A student reported to his college's health services office with multiple abrasions and contusions from capsizing his motorcycle, and a bee sting in his throat. The doctor cleaned and disinfected his injuries, washing out gravel as necessary and bandaging as appropriate, and did whatever is done for bee stings in the gullet. He also suggested that in the future the young man ride with his mouth closed.
"I was singing, Doc," his patient explained.
That's motorcycles for you. If you've ever dreamed about flying and wished you could, riding a bike is the nearest experience in real life (or parachuting, probably; I can't answer for that because I've never done it). Motorcycles are, in Marshall McLuhan's phrase, an involving medium. You roll along on a summer day, leaning with every bend in the road. Warm air flows through your clothing and caresses your skin. You feel a delicious chill when you pass a body of water, and the pleasant shock of an unexpected sprinkling of droplets from a lawn-watering system. A motorcyclist experiences a mystical sense of oneness with the world as it glides by.
Then in a second or two everything changes. Gravel or leaves or water on the road, a pothole, a piece of the underpinnings of a car not seen in time, or something unfamiliar in the respiratory tract -- not to mention the things other motorists do -- and the biker is sliding down the road leaving skin on the pavement and thinking about compound fractures.
As the saying goes, "You can always tell a happy bikey by the bugs on his teeth" -- but maybe not for long.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
TAX PARTY
Does anyone but me remember the carnival atmosphere that used to prevail at the South Station Postal Annex in Boston on the night of April 15?
At least a couple of times I found myself dashing for the post office as midnight approached, promising myself never to put it off like this again. Lots of other people were no better than I. The streets and byways in the South Station area looked like the gas lines of 1973, choked with procrastinators' cars trying to get into the tiny parking lot. I seem to remember a band playing somewhere on the premises, balloons and confetti and food, and people sitting on the cement wall that bordered the parking lot -- young guys, mostly, with no particular business there, dangling their feet and watching people come and go.
Inside the post office would be a long line of taxpayers snaking between posts that divided the usually empty and echoing space into lanes. It didn't take long to get through -- the clerk just weighed the envelopes, stamped them, and took your money, and you were on your way. There was probably even a system for weighing and stamping it yourself. I wouldn't have used it. I never understand such things. The postmark machine kept stamping April 15 until everybody and their taxes had finished.
For a bunch of years I did in fact do better and wasn't a participant in the April 15 melee. Then a small business I worked for put off its tax return to the last minute, and I was commissioned to run it to South Station.
No longer did the channel area look like a late-night party -- no band, no gawkers, no balloons. I don't remember anyone outside at all except taxpayers coming and going, matter-of-fact and rather tired. The lines were in place inside; but the postmarking machinery had been updated and now chugged along automatically, changing the date promptly at midnight. If you failed to get to the head of the line by twelve, your postmark was late (anyway, do we believe that the IRS has time to scrutinize everybody's postmark and come after people for being a few hours late?). If your tax return will be dated the following day anyway, you might as well drop it in the mailbox down the street.
At least a couple of times I found myself dashing for the post office as midnight approached, promising myself never to put it off like this again. Lots of other people were no better than I. The streets and byways in the South Station area looked like the gas lines of 1973, choked with procrastinators' cars trying to get into the tiny parking lot. I seem to remember a band playing somewhere on the premises, balloons and confetti and food, and people sitting on the cement wall that bordered the parking lot -- young guys, mostly, with no particular business there, dangling their feet and watching people come and go.
Inside the post office would be a long line of taxpayers snaking between posts that divided the usually empty and echoing space into lanes. It didn't take long to get through -- the clerk just weighed the envelopes, stamped them, and took your money, and you were on your way. There was probably even a system for weighing and stamping it yourself. I wouldn't have used it. I never understand such things. The postmark machine kept stamping April 15 until everybody and their taxes had finished.
For a bunch of years I did in fact do better and wasn't a participant in the April 15 melee. Then a small business I worked for put off its tax return to the last minute, and I was commissioned to run it to South Station.
No longer did the channel area look like a late-night party -- no band, no gawkers, no balloons. I don't remember anyone outside at all except taxpayers coming and going, matter-of-fact and rather tired. The lines were in place inside; but the postmarking machinery had been updated and now chugged along automatically, changing the date promptly at midnight. If you failed to get to the head of the line by twelve, your postmark was late (anyway, do we believe that the IRS has time to scrutinize everybody's postmark and come after people for being a few hours late?). If your tax return will be dated the following day anyway, you might as well drop it in the mailbox down the street.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
SPRING IS SPRUNG
March 21, 2011: It's snowing. That's one of the ways we celebrate spring in these latitudes. In Otter River we have similarly celebrated Palm Sunday, Easter, Mother's Day, and conceivably Memorial Day. I remember a snow shower on May 22, and concern about frost and the newly planted flowers at the cemetery in the last days in the month. I also remember my grandmother expressing concern that the marchers in the Memorial Day parade might faint from the heat -- it had happened, she said.
At the other end of the calendar, we have had frost before the end of August. My father didn't attempt to grow pumpkins, as much we kids wished he would, because, he said, the frost always got them. What kind of growing season is too short for pumpkins? New England pioneered in manufacturing for good reason. By contrast, the year I bought my motorcycle it was 100 degrees on Labor Day. At the family reunion I gave rides to anyone brave enough to accept.
My mother reports seeing snow in Otter River in every month of the year except July -- and frost in July, once. I remember as a child being impressed by a change of temperature of almost 100 degrees within a week or two.
Meteorologists love New England weather for the challenge of trying to figure out what it will do next. The rest of us accept it more or less philosophically, and newcomers get used to it. I remember a woman from Poland taking exception to snowstorms through March and into April, after what had looked like the dawn of gentler weather: "In my country, yes, it is cold in the winter, but when spring comes, it's spring." What must a person from India think when they step out the door into one of those crystal-clear, still days with the thermometer below zero, especially if their car won't start? From Poland as well as India, our weather looks like some kind of mistake.
Today's snow doesn't bother me. How much harm can there be in an inch or two of soggy snow that melts on contact with blacktop? The crocuses and daffodils go about their business, snow notwithstanding. And for a day or two it'll whiten all those dirty snowbanks.
At the other end of the calendar, we have had frost before the end of August. My father didn't attempt to grow pumpkins, as much we kids wished he would, because, he said, the frost always got them. What kind of growing season is too short for pumpkins? New England pioneered in manufacturing for good reason. By contrast, the year I bought my motorcycle it was 100 degrees on Labor Day. At the family reunion I gave rides to anyone brave enough to accept.
My mother reports seeing snow in Otter River in every month of the year except July -- and frost in July, once. I remember as a child being impressed by a change of temperature of almost 100 degrees within a week or two.
Meteorologists love New England weather for the challenge of trying to figure out what it will do next. The rest of us accept it more or less philosophically, and newcomers get used to it. I remember a woman from Poland taking exception to snowstorms through March and into April, after what had looked like the dawn of gentler weather: "In my country, yes, it is cold in the winter, but when spring comes, it's spring." What must a person from India think when they step out the door into one of those crystal-clear, still days with the thermometer below zero, especially if their car won't start? From Poland as well as India, our weather looks like some kind of mistake.
Today's snow doesn't bother me. How much harm can there be in an inch or two of soggy snow that melts on contact with blacktop? The crocuses and daffodils go about their business, snow notwithstanding. And for a day or two it'll whiten all those dirty snowbanks.
Monday, March 7, 2011
DOG ABUSE
A television documentary about guide dogs some years ago showed a dog leading its blind owner through a field crossed with parallel ditches, jumping each ditch with its owner a second or two behind, to illustrate the training of dogs for their owners' specific needs. Presumably, if someone wanted a motorcycle-riding canine for a sensible reason, Seeing Eye could train one from puppyhood for the purpose. When Natalie and I lived in Berkeley, we joked about how convenient it would be if her Seeing Eye German Shepherd could be persuaded to ride my Lambretta so I could drive them home when we met unexpectedly.
At the time, I might or might not have seen You Are What You Eat, a hip and trendy movie circa 1968, which keeps showing a small dog -- one of those white curly things as I remember -- riding on the tank of a Harley-ish bike. I had seen, in a motorcycle parking lot on the Berkeley campus, a young man mount his scooter and gesture to his dog, which jumped onto the floor in front of his feet and happily rode off.
One idle afternoon behind Natalie's apartment on Dwight Way in Berkeley, we decided to try introducing the dog to two-wheeled travel. With the engine running and me in the driver's seat, Natalie lifted the dog in her arms and climbed aboard. I don't speak dog and couldn't see the animal -- it was behind me -- but I could tell that this was not, so to speak, a happy puppy.
I pulled in the clutch and shifted into gear. The dog had heard that clunk many times and knew as well as we did what came next. It shook free of Natalie's grasp, leapt to the ground, bolted up the stairs to the apartment, and betook itself to some favorite safe and comfortable corner. Natalie and I laughed long and loudly, and made no further attempts to make a biker of the poor beast.
At the time, I might or might not have seen You Are What You Eat, a hip and trendy movie circa 1968, which keeps showing a small dog -- one of those white curly things as I remember -- riding on the tank of a Harley-ish bike. I had seen, in a motorcycle parking lot on the Berkeley campus, a young man mount his scooter and gesture to his dog, which jumped onto the floor in front of his feet and happily rode off.
One idle afternoon behind Natalie's apartment on Dwight Way in Berkeley, we decided to try introducing the dog to two-wheeled travel. With the engine running and me in the driver's seat, Natalie lifted the dog in her arms and climbed aboard. I don't speak dog and couldn't see the animal -- it was behind me -- but I could tell that this was not, so to speak, a happy puppy.
I pulled in the clutch and shifted into gear. The dog had heard that clunk many times and knew as well as we did what came next. It shook free of Natalie's grasp, leapt to the ground, bolted up the stairs to the apartment, and betook itself to some favorite safe and comfortable corner. Natalie and I laughed long and loudly, and made no further attempts to make a biker of the poor beast.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
HE DID WHAT?? THINGS I WOULDN'T HAVE THOUGHT ANYONE COULD DO
I
The train sat in the old Harvard Square station, thinking about moving. Just as the bell rang, a young man with a large suitcase in each hand started down the stairs leading to the platform, in a very great hurry. He didn't even slow down as he approached the turnstiles. Holding the suitcases high enough to clear, he gave a mighty leap; cleared the turnstiles; landed still running; and flung himself into the train just as the doors were closing.
II
Justin was about fourteen. We were leaving for school, running late. This wasn't unusual. He hopped down the stairs, one shoe on his foot, the other in his hand. This, with variations, wasn't unheard-of either. It was sort of raining -- misting and dripping, and the front walk was damp. Not wanting to get his sock wet, Justin hopped down the walk to the gate.
The chain-link fence was about three feet high; the gate closed with a horseshoe-shaped latch that hinged down to embrace the fencepost. Justin usually, in one smooth, graceful, and noisy motion, kicked the latch up and the gate open. My position was, "Justin, do you have to do that?" Apparently, he did.
On that soggy morning, Justin hopped up to the fence and considered the available ways of opening the gate. He denies adapting the Crane Kick from one of the Karate Kid movies, much as it looked like it; he also says that he tried his method again a day or two later to establish that he really could do this, that it hadn't been a fluke. He jumped up and, in one smooth, graceful, and noisy motion, with the foot he had been standing on, kicked the gate open and came down on the same foot, crouching low, but without dropping the shoe, putting his foot down, or losing his balance. "I don't lose my balance," he commented.
III
And then there was a former associate of a friend of my first husband. Six feet eight inches tall, I think Ray said he was -- think of Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey in The Green Mile. The local junkyard stacked car engines against the back wall of the lot; Ray's friend would reach over the wall and literally and figuratively lift engines.
***
The consensus on the subway platform (I wasn't there but was told about it by someone who was) was that the traveler with the suitcases must have been a trained athlete -- track, presumably, a broad-jumper or hurdler, or possibly a pole vaulter. He must have been sure that he could clear the turnstiles, suitcases and all; he could have been badly hurt if he'd miscalculated. It's safe to conjecture that he really needed to catch that train.
Justin had had some martial arts training and watched Bruce Lee movies intently and analytically. He'd done a lot of kicking and punching at imaginary enemies, to the detriment of anything in his room that wasn't mounted on the ceiling.
Both Justin and the track star were applying skills from another context to a real-world problem. I know nothing about the engine thief's background. He could have been a weight-lifter. My guess, based on what I knew of Ray, was that his friend was just a big, strong guy testing himself against the world.
Could anyone really lift an engine over a fence? (Clearly, the possibility didn't occur to the junkyard.) According to Wikipedia, the Olympic weightlifting record is 436 kilograms, or nearly 1,000 pounds. My mechanic estimates the weight of an engine at 400 or 500 pounds. Of course, there is a great difference between an athlete doing, under controlled conditions, something he's trained to do, and a guy swiping engines in the dead of night under conditions with a lot of variables.
Ray recounted his friend's activities as something he definitely knew about and, I think, had witnessed. But maybe he'd just been told about it; maybe the guy was lying, or contemplating engine-snatching as a nifty idea that he meant to try someday. Maybe he did it once when the engines were piled particularly high, and out of respect for his back didn't try it again. Anyway, like so many good stories, if it isn't true it deserves to be.
Friday, January 7, 2011
IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME: ROADS BETTER NOT TAKEN
Who among us hasn't succumbed to the temptation to see if there's a better way from A to B than the obvious; or been sucked up by a malevolent on- or off-ramp; or simply taken a wrong turn, and wound up somewhere between east of Eden and the dark side of the moon, desperate to get back to civilization?
Should you find yourself leaving the Twin City Mall on the Leominster/ Fitchburg line in search of Route 2 East, you will come immediately upon a sign offering you Route 2 West - Athol - Greenfield, and nary an indication of where Route 2 East might be. Directly to your right you will see an apparently well-traveled piece of asphalt that looks to be a frontage road for Route 2. It isn't. If you follow it you will drive past untold suburban bungalows and then into open country -- woods and fields, stone walls and narrowing pavement. It can easily be an hour before, in accordance with directions from whatever persons you come upon, you find yourself backtracking on that same road, muttering an impolite opinion of the futility of human affairs when you pass the Mall on the left. A few hundred yards past the sign for Athol and Greenfield is another sign, directing you to Route 2 East - Boston. Make a large mental note not ever again to turn right at the exit from that mall.
Similarly, when you come out of the Leominster train station and turn right, you soon fetch up against the light just below the railroad bridge. It must have happened that that light was green when I approached it; as with the light at Route 60 coming off Route 2 East in Arlington, that's a rare event. Usually, you have abundant leisure to look down the hill to your left and contemplate a traffic snarl of the kind to be found in small cities that haven't quite adjusted to the automobile. The road straight ahead leads approximately west, the direction in which you want to go. If you yield to the urge to see if that road could provide an alternative to the snail's pace visible on the left, you will wind through what seems to be a huge suburban cul-de-sac: plenty of roads, but none that go anywhere. In the end, you creep ignominiously back on the same road and come to the same light, where there's nothing for it but a right turn onto the overburdened bridge you were trying to avoid.
Another what-if-we-go-straight-at-the-light occurs on Route 2A coming out of Fitchburg (or trying to -- nobody should ever go to Fitchburg if there's any decent alternative). I investigated that road once, about twenty years ago. Like the non-frontage road from the Mall, but longer, it winds through the countryside and eventually leads to some part of north central Worcester County that I had never heard of and didn't want to visit. I had warned my husband and son that this might happen when I asked their permission to undertake a potential wild-goose event. That didn't stop them from ragging me about my choice of routes at every turn unproductive of anything but more countryside.
Then there's that chain of what I think Boston calls "parkways" -- Fenway, Riverway, Jamaicaway, Arborway. Attractively designed and landscaped, these roads curve gracefully around and about from Back Bay to the Arnold Arboretum or thereabouts. Side streets are few, signs and markings all but nonexistent. There's no place to pull over and squint at a map, and even if there was it wouldn't help because you can't figure out where you are. On one attempt to get to Jamaica Plain I wound up at a pay phone in Dorchester explaining to my friend that we weren't going to get to the event we were aiming for because I would be lucky if I was ever seen again. Do not ever set wheel on that necklace of parkways without a GPS or a native guide, or both.
Possibly the worst road to get kidnapped onto is the ramp that separates itself from the Central Artery just north of what I think of as the Wishbone Bridge, with its blue lights and many cables. If you don't resist the magnetic pull of that left-hand exit, you find yourself on a bold sweep of elevated highway that swings around 360o to see you under the bridge and on your way to the airport. The word airport sends me into fight-or-flight mode. When I found myself, about midnight, in the clutches of the airport ramp, I bailed out at the first exit I came to.
Bad mistake. Precipitated into what I think was Chelsea, I crawled along streets of multi-family houses, many boarded up, all dark and silent, punctuated by commercial buildings that might have been warehouses. Occasionally a corner would be faintly illuminated by a dismal-looking bar with an Irish name; then back to the streets of bombed-out dwellings and warehouses. Seldom have I been as glad to see anything as I was to come upon a sign for Suffolk Downs, which I knew was in the same universe as Route 60. I got home to Medford very late and very tired and with a wholesome and enduring horror of that left exit to the airport.
Sometimes "lets see where this goes" reveals a superior route. West of the Meadow Glen Mall, I once went straight instead of keeping to the right on Route 16 in the Medford/Arlington direction. To my surprise, the road went straight as could be desired, at right angles to its cross streets (if you take that for granted you come from some place other than Boston), until it dropped me tidily into Powderhouse Square, Somerville. I haven't had occasion to go that way often, but once or twice it has saved me.
But mostly these explorations leave one lost in space, vowing by all one holds sacred never to go that way again.
Should you find yourself leaving the Twin City Mall on the Leominster/ Fitchburg line in search of Route 2 East, you will come immediately upon a sign offering you Route 2 West - Athol - Greenfield, and nary an indication of where Route 2 East might be. Directly to your right you will see an apparently well-traveled piece of asphalt that looks to be a frontage road for Route 2. It isn't. If you follow it you will drive past untold suburban bungalows and then into open country -- woods and fields, stone walls and narrowing pavement. It can easily be an hour before, in accordance with directions from whatever persons you come upon, you find yourself backtracking on that same road, muttering an impolite opinion of the futility of human affairs when you pass the Mall on the left. A few hundred yards past the sign for Athol and Greenfield is another sign, directing you to Route 2 East - Boston. Make a large mental note not ever again to turn right at the exit from that mall.
Similarly, when you come out of the Leominster train station and turn right, you soon fetch up against the light just below the railroad bridge. It must have happened that that light was green when I approached it; as with the light at Route 60 coming off Route 2 East in Arlington, that's a rare event. Usually, you have abundant leisure to look down the hill to your left and contemplate a traffic snarl of the kind to be found in small cities that haven't quite adjusted to the automobile. The road straight ahead leads approximately west, the direction in which you want to go. If you yield to the urge to see if that road could provide an alternative to the snail's pace visible on the left, you will wind through what seems to be a huge suburban cul-de-sac: plenty of roads, but none that go anywhere. In the end, you creep ignominiously back on the same road and come to the same light, where there's nothing for it but a right turn onto the overburdened bridge you were trying to avoid.
Another what-if-we-go-straight-at-the-light occurs on Route 2A coming out of Fitchburg (or trying to -- nobody should ever go to Fitchburg if there's any decent alternative). I investigated that road once, about twenty years ago. Like the non-frontage road from the Mall, but longer, it winds through the countryside and eventually leads to some part of north central Worcester County that I had never heard of and didn't want to visit. I had warned my husband and son that this might happen when I asked their permission to undertake a potential wild-goose event. That didn't stop them from ragging me about my choice of routes at every turn unproductive of anything but more countryside.
Then there's that chain of what I think Boston calls "parkways" -- Fenway, Riverway, Jamaicaway, Arborway. Attractively designed and landscaped, these roads curve gracefully around and about from Back Bay to the Arnold Arboretum or thereabouts. Side streets are few, signs and markings all but nonexistent. There's no place to pull over and squint at a map, and even if there was it wouldn't help because you can't figure out where you are. On one attempt to get to Jamaica Plain I wound up at a pay phone in Dorchester explaining to my friend that we weren't going to get to the event we were aiming for because I would be lucky if I was ever seen again. Do not ever set wheel on that necklace of parkways without a GPS or a native guide, or both.
Possibly the worst road to get kidnapped onto is the ramp that separates itself from the Central Artery just north of what I think of as the Wishbone Bridge, with its blue lights and many cables. If you don't resist the magnetic pull of that left-hand exit, you find yourself on a bold sweep of elevated highway that swings around 360o to see you under the bridge and on your way to the airport. The word airport sends me into fight-or-flight mode. When I found myself, about midnight, in the clutches of the airport ramp, I bailed out at the first exit I came to.
Bad mistake. Precipitated into what I think was Chelsea, I crawled along streets of multi-family houses, many boarded up, all dark and silent, punctuated by commercial buildings that might have been warehouses. Occasionally a corner would be faintly illuminated by a dismal-looking bar with an Irish name; then back to the streets of bombed-out dwellings and warehouses. Seldom have I been as glad to see anything as I was to come upon a sign for Suffolk Downs, which I knew was in the same universe as Route 60. I got home to Medford very late and very tired and with a wholesome and enduring horror of that left exit to the airport.
Sometimes "lets see where this goes" reveals a superior route. West of the Meadow Glen Mall, I once went straight instead of keeping to the right on Route 16 in the Medford/Arlington direction. To my surprise, the road went straight as could be desired, at right angles to its cross streets (if you take that for granted you come from some place other than Boston), until it dropped me tidily into Powderhouse Square, Somerville. I haven't had occasion to go that way often, but once or twice it has saved me.
But mostly these explorations leave one lost in space, vowing by all one holds sacred never to go that way again.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
'TIS THE SEASON
This is the time of year when the fruitcake jokes begin to appear. Like Queen Victoria, we are not amused. The fruitcake I have made annually for fifty-one years is expensive and a lot of work -- something of a labor of love. I make it because I enjoy it, and I try to give it to other people who do. I have never required anybody to like fruitcake, or anything else I make. I didn't understand as a child, and I don't understand now, why the fact that someone doesn't like something should be felt as an affront.
"Oh, dear, don't let Nana hear you say that -- that's her homemade bread, you know." The issue wasn't the bread itself, which I had always eaten with as much enthusiasm as anyone, but the fact that it was soaked in gravy. I had explained clearly to whichever aunt was sitting beside me that I didn't like soggy bread. How that came to be heard as a negative statement about Nana's bread was beyond me; why she should care even if I didn't like her bread was more mysterious still.
Worse still was, "How can you not like these lovely lima beans that Uncle Leland worked so hard to grow?" What connection could there possibly be between Uncle Leland's decision to plant, weed, cultivate and encourage lima beans, and the fact that a young niece whom he saw maybe once a year and who certainly figured in his calculations not at all, didn't want to eat anybody's lima beans?
When I came to cook for other people, I still didn't understand the problem. "Oh, you don't like that? Lets see what else I can find for you," might represent my position. In any civilized setting, "Would you like some . . . ?" "No, thank you" covers it.
My willingness to put myself out for a picky eater took a hard hit during my first marriage. When he didn't like something he was often horrid about it (poking left-handedly at his dinner: "What is this made out of, rhinoceros hide?"). A polite refusal, or even a matter-of-fact suggestion or two about
how something might be improved, is fine with me. I object to rudeness, which includes unfunny jokes and unnecessary carrying on.
A disagreeable person I once worked for, upon my mentioning fruitcake- making, said with his trademark sneer, "But you know nobody likes fruitcake." If I had thought quickly enough I might have said something like, "None of the ignorant peasants you hang out with, maybe," but I hope I wouldn't have bothered. It probably would have been too subtle for him.
Some woman whose musings used to appear in the Boston Herald would devote one column each year to downing fruitcake -- a waste of energy equaled only by the fools who kept sending them to her on some such premise as "However much she hates fruitcake she's got to love mine." (This kind of thinking reminds me of Tschaikovsky's wife. He told her up front that the marriage was strictly for the sake of appearances and that he had no sexual interest in her. Beautiful and stupid, she apparently couldn't believe that any man could resist her. He did; with some untidy consequences that I don't remember.)
Before I give my fruitcake to anybody I do my best to determine whether or not they actually want it. One person who didn't explained, "There's something in it that I don't like." That would presumably be the candied fruit peel: bits of citrus peel permeated with sugar syrup, more or less sweet but with the astringent bite of the peel. I love those things. I'll eat them by the handful out of the box until my tongue hurts -- but I know that's perverse.
Citrus peel is probably the most common objection to fruitcake. Some people don't like dried fruit, or don't like or are allergic to nuts. My daughter-in-law is trying to be open-minded. She doesn't like dates, in which my fruitcake abounds, and prefers it without the brandy and sherry wrapping.
I don't have a problem with any of that. But the two people who said they liked fruitcake but never acknowledged the ones I sent them got dropped after a year or two, with a small muttered "phooey on them." The lady who said she liked it, accepted a slice, ate a bite and a half, and left the rest has been on my sour-memory list ever since. I seriously dislike wasting even a small amount of anything as money- and labor-intensive as fruitcake.
After my choir's Christmas orchestra rehearsal I get thanks and compliments on "that delicious fruitcake," which disappears in an augenblick or two. I'm glad the choir and instrumentalists like it; maybe I'll give them an extra one this year. I'm glad the people who don't like it can cast a cold eye on it and pass it by in favor of a cookie or two. De gustibus non disputandum est (that's ancient Roman for "there's no point in arguing about taste"). People who like fruitcake often like it a lot. Those who don't are invited to shut up and not eat it.
"Oh, dear, don't let Nana hear you say that -- that's her homemade bread, you know." The issue wasn't the bread itself, which I had always eaten with as much enthusiasm as anyone, but the fact that it was soaked in gravy. I had explained clearly to whichever aunt was sitting beside me that I didn't like soggy bread. How that came to be heard as a negative statement about Nana's bread was beyond me; why she should care even if I didn't like her bread was more mysterious still.
Worse still was, "How can you not like these lovely lima beans that Uncle Leland worked so hard to grow?" What connection could there possibly be between Uncle Leland's decision to plant, weed, cultivate and encourage lima beans, and the fact that a young niece whom he saw maybe once a year and who certainly figured in his calculations not at all, didn't want to eat anybody's lima beans?
When I came to cook for other people, I still didn't understand the problem. "Oh, you don't like that? Lets see what else I can find for you," might represent my position. In any civilized setting, "Would you like some . . . ?" "No, thank you" covers it.
My willingness to put myself out for a picky eater took a hard hit during my first marriage. When he didn't like something he was often horrid about it (poking left-handedly at his dinner: "What is this made out of, rhinoceros hide?"). A polite refusal, or even a matter-of-fact suggestion or two about
how something might be improved, is fine with me. I object to rudeness, which includes unfunny jokes and unnecessary carrying on.
A disagreeable person I once worked for, upon my mentioning fruitcake- making, said with his trademark sneer, "But you know nobody likes fruitcake." If I had thought quickly enough I might have said something like, "None of the ignorant peasants you hang out with, maybe," but I hope I wouldn't have bothered. It probably would have been too subtle for him.
Some woman whose musings used to appear in the Boston Herald would devote one column each year to downing fruitcake -- a waste of energy equaled only by the fools who kept sending them to her on some such premise as "However much she hates fruitcake she's got to love mine." (This kind of thinking reminds me of Tschaikovsky's wife. He told her up front that the marriage was strictly for the sake of appearances and that he had no sexual interest in her. Beautiful and stupid, she apparently couldn't believe that any man could resist her. He did; with some untidy consequences that I don't remember.)
Before I give my fruitcake to anybody I do my best to determine whether or not they actually want it. One person who didn't explained, "There's something in it that I don't like." That would presumably be the candied fruit peel: bits of citrus peel permeated with sugar syrup, more or less sweet but with the astringent bite of the peel. I love those things. I'll eat them by the handful out of the box until my tongue hurts -- but I know that's perverse.
Citrus peel is probably the most common objection to fruitcake. Some people don't like dried fruit, or don't like or are allergic to nuts. My daughter-in-law is trying to be open-minded. She doesn't like dates, in which my fruitcake abounds, and prefers it without the brandy and sherry wrapping.
I don't have a problem with any of that. But the two people who said they liked fruitcake but never acknowledged the ones I sent them got dropped after a year or two, with a small muttered "phooey on them." The lady who said she liked it, accepted a slice, ate a bite and a half, and left the rest has been on my sour-memory list ever since. I seriously dislike wasting even a small amount of anything as money- and labor-intensive as fruitcake.
After my choir's Christmas orchestra rehearsal I get thanks and compliments on "that delicious fruitcake," which disappears in an augenblick or two. I'm glad the choir and instrumentalists like it; maybe I'll give them an extra one this year. I'm glad the people who don't like it can cast a cold eye on it and pass it by in favor of a cookie or two. De gustibus non disputandum est (that's ancient Roman for "there's no point in arguing about taste"). People who like fruitcake often like it a lot. Those who don't are invited to shut up and not eat it.
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