The Crack of Dawn

Volume #110

9/27/22

Newsletter110

The Crack of Dawn

My house is just 2,000 sq. ft. and I have fifteen loaded bookshelves.  Most of the shelves are cheap particle board with wood laminate, although a couple of them are solid wood.  I had all of my vinyl albums on a cheap bookshelf, and albums are heavy.  Like a sight gag from a silent movie, a couple of days ago I pulled out one album and the entire bookshelf jittered, then slowly, inexorably, collapsed sideways accompanied by the sound of cracking particle board.  Yesterday was trash day.  As I took my daily walk through the ‘hood what should I see discarded at the curb but a perfect, solid, unmarked, cherrywood bookshelf, divided into two shelves instead of three so it exactly fit my albums.  And since it’s solid wood, it won’t collapse.  And it’s a nice piece of furniture.  Thank you, universe.

Here’s an example of how times have changed, and not necessarily for the worse.  In elementary school back in the 1960s I was prone to nosebleeds.  One day, first thing in the morning, my nose started to bleed.  I went to the office and they gave me a pile of brown, non-absorbent, paper towels.  I sat on a green cot and blotted my bleeding nose for a couple of hours until there was a foot-tall mound of bloody paper towels beside me.  The folks in the office had tried calling my mother several times, but she wasn’t home.  Becoming alarmed at the amount of blood I was losing, and not wanting me to expire at school, the principal, Mr. Little (a tall man), hustled me into his VW Beetle, drove me home, and left me there.  My nose wouldn’t stop bleeding.  My mom came home a few hours later to find me buried in a mountain of bloody paper towels.  She immediately took me to the doctor who cauterized the inside of my nose, and that solved my constant bloody nose problem.  But can you imagine the principal of an elementary school doing such a thing now?  “He seems to be bleeding to death.  Let’s get him off school property.”

Along the same lines, when I was 14 I went to a summer camp called Agree Outpost, which was part of the Jewish Center.  The camp was located in Wawa, Ontario, at the northern point of Lake Superior.  Being a juvenile delinquent, I sneaked into the woods and smoked a forbidden cigarette.  I was caught, and in ridiculous display of no tolerance, I was immediately kicked out of camp.  A bus of kids was leaving that day back for Detroit and I was put aboard.  We arrived at the old Jewish Center here in Detroit, at Curtis and Meyers which is right in the city and not a great neighborhood (the new Jewish Center is far out to the suburbs).  This would have been 1972, five years after the Detroit riots, and when most white people had upped and split the city in what was called “White flight.”  Anyway, by sunset all of the other campers had been picked up by their parents, except me.  As it grew dark, at Curtis and Meyers, I found myself entirely alone with just my duffel bag.  The Jewish Center was closed.  There weren’t even lights in the parking lot.  It was dark.  Luckily I had some change.  I found a pay phone on Meyers and called home.  My mother answered, and I said, “Hi, mom.”  She said, “Are you at camp?”  I said, “No, I’m at Curtis and Meyers, and it’s dark.”  Sounding surprised, mom asked, “What are you doing at Curtis and Meyers?”  I said, “Could you please pick me up, as soon as possible, and I’ll explain then.”  My mother was so goddamn mad, not at me, thank goodness, but at the Jewish Center, that I ended up going back to Agree Outpost the next summer for free.

Finally, somewhere in the 1970s, my family was vacationing in Cancun, Mexico.  My dopey dad was walking up the beach and saw a man he recognized.  Dad asked, “Did you go to Central High in Detroit?”  The man said no and walked on.  Dad returned to the rest of us on the beach looking puzzled.  As the man came walking back down the beach my dad pointed at him and said, “I swear that guy went to Central High.  But I asked him and he said he didn’t.”  As the man got closer we all recognized that it was Robert Mitchum.

How could today be anything other than great?