A Not So Boring Life

HOME DELIVERY I would get up in the early morning and hurriedly pull on a pair of denim pants, patterned shirt and a pair of beat-up sneakers to scoot out the backdoor and up the six or so blocks past the Junior High, cutting through the parking lot of the laundromat on Market Street and into the alleyway leading to the squat cinder-block building with a large garage-like door on the left and a small office to the right.  Although still dark, there was a bustle of activity on the street and in the building as the three refrigerated trucks waited their turn to back halfway through the open bay to load plastic cases holding quart, half-gallon and gallon containers of pasteurized milk, along with pints and half-pints of chocolate milk, heavy cream and half-and-half.  As a helper on the morning retail run covering second and third and fourth wards, I would begin the day’s shift stacking the crates of milk along the walls of the back of the truck, arranging them for easy a...

Reflections on Hair I am about to cut all the hair on my head and shave off all of my facial hair. It started as a simple fund raising idea for the organization I work for.  In a gambit to raise a minimum of $1500 from friends and family, I foolishly promised that I would let myself be subjected to a Kojak-like do-over if it happened.  And it did.  For those of you who might not know who the 1970’s TV character Kojak was, he was a detective.  A bald detective.  A lollipop sucking bald detective.  And I will soon be like him. Well, maybe not the lollipop part. But first, before I submit to a public shearing, I feel the need to reflect back over all the different manifestations my hair and I have gone through over the years. When I was between the ages of 3 to 12 years, I didn’t know that there was any kind of haircut other than the flattop.  It was an uncomplicated thing:  you went to the corner barber shop, sat in the hydraulic chair ...

Something, maybe a snatch of music, possibly a reference to the time I was a literacy Vista Volunteer in Pittsburgh, drew up this memory: My best guess would be that he was around 70 years old.  He wore a herring bone suit that had seen better days; a sweat-soiled white shirt; a pair of scuffed, lace up black shoes.  He placed a battered Homburg on the counter beside me as he ordered a cup of coffee.  When he turned to say good morning, looking me up and down, checking out my half-eaten eggs and finally locking me in with a penetrating gaze of slightly bloodshot eyes, I knew a story was coming.  The best ones usually come about through chance meetings and the time and willingness to listen.  It was Saturday, I had nothing better to do, and the second cup of coffee was free.  He told me that he was a debt collector during the thirties.  He alluded to, but didn’t quite say, that it was basically a strong arm job, chasing out-of-luck debtors for ...

Now that’s what you could call….uh…perseverance? Toward the end of 1971, I was still pretty young.  And relatively healthy (despite the recreational inclination of those iconic 70s and a two year old cigarette habit that would last for another 40 years).  I was also serving time in the U.S. Army as a clerk/typist running an offset printer in a tiny, windowless room on the first floor of the Army Security building at Fort Meade, Maryland.  I still wonder about that from time to time but heck, we all do things throughout life that don’t necessarily fit in with who we are.  Or aren’t. So, the healthy part:  Three friends and I started getting up early to run laps around an on-base park.  It wasn’t really any kind of physical regimen - more a group activity that wasn’t regulated by any part of our military lives. One day we saw a bulletin board notice about an informal inter-unit track and field competition.  It included all the usual events – sho...

Do you remember 1979?  Do you remember Skylab?  The U.S.’s first space station was disintegrating and due to fall back into earth’s atmosphere, breaking up into small pieces that COULD FALL ANYWHERE!  I remember!  Did I worry, like thousands of people around the world, about suddenly being hit on the head by a piece of the debris?  Did I contemplate the damage that might occurs should a piece fail to disintegrate sufficiently and fall into, say, a nuclear power plant? Hell, no!  I saw a MARKETING potential!

FOKUS MOKUS!  FOKUS MOKUS!  The chant would usually begin at about seven thirty in the morning on Saturday and Sunday.  Anywhere from five to ten children from surrounding apartments in the three-story red-brick complex located on the outskirts of the Kyrgyz city of Osh would gather outside my first floor windows, calling for me to come out and do the same magic tricks that I had unwittingly shared with them shortly after moving in.  FOKUS MOKUS!! – What I surmised was the Russian equivalent (or child’s mispronunciation) of Hocus Pocus or ‘WE WANT MORE MAGIC TRICKS!”

VYZYATKA, HABAR, BAKSHEESH, PAYOLA (or A BRIBE BY ANY OTHER NAME …) “Dokuments, please.    Spaceba.   You are coming from where?  Going to where?” “And how many beers have you had, comrade?” I was ready for the question from the moment that the Kyrgyz policeman first stuck his head through the driver’s side window into the new Russian-made Niva truck.   “Beer?  I have had no beer, Officer...”  It was worth a try, wasn’t it?  But the look on his face immediately told me that it just wasn’t going to work.  “Oh, Okay.  Look, I had one beer with lunch.”  “But comrade, you must know that it is illegal in Kyrgyzstan to drink and drive.  It is the same in your country, da?”  Okay, okay – the bribe was offered, accepted and we were once again our way.  Given that we were stopped within 15 minutes after starting on our 12 hour drive SHOULD have given me an indication that it was not going to be an easy trip....