HOW DANNY CUT UP THE BATHTUB: "It should have worked!"

My husband needed steel plate -- like sheet metal, but heavier -- for a solar oven he meant to construct for a college industrial arts project. The cost, even from the junkyard, was more than he wanted to spring for; so he tried to do an end run around the laws of economics, only to run headlong against the laws of physics.

He bought from the junkyard an old-fashioned cast-iron bathtub, shorn of feet and fixtures and very dirty. The idea was to cut it up into an equivalent of steel plate, for which he bought an oxyacetylene welding torch. The work went excruciatingly slowly, and the metal dripped down in clumps and hardened. He managed to inflict on the tub  a wide, irregular and very ugly gash with gobs of re-hardened metal clinging to the edges, before he ran out of welding rod and patience. There comes a point where trying to save money doesn't. It would have done no good to call his attention to that aspect of it, and I don't remember doing so.

An acquaintance in the welding business was prevailed upon to let Danny use an electric arc welder. I  assumed at the time that this arrangement was to be less expensive than paying Bob the welder to cut up the bathtub. The possibility that Bob wouldn't have accepted the commission didn't occur to me until later.

The electric arc welder wasn't portable; Danny and the bathtub had to go to it. The tub, of course, weighed a damn ton. (The difference between a ton and a damn ton is that a ton is 2000 pounds, and a damn ton is way more weight than one expected or wants to deal with.) I came along to see what would happen, together with a neighbor who helped boost the tub into the Danny's van.

The bathtub defeated the electric arc welder as well. Cast iron contains sand, which causes it to melt slowly and unpredictably. Danny would have had to work at it steadily for a couple of days and expend more welding rod than he was willing to pay for.

After Danny's admission of defeat, he and I, Ray the neighbor, Bob the welder, and Warren, whose connection with the project was unclear, performed an amiable post-mortem. Danny kept insisting that it should have worked. Warren said he'd need a laser. I suggested a phaser (the weapon everybody carries on Star Trek), or prayer for a miracle to St. Jude (the patron saint of lost and hopeless causes). Bob's last word on the subject was, "I knew this wouldn't work, but I couldn't have told you, now could I?" Danny probably took that as a compliment.

Mercifully, Danny cut his losses, left bad enough alone, and sold the bathtub for scrap. He insisted that the whole caper was worth it for the experience and the knowledge gained of the physical properties of cast iron. He probably declares to this day that "It should have worked!"

VICTOR

"Victor" is a small-ish framed mirror with an ad for RCA Victor painted on its surface, the old Victrola with the bemused dog peering into the horn over the legend "His Master's Voice." It appeared in an antique store in Peterborough, New Hampshire, when Laurie and I were vacationing nearby one summer.

Since the 1950s, Laurie had loved any gadget for reproducing sound. While still in high school, he found an old record-player in a second-hand store, the kind that would play records with a thumbtack if you didn't have a needle. He paid the minimal price asked and triumphantly lugged  the machine home on his back. He always regretted another old record player and a collection of 78 RPM records that he came upon later in another establishment but lacked the wherewithal to buy. The enviable sound reproduction system he had during our marriage was the  culmination of many such over the years.

     Laurie came upon Victor in Peterborough and fell in love at first sight. Uncharacteristically, he decided he couldn't spare the $25 they wanted for it. He showed it to me with delight, I admired it appropriately, and Laurie regretfully said goodbye to it. I sneaked back and bought it, and hid it until Christmas.

     In our condominium in Medford it hung from the top of a low cabinet, concealing two shelves of blank audio disks and related oddments. It now languishes in my office in a bag of framed photographs waiting patiently for homes to be found for them. I wish I knew an audiophile or electronics aficionado old enough to remember "His Master's Voice," who would appreciate Victor and give it a home in remembrance of Laurie.

TRAIN WRECK IN THE SAHARA

In the late 1990s Laurie and I were part of the loyal following of an a capella vocal sextet called Five O'Clock Shadow. Excellent musicians, they were also smart, funny and likable, onstage and off. We knew Mike and Bill as soloists/section leaders in our choir, and the others from chatting with them after performances.

Justin and his friend Nathan were Shadow fans as well. Barely in high school and thus way under age, they were always trying to get into Johnny D's in Somerville to see them. They were allowed in when they came with us; once they talked their way in by themselves, by claiming acquaintance with Bill. Largely inspired by the Shadow, Nathan started his own a capella group at Arlington High.

One night at Johnny D's the guys were performing their cover of Tea in the Sahara. Dan, the baritone, sang the lead from stage front and center; Bill, Warren and Dave harmonized behind him and a bit to his left; and Mike and Wes, bass and vocal percussion, exercised their stabilizing influence face to face on the other side of the stage.

Somebody made a joke -- they did a lot of that -- and everybody laughed. Ordinarily, of course, the laughter would run a brief course and the Shadow resume singing. That night, whatever cosmic forces govern stage performances kept them all laughing. The audience smiled and chuckled as the guys struggled to collect themselves and allow Dan to continue. Eventually they got the lid on it and carried on tentatively, recovery solidifying note by note.

Then Wes said something I didn't hear. Probably no one did except Mike. Mike's from-the-bottom-of-the-earth deep voice answered, "That's why they call me a bass."

Whatever the joke was, it destroyed Wes. He caved in, helpless with laughter, dragging Mike with him. After a minute or two of this with no end in sight, Bill, Warren and Dave withdrew to the back of the stage and sat down in a row (rather like the three evil-denying monkeys): knees drawn up, heads bowed, waiting patiently for order to restore itself. Dan, left standing in the middle of the stage clutching his microphone, muttered, "Of all the songs I always thought we couldn't train-wreck . . . ." But nothing, of course, is certain in show business.

Eventually Mike and Wes calmed down, decorum  prevailed, and Tea in the Sahara proceeded according to plan. Many who were in the audience that night must remember this incident, as I do, as an endearing moment in the saga of Five O'Clock Shadow.

GOSPEL CONCERT

On a visit to the Medford Public Library, my teenage son and I spotted an flyer announcing a concert of gospel music to be performed that night by the choir of the Shiloh Baptist Church in honor of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. We dropped in on impulse because Shiloh Baptist was in our back yard and we sometimes heard the choir practice.

For some reason we were early. I plopped us down on the left-hand side of the center aisle about half way back. On the other side, more to the front, a handful of African-Americans had seated themselves.

As the audience drifted in, Justin noticed that the few white people were clustering around us and the African-Americans sat everywhere else. Now, Justin grew up in West Medford getting into equal-opportunity mischief with whoever happened to be around. He couldn't believe this. "They've left three empty rows!!" he hissed at me indignantly.

     As the audience continued to develop on the same lines, he became more and more disgusted, eventually insisting that we get up and move.  I didn't quite want to be all that pointed about it, so I thought of something to ask the choir director.  At first the expression on her face might have meant "What are you doing here?" or "Why are you bothering me when I'm trying to focus on this program?"  As we chatted, she softened up and apparently decided I was all right.

     Having made peace with her, Justin and I sat down on the right-hand side of the hall and enjoyed the concert.

NEUMES AND BLACK-LETTER

One of the artifacts from my years with Sherry, between 1970 and 1973, is a page of illuminated music manuscript. Another of our artifacts hasn't survived: a 3 x 5 card inscribed in Sherry's black-letter script that we posted in the refrigerator after I broke a glass shelf and replaced it with a piece of masonite: Res graves in plauteo inferno non ponete. Flexit. -- "Don't put heavy things on the bottom shelf. It bends." These two objects
exemplify the precious and rather pompous humor we went in for. We couldn't even plead callow youth as an excuse for this sort of thing. Sherry was in her late twenties; by the time we moved out, I was thirty.

I was studying Latin at the time and produced the out-of-wedlock text for the sign. The music manuscript was a product of my brief study of Medieval music. In a moment when there must have been something constructive I could have occupied myself with, I transcribed Take Me Out to the Ball Game into thirteenth century mensural notation. "Mensural" refers to the fact that that system of notation showed relative note values, in a crude and limited fashion. I used Take Me Out to the Ball Game instead of some other hokey tune because triple meter is much easier in thirteenth century notation than anything counted in twos.

Sherry was delighted with this exercise in arcane whimsy and produced an elegant illuminated manuscript, gold leaf and all. I framed it and it hung on our wall, and subsequently on various walls of mine. There was no place for it in Medford, so it was relegated to the attic. I wondered from time to time what changes were being wrought in it by the heat, thinking that, if anything, signs of age might befit it. There were plenty of things in the attic that were in more danger.

When it did turn up, it was in about the same condition as when it emerged from Sherry's pen and paintbrushes. Illuminated manuscripts are tougher than one might think: the Book of Kells has been fished out of water -- maybe even sea water -- any number of times, after the Vikings tossed it in or the monks hid it there. Take Me Out to the Ball Game has now been restored to public view, on the wall behind the piano.

SHIPWRECK

Walking down Tremont Street in Boston one bright winter day with the temperature at something like ten degrees Fahrenheit, I reflected, "If it was always like this I might actually get some exercise." On a camping trip with my first husband, I rescued his fishing tackle when he was about to abandon hook, line and sinker rather than venture into the chill water of Lake Champlain.  In short, I resist cold better than heat.

My son went through a phase of fascination with battery-powered toy vehicles, mostly cars, although he aspired to a boat and an airplane. He never got around to the airplane, which is just as well, given his adventure with the boat. He bought it with money he got for his birthday. Dismayed as I often was with the use he made of funds that he came by in childhood, including the generous allowance I began issuing him when I got tired of being hit up for money, I stuck to my principles: He could do as he liked with his money as long as he stayed away from the hazardous, the illegal, and anything that would adversely affect someone else, especially me.

My sister came to watch us launch the boat onto the Otter River Pool. I think it puttered about some before it did a Titanic -- upset itself and sank -- a couple of feet from the shore. The battery case came open and dumped the batteries into the water, together with the top of the battery compartment.

We tried to fish the boat out with whatever was at hand. Maybe we didn't have anything long enough. Maybe the boat was caught on something, or positioned in such a way that it couldn't just be raked out. It became clear that the only way to rescue the boat was to get our hands on it, and the only way to do that was to wade into the water.

We weren't overwhelmed with volunteers. The Otter River Pool is locally famous for cold water in July. On this November day, an inch or so of ice made its lacy way along the shore. But we couldn't abandon Justin's birthday boat, and we shouldn't leave the batteries to corrode in the water. I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up my pants and set forth. It was plenty cold, but retrieving the boat and locating the batteries didn't take long.

     Justin was grateful, and Paula was impressed. "Justin, you owe your mother," she said.

HOSSRADISH

C.S. Lewis says in his autobiography that he never could write the words "my father" without thinking of Tristram Shandy. He then comments that on consideration he was willing to let the reference stand.  My father didn't have much in common with either Lewis's father or Walter Shandy -- but like them, he had his own ideas and ways of doing things.  His approach to life was concrete and practical.  His idiosyncracies took the form of
projects, to which he was apt to assume that Mother would contribute time and energy as she was able.  She didn't always. She had plenty to do without that.

Dad loved kielbasa with horseradish sauce.  He didn't, mercifully, attempt to make kielbasa, at least not in my lifetime.  Mother reports that he had attempted sausage at some point in the far distant past, from a home-grown pig.  Dad liked to start his processes at the beginning.

On an agricultural impulse he undertook to grow horseradish in the hope that someone -- meaning, as usual, Mother -- would reduce it to sauce for use with kielbasa.  You can buy perfectly good horseradish sauce in a jar in the supermarket.  From Dad's perspective, that was beside the point.  (Have I ever mentioned my lifelong insistence on making pumpkin and lemon pies from, respectively, a pumpkin and a lemon or two, ignoring  Mother's lobbying for canned pumpkin and lemon pudding mix?)

Dad appropriated for his crop of, as he said, Hossradish a flower garden that had fallen into desuetude, a strip maybe a foot wide and twenty or so long.  The plants grew and flourished, uttering, like Walt Whitman's Louisiana live oak, joyous dark green leaves, and building thick white carrot- or parsnip-like roots.  Dad never quite got around to harvesting any for Mother's edification, and certainly no one else did.

The neglected horseradish throve happily on its own recognizance for several years, efficiently displacing anything that had previously lived in that garden or thought of moving in.  There was enough there to supply the Jewish population for miles around at Passover or any other occasion when bitter herbs are wanted.

The horseradish flourished below ground as well as above. As it reproduced and expanded, it made more roots with every passing season.  As much as a foot long, they twisted around each other in an inextricable tangle.  I have wondered if it would be possible to use horseradish as an underground fence for a vegetable garden against woodchucks and rabbits and other burrowing creatures.  No; they can burrow a lot deeper than that; but it warms the heart to picture some beast of the rodent type attempting to gnaw through it.

In the fall of 1984 I made up my mind that I would finally dig up some horseradish and try to figure out what to do with it. Tugging on the individual plants didn't impress them a bit; nor could they be dug out with a trowel.  I succeeded, after much labor, with a shovel and a pitchfork.  I'm not sure I didn't bend or break some tool in the process.


I took a cubic foot or so of convoluted roots and associated topsoil to my apartment in Bedford and dropped it all on the deck behind the house.  At my leisure, I attacked the whole clump with a hose; the dirt clung to the interior of the tangle and required a great deal of washing.  The consistency of these things was between that of a hard, woody old turnip and a soft pine tree.  I managed to dissect out enough root to grate and peel, hunted up a
recipe in The Joy of Cooking, and did the best I could.

I commissioned a ceramics-making friend to produce a small white pot with "Horseradish" emblazoned on the side for presentation, full of homemade horseradish sauce, to my father for his birthday.  He seemed pleased with it.  It didn't look like the kind that you buy did actually constitute Hossradish sauce as he understood it.