by Ross, Fran
JESUS THE CARPENTER
The purpose of this quiz is to find out what you know about Jesus as an ordinary laborer. Did he do good work? [For the teacher’s edition, James planned to add his educator’s joke for the day: “Did Jesus know his adz from his elbow?”] Pretend you are a citizen of old Galilee, and answer the following questions:
1. How would you rate Jesus on over-all workmanship?
( ) A balmalocha ( ) Good ( ) Fair ( ) All thumbs
2. Do you have to wait in for him all day?
( ) Yes ( ) No ( ) Sometimes
3. Are his hourly rates
( ) high ( ) average ( ) a bargain?
4. Does he have good work habits?
( ) Yes ( ) No ( ) Can’t say
5. Is he good at Jewing-down [mental note of James: “Change this phrase in final draft”] his suppliers and thereby passing on a savings to you?
( ) Yes ( ) No
6. In cleaning up after a job, how does he rate on a scale of 1 to 10 in which 1 = You could eat off the floor and 10 = Very messy?
Insert number here:______
7. Does he render bills promptly?
( ) Yes ( ) No
8. Would you hire him again?
( ) Yes ( ) No
James, a memory
James grinned. He was thinking now about his childhood. His earliest memory was of the day his family and the Butlers left the village of Gladstone to go North. The village idiot had waved at them and smiled his sweet but dumb smile. Little James’s parents never tired of talking about their adventures in Gladstone.
Gladstone was blessed not only with a village idiot but with a village moron and a village imbecile. They were brothers. Each day they would go to their jobs on the village green. The people of Gladstone felt that it was good for the three boys to work outdoors. The fresh air would do them good. In bad weather, the village moron, with his superior intelligence (IQ 53), could be seen herding his less advantaged brothers and co-workers in out of the rain and under the lean-to that the village had built for them with the proceeds of the triquarterly fish fry and census.
The Gladstonites liked to see what—or, rather, who—was new every nine months. The fish fry was an important part of this head counting, since it was the testing ground for determining which proportion of which kind of fish would give the greatest boost to the fertility curve of Gladstone. Some Gladstonites felt that the matter was already settled, that a 3:1 ratio of porgies to smelts had given sufficient proof of its power back in the summer of 1906. Others plumped for a 5:4:3½ mixture of mackerel, cod, and striped bass or—six of one, half a dozen of the other—an 8:7 blend of smelts and catfish, pointing to the fact that census-taking methods in 1906 were somewhat hit-or-miss and that the years of their compounds, 1907 and 1908, had each been only one off the high-water mark. These latter factions, countered the porgy-smelt bloc, could talk all they wanted, but they could not argue with the record book. It was infantile to deny the part their formula had played in the Baby Boom of Aught Six.
By 1919, the total population of Gladstone—not counting the Butlers and the Clarks, who were leaving and who, technically, lived on the outskirts of the restricted and segregated village, but counting the three village dogs—was twelve. The nine people included Josh and Lettie Jones, who were the parents and next-door neighbors of Jed Jones and his wife-sister Maybelle, who were the parents and next-door neighbors of Jody Jones and his wife-sister Lulu, who were responsible for the Baby Boom of Aught Six and also the boomlets of 1907 and 1908. It was Jody and Lulu who, in 1906, had produced twins Clyde and Claude, who were, respectively, the village imbecile and idiot. In 1907, Clarence I was born but succumbed to the croup at three months. In 1908, Clarence II, the pride and joy of the Jones family, was born. Although he was the youngest, Clarence II’s natural ability soon evidenced itself. From shoe tying to vacant staring, he was more adept at age nine than Clyde or Claude would ever be.
Clarence II led his older brothers to the green each morning, sat them in their spots in the middle of the sward, made sure they had all their materials, and settled next to Clyde. The brothers made moccasins, at the rate of one-half a day. They made only one size (ladies’ 6½B) and for the left foot only. Lulu, their mother-aunt, undid their output every day, but it kept them off the streets. At first it was thought that Claude, the idiot, would hold the others back in any joint endeavor, since all he could do well was drool. But drooling turned out to be an important aspect of moccasin production. While Clyde and Clarence II stared into space waiting for the production line to gain momentum, Claude began chewing and drooling on the piece of leather Lulu put in his mouth on the way to the green each morning. This drooling-chewing process softened the leather, which had become hard and stiff after drying out from the previous day’s drooling-chewing, so that Claude’s twin brother could more easily fold and crease it in four places and hand it on to Clarence II, who would stitch through the holes that his mother-aunt had punched for him, totally absorbed as he shoved and hauled on the leather thong tied to the small stick.
By the time Clarence II got halfway around with his stitching, the clock in the church tower, had there been a church with a tower with a clock, would have struck three. As it was, the only way to tell it was three o’clock was that the town drunk, Jed Jones, grandfather and great-uncle of the Jones boys, would come stumbling toward the one tree on the village green, would circle around the two-year-old sapling in confusion, and, thinking he was lost in the woods, begin sobbing uncontrollably. Whereupon, all the village Joneses would stop whatever they were doing, look up, and say, “Jed’s lost. Must be nigh onto three o’clock.” For Lulu, it was time to go pick up her three children-nephews-craftsmen.
James had heard this story about Gladstone and the Jones boys at least one and a half times. And at least that often he had wondered what had happened to the porgy-smelt bloc. And the mackerel-cod-bass people—his favorites—what of them? No matter. He would never forget Claude’s incoherent little wave and smile as the Butlers and the Clarks left town. Outsiders, numb to nuance, often ascribed more intelligence to Claude’s smile than he was, by Stanford-Binet standards, entitled to. “Look at that moron grin,” a wagonload of Jukes once said as they went creaking and kallikaking past the village green. But it could not be doubted that this scion of Virginia aristocracy had the family smile. It was rumored that Claude and his brothers were related on both sides—that is to say, on one side—to the Randolphs. Thinking of little Claude, James daily reproduced the patrician simper of one of the F.F.V.
How James’s affliction affected Helen
“I don’t have eppes an idea of how to support my children,” Helen said as she sat down to assess her situation after the breakup with Samuel. “How long can we go on living on the proceeds from Daddy’s backlist? It would be an averah if I can’t get up off my rusty-dusty and come up with an idea for making some heavy gelt.” Her monologue over, she listed her talents on a piece of paper:
1. Mimicry
2. Making head equations
3. Singing
4. Piano playing
As far as she knew, there was no great call for black female impressionists. (“And now, my impression of James Cagney showing Mae West how to do the buck-and-wing.” Cagney: Tappety-tap, tappety-tap. Mae West: Humpety-hump, humpety-hump. Cagney: “You, you, you dirty rat—I said the buck-and-wing!”) As for her head equations, she refused to commercialize them. Operating on numbers 3 and 4 were all the pluses and minuses of cliche, but she picked number 4.
As she began practicing, her head equation was:
88BW = ∞ M + R
where B = black keys (or Helen’s folly), reminders
W = white keys (or Samuel’s head), poundings
M = Money, dollars
R = road, years
3 Helenic Letters
The first letters
When Christine was a year old and Jimmie C. a baby, Helen began sending them letters, which Louise read to them.
The letters always said the same thing:
Chicago [or wherever]
Dear Kids—
Mommy misses you and sends you ∞ love.
Louise sometimes read “∞ love” as “lazy-eight love” and sometimes as “scribble love,” until Helen, home on one of her rare visits, straightened her out. Then she read it as “infanty love,” thinking it was a special term for babies.
The children paid no attention to Helen’s letters.
When Christine was three and Jimmie C. two, Helen’s letters read:
Pittsburgh [or wherever]
Mommy would give anything to just stay at home and take care of her precious babies.
One day, Christine looked up from her coloring book (a leftover copy of her grandfather’s best-selling Esau Gets a Shave) and snatched the letter from her grandmother’s hand. Louise let the child play with the letter and went into the kitchen to prepare sop buntut Djakarta. Christine stared at the letter for some time, then, carefully selecting her Crayolas (a huge set that boasted exotic colors like red, green, and blue as well as the standard mauve, puce, chartreuse, and oregano), she composed a reply:
Helen made a moue of wry appreciation when she got her daughter’s letter, wrote her by return mail that intentional mirror writing had gone out with Leonardo, and began sending the kids letters about her own childhood remarkable for their Helenic this and that.
Selected excerpts from Helen’s letters to her children: the first twelve years
Minneapolis
Kindergarten! The smell of finger paints at George Brooks Elementary School: wet plaster going sour. Every afternoon at two, we would have a container of piss-warm milk and three graham crackers. Every afternoon at fourteen minutes after two, Roselle Morgan would spit up. We left a big space around her and went to sleep on our little rag rugs, our little noses twitching like rabbits’, our tender sinuses cleared.
Des Moines
My first boyfriend was a nayfish named Roger. I sat next to him in Miss Barton’s first-grade class. One day Roger said to me, “Malvina is my girlfriend. I like Malvina.” I looked at Malvina, the most beautiful first-grader in America. “Frankly, I don’t see what you see in her,” I lied. “Why don’t you like me instead?” “Okay,” he agreed, and I took him home with me for lunch. Louise made coq au vin that day, as I recall. Roger asked for a peanut butter sandwich, which he dipped in that divine sauce. A chaloshes! I dropped him at recess the next day and gave him back to Malvina.
Boston
Time: World War II. Place: Mrs. Dannenbaum’s room, Shoemaker Junior High School. As the scene opens, the students are singing patriotic songs.
“We’re the Seabees of the Navy. We can build and we can fight!”
“. . . oh, nothing can stop the Army Air Corps—except the Seabees.”
Mrs. Dannenbaum’s husband was a Seabee.
San Francisco
TV? Feh! In my day we had THE MOVIES! In our old neighborhood in West Philadelphia, we had the Cross Keys, the Nixon, the State, the Belmont, the Mayfair, and—bedbuggiest of all—the good old Haverford, affectionately known as the Dump. At the Dump, we ate until we thought we would plotz. Do they still make Grade A’s, Baby Ruth, Payday, Milk Duds, Rally, Hershey (with and without almonds), Butterfinger, Tootsie Rolls, Jujyfruits, Mr. Goodbar, Oh Henry, Raisinets, Good and Plenty, Dots, Milk Shake, Sno-Caps, Goobers, Chuckles, Hershey’s Kisses, Nestlé’s Crunch, and Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews? Mounds, Almond Joy, polly seeds, candy corn, candy buttons, candy-in-the-tin-fluted-cups-with-the-little-tin-spoon, Mary Janes? What about jelly apples, wax lips, fudgicles, ice cream cake?
For eleven cents we could see a double feature, five cartoons, a serial, and a footrace. We had cowboys like “Wild Bill” Elliott, Johnny Mack Brown, Bob Steele, Don “Red” Barry, Tim McCoy, Tim Holt. I can’t relate to a generation that thinks that the real Tarzan is Gordon Scott. We had the only real Tarzan—Johnny Weissmuller—and Jane and Cheetah and Boy. (The guys in the background saying “Ooga-booga” were jazz musicians who didn’t have a gig that week.) We had Maria Montez and Jon Hall, Sabu and Turhan Bey. We had Spy Smasher. But best of all, we had Perils of Nyoka, known to the neighborhood kids, of course, as Pearls.
Every week we’d leave Nyoka, Queen of the Jungle, and her boyfriend Larry in a mess, honey—they were sure to die. We’d rush to the Dump the next Saturday—and the episode would start practically in the middle of the previous week’s chapter. That way, only half the new chapter was really new. As for the “impossible” situation—a nebbech would have sneered at it. Something would always be added that hadn’t been shown the week before. Suppose old Nyoka was in a room with steel spikes sticking out of the walls. Suppose the room was getting smaller and smaller. Suppose you knew she was about to be iron-maidened to death. The next week the spikes would be about as close as Camden, New Jersey, when Larry, who was supposed to be in Camden (or thereabouts), would rush in, throw a piece of bubble gum into the machinery—and away all spikes. We fell for this week after week.
Then there was the footrace—a short feature of a ridiculous cross-country race with a lot of wildly dressed, scrocky-looking competitors cheating their way toward the finish line. When you first went into the Dump, you got a stub with a number on it. If your number matched the number of the nerd who won the race, you got a prize—a bicycle or something. Nobody I knew ever won anything. The movie manager’s son opened a bicycle shop on his fourteenth birthday. He was found Schwinned to death on the day after his fourteenth birthday.
Aside from the Scheherazade Perplex (Maria-Jon-Turhan-Sabu), over the years I had two movie idols: Jane Powell and Barbara Stanwyck (weep, Yma Sumac, over the range of Helen Clark!). I could be as moved by Song of the Open Road as by The Strange Love of Martha Ivers; by Rich, Young, and Pretty, A Date with Judy, Luxury Liner, and Small Town Girl as by Double Indemnity and Sorry, Wrong Number. Nu, what moves you kids? Road Runner and Coyote!
Wapshot-on-the-Chronicle, Mass.
What ever happened to Toughie Brasuhn?
Baltimore
I wonder if the sign I used to see on Spruce Street is still there? It read: LITTLE FRIENDS DAY SCHOOL. I always expected a bunch of dwarf Quakers to run out of the building.
Denver
Scene: Overbrook High School homeroom. Brenda Schaeffer is telling her classmates Arlene Melnick and Helen Clark about her weekend. How she and her family were invited for Friday-night dinner to the home of a business acquaintance of her father. How at this house, a little old lady with the burning eyes of a fanatic was lighting candles. How this same L.O.L., when she lit the candles, did this also. (She demonstrates for Arlene and Helen, drawing her arms toward herself over the imaginary flame of the imaginary candle.) “Now, what was that all about?” says Brenda, daughter of the biggest pretzel maker in Wynnefield (it was her sacred duty to provide free pretzels for all her friends’ pajama parties). Arlene shakes her head like an ignorant shiksa. It is left for Helen the shvartze to explain to these apikorsim the tradition of the shabbes candles. “Oh,” says Brenda, her curiosity quenched, her religiosity quashed, “I just thought it was some weird European way of warming your hands.”
Cincinnati
My Worst School Assignment: Mr. Storch, criminally insane English teacher, told our class that we should get to know our city more intimately. “I volunteer to fuck Market Street,” whispered Joey Hershkowitz, class clown. This was my assignment: to do a first-hand report on all the statues in center city, from river to river, from Vine to Pine. Yes, he did mean first hand. Yes, “river to river” did refer to our beloved Schuylkill and our renowned Delaware. Yes, Vine Street is not exactly cheek by jowl with Pine Street. Yes, it was the dead of winter. Yes, I did freeze my kishkas. Yes, Storch is probably still at large in the Philadelphia school system.
New York
Advantages Philadelphia Has Over New York: Fairmount Park (more than four times bigger and better than Central Park). The park’s colonial houses: Strawberry Mansion,
Lemon Hill, Belmont Mansion. The weeping cherry trees of George’s Hill, the Playhouse in the Park, Robin Hood Dell. Hoagies (more than four times better than heroes). Steak sandwiches (they don’t make them here the way they do at home: layers of paper-thin beef smothered in grilled onions; melted cheese, optional; catsup, yet another option!). People who wait for you to get off the subway before they try to get on. Smoking on the subway platform. Row houses. The Philadelphia Orchestra. Mustard pretzels with mustard (in New York—would you believe?—they sell mustard pretzels plain). Red and white police cars so you can shout, “Look out, the red devil’s coming!”
Things I Miss About Philadelphia That Are Long Gone: Woodside Amusement Park. The Mastbaum movie theater. The Chinese Wall. Schuylkill Punch (no soup in the country is as chunky, as stick-to-your-ribs as the witches’ brew we called water). The raspy spiel of a huckster named Jesus.
Detroit
We have had two ashtrays for as long as I can remember. One says: Honi soit qui mal y pense. The other one is my favorite. It says: De robe flétrie/nul ne souci. The flêtrie ashtray is off-white ceramic. Two brown slashes at each of the corners accent the four depressions for cigarettes. Rounded red and green leaves sprig each of the four rim sections. The message is on the floor of the ashtray; it is painted in two lines in brown handwriting. Another sprig of rounded red and green leaves is just under the words. Touch it, children, and think of me.
