and thirty classmates to stop the laughing. I thought the teacher was going to bust a gut laughing, he couldn’t even stand up, he was laughing so hard. That made the class laugh even louder and longer too! All but one person got the joke, me! What in the heck was so funny about a little hoss fish? After the laughter settled down, my teacher offered its name for me, sea-horse. I’m thinking, sea hoss, hoss fish what’s the big difference anyway?

It’s only fair to tell that my teacher did offer an apology, explaining that my choice of words was very funny to them, and how I pronounced the word horse triggered the laughter. However, I really didn’t get what was wrong with how I pronounced the word hoss anyway.

Mrs. Di Cola’s Sugared Walnuts Apology

Mrs. Di Cola was our landlady and watched over us for our parents, when we came home from school. An hour later, we got picked up by our Grandfather and delivered to our parents business in Saratoga, until we could all come home together.

I’ll back-up in time for a moment to introduce this lovely woman. When we first arrived in San Jose, California, the real main city of what was then called the Santa Clara Valley, (today it’s known as Silicon Valley), finding an apartment that accepted kids was rare. San Jose was a small city of maybe 85,000 back in 1951. All of our parents plans for finding a suitable settlement home were upset by this simple fact, moving with kids was not a good idea when there were no helpful laws to protect families from this sort of infringement or right to find a home. Fortunately, today’s laws prevent this sort of behavior.

Bushels Of Sticky Wallpaper Waste

Moved to the first house our family owned, a cottage built-in the 1870′s that had wallpaper unchanged in over 80 years!

It was right after WWII ended and I was probably five or six years old at the time. I remember wanting to be a good little helper for my parents as they tried to update this museum of late nineteenth century living the good life. The first item on the list of “to-dos” was to remove some really bad wall paper choices someone made eighty years earlier! Even as a little guy, I knew how badly it needed to be changed.

Dad had some kind of steam machine that made peeling the old paper off the walls a breeze. Big old strips of aged Caramel-colored printed paper came tumbling down to the floor easily, and it was my job to pick them up and stuff them into round wooden bushel baskets. This was fun, if not sticky work, but I’m a kid, I don’t know how to be lazy yet!

Four Eyes Can Be Annoying

I was in the fourth grade and eight years old when I got my first pair of eye-glasses; it was the first time I saw anything the way it really looked! And, that was when I got my new nickname, Four Eyes.

I think perhaps a derogatory name, but I was so excited to see a whole new world. Well, I guess you might have guessed by now, I was extremely myopic; I could see things pretty good if it was really close to me, that’s what nearsighted people can do best. Anything beyond four feet, was either blurry, or non-existent.

I loved our weekend trips in the country or best when we headed to the beach for the day. I looked out the car rear window and saw everything as a moving blur, that’s what I knew to expect when the world was passing by. I never suspected there was more or that something was missing, it had been that way my whole eight years on the planet. My parents had no reason to suspect something was amiss.

Riding the Swan Boats in the Lake of the Boston Commons

It was the Post-War Forties, and how fun it was to ride the Swan Boats.

I wish I could remember exactly about the Swan Boat ride in the Boston Commons Lake; in my mind we could rent smaller peddle boats for a cruise around the beautiful lake. However, as I search for information and images of this, I find that they are/where passenger boats with park bench-like seating, and someone else does the piloting. It seems so passive, not as I recall it to be, not as I could have been much help either with the peddling at four or five I guess!

I promise myself to investigate and report back to this post when I can clear it up.

Almost Freezing Into a Human Popsicle in Bozeman, MT

I remember the time that I went out in -50 degree weather to shovel the snow off my sidewalk.

I had just ice-picked off the several layers of ice that accumulated on my sidewalk from the house to where my parked car was on the street. (Much like the image above, although not my car.) We had a warm Chinook wind during an early morning hour that melted the snow just about every where, including under the tires of my big old heavy Buick sedan. However, by about six in the morning it froze again into the thickest ice this side of a glacier! Needless to say two feet of ice buried the car, and stayed that way for over a month! But I digress, I was in my home office looking out the window enjoying the view of a freshly de-iced sidewalk, when all of a sudden it started to rain down ginormous flakes of snow, you know, the kind that can build a cover in about two minutes flat. I thought I should get that walk shoveled as soon as possible, maybe as soon as it stops snowing.

The Gun was as Big as a Cannon!

Gun big as a cannon!

Back when I was a young college student, and working as a grocery store clerk, I got robbed at gun point at my check-out counter. I had been working for the five Carlino brothers who owned the Time Market on West San Carlos Street in San Jose, CA, which is a whole story by itself, and might be written too when I get in a nasty mood.

It was near the end of the day, almost closing time and I had only three customers in my line. I was the only one working the registers at the time; the son of one of the brothers was in charge and doing some work on the floor to get ready for the morning shift when the brothers would be working again. I was doing some friendly chatting with all three customers in line, typical of me most of the time when I’m with customers. I finished with the first two customers and then it’s the last guy in line. After I finished ringing up his purchases, I noticed that he had a gun in his hand under his jacket, and in my friendly little way, I joked with him about him finding some kids toy gun on the floor, and wondered what he was going to do with it. That got answered pretty quick! He pointed the gun up into my face, I could see bullets in the chamber of the 22 caliber gun.

The Billboard That Blew Perfect Smoke Rings

A trip to Boston was not a trip until we saw the billboard that blew perfect smoke rings constantly.

I’m not really sure exactly what I was thinking about when I remembered the smoking billboard sign while I was gathering my thoughts to write about; I was so young when I saw it, however, it make such a big impression! How could a billboard sign smoke? And, how did it blow such perfect smoke rings? Such a mystery that it remains embedded into my brain until today. How fun it was to see, how boring it must have been for my parents to have to seek out this billboard each time we visited Boston! After all, it wasn’t a trip to Boston if we didn’t see this truly remarkable happening. Now if I’m not mistaken, it’s a good bet that we probably nagged them to death until we got to see it again. That part, I can’t really remember, I’d hate to think we would have done that to them, but, kids are kids, and we were kids!

During the years that I smoked cigarettes, (not Camels though), I tried my damnedest to blow smoke rings, never got anywhere close to what looked like one though. Fortunately for me, I quit smoking long before I had a chance to learn how to blow a perfect Camel Smoke Ring, just like the billboard in Boston, therefore, it’s still a mystery to me.