Buffalo Gal

by Laura Pedersen

  When we finally sat down to dinner, I noticed, among other things, that Welch’s strawberry jam was substituting for cranberries. And when I said, “Please pass the rolls,” I was told there weren’t any.

  Defiantly, Mom looked around the table and asked, “Does anyone else want rolls?” She had the inflection of an interrogator trying to get the suspects to give up the location of HQ.

  The guests vigorously shook their heads no while busily rearranging the turkey on their plates, and conversation fell into a coma. Aunt Sue finally broke the tension by saying, “I think I read somewhere that rolls are bad for you.”

  The next day, the Buffalo News carried a big article reporting that the art world was going gaga over sculpture and paintings produced by the mentally ill, dubbed “Art by the Insane” at the time. (Nowadays it is titled the politically correct catchall “Outsider Art.”) And some of it was fetching prices that were utterly insane. Mom was ecstatic that something had finally gone her way. She even turned the heat back up.

  We went to church the following Sunday, and perhaps it did some good because all Mom’s New Year’s resolutions eventually came true. She no longer has the worst car in the parking lot, she eventually retired without losing her job, and ever since I moved out of the house, the ring around the bathtub has gone for good.

  Thirty

  In All Probability

  Although I didn’t know exactly what a Wall Street trader did before visiting the stock exchange, in retrospect there were a number of clues that I’d become one. Dad started me collecting coins back when I was four or five. He elaborated on the art and science of being a numismatist—the various mint marks, design changes throughout the years, how pennies were made of silver during World War II, and why coins containing mistakes were especially valuable.

  However, waiting fifty years while a 1945 Lincoln cent minted in San Francisco doubled in value was too long a timeline for me. Much more interesting was the stock market, where a new issue worth twenty-five cents might trade at five dollars a week later. I’d noticed the same thing could happen with metals. Gold was three hundred dollars per ounce, and I certainly couldn’t afford that. Silver was only ten dollars an ounce, and so whenever I had some cash, I’d invest in a bar or two. Little did I know it was the start of the greatest silver boom since Mark Twain had moved west to seek his fortune as a miner back in

  the 1860s.

  During the government gold auction of 1979, demand was greater than expected. The second energy crisis brought with it a new round of double-digit inflation, and bullion prices went through the roof. Silver rocketed from ten dollars an ounce to fifty, further fueled by Arabs purchasing silver in bulk with freshly minted petrodollars and an attempted takeover of the market by the Hunt brothers of Texas.

  I sold some of my stockpile near the top, signaled by the immigrants in Buffalo delivering heirloom tea sets, the only thing they’d managed to bring from the Old Country, to the smelter, solely for the value of the metal. But I didn’t sell all of it, and that was my first lesson in trading—what goes up can go down, and at a substantially faster rate than it went up. The market crashed within a few months. I also learned that when a market is plummeting, everyone is a seller.

  Every summer, Dad and I left for our two-week Long Island pilgrimage to visit Grandpa Hjalmar, who was now in his eighties, though in excellent shape. He wore aviator sunglasses, still drove a bronze Camaro, swam in the ocean every morning from June until September, and juggled calls from women all day long.

  Grandpa would drive an hour from his home in Huntington to meet us in Hampton Bays, where we’d rent a condo and spend most of our time at the beach, or shooting pool when it rained. In the evening, Dad and Grandpa barbecued, and between the smoke from their steaks, Dad’s cigarettes, and Grandpa’s cigars, it’s amazing the fire department wasn’t called out. At night, my objective was to fall asleep before the two smokers did, since they could take the roof off with their snoring.

  The world was much more tolerant toward smokers back then, even if my mother was not. They could puff away in movie theaters, restaurants, malls, and on airplanes. Basically, the only place they couldn’t smoke was in the rooms and corridors of a hospital, though the visitors’ lounge was fine. The world was their ashtray.

  In Hampton Bays we had a neighbor named Bill Reese who was in his seventies and comfortably retired. Most of his career had been spent working on the floor of the American Stock Exchange. Bill and I would sit on the veranda for hours and talk about the market. He explained how to determine where a stock was headed based on price movement and volume, rather than what was going on with the company. Bill also taught me how to dive off the end of the dock, not a bad thing to know if eventually heading for Wall Street.

  One day when I was fourteen years old, I shared with Bill my plan to catch a train into Manhattan and head over to the visitors’ gallery of the New York Stock Exchange. He suggested stopping at the American Stock Exchange and handed me a note with the names of some of his old cronies.

  There were six people on the list that I presented to the guard. Two were dead, which should have been a clue right there that I was interested in a dangerous business. Three were retired. And the last one the guard wasn’t able to find. Just as I was about to leave, the son of the man we couldn’t find showed up at the door because he had heard a page and shared the name, Joe Petta, with his father. (Back then if someone yelled Joey, Louie, or Vinnie on the floor of the AMEX, twenty guys looked up.)

  Anyway, Joe gave me an oversized broker’s jacket to cover my shorts and escorted me down onto the trading floor. A huge, neon green ticker tape crawled across the walls high above us, and the latest business news scrolled down a large board next to it. People were shouting, arguing, signaling, and generally racing around like maniacs, a few taking large bites of sandwiches as they scurried past. Suddenly one would stop, look up toward the balcony, cup a hand to the side of his mouth, and let fly what must be akin to a wild-moose mating call. It was glorious! I wanted to return as soon as possible.

  My school offered an elective class on economics, but it was very basic, along the lines of “What is a stock?” During sophomore year of high school, I rode my bike to the nearby University of Buffalo and asked the admissions office if I might take economics classes there. They said no because I didn’t have a high school diploma, which was required for entrance.

  However, I was determined to treat the word no as a request for more information. What did they have to lose, I politely asked the woman. I was willing to pay my way. If I flunked out then that was that. And no matter what happened, I wasn’t a matriculated student and couldn’t ruin any of their published statistics.

  Eventually I was granted provisional acceptance and signed up for macroeconomics. The class was great, though the Indian teacher was a bit difficult to understand. He’d put scads of numbers on the board and then tell us to “dehttermine” the answer. I’d taken algebra and geometry, but this appeared to be some fancy logarithm he was after, one I hadn’t yet been taught. When I glanced around the room, sixty other faces looked equally perplexed. After a few classes it hit us that he wanted us to “determine” the answer.

  Oh, and he loved shoes. We’re talking all-out fetishist. Every

  single supply-and-demand example involved thousands of shoes changing hands, or feet, as the case may be. Being from India, maybe he didn’t approve of the traditional economics examples of guns and butter—perhaps guns were reminiscent of colonialism and butter off-limits as a by-product of the sacred cow.

  Thirty-One

  Home Alone

  My parents seem to have borrowed most of their child-rearing procedures directly from nature—training the offspring to be independent and self-sufficient as early as possible. Mom and Dad wanted me capable of feeding, dressing, and transporting myself at an early age, not so much as a reprieve for themselves, but because this was in my own best interest. Same with personal safety.

 
Back when Dad was in basic training, before heading off to Korea, they taught him hand-to-hand combat, along with the art of digging foxholes. As I was an only child and Mom was going back to school to start a career, it became clear to Dad early on that I would be alone in our house more and more as the years passed. So he decided some self-defense classes were in order.

  Though we lived in a sleepy suburb, strange things were known to happen. Occasionally there’d be a string of robberies, or kids playing in the nearby woods would stumble across a dead body. There were mental hospitals and prisons in the area, and patients and inmates would occasionally escape.

  Dad’s first piece of advice if I found myself in a dangerous situation was to simply get out of the house as fast as possible and run for help. We are not a family that goes looking for fights and danger in general, much preferring a quiet room, a good book, and a chocolate bar. In fact, young Pedersens are built for fleeing, with the long, lean bodies that track teams covet. We’re built for speed, not comfort, as declared in the Pedersen family motto: This body may not be much to look at, but it sure does work. This is fine for a girl, so long as at age thirty-six you don’t mind having lifeguards at water parks yelling, “Hey, mister, take off your shirt!”

  So Dad made it clear that if I ever heard anyone entering the house, I should be in the business of exiting the house through a door or window, whatever was closest. Phone calls to the police could be made from the home of a neighbor. Don’t hide under the bed or in a closet, don’t try to prevent a crime, just get out!

  However, there might be a time when I’d come face-to-face with a criminal and not be able to escape, such as if I was sleeping or doing something in the basement and the exit was blocked. Dad showed me three ways that a young girl could attack a large man with her bare hands. Thinking kickboxing and karate, I assumed Dad was going to take me out back and teach me chops and feints.

  No chance, Grasshopper. Dad said the martial arts were fine as hobbies, but eight-year-old, eighty-pound me wasn’t going to be giving any burglar a knockout back-fist blow.

  The first move he taught me involved extending two fingers and driving them directly into an opponent’s windpipe as hard as humanly possible. Without air and a way to breathe, criminals apparently lose their effectiveness. The next maneuver required making one’s hand very flat and then smashing the butt of the palm up under the intruder’s nose. This is rumored to be quite painful and inhibits further motion. It can also result in immediate death. The final self-defense tactic was taking two fingers and poking them directly into the maniac’s eyeballs, creating a Greek tragedy right there in the comfort of your own

  living room.

  Dad was a pacifist and not into guns, knives, and killing in general, but he was well aware of their usefulness in certain situations. We never kept a real gun or bowie knife in the house. He said that most of the time they ended up being used against you. But when I was eight, Dad did provide me with a life-size and properly weighted

  replica of a handgun. He pounded some fishing sinkers into the barrel

  so it appeared to be fully loaded. Even Uncle Jim, who worked as a police reporter, thought the replica was convincing.

  Dad said the best use of the fake gun was to hit someone over the head with it as he walked through the door. But if that wasn’t possible, I shouldn’t pretend to be in a spaghetti Western and point it at the robber using one hand. Instead, Dad showed me how to firmly plant my feet, hold the gun out in front of me with two hands, aim it at the intruder (so he can be sure to see the “bullets”), and then start to shake my hands as if I was having a seizure. Dad says there is nothing more frightening to an adult than a scared kid with a handgun. And at this point, if the intruder has any regard at all for his own life, he will abandon the mission.

  Even though Dad gave me this “gun” to keep in my night-table drawer, his weapon of choice was a wooden baseball bat, which I kept right next to my bed. (I eventually added a carving knife to my cache, thinking that after killing someone it might be necessary to draw and quarter him.)

  Once again, we went out in the backyard, and Dad demonstrated how to conduct oneself when using a baseball bat for self-defense. In my eyes, the obvious move was to bonk someone over the head or let him have it across the chest, as if hitting a line drive, but once again Dad said no.

  The best use of a bat, according to Dad, is to point it forward and drive it directly into the sternum of the opponent as hard as possible, thereby removing the person’s air supply and hopefully sending him over backward and to the ground in the process. (I noticed some crossover here with my mother’s first-aid training, where one always checks the airway and breathing first.)

  Speaking of the sternum, Dad explained that should any of the hand-to-hand combat or batting techniques result in a victim with a bit of fight left in him, once he is on the ground, simply place the heel of a foot on the sternum and step down hard. Dad put his hand on my sternum and pressed ever so slightly, and I could feel the discomfort. (Once again, I was very familiar with the sternum as a result of my mother’s enduring devotion to the Heimlich maneuver.) Unwanted visitor still being pesky? Then place weight on the heel and snap the bone right off. If the person doesn’t die, then at least he’s been put out of the breaking- and-entering business for several weeks.

  Dad reviewed these safety procedures fairly regularly. Occasionally he would decide on a slight modification. Overall, I felt confident that I could protect myself in most any situation. Dad maintained that it had been proven again and again that a small person could overtake a large person, even if the assailant was stronger and carrying a weapon. But the secret lay in not doing any of the things seen in the movies, because the real and most effective ways to kill a person do not make for interesting film footage, and thus are not regularly performed on the silver screen. I took him at his word. The only other defense I knew would have been to try to get the intruder to eat my mother’s pork chops.

  Finally, my skills were put to the test when I was fifteen, a five-foot-nine soccer player with stevedore shoulders and the night radar of a junkyard dog. My room was an armed camp, equipped with baseball bat, fake gun, knife, slingshot, and guard poodle. Dad was living in his apartment a few blocks away, and Mom was working the night shift. It was after midnight, and I’d just crawled into bed with Fifi.

  Some people might think I’d want a rottweiler or a Doberman for protection. But ask any cat burglar who landed in prison and he’ll say a yappy Yorkshire terrier or teacup poodle is basically a criminal’s worst nightmare, barking away from under the couch or bed—can’t get to them, can’t shut them up, can’t hit them, can’t poison them. In fact, poodles are so smart some of them have gone for help. Small dogs are the smoke detectors of household burglary—they sound the first alert so that professional crime fighters can take over.

  I heard the front door rattling, and Fifi and I both leapt up. Could Mom be coming home early from work? Sure, but she had the car and always came in through the garage. Could my friend Mary be coming to sleep over, borrow shampoo, or make a late-night snack? Entirely possible, but she knew where we hid the key and would have been inside by now, poking her head in my bedroom to wake me up.

  The door continued to rattle, and the string of Tibetan bells that hung from the knob jingled as they smacked against it. Even when the door was nudged ever so slightly they tinkled. This was Mom’s contribution to safety. Though I’m pretty sure their original purpose was to keep track of me.

  Grabbing my trusty wooden baseball bat I ran toward the front door. The knob was obviously being jimmied, and as it wobbled, the bells continued to ring. Fifi came to assist, though more for moral support than anything else. At fourteen, her senses were okay but her teeth were a distant memory.

  There was a chair next to the front door on which we kept the newspapers. I climbed on top of it and stood just opposite the door so that when and if it opened I had a clear shot at the intruder’s skull.

&nbs
p; Finally the door was unlocked. The knob turned freely. I went into my windup, took a deep breath, and raised the bat high above my head. The door inched open. A man’s head appeared. I began to lower my bat.

  “Gadzooks!” my father and I both yelled at the exact same moment, me just averting my swing to miss cracking his head wide open.

  “What the heck are you doing?” he asked, more terrified than mad.

  “What the heck are you doing?” I asked. “It’s one o’clock in the morning, and I’m here alone.”

  “I’m stopping to pick up my mail. Is it that late?” he asked and glanced down at his watch. “Betty and I were playing Scrabble and must have lost track of the time.”

  I climbed down from the chair, and we walked into the kitchen where his mail was kept in a pile on the counter. Normally he picked it up after work.

  “You almost killed me,” he said, nerves not quite calmed after such a near miss.

  “You got that right,” I said. “Just like you taught me.”

  The following week I was on my own again when, around nine, the phone rang. It was Dad. He was leaving Betty’s house and wanted to stop by to pick up his mail on the way home. Fifteen minutes later I heard something banging against the front window and thought maybe it was a broken tree branch. Then I heard a man’s voice, “It’s me! I’m coming for the mail!”

  As I walked toward the window in the dining room there was a knock at the front door. Now the voice was coming from the front porch. “It’s me, your father. I’m coming to get the mail!”

  I headed toward the front door and shouted, “All clear!”

  He knocked once more before opening the door and then carefully peered inside before entering.

  Just like in the wild, if human parents do their job correctly, they train their young to displace their elders and become responsible for the future of the tribe.