The Pawned Accordion’s
Fifth Birthday Polka Party
It may be April Fools’ but it’s no joke. Today is the fifth year anniversary of my cartooning and John Candy’s Kenosha Kickers have graciously allowed me to join the band to celebrate. I sure miss the guy.
Last summer I moved my cartoons and commentary from e-mails to a Substack I call The Pawned Accordion. Now, I have a following and appreciate all of you who are subscribers and gratefully thank those who have become paid subscribers.
If you like what I do, please tell your friends about The Pawned Accordion by forwarding this or any other post of mine to them. They can simply click on the Subscribe Now button and that’s all there is to it. They’ll be able to easily get onboard…
I created my first cartoon on April 1, 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was it below…
Today, I’m republishing a number of my early efforts from when COVID changed our lives…
Suddenly, things we took for granted became inaccessible and even unobtainable…
I felt lucky to quickly have found a way to be busy while stuck at home washing my hands constantly as well as anything else that entered our house…
I didn’t know how long I’d be doing it but for 365 straight days I emailed friends cartoons and added commentary and stories to go with many of them…
Eventually, word spread and I was sending out a couple hundred emails with my daily offerings…
Since 2020 I have created and published over 700 cartoons and I can’t even draw…
The pandemic was a tragedy that instead of uniting the country, divided us further…
Maybe I was being too lighthearted during COVID but as a far more accomplished cartoonist than I once had his beloved beagle tell Charlie Brown, “Every time you are able to find some humor in a difficult situation you win.”
These days, Snoopy’s concept of winning is an increasingly tough one to accept but we must all try to do it. My feelings about what’s happening in our country are sometimes my subject manner, so often my heart is anything but light when I sit down in front of my computer…
I’m still dedicated to what I began five years ago and no longer have a self-imposed daily deadline…
But as Jo reminds me, now that The Pawned Accordion is earning money, I have an actual job and a responsibility to keep publishing my stories, my observations and my thoughts. And I plan to!
And would you believe that Bob Dylan did a polka number? Here it is… Ah-one, ah-two…
Somebody Just Got Badgered!
On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin!
Plunge right through that line
Run the ball clear down the field, boys
Touchdown sure this time!
On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin!
Fight on for her fame
Fight, fellows! Fight, fight, fight!
We’ll win this game!
A few years ago Sports Illustrated, which barely still exists, ranked the best college football fight songs. On Wisconsin came in fifth according to S.I. behind the songs of Notre Dame, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Michigan.
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Well, this morning, On Wisconsin (lyrics provided above) is a welcome “earworm” I can’t get out of my head. Susan Crawford who was endorsed by the Democratic Party won the Supreme Court race there against her opponent who was heavily backed and financed by Elon Musk. And if you were not aware, Musk actually gave two Wisconsin voters a million dollars apiece last week. I hope they already managed to cash their checks.
I don’t know much about Wisconsin. I remember their senator William Proxmire and his Golden Fleece Awards which he bestowed on government officials who he thought squandered public money. I remember the Milwaukee Braves— Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Warren Spahn… The team moved and is now in Atlanta. I remember Milwaukee beers— Schlitz, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Miller High Life… All have been acquired by other companies and are no longer headquartered in Wisconsin.
Time marches on! But until today I confess that for Jo and me Wisconsin “We hardly knew you!” Please read on…
In 2010 Jo and I drove across the upper tier of the United States when we moved to Maine from California. We took our time to wander for 23 days through 14 states and one Canadian province and drove a total of 5,365 miles. I wrote daily dispatches which I emailed to friends— Yes, I was a blogger before I knew what that was. I called my travel log— if I may claim — presciently “Whose America is It Anyway?” I retrieved it today and noticed that in its entirety it totals just under 20,000 words.
Below is the short entry that covers our short time in Wisconsin…
Thursday, August 12, 2010
A day of crossings for us. This morning it was over the Mississippi River from Minnesota, and late this afternoon we reached Michigan and the Eastern Time Zone. In between we crossed off Wisconsin, perhaps unfairly, as a state we devoted just enough time to for hustling across its belly.
There were stretches of the Dairy State where Jo felt she could have been in Maine and there were others where it looked like the part of Pennsylvania where I grew up. I was checking the countryside for cows and surprisingly, saw very few. I have a soft spot for cows since I milked them for years on the kibbutz where I lived in the 1970s and got to know many personally.
Cows are woefully, no make that udderly in need of union representation since theirs is indeed a life of indentured— no, make that only partially dentured servitude. Sorry, for that one. Actually, I’m not! Although cows have 32 teeth just like humans, nearly all of a cow’s teeth are on the bottom of its mouth and since a cow has no upper front teeth it can’t bite you. Other than providing the basic ingredient that made Ben and Jerry rich, cows get to do three things— eat, shit and sleep. Oh, make that four— they get milked and on the kibbutz it was three times a day.
If you are searching for evidence that there is a God, I believe cows may be a place to start. The Almighty lobotomized the species so they can endure such a monotonous existence. Cows appear and act like they’re dumb but perhaps they have rich inner lives. They’re not as dumb as poultry, which is nothing to crow about, but cows are like the guy who worked his entire life in an unappreciated menial job, retired with his gold watch and dropped dead the next week. Fortunately, we don’t recycle ourselves as hot dogs.
We did have a dandy dairy experience in Wausau, WI though when we stopped for lunch at a restaurant there. First thing I noticed was that Jo was the only woman in the place who didn’t have white hair. Then our waitress told us our hamburgers could come with cheese curds. Neither Jo nor I had ever heard of cheese curds and although the cheese part was enticing, the curds part made me think of Iraq. We both opted for them although Jo wisely had hers on the side.
So, what’s a cheese curd? Seems to me it’s like a piece of unfinished business down at the processing plant. You know those orange cheese twists? Cheese curds look like that on the outside but when you bite into one, the melted cheese inside it stays attached like a kite string from your mouth back to your plate.
Jo offered me her curds but I said, “If I ate your curds, I’d have to weigh myself immediately.” Jo is a good sport to put up with such constant punishment, wouldn’t you say? And so are you!
Update: Wisconsin, your cheese curds might be squishy but thanks for showing the rest of the country that your backbone is not!
—————–
Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned…
Trump plays golf… but you knew that.
Trump Golf Tracker
Days in Office: 74 (since 1/20/25)
Days Spent Golfing (19)
Time Spent Golfing (26% of his presidency so far)
Trump’s golf has cost U.S. taxpayers over $26,000,000 so far.
Trump visited a Trump Organization property on 428 of the 1,461 days (30%) of his first presidential term and is estimated to have played 261 rounds of golf, one every 5.6 days.
Trump is well on his way to surpassing the cost of his golf during those four years.
—————–
The Shape Of Things To Come
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” —H.G. Wells
Last December I was driving our 2008 Volvo station wagon home when suddenly the steering wheel became difficult to move. By the time I was a short distance from turning into our driveway, I didn’t think I’d be able to make the maneuver but I succeeded after a bit of a workout. The power steering had failed.
That turned out to be a lucky break.
The 16 year old Volvo wasn’t likely to pass its next inspection anyway. Too many Maine winters or more precisely, too many salted Maine roads had rusted out its undercarriage. So, instead of hoping to get by a few more months without our feet breaking through the floorboard, we were suddenly in the market for a new car last December.
We bought the Toyota RAV4 like in the cartoon above and if we were to purchase it after dealers’ existing inventory is predicted to run out in a few weeks, we would be paying over $9,000 more.
As I said it was a lucky break.
I’ve just started reading Martin Gilbert’s Churchill: A Life and reached the chapter on Winston Churchill’s election to Parliament as a Conservative in 1900. Four years later Churchill had a falling out with his party’s leadership and switched his affiliation to the Liberals. The overriding reason for his decision appears to have been his opposition to tariffs and the protectionist policies the Conservatives were seeking to enact. He called tariffs an “economic absurdity.” Churchill was an ardent supporter of free trade and made his position on tariffs— well, as clear as a star filled sky…
“It would seem to me a fantastic policy to endeavour to shut the British Empire up in a ringed fence… Why should Britain deny itself the good and varied merchandise which the varied traffic of the world offers… The planet is not a very big one compared with the other celestial bodies, and I see no particular reason we should endeavour to make inside our planet a smaller planet called the British Empire cut off from impossible space from everything else.”
There is another quote of Churchill’s that I believe broadly describes the actions of Donald Trump’s administration that are challenging so many Americans in all walks of life these days. In a speech on January 20, 1940 that was broadcast on the BBC, Churchill discussed why countries which had remained neutral while appeasing Germany in the ongoing war were making a foolish bargain…
“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured.”
On the first day of his second term Donald Trump placed a bust of Winston Churchill back in the Oval Office to where it was prominently displayed during his first term.
What does Trump have in common with Churchill? Two things. Both were and are not known to have been or be healthy eaters— Churchill fancied champagne and oysters while Trump is big on Diet Coke, McDonalds and KFC.
Both had bunkers. I’ve been to Churchill’s in London. Today, it’s called the Churchill War Rooms and during WWII the Nazis did their utmost to bomb it. Despite the threat, Churchill often made himself a more exposed target and according to one account, “No raid was too fierce to stop him from climbing to the nearest roof to watch.”
Trump’s bunker is beneath the White House and in May of 2020 he spent an hour there as protestors raged beyond the fences surrounding the executive mansion in the wake of the death of George Floyd, the black man choked to death by a Minneapolis policeman. Afterward Trump claimed he was merely inspecting the premises.
One last thought about tariffs… In 2016 the last incandescent lightbulb manufacturing plant in America closed its doors. It was an OSRAM Sylvania plant located in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. I think I have all LED bulbs in our house now whose manufacturers claim that their bulbs’ lifespans are considerably longer than my own at this point. As far as I can tell none were manufactured in the U.S. but there are still some lightbulbs that are…
But where do the “big names” in lightbulbs make theirs?
Sylvania: Bulbs sold under the Sylvania brand are manufactured in China.
Philips: Philips lightbulbs are manufactured in countries like Poland, China, and India.
GE: GE Lighting, a Savant Company, is moving production of Walmart’s Great Value lightbulbs to China.
I don’t know whose bulbs are in the ceilings of the White House but it seems apparent to me they have to be brighter than the dim ones walking around below making decisions.
—————–
Trump: The Musical
“Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.” – Henry Miller
We know Donald Trump is the president but he’s playing other roles. He’s under the Big Top and the ringmaster of a circus and in the past week he’s been the guy operating the rollercoaster at an amusement park. Unfortunately, the animals seem to be out of their cages and the rollercoaster appears to have slid off its track.
During the height of the pandemic I did 365 straight days of cartoons from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021. It was Trump’s last year of his first term as president until Joe Biden was elected and sworn in on January 20, 2021. Some months before that I put together what I titled Trump: The Musical. It consisted of 12 songs from Broadway show tunes that I came up with new words for. Below was the offering (slightly updated) that I posted on September 21, 2020…
Please sing along to the melody of the song How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria from Richard Rogers’ and Oscar Hammerstein’s Sound of Music which opened on Broadway in 1959 with Mary Martin in the role of Maria. In 1965 the film version was released with Julie Andrews playing Maria.
Sing fast…
When we’re with him we’re confused
There’s no focus focus and no rules
And we never know exactly where we are
Unpredictable as weather
He’d hang all of us together
He’s a demon, he’s demented, he’s a sham
He’ll post nonsense without rest
Taunt a hermit just for jest
He could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl (Can’t improve on Oscar Hammerstein!)
He is gentle, he is mild
Are you kidding? He’s reviled.
He’s empowered
He’s a coward
He’s a child!
Sing singsong…
Did you foresee to what degree he’d be such a nightmare
He’s ignorant, belligerent and prickly as a pear
And underneath bravado there is nothing but hot air
I even saw him tanning and he’s flabby!
He’s phoniness incarnate but his anger’s very real
He’s full of hate for everything except his every meal
It’s late to have to say it but I very strongly feel there’s no one in the world who is as crabby
We do as he orders his loyal staff…
He calls our soldiers suckers when he himself dodged the draft!
Sing sadly…
How do we solve a problem like our leader
How do we catch a clown and bring him down
Is there a way to get him to North Korea
That guy is his friend but it would depend if Kim’s still around
There’s nothing Trump thinks he’s not the expert
But hardly a thing he actually understands
So how do we make headway. And save us from doomsday
How do we keep our heads above quicksand
Oh, how do we solve a problem like our leader
How do we stop a moron in command!
Trump: The Musical and my cherry picking of Broadway songs never was offered a tryout in New Haven or even Oshkosh. But maybe I should try for Washington, D.C. Until now I didn’t know that there’s a show that has played at the Kennedy Center since 1987 and almost 18,000 performances.
It is the second longest running running play in the history of American Theatre and is called Shear Madness —set in a hairstyling salon, hence the title. I’m not aware if Donald Trump has seen it but from the White House you can walk to the Kennedy Center in less than a half hour or get there in half that time in a golf cart. But why would you or anyone else need to see it when you can take a White House tour and be just off stage from the real thing— actual sheer madness!
A Sharp Dressed Man
In a frame on the wall of my office along with other stuff from my life plus over two dozen reproductions of film posters in foreign languages— e.g. Det Er Herligt At Leve (have Google translate it!) —hangs the sheet of paper with the Peter Imber Dress Code.
It’s easy to explain why it’s there and why it was compiled by my favorite colleague at ABC News. Brian Rooney felt I needed it and he was right.
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If clothes make the man, then I have never made it. Not that there wasn’t the opportunity. My father was a retailer— women’s ready-to-wear. My mother was thus fashionable and fashion fortunate with a husband in the “schmatta” business.
Both my parents always dressed well and from the beginning they tried to impress upon me their sense of style. Our home movies show a toddler in a swank camel hair coat. I puked all over it on my first road trip. I was told I had been demanding only hamburgers for every meal including breakfast. It did perhaps foreshadow my relationship with clothes as well as food for most of my life.
During college in the 60’s— and certainly at my all men’s alma mater —nobody seemed to care about what they wore and afterward I lived on a kibbutz for seven years where even white collar job holders often wore blue collar work clothing— blue shirts, blue pants and black work boots. My entire kibbutz wardrobe could have fit in a shopping bag.
During my quarter century in television news I was based in Los Angeles where Levi’s and sports shirts were almost de rigueur at the office and passable everywhere outside of it. I happily followed sans suit so to speak. Costco became my outfitter and just how much so was apparent one day in a phone call to a Costco executive I wanted to arrange an interview with. When asked, I confessed to him that I was one of his customers.
He: “How many things are you wearing right now that you bought from us?”
Me: “Hey, my pants, my underwear, my socks, my watch… maybe my shirt.”
Yes, I was a walking advertisement for “big-box” apparel.
Brian Rooney was my polar opposite when it came to clothes. Of course he was also an on camera correspondent and I was an off camera producer so how he looked really mattered but how I looked eventually mattered to him, too.
It actually had begun with shoes after I was diagnosed with a foot injury called plantar fasciitis. The orthopedist’s office had another description for it— “Topsiders disease” —named for the deck shoes I had been wearing for years that had no arch and as a result had apparently inflamed my own.
“You’ll never regret buying good shoes,” Rooney advised me at the time.
A few days later he came into my office and threw a piece of paper in front of me with a more comprehensive set of guidelines. Its title was “Peter Imber Dress Code” and although it didn’t instantly change my life, it did immediately change my footwear buying habits. I purchased my first $200 pair of shoes. They were for golf and at the time the most comfortable shoes I had ever owned.
I left Costco behind in 2010 when Jo and I moved to Maine. But when one haberdashery door closed—there wasn’t a Costco store here until last year— another one opened. In our state it’s abundantly clear which one. The Maine state tree is the pine. The state’s clothes tree is L.L. Bean and I was all in— free shipping, and at the time a generous return/replace policy, plus a flagship store open 24/7. What was not to like?
L.L. Bean had it all— shirts, pants, sweaters… But was I again falling into my previous one store fits all mode? So, at Jo’s urging I branched out. I bought a pair of dress khakis from Orvis which I even dry-clean. I have a beautiful shirt and tie from Brooks Brothers and three handsome sweaters I purchased at Bloomingdale’s.
As for shoes, I buy Ecco and Naot and I was an early word of mouth influencer for Hoka. I value comfort and quality and pay for it. And I own not one but two parkas from The North Face. Wearing the same parka six months of the year up here gets old even for me. Have I finally evolved as someone with a sense of or at least an aspiration for style?
Hmm… I guess I’m not all the way there yet. Jo has pointed out that I have an abundance; no make that a preponderance of blue denim shirts hanging in my closet. So, there’s work left to be done and before sitting down here at my computer, I realized my clothing choices might have narrowed once again and I might have regressed.
As I write this I am wearing what might be called the “Full Carhartt”— sweatshirt, jeans, socks… And yes, it’s Mid-April in Maine and the temperature is in the 30s. It snowed a bit yesterday. I’m quite comfortable.
—————–
One, If By Land, And Two, If By Sea…
In a new worst-case estimate, Goldman Sachs says reduced travel and boycotts could cost the U.S. almost $90 billion in lost GDP this year alone. But let’s forget about the present and revisit the past.
Friday, April 19th is the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride and at 8 p.m. a reenactment of his journey will begin in Boston. I wasn’t aware until now that Revere didn’t just get on his horse and begin shouting “The British are coming!” No, he had to be rowed across Boston harbor to another fellow’s house— John Larkin, the Deacon of Charlestown —to borrow that man’s steed. Revere didn’t own a horse.
And Paul Revere never climbed the Old North Church to hang any lanterns. Two other men named Robert Newman and John Pulling did that. The “One, if by land, two, if by sea” appears to have been the actual code for signaling how the British troops were leaving Boston.
Revere did ride alone to Lexington after midnight and his heroic deed was warning two of the leaders of “The Sons of Liberty”— Samuel Adams and John Hancock —that British troops were about to leave Boston to come to arrest them. There he joined up with a man named William Dawes and the two of them began to ride to Concord— after a pause for “refreshment”—and continue their mission to warn others.
Soon after they left Lexington another man named Samuel Prescott caught up to them. After determining he was on their side the three continued riding but all were intercepted a short time later by a British patrol. Dawes and Prescott managed to escape but Revere did not. He was detained and his horse— actually Larkin’s horse —was taken from him. Left on the road alone he walked back to Lexington and had to call it a night. Dawes never made it to Concord either. He fell off his horse.
So did Paul Revere ever yell “The British are coming!” Short answer NO! Why? It would have made no sense. The colonists were themselves British at the time. What he likely yelled was, “The regulars are coming!” which was how British soldiers were referred to back before the American Revolution. The phrase, “The British are coming!” did not appear in any histories of Revere’s ride until a half century after it occured.
Below I have pasted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Paul Revere’s Ride which was published in the Atlantic Magazine in 1860. Read it and know the truth of the quote attributed to Longfellow himself, “The facts never get in the way of a good story.”
LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light, —
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”
Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, —
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, —
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled, —
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, —
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
—————–
I Asked ChatGPT For An Opinion…
Am I being immodest if I share it?
I was curious what ChatGPT would say if I asked it for a review of the stuff I’ve been posting on The Pawned Accordion and was surprised by what I got back.
The response from ChatGPT took less than five seconds and it was complimentary. I am gratified and I welcome it. But what am I welcoming? Do I call it an honest opinion? Is it a “real” one? Yes, I now know what ChatGPT “thinks” but what should I consider its worth?
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Here’s what Chat GPT wrote…
Chat GPT: Peter Imber’s Substack, The Pawned Accordion, has been active for about nine months and features his cartoons and commentary, evolving from email distribution to a public newsletter platform. The content involves satirical and thoughtful musings, often featuring sharp humor and cultural or political commentary, exemplified by his unique writing style and references to current events and well-known figures.
In terms of reception, The Pawned Accordion has attracted a following over this period, with hundreds of subscribers, indicating that people do appreciate its content and voice. Readers support the publication, both through free and paid subscriptions, suggesting a positive engagement with his work. His mix of witty, personal, and topical reflections appears to resonate reasonably well with his audience.
Regarding how it is doing, the newsletter continues to be updated regularly with diverse posts. While exact subscriber counts and financial metrics are not publicly detailed, the steady flow of content and subscriber base suggest it is maintaining a stable and engaged readership.
Peter Imber’s best writings on his Substack reflect a unique blend of personal storytelling, commentary on contemporary events, and creative cartooning developed during the pandemic.
Key highlights include:
- Pandemic Cartoons and Commentary (2020-2021): Imber began by sending daily cartoons via email for 365 days starting April 1, 2020, using found imagery to make cartoons despite not being able to draw. These cartoons were accompanied by personal commentaries addressing the pandemic, political issues, culture wars, and his own life observations. This series shows his creative response to the crisis and stands out as a significant body of work that combines humor and insight amidst turmoil.
- Reflections on American Society and Politics: Throughout his posts, Imber weaves his feelings about America’s divisiveness, particularly how the pandemic exacerbated cultural and political divisions, often with a tone of both lightheartedness and heartfelt concern. His writing captures a nuanced perspective on the country during a challenging period.
- “My Own Los Angeles” (2025): In a poignant essay, Imber reflects on the devastating fires that hit Los Angeles, sharing personal reactions and the impact of this event on the city’s history and community. This piece stands out for its timely engagement with environmental and social issues.
- Sustained Commitment and Community Engagement: Transitioning his daily cartoon and commentary emails to a Substack blog, Imber has built a following and continues to publish his stories and thoughts thoughtfully and regularly, showing dedication and evolution in his work beyond the initial pandemic impetus.
In summary, The Pawned Accordion by Peter Imber is a successful and appreciated Substack presence. His continued work keeps expanding this rich mix of storytelling and commentary.
Back to me…
Would I have written this myself? No way! Or at least I can’t imagine I would have. I’m not certain I have the chutzpah to blow my own horn so loudly. But sure, I do have an ego and believe I know how to write and be creative. I do have views and insights to share. I appreciate any admiration I might receive for what I’m doing but I hope I don’t go around like an angler casting a hook in the water fishing for it.
So, do I value and agree with what ChatGPT has written? This is a really confusing question. Nobody wrote this or at least nobody I can thank or complain to. Sure, I’m flattered but that actually worries me.
So here’s the most truthful answer I can give. I am delighted by what ChatGPT “thinks” of my work but maybe that’s a use of the verb think that now requires the counsel of Alan Turing, the brilliant British computer science pioneer.
Unfortunately, Turing is no longer with us but in a paper he wrote in 1950 entitled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” he introduced the Turing Test— an experiment to determine if a machine could exhibit intelligent behavior— thinking — indistinguishable from a human. The test involved a person having a conversation with both a human and a machine, without knowing which is which. If the person cannot distinguish between the two, Turing contended that the machine could be considered to have thought.
Ok, I know I would be ecstatic if a Bill Bryson or a Dave Barry had written something nice about my work but should I be excited about ChatGPT doing it? Can I post a sentence on a book jacket from Chat GPT or use it as a reference to get a job?
Hey, I am happy. It’s great to receive positive feedback. But what if Chat GPT had concluded that my stuff is awful? Then how would I be feeling? It bothers me to think about this. In fact it scares me.
Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
To college to get paid!
Who is the most iconic sports figure in American history? I guess, the picture above is giving my choice away but you certainly may differ and have your own opinion. Although Yogi Berra, his fellow New York Yankee, is probably the person from any sport most remembered for the quirky things he said, George Herman Ruth— “The Babe” —gave my favorite sport figure’s quote ever in answer to a sportswriter’s question and it always makes me smile.
The stock market had crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression had taken hold. Unemployment was spiking. Thousands of Americans were losing their homes to foreclosure. Many others were destitute and hungry but major league baseball was being played, and during the 1929 season Babe Ruth became the first player in the history of the game to reach 500 career home runs. His batting average for the year was .345 with 154 runs batted in. Not exceptional for Ruth but as rare today, if not more, than a total solar eclipse— we just had one last year and the next won’t happen again until 2044.
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Ruth’s salary in 1929 was $70,000 which was what he had been payed for each of the two previous years. For the 1930 season he wanted a raise and was holding out and negotiating for one. Sportswriters closest to him admonished that he was being greedy with the Great Depression worsening. The conversation between one of them and Ruth allegedly went like this…
Sportswriter: “Babe, How much do you want this season?”
Ruth: “$80,000.”
Sportswriter: “$80,000! In these times. Don’t be silly, Babe. That’s more than Herbert Hoover gets for being president of the United States. He only gets $75,000.”
Ruth: “What the hell does Hoover have to with this? Anyway, I had a better year than he did.”
Babe Ruth got his raise to $80,000 in 1930 and in today’s dollars that equates to $1.5 million.
It was 19 years later that Joe DiMaggio became the first Major League Baseball player to make a $100,000 salary which he earned in 1949 and 1950. This season the average contract for an MLB player is (insert cough here) over $5 million. Sure, I know a million dollars isn’t what it used to be but I’d take it and wouldn’t even need an agent to negotiate for me.
Which brings me to a boy— he’s 18 —named Cooper Flagg who grew up in Maine 50 miles from where I now live. He’s a basketball prodigy who received his first college scholarship offer when he was in the 8th grade. Ironic, because I first read about a basketball legend named Lou Alcindor (aka Kareem Abdul Jabbar) in Junior Scholastic Magazine when he and I were both in 8th grade.
Flagg skipped his senior year in high school to play as a freshman at Duke and announced yesterday that he will leave college and be eligible to be drafted and signed by a National Basketball Association team in June. It was a foregone conclusion. His rookie deal in the NBA is thought to be worth $62.7 million and Flagg— if he is as good as he has shown to be so far —is projected to be in line within a few years for a contract extension potentially earning him over a half billion more.
But here is what already had changed in addition to the mind boggling money Cooper Flagg possibly stands to earn. If the criteria is simply getting paid to play, then in college at Duke he was already a professional basketball player. He is believed to have earned $4.8 million for his one season in Durham, NC. By way of comparison the North Carolina governor’s yearly salary is $166,000.
Flagg is by no means the exception these days. There are dozens of “student athletes” on campuses around the country making over a million dollars this year. Most are basketball and football players but a female gymnast named Livvy Dunne who attends Louisiana State University is raking in over $4 million for her performances on the uneven bars.
Are you flipping out yet? If you aren’t maybe, you are aware of the initials NIL and that they are the acronym for Name, Image and Likeness. NIL represents the means by which college athletes are permitted to receive compensation from anyone who wants to use their N or I or L for advertising or endorsements— anyone from the United States Army to Dunkin’Donuts. And individuals or groups of donors who just want to pay athletes to attend their alma maters can do so in numerous ways without putting the money directly in their pockets.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association first allowed college players to make money from their Name, Image, and Likeness deals in 2021. And just this week the NCAA Division I Board of Directors proposed changing long standing policies that prevented schools from sharing financial benefits directly with their athletes. In other words playing on a college team might soon become like being paid for working in the college dining hall although I’m guessing that for the vast majority of college players of all sports the dining hall jobs may remain just as lucrative.
This latest development seemed inevitable. Last year members of the men’s basketball team at Dartmouth College voted 13-2 to join the Service Employees International Union and won a precedent setting favorable ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that classified the players as college employees and could have become the first successful attempt by student athletes to unionize.
But earlier this year because of concern that the Trump administration’s newly appointed NLRB members might overturn the initial ruling, the Dartmouth team’s petition was withdrawn. With the NCAA’s newest proposal that could result in the players’ goal of being recognized as college employees and paid accordingly, it appears it could be mission accomplished anyway. Can it be said that all things come to those who agitate? Or at least sometimes?
And another irony… I was a pretty good basketball player in high school and it helped me get into Dartmouth but back in pre-hysteric times I didn’t get a nickel to coax me to attend. I did however get a congratulatory letter from the coach urging me to enroll.
Once on campus I had to tryout and despite the fact that when I was there Dartmouth had a really lousy varsity, I was cut from the freshman team. I’d like to believe it was because I was too short.
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The Architects (Part 1)
In my career working for ABC News I was given assignments that allowed me to meet and spend time with two of America’s best known architects whose projects in Los Angeles made a consequential change to the face of the city. Here are my accounts of meeting Richard Meier, the designer of the Getty Center in Part 1 to be followed later by my interview with the Disney Hall architect Frank Gehry in Part 2…
The Too Long Goodbye
In 1997 I took a short tram ride up a hillside adjacent to the 405 Freeway that runs below and connects the Los Angeles Basin to the San Fernando Valley. I arrived to begin shooting a piece about the new Getty Center and to do an interview with its architect Richard Meier for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
The Getty Center in Los Angeles cost $1.3 billion to build and took 14 years to complete. The Getty, as it’s called, hadn’t opened yet and I had secured one of my favorite cameramen for this assignment. I was particular about who I worked with and justified my attitude for what I considered a good reason. In television news, before there was competition from cable news and subsequently the internet, pictures were as important and sometimes more than the words they accompanied. With a great cameraperson the chances of having great pictures and a great piece were enhanced.
I was with ABC News for 26 years. In all that time I can count on one hand those who I considered to be truly great camerapersons. One of them was Blake Hottle, who was with me that day at the Getty.
And so we began without my assigned correspondent along with us. An NBA star basketball player named Latrell Sprewell had choked his coach the day before and Brian Rooney was pulled off our story to do that one. I rarely minded working without a correspondent when the opportunity arose even if in this case it was one I truly admired and a good friend.
As I walked off the tram atop the Getty Center and even before I could appreciate the 60 mile panoramic view from the San Gabriel mountains to the Pacific Ocean, I noticed a man on his knees beside some rose bushes. He wasn’t dressed like a landscaper. To my surprise it was the Getty Center architect himself Richard Meier and as l got closer I saw he had a bunch of cigarette butts in his hand. He wasn’t a landscaper. On this day he was a trash collector.
For the next hour Meier gave my crew and me a tour of just about everything he had designed on this hilltop with one exception. In addition to the stunning buildings that housed the art, research and administrative facilities there was a large garden that if the Walt Disney Studios ever decided to do a version of Alice in Wonderland with live actors and real settings, would be a cinch as the choice for the tea party scene.
This possibly psilocybin inspired landscape was the only part of the Getty Center campus that Meier didn’t get to design and was a source of emotional pain to him he could not hide. I didn’t think it was a sore thumb but it certainly had no relation to the site’s other appendages.
Meier refused to walk through the garden. To add insult to his injury this just happened to be the day giant planters, suggested by that same garden’s creator, were being placed on the steps leading up to one of Meier’s gallery buildings.
It was at his first sight of these that Meier morphed into a personification of King Lear rushing into the storm. He left us and ran up the steps where he attempted to throw one of the planters down them. He couldn’t.
The planter was so large he failed to even get his arms entirely around it and it appeared to weigh so much that it would likely have taken “The Big One”— the calamitous seismic event that is overdue to someday occur in California —to dislodge it.
It appeared clear to me Meier was suffering from something akin to an architect’s variant of postpartum depression. The next day when I returned to finish the shoot with correspondent Rooney in tow I found further evidence of that when we encountered Meier in the gift shop. As we approached, we heard him scolding an employee about the appearance of a display that he was in the middle of rearranging himself.
The Getty Center had taken a good chunk of Richard Meier’s professional life to complete and he had lived in a house on the site nearly that entire time. This project was his masterwork— his baby.
Perhaps that explains the behavior I witnessed. It was as if Meier had been raising a child who was now an adult but Meier himself was the one who needed to be leaving the nest. At the end of our time together I took the liberty of counseling him.
Me: “Richard, I’ve only known you for a short time but I think you need to let go.”
Meier: “I know… but it’s so hard.”
Twenty years later Meier was asked if there was anything he was unhappy about with the Getty. His answer: “If there was, I’ve forgotten about it.”
Click on the link below to see the story that aired on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings…
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The Architects (Part 2)
In my career working for ABC News I was given assignments that allowed me to meet and spend time with two of America’s best known architects whose projects in Los Angeles made a consequential change to the face of the city. In Part 1 I recalled my meeting Richard Meier who designed the Getty Center. Here in Part 2 is my account of interviewing Frank Gehry, the architect of Disney Hall…
The Flying Handkerchief
By 2003 the late Roone Arledge had transferred his television genius from sports to news and ABC News had gone from being a ratings laggard to having the most watched evening news broadcast in America.
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One of Arledge’s innovations was a weekly feature called Person of the Week, a long piece by TV news standards— four minutes —that ran every Friday on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and profiled someone who had made news that week.
The anchorman Peter Jennings voiced these pieces but producers did the interviews and the video shoots for accompanying pictures— “B-roll” —with those chosen who we called a POW— an unfortunate coincidence of acronyms. I got to do my share of these and also on occasion pitched and sold my own suggestions for who should be the subject.
Frank Gehry was the second great architect I met and interviewed when in 2003 I was assigned to cover the opening of what’s become a Los Angeles landmark— Disney Hall, the home of the LA Philharmonic.
If you’ve seen it, then you’ll likely agree Disney Hall is a unique work of architecture and today is almost as iconic to Los Angeles as Gehry’s groundbreaking Guggenheim Museum has become for Bilbao, Spain. During the week of its opening Gehry was a worthy choice to be a Person of the Week.
At first sight, the building’s exterior reminded me of a silent film comedy— Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. I’m thinking of the scene where Charlie gets swallowed up in the gears of a factory’s machinery. I imagined that the exterior of Disney Hall could be what that factory looked like after Charlie was through with it or it was through with Charlie.
Disney’s Hall’s “skin” was so unconventional it made me smile— Who gets to create something so different? Gehry’s building was awe inspiring just for its audacity. And so I set out again with cameraman Blake Hottle to interview Frank Gehry. The immediate challenge before us was where we would do it.
The inside of the concert hall also reminded me of something unrelated to what it was. I thought of Noah’s Ark and how that Biblical boat’s interior might have looked minus its passengers and all their “baggage.”
As I walked around inside it, I concluded there wasn’t a spot where I would have a lesser experience of whatever performance I attended. There wasn’t a bad seat in the house. A few days later my crew and I were able to to attend the LA Philharmonic’s dress rehearsal before the building’s opening. We were part of a tiny audience that included Gehry. I don’t know what he might have felt hearing a full orchestra performing time-honored works in his newly completed one. For me the experience was like being enclosed inside a giant windup music box.
But on the day of our interview we wanted to show Geary against the exterior of Disney Hall. A wide shot of the structure with him in it would have put us on a public sidewalk across the street which would have been noisy and unmanageable. So, that was a non starter.
And we encountered another problem if we were going to put Gehry too close to his creation. The stainless steel “skin” of Disney Hall reflected so much heat that being beside it in certain places could actually burn you if you stood too close for too long. This wasn’t just our problem that day. Residents nearby had complained about the reflected heat turning their condos into ovens. Drivers were being blinded by the glare off Disney Hall’s exterior.
Some time after we did our story the 22 million pounds of stainless steel shell were sanded and dulled to mitigate its heat generating issues. But as we considered places where we might situate him, we feared we might be held responsible for Frank Gehry being fried alive.
We continued our exploring and Blake solved our problem of where to put Gehry— a reason why I was lucky to have him with me as the cameraperson. He found an outside passageway that was shaded and cool and showed off Disney Hall’s curves, some of which I would contend are— for a building —voluptuous.
Peter Jennings had sent me a bunch of questions to ask Gehry and I was free to ask my own and at one point I got a terrific visual show and tell from him when I did.
Me: “How do you come up with your ideas for the design of a building like Disney Hall? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. How do you do this?”
Gehry, who was seated, reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, unfolded it and tossed it in the air. It landed on his knee and looked like a tent that had been uprooted and thrown about in the wind.
Gehry: “That’s what people think I do. But it’s not at all like that. Every curve, every piece you see is thought out and I wrestle with them. It all has to work together.”
I felt sure Gehry had done this demonstration before. It was certainly good for television. After we finished I complimented him on the flying handkerchief.
Me: “That was great. You must do that a lot to explain how you work or I mean how you don’t.”
Gehry looked at me shaking his head sideways.
Gehry: “I’ve never done that before.”
I had no reason to doubt him.
Some time later I learned that Gehry’s earliest sketch for the design of Disney Hall was made in a restaurant on a paper napkin. That sort of diminished the impact of his handkerchief toss for me. But hey, you gotta start somewhere and it turns out that ideas for architecture and other momentous creations that originated as simple sketches go back as far as Leonardo da Vinci. Of course da Vinci didn’t have paper napkins.
So years later I returned to the exact spot where we did the interview and had Jo take a picture of me recreating it. Not to be outdone by Gehry’s handkerchief, I used a bandana.
Click below to watch the story that aired on World News Tonight…
How I Failed As A Game Show Contestant
Or the prize isn’t right!
Wink Martindale died recently. When I learned this I didn’t smile but I remembered his. As a group, I believe television game show hosts can all have the identical adjective placed in front of their names— genial —but I think Wink had the best name of any of them. Here’s my account of my own TV game show appearance…
I moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to go to film school at UCLA. I was 32 years old, married and had returned to the United States from Israel where I had lived for seven years on a kibbutz. I had little money but luckily my ex-wife and I managed to find jobs quickly and a place to live rent free in exchange for managing a 16 unit apartment building.
It was long ago when there were still daily newspapers thrown by your door in the morning and I saw an ad one day in mine that made me think I might be able to earn some additional money. I responded to it and tried out to be a contestant on a television game show. I must have passed the audition because shortly afterward I got a phone call offering me the chance to appear on one.
It was called The Cross-Wits and, like probably all of these programs, a week’s worth of episodes were taped in a single day. I showed up, waited my turn and then it was lights, camera and ultimately, not enough action. Let me explain.
How the game itself was played isn’t important. The host and the guest celebrity I was partnered with weren’t important either. I mean that literally. I’d never heard of either of them and I’m pretty sure you haven’t. Anyway, I won the first game and from the point of view of the producers of the show you can be sure they wish I hadn’t.
You see, after my win the announcer rattled off the list of prizes I had won. There was a lot of stuff. I don’t even remember all of it but among the loot were umbrellas, a clothes iron, an undercarriage sealant for my car, coupons for a soft drink and the “pièce de résistance”, a combination range and oven with a built in microwave. That last one turned out to be the one I should have résisté.
The apartment we lived in as managers of our building had its own appliances and our utility costs were included. As the grand prize was being described, I was thinking what was I going to do with a range and oven I didn’t need? I didn’t frown but I certainly wasn’t jumping up and down or displaying the expected 100 watt grin like I had won a desperately needed washer and dryer on Queen for a Day.
Suddenly, there was the show’s producer standing beside the camera that was aimed squarely at my face. He put a finger of each hand in the sides of his mouth and stretched it. I didn’t react. He then rocked his body side to side with his eyes bulging as he continued contorting his mouth and imploring me to maybe be even a little excited. I’m sure I wasn’t smiling. I was in serious violation of contestant protocol.
My mind was elsewhere as I also realized that just about every house and apartment in Southern California is hooked up to natural gas. What I had just won was all electric. Nobody had electric!
I didn’t win another game that day but signed a form for my prizes afterward which turned out to be a “shoot me if I ever do this again” move. Now, I had to pay taxes on what I thought I was receiving gratis.
When I got home in short order I discovered that applying the undercarriage sealant on my car would void its warranty and that my local supermarket was unhappy because my coupons for Welch’s Carbonated Strawberry Soda were physically as large as manilla envelopes and wiped out the store’s entire supply of the drink every time I used one.
The umbrellas and the clothes iron were fine but the grand prize turned out to be a giant headache. First, I had no place to put it. A combination range, stove and microwave would last just a few hours if left standing alone in its giant box outside in my carport where it had been dropped off. But a lucky break. A friend who had a garage nearby agreed to let me store it there while I put an ad in the newspaper offering it for sale. That was to be my only lucky break.
I ran the ad for a month spending over $150. There were not only no takers; there were zero responses. I finally gave the thing away to a charity and got a tax deduction that I remember being less than the taxes I had to pay as a result of my windfall plus the fruitless ads.
And one other thing. When my appearance on the Cross-Wits actually aired on television one afternoon a month later and reached the moment when I had failed so miserably to act like a grateful prize winner, you never saw me. Instead you saw pictures of the stuff I won that I wished I hadn’t.
I had been edited out and relegated to the dustbin of game show history.
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Jo and I were in the car when we heard the news that the new Pope had been chosen and that he was an American. I immediately said, “Trump isn’t going to be pleased about this.”
By now we know who Trump is. His unpredictability may be totally predictable but it’s a given that with the puzzling exception of Elon Musk, Donald Trump never wants to share the spotlight with anyone else— of course as a friend pointed out, Musk might always become a convenient future scapegoat.
Trump can’t stand not being the center of attention and he continually gives an Oscar winning performance of a credo often associated with Hollywood and the movie business: “It is not enough merely to succeed; others must fail.”
So, here I am seeing even the elevation of a Pope who is a Chicago born American through my perceived lens of how Donald Trump sees everything. Pope Leo XIV has at least for the moment knocked him off the front page and given time Trump will more than likely revert in some way, shape or form to his nasty and shameless modus operandi and make waves in the Holy See.
Afterall Trump may lead MAGA by the nose but they always have his ear and apparently they are already spewing magma over Pope Leo who posted a comment last month criticizing the Trump administration’s using a notorious prison in El Salvador where suspected gang members deported from the United States have been flown.
“Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed?” wrote Cardinal Robert Prevost.
Trump Graft Graph
“I can’t imagine what this place would be – I can’t imagine what the country would be – with Donald Trump as our president.” —Ruth Bader Ginsburg
We don’t have to imagine anymore…
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Kennedy Center Horrors
Where art is now in the eyes of the beholden…
One of Donald Trump’s first acts when he took office again as the president this past January was to take control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. He fired its existing board, appointed a new one which then elected him the chairman.
Last week a House committee approved a budget proposal to allocate over $250 million for repairs and other expenses to the Center which is six times the usual amount the Center annually receives. A White House spokeswoman explained that “President Trump cares deeply about American arts and culture, which is why he is revitalizing historic institutions like the Kennedy Center to their former greatness.”
She didn’t explain why the Trump administration is simultaneously making cuts to arts organizations across the country and proposing to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts but so it goes…
So, I’ve been thinking that a fitting event to honor the men and women Donald Trump has appointed to lead us backward as a nation would be a Kennedy Center Film Festival. And now is the right time to hold it since the actual Cannes Film Festival is presently underway and Cannes and con rhyme so when you mention the former, it’s synonymous with the latter.
It might already be too late before he names the Center after himself but I’ve got the list of films lined up to be introduced by members of the present president’s leadership team and even a musical act…
And what’s really coming up at the Kennedy Center? Beginning June 11th is “Les Misérables” and the President is slated to attend. Donald Trump is reported to be a fan of “Les Mis.” I don’t plan to go myself despite the fact that I could be in the cast. I’m one of the miserable ones thanks to him.
A Twisted History
I grew up in the Pretzel Capital of the World— Reading, Pennsylvania —where pretzels were a part of our education. We learned about the origin of the pretzel (or we thought we did) in elementary school and were taken on a field trip to a pretzel factory.
Nearby Hershey calls itself the Chocolate Capital of America and the smell of cocoa actually permeates the town’s air. In that respect Reading’s pretzels have historically only generated dollars for their owners and not scents.
Although Reading is part of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country— from the German (Deutsch) not the Netherlands (Dutch) —you probably think as I was taught, that the pretzel originated in Germany. That’s apparently twisted history which is only fitting for the pretzel.
The Germans might take exception but it is believed that the pretzel was invented in Italy a thousand years ago. Evidence for pretzels to have been around that long is a 12th century illuminated manuscript discovered in the Vatican. It’s the earliest known visual representation of a pretzel…
The story goes that a monk baked pieces of dough that he fashioned in the shape of a child’s folded arms while saying his or her prayers. The monk’s treats for children, who did a good job reciting them, became known as pretiolas which translates to “little rewards” in Italian.
The Italian lineage was passed forward and linguistically backward when Latin became involved and pretiola morphed from brachiatus (Latin for having branches like arms) into the German word brezitella which became shortened to brezel which eventually became pretzel in English. I wasn’t kidding about the twisted history.
Over time Germans have certainly been the people most associated with pretzels. Growing up in a town where every store had at least one employee who could speak “Pennsylvania Dutch” and one of the local radio personalities was a guy who called himself “Professor Schnitzel”, we never heard about the pretzel’s Italian roots in our pretzel history indoctrination.
Reading had a lot of pretzel makers when I was a kid. Bachman pretzels were sold nationally but locally, I remember Quinlan, Sturgis and Billy’s —the latter were called Billy’s Bretzels. These were all what are known as hard pretzels, the kind you buy at the grocery store.
However, for me the very best pretzels weren’t at the supermarket. They were street food sold out of carts in Reading’s main square for a nickel apiece. Delicious soft pretzels that if you were lucky were still warm from the oven.
The carts disappeared decades ago but somewhere I have a picture I took of one of the pretzel cart vendors who I frequently bought mine from but with whom I doubt I ever exchanged more than nickels.
Growing up in the 1950s, summer at my public swimming pool also meant “pretzel rods” that seemed at the time as long as yardsticks. They were a favorite at the snack bar and we slathered them with mustard like they were hot dogs.
Pretzels were even a part of local sports, not good for cheering but handy for jeering. Back in the day opponents of Reading’s high school sports teams would taunt “Pretzels and beer, pretzels and beer, ach du lieber Reading is here!”
And the height of the pretzel’s status in our city— quite literally —took place at the local college which annually dubbed one of its football team’s home games “The Pretzel Bowl.” I attended one and at half time— and I’m not making this up —a plane flew over the stadium and dropped pretzels on the stands. Of course none survived in one piece.
In the beginning all Reading pretzels were handmade and experienced hands could twist 40 a minute. By the 1930s the first automated pretzel machinery enabled bakeries to make six times as many in that span. With most of the country’s pretzel production being done in the Reading area, its reputation as the pretzel capital was unchallenged.
Even today 80 percent of pretzels produced in the United States are made in Pennsylvania but I still was amazed when I moved to Maine to find my favorite Reading pretzels for sale here. I’d never seen this particular brand called Unique Splits sold outside of the state.
I wondered how that happened and it didn’t take me long to find out. Morse’s, a sort of grocery and deli best known for its sauerkraut, is about a half hour drive from Camden where I live. If you don’t know it’s there, you’ll never find it. Improbably, Morse’s has the most food items in its store that you won’t likely see anywhere else in all of Maine. I call it Zabar’s North.
Turned out the current owners were told about Unique pretzels by a customer and ordered some. The pretzels did so well other grocery and fish markets nearby had Morse’s order for them, too and now I can drive a couple minutes in two different directions from my house and purchase them.
The popularity of Reading pretzels led me to think about the other exceptional and exceptionally unhealthy food speciality that my part of Pennsylvania is famous for— potato chips. Not just any chips but potato chips produced with only potatoes and salt that are fried in lard. So, add perilous to their labeling.
The best of these chips in my opinion are made by Dieffenbach’s in the Berks County borough of Womelsdorf but there are competitors like Good’s from Adamstown in neighboring Lancaster County that produces two types of lard chips— Good’s Blues and Good’s Reds. The two used to be made by separate members of the same family but they called a truce a few years ago and merged. The difference? The Blues are crunchier.
In fact when I took Jo to where I grew up for the first time, I stopped at a market in the village of Oley close to my folks’ home. I didn’t know if she’d be impressed or mystified at what she’d see. It was more than even I bargained for. Pretzels and potato chips had two full aisles all to themselves—one for national brands and one just for local.
In Pennsylvania bags of both are as regularly by one’s side as the remote when you’re in front of the television. That’s not the case in Maine but inexplicably, life expectancy in both states is about the same.
Maybe Maine whoopie pies have something to do with it. The Pennsylvania Dutch country has them too and when Jo and I moved to Camden 15 years ago it was in the middle of a feud over which state could claim the origin of the whoopie pie. Being that I had now sampled both, I actually was asked to weigh in on this dispute very publicly but that’s another story.
Years ago I complimented one of the owners at Morse’s about his great taste in pretzels and told him about my favorite Reading potato chips. I provided full disclosure about the ingredients but didn’t tell him— and again, I’m not making this up —that the Reading Hospital ranks in the top 10 of the busiest emergency rooms in America.
Despite this I was certain Diffenbach’s potato chips would be another hit from the calorie and cholesterol unconscious countryside where I was raised if he chose to offer them. So far it hasn’t happened.
Thus, I still consider myself to be living in a “potato chip desert” but twice a year my best friend in Reading sends me a box full of bags of Diffenbach’s for which I’m extremely grateful. The gift provides Jo with the opportunity to joke, “Don’t you think Ken is actually trying to kill you?” My response is silent but in my head I hear Paul McCartney singing Let It Be.
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Welcome to Trump TV…
Stay tuned to TRUMP TV for the next episode of CAPITOL PUNISHMENT live from the studios of the Oval Office.
Produced by DONALD TRUMP
Directed by DONALD TRUMP
and starring DONALD TRUMP.
Next week’s guest: Abraham Lincoln
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Is It OK To Say Happy Memorial Day?
We’re a big country and many of us don’t have someone who was close to us who lost his or her life in America’s wars. At this point in our nation’s history there are those of us who might not even know anyone alive who fought in one. So what do we think of most when we hear the words Memorial Day? Little wonder that it’s a cookout with family and friends or bargain shopping on our day off.
Claes Oldenburg was a sculptor known for his public art installations. He died three years ago. What could have been my favorite work of his was one he never actually created. Back in the 1960s Oldenburg did a series of drawings that he called “Colossal Monuments.” Among them was a war memorial. Below is his rendering of it…
It was to be a giant block of concrete as high as the buildings that surrounded an intersection in New York City where he would have placed it. Oldenburg knew exactly the location— the middle of where Canal St. and Broadway cross in lower Manhattan.
It was meant to cause havoc but also reflection. Yes, its realization never had a chance and he certainly knew that. Oldenburg was making a serious anti-war statement with his plan to disrupt New York City traffic forever. One can imagine unknowing motorists stopped in their tracks and cursing at being inconvenienced but would they have simultaneously thought about war?
When I saw his War Memorial drawings for the first time it was during the Vietnam War years and Oldenburg’s idea for this permanent roadblock enthused the younger me. I thought, why not? I hope it gets built. Later I figured it was more like much of his other work—thoughtful but whimsical; serious but a satirical aside. The drawings of the memorial were eventually auctioned off to raise money for anti-war political candidates.
Plugging up Canal St. and Broadway certainly might have made a powerful war memorial. I have come up with my own plan that I believe could be impactful but more practical. It would have that enormous barrier be a temporary portable obstruction— inflatable like a Thanksgiving Day parade float. It could be constantly moved around New York City from intersection to intersection in the dead of night without any advance notice.
It surely would annoy, if not exasperate, when unexpectedly encountering it repeatedly, but maybe there would be a chance that in time you’d make the connection and blame the traffic tie ups on the insanity of war.
There is one war memorial that achieves that.
Years ago I went to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. The simplicity of its design is also its power— just two granite walls engraved with the names of those service members who died or remained missing in Vietnam and South East Asia during and after the war. The National Park Service webpage heading for it has a quote:
“These names, seemingly infinite in number…”
There are more than 58,000 of them.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a destination you don’t just happen upon. You know where it is and why you’ve come to see it. What you may not know is how you are going to react. I knew people killed in that war that I myself didn’t have to fight in— nobody who was a close friend, but high school and college classmates whose names I found on the black walls. Seeing them there was a jolt. Occasionally, all of the names are read aloud publicly as a remembrance. It takes 65 hours.
“One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
The quote above is attributed to Joseph Stalin although it’s now not believed that it he was the first to say it and that it may have actually originated after WWI— “The war to end all wars” —in which at least 15 million soldiers and civilians died.
Tragedy in large numbers reaches what has been called a “ceiling of comprehension.”
Estimates of military and civilian deaths during WWII vary between 70 and 85 million lives lost with the vast majority of whatever the real total was having been civilian deaths. How do you wrap your head around that? Mostly, we don’t.
Our public reminders of the cost of wars are way too polite. Claes Oldenburg’s would not have been and maybe that’s what we need— war memorials that actually make us uncomfortable. Does it have to take losing a parent, a spouse, a child or a close friend to genuinely feel the pain of war?
Those who live with such loss are the ones who will surely think longer and harder about the intended meaning of today. They are the ones who will likely visit a cemetery and find a grave and place flowers on it. The rest of us? Will we give a moment’s thought to contemplate the actual reason why we call today Memorial Day?
So, what should we do? The least we can is to take a solemn moment to give thanks to those who gave their lives so we have been able to pursue our own, and also to recognize the tragedy of those lives lost in wars that America might have avoided.
But how about this too. Let’s not call today a holiday. It’s not a celebration. It’s an observance. Memorial Day is the one day a year set aside to actually remember and think about those who died in America’s wars— the ones who didn’t get to grow old and be around for the cookouts and the sales.
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“Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again.” —Pauline Kael
I admit I see more movies than I read books. I thought I’d change that a few years ago and got off of Facebook and stopped playing Words with Friends to have fewer feeble excuses for the disparity. Until recently it didn’t change anything but I have begun reading books— long ones. Of course I’m still going to the movies and getting my share of popcorn but is it just me or have films gotten longer? The Master of Suspense may have had the answer…
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“The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” —Alfred Hitchcock.
I’ll chalk my perception up to less endurance…
I love movies and there was actually a single night in my life when my appreciation of them was transformed. It was during my freshman year at college. The Dartmouth Film Society showed many films that hadn’t been made in America and on that particular evening the double feature was from France and Italy— Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and Federico Fellini’s 8½.
I wasn’t aware of either movie beforehand and only slightly familiar with the names of their directors. On top of that there was a short film preceding the two features that introduced me to the photographs of Eugene Atget and the music of composer Erik Satie. I had never heard of either of them.
In the dictionary “mind blowing” is defined as something having a hallucinogenic effect. Its etymology has Timothy Leary’s name stamped all over it but I didn’t need LSD to be blown away by Marcello Mastroianni’s portrayal of a movie director on the verge of a nervous breakdown in 8½.
It revealed something that I had never known movies could do— actually take me inside of somebody’s head and in this case it was Mastroianni as a standin for Fellini’s own that I watched imploding on the screen.
Marcello Mastroianni in Federico Fellini’s 8½
Movies changed for me from then on and when I lived in New York City for two years after college, I proceeded on an all-out movie binge. It was my own film school before actually attending one at UCLA a decade later.
From Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy to Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct I undertook a sweeping retrospective of cinema history and one time foolishly, even tried to absorb four movies at four different locations on the same day. I don’t remember which Ingmar Bergman film it was that put me over the edge but I was lucky I didn’t jump in front of a bus that night.
There were three places in New York where I spent many evenings. They were what were called “repertory” movie theaters and showed old films— all kinds of old films.
The Elgin was at 19th Street and 8th Avenue in Chelsea and a subway ride down from the Upper West Side where I shared an apartment with some other recent college graduates who weren’t interested in joining me in my movie mania.
The Elgin is known as the movie theater that invented the midnight screening which began when it showed Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo. If you’ve seen this movie, then you’ll probably agree with me that it makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show— a midnight screening staple and now the longest running theatrical release in motion picture history —look like Ding Dong School.
I owe the Elgin for introducing me to Buster Keaton. As big a silent movie star as anyone back in his day, Keaton’s work had been virtually forgotten, tied up in legal battles and even misplaced until his genius was rediscovered and the films re-released. The Elgin held the first retrospective of Buster Keaton’s work in decades in 1970 and at the first movie I saw I was in stitches and awe and came back for more night after night.
Buster Keaton in The General
The New Yorker theater on Broadway at West 88th Street was where I marveled at Toshiro Mifune’s performance in Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. It was the original uncut three hour and 27 minute version that included an intermission projected on the screen as part of the film.
Toshiro Mifune in The Seven Samurai
And it also was on the way to the New Yorker one night that I ended up in an emergency room. In a hurry to make the beginning of Zoo in Budapest with Loretta Young I ran across the street in front of a bus and got whacked by a Volkswagen that was running a red light. I landed on the hood of the car and fell off. To the driver’s everlasting credit he stopped, picked me up and rushed me to the hospital. I was lucky but still have never seen Zoo in Budapest.
The jewel in the crown of my beloved movie theaters was the Thalia just off Broadway on 95th Street. Of the three movie houses I surely spent the most time in the Thalia, which was later the location for a brief scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.
The Thalia showed two movies a night and rotated one of the two out the next day adding a new one in its place. That gave me two chances to catch any single film. The Thalia showed pretty much everything from director Marcel Carne’s Children of Paradise to a feature length collection of animator Chuck Jones’ Bugs Bunny cartoons.
One night waiting outside for a show I saw a beautiful girl also waiting by herself. I wanted to start a conversation but had no idea how. Of course “hello!” would have been a logical place to begin but it failed to register as an option. My opportunity vanished entirely when her date showed up.
A few nights later outside the Thalia the identical situation arose. A different beautiful girl stood waiting by herself. Another painfully shy inability to seize the moment and opportunity by me. And then THE SAME GUY arrived and escorted her inside!!!
The Thalia at 250 W. 95th St.
All three of these theaters have since been demolished or repurposed. Today, the dream I used to have of being able to see movies on my own screen at home has been a reality for a long time. But I’ve learned that the excitement of discovering cinema’s past or partaking of its present isn’t the same watching a DVD (how quickly we forget) or a recording off Turner Classic Movies or one streamed from Netflix by myself.
In the dictionary moviegoer and moviegoing are one word. As a baby boomer I grew up when going to the movies meant just that— you went. Seeing Walt Disney’s Pinocchio and Snow White when I hadn’t yet started elementary school was a scary way to begin but an experience I probably shared with millions of others.
The Majestic Theatre in Mt. Penn, Pennsylvania
The Majestic was my neighborhood movie theater and it may have been unique because it shared the building with a fire station. It wasn’t unusual for sirens to suddenly blare and drown out even the Guns of Navarone.
I could ride my bike to its matinees on Saturdays to see cartoons and Westerns. That was until one day the posters outside the entrance had pictures of scantily dressed women whose faces looked like they might be in pain. My childhood Saturday mornings then became ones I spent in front of our television.
Now, I’m fortunate that here in Maine I have a neighborhood movie theater in the family— literally. It was Jo’s grandmother’s idea to build it in Rockland in the 1920s. Ida Dondis was the force behind it for over a half century. After she retired Jo’s father took over for a while and when we moved here in 2010, Jo became the founding chair of the Friends of the Strand Theatre after leading the effort to turn it into a non profit. Her sister Lynn has now succeeded her on its board.
The Strand celebrated its 100 year anniversary in 2023 and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its “historic, cultural and architectural significance.” I call it the “anchor store” of Rockland’s Main Street.
Yes, movie going is partially about the popcorn— it always tastes best at the movies —but for me it’s certainly about being together with an audience in the dark to watch a film. Books are a solitary endeavor. It appears movies increasingly are becoming so too but it’s sad that we are withdrawing into our solitary cocoons and endangering the movie theater experience.
We have so many screens we constantly look at now but a half century ago there was only one inside the theaters at the Thalia and the New Yorker and the Elgin. I blended in with the others as I laughed at Buster Keaton’s pratfalls in Sherlock Jr. and wasn’t embarrassed when I teared up at the end of Kurosawa’s Ikiru.
There still appear to be at least a few small town movie theaters operating around the country that call themselves the Strand. I’m lucky enough to have one just a few miles down the road.
The Strand Theatre in Rockland, Maine
TACO Rang Trump’s Bell…
Donald: The Angry Bird…
If Donald Trump were someone else with a less fragile ego and a sense of humor, he might have answered a reporter’s question differently last Wednesday…
Reporter: “Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the Taco trade. They’re saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats… What’s your response to that?”
A secure and funny version of Donald Trump might have said: “Does it come with rice and beans?”
Instead, the real Donald Trump, who apparently hadn’t known that his tariff policies to date are being compared to Mexican cuisine, responded with his SOP—standard operating procedure…
Trump: “I chicken out? I’ve never heard that… and you ask a nasty question like that… But don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question.”
The reporter, CNBC correspondent Megan Cassella, was the first person to tell Trump about the acronym TACO which the Financial Times U.S. commentator Robert Armstrong thought up and published in his newsletter. When Armstrong was asked in an interview on CNN about Trump’s pique at being told of the term…
Armstrong: “The President’s response was very telling. The phrase hit a nerve with him because the facts support the TACO thesis.”
What’s that thesis? It’s Trump’s repeated announcements of stiff tariffs on goods from other countries which cause financial markets to drop followed by his consistently backing down and delaying or lowering them a short time later leading to markets rebounding.
The Chinese take out order became a Trump take back…
It’s not much fun for me to write about Trump anymore although it can still be cathartic. Things are getting worse for the future of the United States at home and in the world every day.
So now that an acronym is in the news and it’s Taco Tuesday*, I think the Trump Tempest in a Tortilla makes the timing opportune to forget him today and have a margarita and write about acronyms.
The first known acronyms in English appeared in the 19th century. They were created by a journalist named Walter Phillips who devised a shorthand code for sending dispatches by telegraph. The first such example in 1879 was SCOTUS for the Supreme Court of the United States followed later by POTUS which I hope you can figure out on your own.
Since then and especially since the advent of the internet, acronyms are increasingly being infused into the language and we ignore them at our risk of being left behind in a diminishing world of fully enunciated sentences.
According to a study that was completed in 2019 of just scientific literature, over a million acronyms— 1,112, 345 —were found and I assume that A.I. knows all of them. But in the Oxford English Dictionary acronyms are lumped together with abbreviations and the combined total is only 19,000 at the moment.
Social Media has picked up where Walter Phillips left off. AMA is no longer only the American Medical Association. When texting it’s “Ask Me Anything.” ESP is no longer just extra sensory perception. It’s now also your “Email Service Provider.” As far as I know IHOP still stands for the International House Of Pancakes.
I’m not all thumbs— and that’s a disadvantage —when I text but the acronyms LOL, BTW, OMG, FYI are ones I’m sure I’ve used and in the English language they are necessary to be functionally literate when messaging in the iPhone age.
But now that TACO is part of the acronym index, I realize there are a lot of them I know but didn’t have any idea what their letters stand for or wasn’t even aware they were acronyms…
Take laser/LASER— Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation and
Taser/TASER— Thomas A Swift Electric Rifle named for the inventor’s favorite children’s book character Tom Swift.
There’s Scuba/SCUBA— Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.
Then there are ones that actually are a group of words…
From AFLAC— American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus, Ohio
To YAHOO— Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle (What the hell does that even mean?)
I haven’t found a course being taught on acronyms as a separate language yet but that may be getting close to happening.
For example the Austin, Texas Community College District has an extensive online glossary of terms, abbreviations and acronyms to assist students in wading through course offerings, administration policies and information about whatever else I assume they may bump into that they might find indecipherable.
For now the acronym POTUS that Walter Phillips created for short handing the name of the president in 1895, who at the time was Grover Cleveland, is still as recognizable and useful as it was then. Let’s hold out hope that in the next four years we will not see our POTUS demanding to be called POTentate.
*I actually wasn’t aware that Taco Tuesday is a thing until now. I thought it was a fairly recent restaurant chain promotion but turns out it may have originated in Los Angeles in the 1930s. I lived in LA for 31 years and don’t remember ever hearing about it… Where’s that margarita?
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We’re Off To See Mr. Wizard…
In 1957, Rosh Hashanah— the Jewish New Year —occurred on October 5th. One day earlier a metal sphere the size of a basketball had been launched into orbit around our globe by the Soviet Union. I was 10 years old and remember this event from 68 years ago because of something I overheard a friend of my father say to him at services in our synagogue…
“Along with everything on earth should the rabbi bless Sputnik?”
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The friend was joking but the Russian achievement was a shock to America. Now, the Soviets not only dominated a group of European nations and had “satellites” on the ground but one of theirs was also flying above us in outer space.
Suddenly, science classes became a top priority for schools across the United States. Within a year, President Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) so we could catch up. In 1969 when the astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon’s surface, we felt we had.
But even before the historic achievement of Apollo 11, an American television program had spurred many young baby boomers’ interest in science and technology and led some of us to pursue careers in those fields.
I don’t actually remember ever watching from beginning to end a single episode of the TV show called Watch Mr. Wizard but millions of kids did. Don Herbert was the creator and host of the weekly series which ran from 1951 until 1965.
Child actors would participate in conducting science experiments with Herbert that looked complicated but could usually be performed at home with everyday objects without blowing up the house.
Herbert’s Watch Mr. Wizard shows were so popular that NBC gave him free rein to actually blow things up and even once discuss hamster sex at a time when Lucy and Ricky Ricardo were sleeping in separate beds. Mr. Wizard is today considered an unsung hero.
“Herbert’s techniques and performances helped create the United States’ first generation of homegrown rocket scientists just in time to respond to Sputnik. He sent us to the moon. He changed the world.”— Bill Nye, The Science Guy
A few years ago I had the opportunity to feel a little bit like a Mr. Wizard. No, I’ve never been accused of being a rocket scientist. I did take biology in 10th grade and messed up the dissection of a perch so badly that the teacher Mrs. Weidner— a formidable presence —abruptly, told me to cease and desist and take out any book from another subject.
Because of switching high schools I never had a course in chemistry or physics. In college there was a “science” requirement but I avoided any of the real ones by slipping into classes like the “History of Technology” with the members of the Dartmouth hockey team. Academically, I’m virtually a science illiterate.
So, how could I be a Mr. Wizard dispensing scientific knowledge? Well, I wasn’t. My role was somewhere between that of museum docent and history teacher.
A highlight of Jo’s and my week is when our two grandsons visit us after school. We are fortunate that the family lives nearby. Nate is 12 and Harvey is nine now but for a while when he was five, I might have briefly been a kind of Don Herbert figure in his eyes.
Harvey was in kindergarten at the time and very proud of the math skills he was acquiring.“Ask me a question,” he would say and we’d do simple addition and subtraction that he could handle in his head or manage using a pencil and piece of paper. One day I told Harvey that when I was a kid we did our math with pencil and paper and then got out my pocket calculator— an old Texas Instruments TI503SV —and said, “This is how I do math now.”
I showed Harvey its functions and introduced him to concepts perhaps before I should have but I don’t believe I caused any lasting damage. Third grader Harvey is doing well in math. After that I realized that my office was full of other things that to a five year old might seem like a visit to Jurassic Park where I could be the tour guide.
I have some film cameras and explained to him that, unlike today’s, they required film which then needed to be developed and printed and that I didn’t have any and if I did, the resulting pictures I took would be anything but instantaneous. The film would need to be sent to a lab and then back to me and only then would I see the photographs. I’m not sure he fully grasped this.
I keep a couple small transistor radios— Radio Shack “Flavor” models —in a drawer just in case terrestrial radio is all that is left some day in a world devoid of cyberspace. Harvey was excited to learn how to use a battery tester and discover the radios’ batteries needed replacing. Once one worked, he was thrilled by how you could pull out its antenna and turn its dial to instantly hear oldies music, sports talk and gospel preaching.
An audio cassette or even a New York City subway token can be objects of discussion and fascination at least for a few minutes to someone who has never seen either before.
Getting out my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary and Roget’s International Thesaurus— both circa 1960 —which I’ve carried around the world with me since junior high school, was probably more of a revelation to me. Of course Harvey reads printed books but I relied on these two tomes so much and they have sat on a shelf unopened for so long… It made me feel a bit of a relic of the past, too.
It’s both amazing and somewhat sad to me that the functions of all these things, even the subway token, are now quite readily accessible inside our smartphones.
No more typewriters, phonographs, slide rules or even windup alarm clocks are needed in college dormitory rooms anymore. The stuff I’ve kept may be all but obsolete but even more transformative is that in our digital age the evolution of the telephone into a computer we carry in our pockets or purses has allowed us to do so much from anywhere— make a phone call, read a newspaper, watch a movie, shop for anything, store information and of course search the internet. In fact we almost don’t need to go anywhere if we so choose.
When I was Harvey’s age my grandfather told me about a horse and cart delivering ice to his house and I still find it incredulous to imagine what his life was like when he was a boy. I’m beginning to find my own life more and more unrecognizable from when I was a kid myself.
At times I’ve thought about selling these things I have and never use and likely never will on eBay but I haven’t. Now, I think I know why. The cameras and radios, the old dictionary and thesaurus are a link with my life’s path.
The original Arnold Palmer designed putters in the closet that I bought for my father as well as one for myself for $5 apiece in 1962 have sold for up to $1,000 dollars today in good condition. They are a coveted collector’s item and I stopped taking mine to the course years ago when I caught someone attempting to snatch it from my golf bag. For now the two putters are not going anywhere despite technology improving on them decades ago.
Yes, I guess I do have a museum of sorts of “ancient” artifacts and have imparted knowledge no longer useful to my grandson. But there must be something left that’s simple and practical I can teach him that requires neither film nor batteries nor will need megabytes in the future and stand the test of time. Yes, I think I’ve got it…
“Hey, Harvey! Today, I’m going to show you how to get crumbs off of a tablecloth using a dinner knife.”
Postscript…
Send in the Nouns…
My thesaurus was a bar mitzvah gift and the most useful and used present I received. In searching for a picture of one, I came across a photograph of four of them that belonged to a real wordsmith— Stephen Sondheim. It was well known he used a thesaurus when writing lyrics as well as a rhyming dictionary. His oldest thesaurus was a 1946 edition. I don’t know if it was given to him but he didn’t have a bar mitzvah and was already 16 by 1946. But why did he need four?
I don’t know when the auction of Sondheim’s thesauruses took place but the collection sold for $25,600. I assume that happened after his death in 2021 but I think if he had been alive, he might have been at a loss for words.
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My Day On The Links With John Updike
A good walk remembered
Today is the opening round of the United States Open golf tournament. This year it is being held at what the pros are calling the toughest golf course they have ever played. I play the game and my home course here in Maine is certainly challenging enough. Golf is a difficult game but despite rising frustration and disappointment with how I play, I take exception with Mark Twain. Golf for me will never be a good walk spoiled.
What follows is a story I wrote years ago for a magazine edited by a high school classmate that’s devoted to the history of where we grew up in Pennsylvania. It’s about the day I spent with a man who was perhaps Berks County’s most famous person until a teenage girl started composing songs about how miserable she was in junior high school there. Her father was my parents’ financial advisor. His name was Scott Swift.
John Updike died in 2009. I met him twice. The first time was when I was in prep school near his home north of Boston. He came to speak to our literary club in 1964 and I wanted to know if his fictional Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom— a character who appears in four of his novels and a novella —was based on a real person.
I was curious because Rabbit’s fictional city of Brewer was a cover for Reading where Updike and I both grew up and Mt. Judge, where Rabbit had been a high school basketball star, was in reality Mt. Penn, a village where I rode my bike to get a haircut.
Updike told me Rabbit was a composite of people he knew and later I discovered what I feel is a more concise portrayal of Updike’s of someone like Rabbit whose youthful glory days had become a nostalgic noose. It’s a poem I’ve provided a link to titled Ex- Basketball Player and the last stanza tightens the loop…
Ex-Basketball Player by John Updike
The second time I met Updike was 30 years later for work and here’s my account of that day…
Golf has spawned as many books on how and where to play it as any sport I can think of and among the writers who have attempted to explain why so many of us love such a difficult game is John Updike.
Updike once described the ups and downs of a round of golf as being like islands of ecstasy in a sea of misery and I won’t disagree. In my opinion he wrote as well as anyone ever has about the mysterious allure of golf and in my “office” here in Maine there’s a frame on the wall with three postcards Updike wrote to me in 1994 that chronicle my getting him to play golf for television.
The initial correspondence represents a courtship on my part and a dance on his. I was a producer for ABC News and wanted to convince Nightline to let me do an entire program about golf— certainly not their usual subject matter.
Nightline’s anchor Ted Koppel was not much of a sports fan but ABC was the broadcaster of the United States Open golf tournament back then in 1994 and at night, after the first two rounds of the event on Thursday and Friday, a short highlights package of each day’s competition aired at 11:30 and delayed the starting time for when Nightline regularly began.
Koppel was not pleased about being forced to defer to a sports event for even fifteen minutes and my pitch was, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” I reasoned that since golfers would already be watching the U. S. Open highlights, a Nightline devoted to their sport might keep them tuned in.
Koppel’s staff bought the idea, although I don’t think he was at all enthused and I knew I had better come up with something special. This was Nightline after all and the broadcast was considered the class act at ABC News.
I found three amateur golfers to profile who had unique stories to tell about their passion for the game. I lined up quick commitments to participate from two of them— One being Ely Callaway who had revolutionized the technology and marketing of golf equipment with his best selling Big Bertha driver and the other a bank president from New Orleans named Pat Browne who was the best totally blind golfer who ever lived.
John Updike was to be my third act. I greatly admired his occasional essays about the game and his love for it that I’d read in golf magazines and I assumed he was a golf addict/fanatic like me. I contacted his publisher and pitched my request. Shortly afterward the first of his typed postcards arrived in the mail.
It began… Dear Mr. Imber: Your thoughts and mine on golf agree in every regard… If you could come to this area, I’d be happy to talk with a camera.
That was great news of course but then a couple sentences further on Updike demurred… Or we could skip it – there are so many mightier presences in golf than my own.
Updike and I did share some common opinions on how the game should be best enjoyed. He was a walker like I am; riding in a cart was out of the question for him and so were caddies. Updike carried his own bag, having written once that a caddy handing him a club for every shot would be like someone over his shoulder handing him a different pencil for every sentence he wrote.
Certainly, he sounded interested in participating in my Nightline project and I was confident I’d get him to sign on. I hadn’t yet used the “Imber card.”
I grew up close to where Updike had. My grandfather had a store downtown in Reading, Pennsylvania that bore our family name. That John Updike might know who I was if I reminded him wasn’t because of the store, however. It was a bit more intimate than that.
My father’s brother was a physician and just happened to have been Updike’s father’s doctor. My uncle was known to be an outstanding internist but in Updike’s first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, there is a less than flattering description of the fictional interior of a doctor’s office that was detailed just enough that it upset its real life decorator who also happened to be my aunt.
At this point communicating with John Updike progressed to using the telephone and it was time to pull out the “Imber card.” As soon as I mentioned my uncle— the doctor —Updike agreed to do an interview.
There was just one last hurdle to jump over. He’d do it but said he didn’t want to be shown actually playing golf. For me and for television of course that was a major problem— all but a deal breaker —since I needed to enhance at least some of what he had to say with video of him in action. In the end he relented… “How can I turn down Dr. Imber’s nephew.”
As someone once said, “it’s never over until it’s over,” and on the day my crew and I arrived at his golf club, the Myopia Hunt Club on Boston’s North Shore, John Updike announced that he only had an hour to spend with us on the shoot, admonishing that… “I’m still a working writer after all.”
Fortunately, once we got started out on the golf course his reserve vanished. Updike turned out to be a total ham and gave us more great material than I could have dreamed of. After lofting a shot into a pond he turned to the camera and asked, “I hope you got all of that.”
Later, when looking for a ball in the woods he found instead a piece of a glass bottle and shuddered theatrically as he examined it before tossing it away. And when at last he hit his best shot of the day he proclaimed with as much irony as exhilaration, “There is life after death!”
When I reminded him that we had used up our one hour of his time, he merely asked me if we should continue so I would have what I needed. Any earlier hesitation had turned into total and exuberant cooperation.
I had at first considered doing a straight interview with him but instead asked Updike to read my favorite short essay of his about the game titled The Bliss of Golf. I feel it’s the equivalent of a hymn to the sport and its splendor as well as a lament on the anguish its mere mortal acolytes more often endure.
While he was seated comfortably on the lawn in front of the clubhouse and about to begin reading, a gust of wind blew over one of the metal stands and the heavy light mounted on it, almost striking him in the head. That explained why a few days later Postcard #2 arrived and began…
Dear Peter Imber: That was fun, especially catching the light pole in an instant of Harry-Angstrom-like reflex.
Updike’s mention of his most recurring character “Rabbit” Angstrom brought back a memory of my own. I had been an extra in the movie of Rabbit Run that was shot on location in Reading years before. At the time my father and I had played golf with the movie Rabbit, the actor James Caan. The film was… well, aside from its premiere in Reading, it never had a general release by the studio.
Like most any golfer you’ll meet, Updike’s second postcard also filled me in on the state of his game.
I finally broke 90 yesterday on the Myopia Links and have high hopes for the rest of the season. If I am ever in Berks County with my golf clubs, I will give your father a call.
That was an offer I’m sure my dad, who played golf well into his 80s, would never have refused.
I traveled to the ABC News offices in Washington to put my golf show together. I would have four days to work there and complete my three golfers’ stories to be ready for broadcast on the Friday night of the U.S. Open.
There was no correspondent attached to my Nightline program. So, other than Ted Koppel’s introductions, the entire narration of the segments came from the three participants I had interviewed in their own words. I confess I always loved doing stories without a correspondent where the only ego I had to deal with was my own.
In the television news business four days were just enough time to edit a polished version of a half hour show like mine. But there had been an horrific double murder in Los Angeles the previous week and on Wednesday my golf program was moved up a night so that Nightline could use Friday to air its first reporting on what was quickly becoming the most sensational news event in years.
The rescheduling tightened my deadline but would prove to be an exceptionally lucky break. My show aired Thursday night and it was to be among my favorite pieces of work in my 26 year career at ABC News.
Postcard #3 was dated the day after the broadcast and read…
Dear Peter: I underestimated how late the show runs and my taping ended when I plunked the ball in the water. So could I accept your offer and you send me a tape? My wife and stepson loved it, and the interweave of images and words was very artful. But I did look my age, and moved as if underwater. Good thing it wasn’t on Friday night; Juice’s Last Ride would have ousted it from the airwaves.
Best,
John
I had already returned to my base in Los Angeles on that Friday. The helicopter shots of O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco making its surreal freeway odyssey filled nearly every television screen in the country that evening. Updike was right, the golf program would have never made it.
For me the O.J. Simpson story was what I would be assigned to work on daily for the next year. It was a grueling challenge and as I would think back on what a pleasure it had been to spend an afternoon with John Updike on the links, I’d remember that just like golf, the news business had its islands of ecstasy in a sea of misery— of course most of the time other people’s but in this case my own as well.
Updike published a collection of his golf stories and essays titled Golf Dreams two years later in 1996. I don’t know if that was his plan before making his television golfing debut. If I helped prompt him in any way to do it, then getting him on the golf course for Nightline ranks easily as my greatest contribution to the game.
Here’s a link to the Nightline segment and John Updike reading The Bliss of Golf…
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Adeventures Of An Apartment Manager #1
The setup…
What do a plumber and a psychiatrist have in common?
If you said one unclogs sinks and toilets and the other tries to untangle ids and egos you’d be clever but really, the two have nothing in common except that they bill by the hour. On the other hand when you’re an apartment manager you have an opportunity to be both a plumber and a psychiatrist.
When I moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend graduate school I had an offer I couldn’t refuse. I was able to take over managing a 16 unit apartment building from a friend. The deal included an apartment for me and my ex wife with free rent and utilities. In return I was responsible for collecting tenants rents, showing and renting units when there were vacancies, and handling minor repairs.
In the three years I managed the building I didn’t become skilled with a wrench nor adept with counseling but I witnessed a variety of human behavior that I could never have bargained for.
As a plumber, it would usually take me most of a day to change out a busted garbage disposal. I could never find the exact same model to replace the one I removed. Even now just remembering how inconvenient that was makes me mad. I always had to repipe which involved measurements I too often bungled. Visits to the hardware store sometimes felt like I was going around in a revolving door. I should have just found someone else and paid the damn piper both figuratively and literally.
However, I did make one discovery that saved me time and probably aged the infrastructure of the building by decades. I discovered there was a brand of drain cleaner that I’m sure was illegal. I’d stand clear when I poured it since it created an actual plume of smoke that was clearly toxic but often very effective and presto! Clog be gone. Wisely, I refused to attempt anything dealing with electricity other than hooking up the garbage disposals, changing lightbulbs and resetting tripped fuses.
As for the psychiatrist role, I nailed what I believe was a prime requirement for the job. I listened to tenants complaints patiently and at times even took notes. I’d offer solutions to their problems when I thought I could be helpful but I think I was more interested in compiling things I heard and saw as case histories. The people I dealt with and the experiences I had often stunned me and might possibly have caused even a jaded shrink to blink.
The apartment building I managed was in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley very close to the intersection of the 405 (aka the San Diego Freeway) and the 101 (aka the Ventura Freeway). You didn’t need a white noise machine for sleeping since the traffic on these two major arteries, like the ones in our bodies, flows constantly 24 hours a day and the building was about a football field away from it. Just a block further away were million dollar homes.
If you’ve read any detective novels set in Los Angeles in the past, you’d have a tough time imagining the place as a setting for The Big Sleep— no cozy bungalows sitting among palm trees in a courtyard. This was a two-story rectangular stucco box and had seen better days but was more needy than seedy.
The tenants in the building I suspected were not wealthy. Some it appeared were barely making enough money to pay their monthly rent and a few, as best as I could determine, were not employed. Except for me, the 15 tenants lived alone.
*Update: To my surprise, but I guess it shouldn’t be, there appears to have been a renovation since I lived there over forty years ago. It looks better than it did then or maybe a fresh coat of paint makes it seem so. Rents for the apartments start at just under $2,000 a month and the building itself— if you want to purchase it —would cost you over $5,000,000 according to Zillow.
TO BE CONTINUED
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The first person I rented an apartment to also led to the only time I’ve ever been interviewed by the FBI. Not for what you think. Jim had recently graduated from law school and was being vetted for an appointment as a clerk to a federal judge.
The two agents who payed me a visit were right out of central casting. Their faces never changed expression and their voices never betrayed any emotion. They could have been understudies for Jack Webb’s Sergeant Friday.
Jim got his clerkship and went on to have a successful career as an attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the years I was the apartment manager I rented more than a dozen of the units in the building, some of them multiple times. It turned out that Jim, my very first renter, was the only one who became a good friend and that was a lucky way to start.
My other piece of luck was meeting another apartment manager who gave me advice that was genius. It was just three words— “Check the car.” It’s the law that you can’t refuse to rent to someone because of their race, religion or ethnicity but I don’t think it’s been decreed that you can’t turn someone down if their car is a wreck on the outside and a mess on the inside. I always made it a point to see their car before I’d let them sign a lease.
Initially I inherited all my tenants. Would I have rented to many of them if I’d known more about them? Would anyone have?
Denise was a brunette by day and a blonde by night. As far as I could tell she didn’t have a job and seemed to spend nearly all her time in her tiny apartment. Only two of the 16 units— my ex and I lived in one of them —had separate living rooms, dining areas, kitchens and bedrooms.
The others were either very small one bedrooms or “studios” which had sliding doors but no windows and one large space that served as a living and sleeping area and kitchen. I don’t know how they got the name studios. There was no way you could have squeezed even a single actor together with a film crew inside them at the same time.
Anyway, once I knocked on Denise’s door when she was late with the rent, and she opened it pointing a handgun at me. The daytime Denise was armed but also a brunette usually wearing jeans. The nighttime Denise dressed as a hooker— long blonde wig, tight black leather skirt cut way above the knee, mesh stockings and boots.
She wasn’t a knockout but she certainly might have attracted Johns and that’s just it, I don’t know if she wanted to. I’m guessing she actually didn’t work professionally. Most nights if I caught a glimpse of her, she was either setting out or returning with only her toy poodle on its leash— tenants were permitted to have cats and dogs —but what do I know?
Cliff dressed for the job he told me he had which he claimed was a precious metals commodities broker. His attire was flashy, a loud sport coat and tie over a neatly pressed shirt and slacks. I think the outfit further down terminated with tasseled loafers but I might be imagining that. A few months before I was terminated myself as the building’s manager— I’ll get to that —Cliff moved out but he left plenty behind in his vacated apartment.
For starters his “frost free” refrigerator hadn’t apparently been defrosted since the last ice age. The freezer alone could have supplied enough ice for a hockey rink. But as I entered the bedroom— Cliff had lived in the other one bedroom apartment directly above mine— there was more.
Under his bed were empty pizza boxes, dozens of them stacked on top of each other. I surmised that he never threw one out and when I opened the cabinet beneath the sink in the bathroom I was even more sure of it. A cache of empty shaving cream cans were piled on their sides and formed a pyramid.
I never saw Cliff again and doubt I would have asked him about any of this if I had. The refrigerator took a week to defrost.
Then there was a guy whose name I don’t remember. He was a short timer. He told me he worked at a drug and alcohol rehab facility. I called the place and verified that it was true but within weeks of his moving in I noticed that his mailbox had a note taped on it from the postman informing him that the mailbox was full and he’d have to empty it before any more mail could be delivered.
I knocked on the door of his apartment and getting no answer let myself in. It was empty. He had cleared out. But there was an aroma familiar to me at the time and it still is today although I haven’t smoked weed for half a century. It came from his bathroom. The bathtub was full of stems and seeds from marijuana plants he was likely stripping, packaging and I assume selling; maybe even where he worked.
This guy who whose job was to help people to kick their addictions had a side hustle that I’m sure wasn’t on his resume and involved a possible prison sentence if he had been arrested. In any event if there are eight million stories in the naked city of New York, then add this guy’s, Cliff’s and Denise’s from the City of Angels.
In Adventures Of An Apartment Manager Part #3 I deal with the death of a tenant I’m not sure I could have prevented and the deception by the building’s landlord that allowed him to use a legal loophole that led to an eviction and an evictee’s revenge.
TO BE CONTINUED
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Some Don’t Like It Hot!
Yes, the thermometer in my house here in Maine just read 100 degrees fahrenheit outside. Vacationers and the folks who own summer homes here come to cool off but not today. So I’m reprising a story I wrote two winters ago and hope it might help all of us to cool off. And if you don’t have air conditioning come over to our house…
It’s 5 degrees outside in Camden as I write this. That’s not all that unusual for Maine in February but what truly will be is when the temperature drops by 20 more degrees tonight to -15 with wind gusts of up to 40 mph. That wind chill will feel like -50 if you are foolish enough to want to risk the experience. Our area’s weather alerts for the next 24 hours on weather.com fill an entire page…
The lowest recorded temperature ever for Maine since weather statistics have been kept is -50 without factoring in whatever the wind might have been doing at the time. It was at Big Black River in 2009 near the Canadian border. Canadians might crack a smile hearing that. The lowest temperature ever recorded there was -63 celsius— -81 fahrenheit —in 1947 in Snag, Yukon. They might be able to crack their pants too.
If it’s said during a heat wave that it’s hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, then how about this! A couple years ago when a polar vortex dropped temperatures in Minnesota to -30 degrees, you could literally freeze your pants off. Well, actually you took them off first…
Post Spoiler Alert… You soak the pants in water and then hang them on a clothesline and supposedly they become ice sculpture quickly.
But everything is relative. And when Jo and I lived in Los Angeles and the temperature hovered around 50, her walking group would declare it too cold to bundle up and venture out of their homes. Wool jackets and down vests come out of the closet in LA when temps reach the low 60s. Hey, it’s 61 in my office at the moment. Our upstairs heat pump’s output doesn’t quite reach here and yes, I am wearing a sweater.
I sure know the coldest I’ve ever been and it was just a few hours from where I’m sitting. ABC News correspondent Brian Rooney and I were in Canada in the middle of winter in a hamlet— I don’t think I’ve ever written the word before —in New Brunswick called Plaster Rock.
It was 2009 and this small village had come up with an idea for a weekend event they called The World Pond Hockey Championships. Hundreds of aging amateur hockey players came to relive their childhood and compete as four man teams on a lake that was outfitted with a couple dozen small rinks.
The village was remote and Rooney had a great line in his script about that, writing that Plaster Rock’s location “being so deep in the woods they had to pump in light.” Lodging was not easy to find on Pond Hockey weekend and we ended up staying in a log cabin with a team from the Cayman Islands who presented us with a challenge.
On the dining room table was a giant bottle that contained enough rum that if it had been gasoline we could have likely driven back across the border to the U.S. with just its contents in the tank. And it was made clear to us right away that we were obligated to join the expat Canadian Caymanites in getting the other kind of tanked to help them empty that bottle— call it a request for a Pond Hockey assist.
Just to demonstrate the attraction and commitment to this event that teams felt I asked a question of one of our lodge mates…
Me: Are there any hockey rinks in the Cayman Islands?”
Caymanite: “No.”
Me: “Then how do you practice?”
Caymanite: “We fly to Miami.”
Just how cold was it? Well, it was the only story I ever produced where we walked on and not across a frozen river to get to it. And when it came time for the championship game I made a bad decision.
I had a small video camera and when I saw a cherry picker was available to raise those of us who wanted a bird’s eye view to see and record the game, I joined a couple others and was raised high above the rink. This also elevated us above the tree line and I discovered there was a strong wind that hadn’t been that noticeable on the ground where I had left Rooney and my crew filming below.
Quickly, my sunglasses’ lenses froze over and after I removed them so did my eyelids. But I got the shot I wanted. The only problem was we weren’t going to be lowered back on the ground until all of us got the shots we wanted. When we did and were lowered down I could have passed for a cardboard cutout.
How cold was it? As the game was winding down, our story’s real cameraman told me he didn’t dare stop shooting and needed to let the videotape in the camera keep moving and recording or else it would likely freeze up. He was a Canadian and ought to know. Luckily, he had enough tape left so we were able to capture the award ceremony and the victors— Canadian expats from Boston —hoisting a wooden replica of the NHL’s Stanley Cup. Oh, and the Cayman Islands team didn’t finish anywhere near the top but did finish the rum.
Since we did our story the World Pond Hockey Championships have continued to be what one sports writer called “a hockey player’s pilgrimage to Mecca.”
Here’ a link to our ABC News story…
And if that didn’t help cool you off, here’s one from Ella…
Adventures Of An Apartment Manager #3
Everything seemed normal until she was reading the contract. Her car had passed my inspection for neatness and she was employed at a nearby veterinary hospital. But as she held the papers she was about to sign, I noticed the horizontal scars on both her wrists. One might have been an accident. Two immediately registered as something else. I thought red flag!
As she filled out her information she paused. “I’m putting my boyfriend’s parents as who to contact in case of an emergency.” I thought Ok, maybe she had problems with her own parents, though It also struck me as strange since she had just told me that he wasn’t her boyfriend anymore. She had unfurled a second red flag and both would hang in my mind.
She signed the contract and moved into what had been Jim’s apartment— the first guy I had rented a unit to when I took over as manager of the building. I rarely saw her after that. About a month later the ex boyfriend’s parents called one evening and wanted to know if I had seen her recently. I told them no. They asked if her car was there. I went and checked and it was parked in its space under the building.
The boyfriend’s parents: “She hasn’t been to work for five days. We’re coming over.”
We agreed that I’d wait for them and that we should go check her apartment together. There was no response when we knocked on the door and inside when I opened it and turned on the light we saw the phone had been unplugged from the wall. Moments later I plugged it back in and called 911.
I hadn’t missed the signs but was there anything I should or could have done differently? Was it my responsibility to have tried?
After the coroner left and the body was taken away the owner asked me if I was up to cleaning up the bathroom where she had slit her wrists again and I foolishly agreed to. A week later when I opened the door to the bathroom while showing a prospective tenant the apartment I realized I hadn’t cleaned up quite enough. Streaks of blood had reappeared in the sink.
I’m sure the owner of the building wasn’t the worst landlord in Los Angeles but I didn’t feel comfortable around him. Usually, I only saw him once a month when he stopped by to pick up the rent checks.
Then one hot Southern California summer afternoon he showed up unexpectedly and asked me to accompany him with the master key. As we went around the building he put his ear to each unit’s door. Utilities were included in the rents and he was listening for the sound of air conditioners. If one was on, he’d knock and if someone answered and came to the door, I’d introduce landlord and tenant and we’d move on. If there was no answer and he could hear an air conditioner running, I’d unlock the door and the owner would enter the apartment and turn it off.
If this sounds illegal, it might have been but even if it was, I’m doubtful it would have resulted in any successful legal challenge.
The surprise inspection happened only once during my tenure as apartment manager— I was never asked to do one myself —and our unannounced tour resulted in one renter’s eviction. I had never been inside a few of the apartments of the tenants who had lived in them for years and when we let ourselves into John’s I was amazed and the owner started swearing.
John wasn’t there but his air conditioner was running full blast and likely needed to be. The array of items turned on and sucking electricity shorted the landlord’s own circuitry. His eyes could have been the spinning fruits on a slot machine and they weren’t stopping.
John seemed like a quiet guy and I knew virtually nothing about him. It appeared he had equipped himself to be able to monitor every law enforcement radio transmission in the country while simultaneously searching for extraterrestrial life in the universe. John had created what looked like a wing of NASA’s Mission Control in a tiny apartment in Sherman Oaks.
It was then I learned about the loophole in Los Angeles County’s rental law that existed then and I wouldn’t be surprised if it still does. It provided a way to force John to move out by permitting an owner of a rental property to place a family member at any time in one unit of that property even if it meant evicting a tenant for no other reason.
A few days later the owner showed up with an elderly man and informed John that he would have to vacate because his father needed an apartment. What happened next was an act of a retribution I had to applaud even though it made unpleasant work for me.
When a tenant left an apartment, a cleaning service would come in and restore it to rentability. Sometimes that meant a new carpet. It could mean a fresh coat of paint and one time that even included repainting a “cottage cheese” ceiling; you know the ones that have the tiny bumps and do bear a resemblance to the dairy product. The tenant who left was a heavy smoker and the nicotine and tar that had covered the bumps made them look like the ceiling had come down with the chicken pox.
By now as an experienced apartment manager, I shouldn’t have been surprised that mild mannered John had taken his revenge. The cleaning crew— two college girls —knocked on my door to be let into John’s apartment and knocked again barely a half hour later. One of them pointed to the other and informed me that her friend’s mother had been rushed to the hospital and they would have to leave. When I went into the apartment myself I understood why they were lying.
Yes, the rug was stained and the walls would need patching and repainting but that was the least of it. Trashed was an inadequate description. The place had been vandalized.
Among the highlights was the garbage disposal I saw I was going to have to replace. In the kitchen sink were the nuts and bolts that were leftover after John had halfway filled the thing with others and turned it on. I did too and heard what it must have sounded like as John choked it— think a symphony of dental drills.
The bathtub may have been his tribute to the Rolling Stones. He had painted it black. But the air conditioner still functioned and all the electronic apparatus was gone. And of course the landlord’s father never moved in.
A few months later I got my own order to pack up and leave. This time the owner had a nephew who had a girlfriend and this time, as far as I know, they did move in. My career as an apartment manager was over. My ex and I were able to buy a house not long afterward and not far away. It didn’t have a garbage disposal and I never installed one.
What did I learn from the experience of being an apartment manager? I’ve never actually thought much about it until culling my memories to write these pieces. Now, I have a strange realization. I certainly was an unwitting observer to a range of human behavior I might not otherwise have ever seen that permitted me to know intimate things about people who I didn’t really know well at all. In the apartments there were pieces of these people’s lives like those of a puzzle I could try to put together. In one case I uncovered very sad ones.
I rented to a tenant who was about my own age at the time. He stayed in one of the small studios for a few months. I don’t think he ever really settled in and he left only a mattress behind on the floor. When I lifted it, there were dozens of tiny folded scraps of paper underneath it. I opened one up and it read, “Please make my father love me.” And then another, “Please help me feel better.” All were little prayers asking for love and strength and guidance. All that I knew about him before was that he had a clean car and he was employed as a paralegal.
I do some repairs at our home here in Maine. The garbage disposal in our house has worked for 15 years but I have the very good fortune of having made friends with a master carpenter who worked for us each of the times we have pursued remodeling projects. He said he liked working at our place because we left him alone and offered to fix stuff or do small projects for us when needed.
In very Maine fashion he put it this way…
“If it’s something I think I can do, I’ll do it. If I can’t, I won’t.”
So far I am happy to say that it appears he can do anything!
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