My Day at the Voting Booths

This is the second part of my Election Day story

What lasts 15 hours and starts by hanging out a flag and ends by winning a fight with a machine to release a small computer cartridge? Election Day 2019—my first time ever serving as a poll worker.

It is a strange perspective, seeing an election from its behind-the-scenes mechanical side. I did no campaigning or electioneering, no analysis of candidates, and basically no counting of votes. But I did what really counts. I manned two side-by-side voting machines in the Glen Rock Municipal Building and determined who would cast a vote in either one and when. I was sort of a voting booth entry guard. I also pushed a small button that activated the actual voting process for the person inside the booth. It seems to be a lot of power to entrust with a person who had never been a poll worker before. But luckily it didn’t take much skill and involved a certain amount of repetition. 

The badge I wore proudly yesterday

In all, more than 500 people entered and emerged from MY voting booths yesterday. That’s the number of actual voters. There were also numerous children of a wide range of ages and at least four dogs who waited patiently outside the booth wagging their tails while someone held their leash. I’m not sure it was legal to admit non-service dogs, but we were very welcoming yesterday.

I also faced perhaps the single most dangerous aspect of the entire voting process. My job was to invite people who had signed in with my four other colleagues to enter the voting booth that I had helped to assemble earlier in the morning. But first each had to turn over a small square “voting authority” slip to me. I would push a sharp needle precariously through the slip of paper from the back, creating an entry hole and hopefully, but not always, avoiding puncturing my finger. Then I would push the slip up a string to sit with its earlier mates on the side of my voting booth. Only then would I push the button to activate voting.

My stringed up slips. Note that most
are right-side-up!

As the day went on, I took a certain amount of pride and ownership over my stringed-up voting slips. I made sure that each was snug on the string and sat right-side up. I realized how anal I was being about the task when I came back from my lunch break and felt very annoyed that the person who replaced me for the hour had added some slips upside down. It took a certain amount of will power not to turn those around.

But my day was not without a certain amount of drama. One person who should have voted in the machines for a different district, located across the room, had become impatient, crossed the room to join my much shorter line, and “mis”cast his vote in my machine. Nothing illegal but a technical error. I discovered the slip on my pile labeled D-8 instead of D-3 and reported it to a more experienced colleague. She said we had write a note on our end-of-day report to explain why our machines would have one extra vote and the D-8 machines would have one fewer. This was no “hanging chad” disaster, but it was dealt with efficiently.

A more nuanced issue occurred when an elderly woman entered my booth and called out to me for assistance. She had bad arthritis and could not push hard enough against the small squares to indicate her choices. I walked inside and pushed the buttons she indicated. Simple enough? Not really. An election inspector who happened to be in our room at the time, came over to tell me that, in the future, if I walked into a booth, I must be accompanied by another poll worker aligned with the other political party. We would need to be three-in-a-booth. Really? Really. I wondered about this rule until the time someone asked me if there was one button to push to vote for all of the Republican candidates at once. (There wasn’t.) I wanted to ask the person, why would you to do that! I guess I am just a party animal.

So my day was long and just a little eventful. I still had all of my fingers intact, if only a little abused, and I felt that I had done good work in making the democratic process work well in a small borough in northern New Jersey. The candidates may be feeling elated or a little depressed by the results that emerged from my booth and the others around the borough. But none of it could have occurred if I didn’t push that button to activate my machine for more than 500 voters.

Voting—It’s More Complicated than You Think

This is the first of a two-part blogpost. More to come on Wednesday.

Election Day is tomorrow, and I’m going to be doing my part. No, not that election! This one is more mundane. It involves people running for county commission, mayor and town council, and school board. Of course, the results will not be mundane for those running for those positions. And it won’t be mundane for me either.

I'm going to be up front on the back lines.

I'm going to be right up front on the back lines in the voting process. If someone is voting at the Glen Rock Municipal Building, he or she is going to have to go through me to cast their ballot. I’ll be at the table with the voting roster book checking them in or standing beside the voting booth accepting voting authority slips so they can enter the booth. And there are more responsibilities. Even before the polls open, I’ll be helping to set up the room and the voting booths. I’ll be using a yellow key and a silver key (I hope I’ll remember which to use for what), running off a Zero Tally Strip, and inspecting the Provisional Ballot bag.

If all of this sounds complicated, it might be. You see, this is my first time serving as a poll worker. Luckily, I’m not going at this totally blind. I attended a two-hour training session last week, where I was not only given hands on instruction but even took home a 13-section reference guide for easy, um, reference. And I’m assured that I will be teamed with more experienced poll workers tomorrow who already know the ropes. That’s reassuring for me and for the voters who want to be sure that their votes are entered and tallied properly.

Keeping the system unrigged"

What impressed me most at my training session was the complexity of the process for preparing the polling place and the serious way that those involved in the back lines of the voting process (like me) take their duties. When all you do is vote, you are not aware of the “magic” involved. It gives one increased faith in the voting system at a time when the day-to-day political news drives us toward cynicism. And makes the concept of a “rigged system” —at least at my polling place—not even a remote concern.

We even got into some minutiae about the process. For example, if a voter wants to bring a child into the booth with him or her, we are to explain that the child should be on the voter’s left. Why? Because the Cast Vote button is on the right and it lights up when the voter enters the booth. Brightly lit buttons often attract a child’s attention and cry out to be pressed. Once the button is pressed, the vote is complete and cannot be changed or replayed. The voter gets only one shot at the button. Is this what they mean by “one person, one vote”? For those of us on the back lines, it does.

This button isn't child-proof!

I was even taught that should a voter exit the booth without pressing the Cast Vote button and slip out of the room before he or she can be stopped, I can press the button myself to complete the voter’s balloting. Even more interesting is, if the voter leaves before marking any selections in the booth, I can let the next person in line step right in and use the unblemished ballot. It’s a lot of power to contemplate.

But all of the rules and regulations are not my biggest concern as Election Day approaches. I’m more worried about arriving on time—between 5:15 and 5:30 tomorrow morning because the polls open at 6—and staying awake until my responsibilities end sometime after 8 p.m.  To emphasize this point, the Election Commissioner passed around a newspaper clipping at the training session. It included a photo of an election worker snoozing on the job. “Don’t let this be you!” he warned ominously. I wondered if he knows about my habit of drifting off in the afternoon in a chair or in front of the computer.

No nap for me!!!

But not tomorrow. I’m going to be alert and cheerful (but not too cheerful), and I’m going to make the voting process work like a well-oiled machine. And if the machine doesn’t work for some reason, my reference guide includes three different numbers I can call for quick service. I think I’m ready.

My Birthday with Yogi

Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

—Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire

It is hard to sound nonchalant when you write the words, “I turned 70 last week.” Maybe that’s why my wife and children decided to make the event even less nonchalant by adding in just a touch of . . . either drama or trauma.

My daughter Amanda had come up with a birthday party plan that combined two of my favorite elements—baseball and dinner. I was offered my choice of baseball venues, and I chose the local Jersey Jackals, who play in Yogi Berra Stadium in nearby Montclair, New Jersey. Yes, that Yogi Berra, whose home was in Montclair ever since he played for the Yankees.  There is even a Yogi Berra Museum filled with memorabilia located right next to the stadium, where you can probably share many Yogi-isms with other visitors. My favorite has always been: “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”

Attending a Jackals game held several key attractions for my birthday celebration: the team played professional baseball, played close by, and offered great seats near to the playing field along with free parking. Take that, Yankee Stadium! And relatively inexpensive peanuts salted in the shell, my personal favorite. Plus the stadium undoubtedly had a scoreboard, and maybe they would even put my name and a birthday wish up in lights on that scoreboard.

My birthday makes it to the Yogi Berra Stadium scoreboard.

So where is the trauma in this birthday story, you might ask? Let me explain. A week before the big event, Amanda slipped in the news that she had negotiated something special with the Jackals’ public relations staff. They had agreed to honor my birthday by letting me throw out a ceremonial first pitch before the contest between the Jackals and their Can-Am league rivals, the Ottawa Champions. They even promised me scoreboard recognition while I was throwing out the first pitch, which I was thinking was a mixed blessing. I had played softball into my 60s but hadn’t thrown a baseball in maybe 15 years, and even when I did, my throws were not always strong or accurate.

So I greeted Amanda’s “great” news with an inward sigh and maybe stunned silence. Throw out the first pitch? Yikes. Has a crowd at a baseball game ever booed someone who threw out an honorary first pitch? Would I achieve a first?

Seeing my blank expression, Amanda said she was sure the Jackals would let me out of my ceremonial duty, but I decided not to give up so easily. I had a few days to “train” for the event, and I planned to do just that—if only I could figure out a way to train. First I bought a regulation size baseball at a local sporting goods store. It needed to be the right diameter and weight for practice purposes. (It turns out those balls can be pretty expensive, but this was no time to be cheap.) Then I took my (one) ball and my old softball glove to a local ball field where I would have a mound and a home plate for my training purposes. I took the ball from its box, stood near the mound about 50 feet from home, took my windup, and threw the ball. It sailed about 15 feet in the air, mostly downward, and then rolled another 20 feet toward the plate. I walked the 35 feet, picked up the ball, walked back, and tried again, and again, and again. I noted maybe a slight improvement, but the prospect of getting booed on Sunday looked even more likely.

Then something almost miraculous occurred. I had noticed that I was not alone on the ball field. A man in his 40s was tossing and hitting balls with a teenager, presumably his son. The two finished their workout and began to walk off the field, carrying two gloves, a bat, and a wire basket filled with baseballs. They had to pass me to get to their car and probably were curious what this nearly 70-year-old man was doing throwing the same baseball into the ground and retrieving over and over. The father asked me about it, and I told him my “woeful” story. “Maybe I can help,” he said. “Throw a few pitches to me.”

He watched my form and immediately transformed into a coach, which I learned he was for a local Babe Ruth league team. “Turn your body as you wind up,” he suggested. I tried that, and the ball sailed at least 10 feet farther toward the plate. “Now, work on following through as you pitch to make it go straight. Right. That looks a lot better. You even look a little like a pitcher now.” That was probably a gross exaggeration, but it made me smile inside for the first time since I arrived at the field with my ball. He caught me and offered advice for another 15 minutes, then left me with 5 baseballs for more practice and a pep talk. As he drove off, I realized that we must have shared first names with each other at some point, but I simply couldn’t recall his name. But whoever he was, I certainly appreciate his kindness.

I immediately called Amanda at her workplace, which frightened her a little. Phone calls out of the blue can be a little scary in our family these days. I told her about my impromptu training session and that I would be ready to take on the awesome first pitch task on Sunday.

And I was. Sunday afternoon, I followed a PR person down to the field at Yogi Berra Stadium and met with a Jackals infielder from Marietta, Georgia, named Nelson Ward, who had been designated to catch my first pitch. We chatted about Georgia, took a few practice tosses on the sideline, and then headed onto the field. 

Nelson and me:
Two men from Georgia tossing a baseball.

I think my name was announced, but my heart was probably beating too loudly to hear anything. I asked Nelson how far I should stand from the plate for my toss. “Whatever makes you comfortable,” he replied. I found a spot a few feet in front of the mound, took my stance, and followed all of the instructions my coach had given me a few days before. The ball sailed out of my hand and landed in Nelson’s mitt in the air, Not a perfect strike, but no bounces, and no boos. I walked to Nelson, shook his hand, placed the ball he handed me into my old glove, and proceeded to join my birthday guests in the stands.

I accepted warm congratulations and asked if anyone had captured my momentous feat on video. “Not exactly,” Amanda said. “I was starting to video you, when Mom had a problem with her camera. I helped her, then turned around and you were done. I just got you coming off the mound.”

I watched that 7-second video, and could hear Audrey clearly in the background. “That was it?” she asked, perhaps expecting a little more ceremony, But it was definitely enough. Then I looked up at the scoreboard, and there was my name and a birthday wish in big white letters for a small crowd to see. Turning 70 … there’s nothing to it!

"That was it?" My 7 seconds of fame.

A Small Act of Heroism

The word “hero” has been used so much lately that I think it has lost some of its luster. So I’m a little reluctant to call the recent actions of my dog Tess and me heroic. But we did do what we could to relieve suffering of a fellow creature. And we did it without seeking any reward other than a feeling of joy—and maybe a little bemusement.

Here are the details.

Tess and I were taking a morning walk starting from our vacation home in the Berkshires toward a nearby lake. As we approached the lake, we saw a large group of young ducks milling about on the grass, which lay between two barriers—a metal fence that separated the road from the grass and a plastic slatted and gated fence that separated the grass from a small beach and the lake.

The ducks had gathered in this grassy area beside the lake

The ducks were noisily enjoying themselves pecking at the grass and at each other when something caused them to spook. It might have been Tess’s and my approach, though we were trying to be very quiet and had no intention of barging in on the ducks. In any case, the entire flock began panicking and fleeing. I think they must have been young ducks and perhaps couldn’t fly yet. (What do I know about duck development?) But all of the ducks found their way through a small opening beneath one of the gates in the plastic fence and raced into the water. All of the ducks except one.

The lone straggler must not have been paying attention as the other ducks escaped, and he couldn’t figure out how they had gotten beyond the fence. Tess and I watched as he walked along the slatted fence with increasing desperation, sticking his head into each slatted area and realizing that he couldn’t slip through.

Now, Tess has been in the same situation as the duck many times during our visits to the lake, and she has learned the secret of getting by the fence if she can’t get under it. She simply walks to the end of the fence and slips through an opening in bushes that border it. Simple for a determined dog and presumably simple for a duck too. But not our duck, who continued to pace back and forth like one of those fathers awaiting the birth of a baby in an old movie. And he was getting more desperate as he paced.

Tess might have been thinking it, and I called out to the duck to just keep going to the end of the fence. But neither of us could get through to the duck. At last, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We opened the first gate and walked across the grass toward the duck, who, not surprisingly, was nervous about seeing a dog and a human approaching. But we said some soothing words and proceeded right to a gate in the fence and opened it. Our duck scampered right through and into the lake. It might be my imagination, but I think the other ducks were laughing at their flock mate as he swam toward them.

Later, I told my daughter Amanda about our adventure, and she suggested that Tess and I were heroes. I blushed a little, but secretly I was pleased. We also decided to give our rescued duck a name. The consensus of those who heard the tale (and I shared it with lots of people) was to name him “Lucky,” as in “Lucky Duck.”

Now, this story should end here. But it doesn’t. Amazingly, on our morning walk two days later, we saw almost the same thing happen. One duck found himself all alone on the grassy area without any idea of how to reach the water where the rest of the flock were swimming joyfully. Could this really be Lucky again? This time, Tess and I didn’t hesitate. We walked right up to the fence, opened the gate, and watched the duck scamper through. So Tess and I had responded to another creature’s need and had come through again. Were we double heroes? We couldn’t be sure. But we did have a new name for our rescued duck — we called him “Dumb Luck.”

Lucky swims all by himself the next morning

 .

Compensation: The Real Meaning

I have been thinking about compensation lately and how the meaning of the word has changed for me as I approach age 70.

When I was a teenager—bagging groceries at the Foodtown on Henry Street—compensation meant the $1.15 an hour I was being paid at first. That’s what you earned in a minimum wage job in those days. When the minimum wage was increased to $1.25 soon afterward, my salary went up nearly 10 percent. Today, there is talk of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That seems like a huge increase to my 16-year-old self, but not nearly enough when viewed through my almost 70-year-old eyes.

Maybe I should have written a research paper on minimum wage in high school.

Luckily, during those teen years, I was often able to supplement my salary with tips I earned from carrying bags of groceries out to customers’ cars. Unluckily, I was expected to report the total of any tips I received. Then the reported total could be deducted from my pay for the day. (Full confession: sometimes I fibbed a little and reported only about 75% of the tips, which, unluckily, never amounted to more than $8, even on a great day.)

So what’s different for me about compensation today beyond the changes in minimum wage? It’s what I have to compensate for. A couple of years ago, I injured a tendon in my right forearm. My doctor diagnosed the injury as tennis elbow, which would be cool if I played tennis on even a semi-regular basis. No, I got the injury from carrying heavy suitcases up several flights of stairs while on a vacation in Denmark after a hotel elevator broke down. So, what I really have is suitcase elbow. Would it sound cooler if I called it Danish suitcase elbow?

Would this be more impressive in Danish?

Then, in recent weeks, I have felt a weakness behind one of my knees. I would try to describe it, but anyone nearing 70 like me probably knows what I am feeling. It’s a…a…a…weakness. Once again compensation has been required, so I have added an Ace knee brace to the Ace elbow brace I have kept around for use at the gym ever since my Danish adventure.

This leg has weathered nearly 70 years.

I fear as I actually reach 70—or beyond—that I am going to need additional compensation both for my physical shortcomings and in order to pay for new medical devices to compensate for them. My wife’s grandmother used to say, “It’s no fun getting old.” It’s also painful for your body, your psyche, and your wallet.

Everybody Needs an Editor

These days, I have more free time on my hands than I used to, so I have been listening to a series of lectures on CD by a professor of Hebrew and Bible studies at NYU on the history of the Bible. One of the early lectures focuses on the question of who wrote the Bible. There are no definitive answers to the question. Really, I didn’t expect a specific author credit other than perhaps Moses. But the scholarship is very interesting. What did surprise me was that the professor spends some time noting that the Bible had not only writers but also editors. 

As someone who sends out business cards proclaiming to be a “Writer/Editor,” I was glad that the editing role in the creation of the Bible was being acknowledged. Even if the writers were divinely inspired, they were bound to make some mistakes and overlook some inconsistencies. Hence, the need for editors. Of course, we editors also like to think we are divinely inspired. As I often tell my children (and anyone else I encounter), “Everybody needs an editor.”

Here is an example of Biblical editing that the lecturer noted. In Exodus, Chapter 12, verses 8–10, the Israelites are commanded to eat the flesh of the lamb that they slaughtered and whose blood they used to paint their doorposts so the Angel of Death would “pass over” their houses and spare their first born children. How should the lamb be cooked? The answer is stated directly: it should be roasted with fire and NOT boiled in water. Any parts that remain after the evening meal should be burned with fire in the morning. The details are pretty specific, so they must have seemed important to the writers of Exodus and to the people of Israel who were fleeing from Egypt and heading slowly toward Canaan.

The story of the Passover celebration meal is repeated later in the Bible, this time in Deuteronomy 16:7, where a different verb is used to describe the cooking process—one which involves boiling, though my Bible translates the term as “roast.” Not a big deal, most of us would probably think. But the discrepancy worried scholars over the years—and must have disturbed one or two Biblical editors too, because they now got involved. In a later book, II Chronicles (35:13), one or more editors took over when the lamb cooking process is again described, and this time included terms for BOTH roasting and boiling. The editors thus protected the egos of both previous sets of writers—an editing skill that is often underappreciated.

Over the years, my children have each asked me to review some of their compositions and to provide a little editing magic. We all decided that was not cheating, just improving. I found the best technique to use involved leaving the beginnings and endings of paragraphs pretty much intact while making needed adjustments in the middle sentences and adding an occasional transition or two. [It’s a little like those reading tests you see online where some of the letters inside words are transposed, but your mind makes the connections anyway.] It must have worked ok, because both children often got an ego boost in noting, “You really didn’t change anything much.” I would just nod.

  

All of which reminds me of perhaps my most memorable editing moment, which occurred the summer after I graduated from high school. I was working as an intern on the Savannah Evening Press, the local afternoon daily. The press run of the day’s paper was almost ready to begin. I was asked to give a quick (but thorough) read to the front page to make sure everything looked right. I spotted a pretty embarrassing error. The typesetter had left out the letter l in the word public. In Savannah, Georgia, in 1967, no one discussed anything pubic, especially on the front page of a newspaper. I was told to rush down to the press room, find a pressman, and say these memorable words—“Stop the Presses!!!” That is exactly what happened. Then a typesetter rushed in with a chisel and chipped off the letters “ic” from the word on the plate. The presses started up again, and 30,000 copies were run off with a blank space between the words pub and library on page 1.

In the old days, type was set by placing individual
metal letters into metal frames

I have spent much of the next 50 years editing as well as writing a wide range of materials, but I have never felt quite as heroic as at that moment in 1967. I can just imagine how the editors working on II Chronicles must have felt as they improved the Bible!

A pressman checks the presses. As I learned,
he can even stop the presses!

First Time Fathers

Among the memorabilia turned over to me after my mother died five years ago was a letter that my father had written to my mother soon after my older brother was born. At the time, my father was stationed in England, serving in the Army Air Force during World War II. He was writing to respond to a letter he had just received from home letting him know he was a father for the first time. I’m not sure just why my brother entrusted the letter to me—after all, it’s really about him—but I’m glad to have it. Collecting and retelling our family history is part of my role.

I wasn’t sure how to write about that letter. Then I began reading a book of short essays on fatherhood by comedian Jim Gaffigan entitled Dad Is Fat. The title’s appeal to me is obvious. As one of my friends used to say, “I resemble that remark.” I also can relate to a lot of the feelings and mixed emotions that Gaffigan describes. Having been a father for nearly 38 years now, I think I should understand the role pretty well, but I still question my value sometimes and often rightfully doubt my expertise.

But this blogpost is really about beginnings—how three different fathers responded to their first days of fatherhood.

I can tell you from experience that it is hard to figure out your father role at first. Here is Gaffigan’s take:

The newborn stage is a special time. It’s really a sacred time when nobody expects you to do anything except enjoy your bundle of joy. This sacred time lasts roughly 20 minutes, and then you become the publicity agent for the mother and baby. The masses of family and friends want to be assured the mother is okay and get information on the baby. For some reason, it’s really important for people to know how much the baby weighs. This has always baffled me. It’s rude. She’s not even a day old, and people seem to be obsessed with my daughter’s weight.  She was nine pounds, but I remember telling friends, “She’s eight pounds, sixteen ounces” because it sounded thinner.

My father’s letter of response was not as humorous as Gaffigan’s, But it did have a funny connection to Gaffigan’s story, as you can see below. It was filled with wonder and romance and seemed so UNLIKE the quiet reserved man I would come to know a few years later. In fact, I felt that I was trespassing a little bit as I read the letter, though I am glad I did. It was addressed to “Dearest One and Skippy” and started this way:

Gosh “Sweet,” today was my lucky day. I finally received a letter from you dated April 21 [three days after my brother was born and almost exactly 75 years ago], and was I glad to hear from you. I believe this was the most welcome letter I have ever received from you. Today was also payday, and naturally as I only draw 8 pounds, I decided to invest a couple and send Skippy his first birthday present. . . .

Glad to hear that you and Skippy are getting along so good, but, Sweet, do you think I am a mind reader? Do you know you didn’t tell me how much Skippy weighed or even his birthday? . . . .

 .

Good night, sweet dreams, and God bless you both.

My parents took this picture several months before my
brother was born. My father enclosed it in his letter.

The third new-father response was mine. After our son Brett was born, healthy but a little bit yellow from jaundice, Audrey stayed in the hospital with the baby for a few extra days. I decided to surprise her with some better-than-hospital food from a deli near the hospital. I ordered the food, waited for a few minutes as it was prepared, and then got impatient to start my visit with my new son. 

As I moved toward the deli’s front door, the counterman shouted, “Hey, don’t you want your food?”

I blushed a little as I turned around and reached for the bag. Then I started toward the door again. 

“Hey, aren’t you going to pay for the food?” he shouted with a laugh. I made a quick apology and got out my wallet.

“By any chance, did your wife just have a baby?” the counterman inquired.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Just a wild guess,” he replied.

I would like to think by the time my second child, Amanda, was born and I became a second-time father, that I had gotten a little smoother. But she would probably be the first one to tell you that smoothness is not my style then or now. Alas, our children know us too well.

Audrey, Brett, and me soon after our family got bigger and better.

Wondrous Birds—Our Keys Adventure

I must admit that until Audrey and I took a trip to the Florida Keys a few weeks ago, I had never seen a pelican up close. Then we went to an unusual tourist attraction called Robbie’s of Islamorada, where you could pay a fee to feed small fish to large hungry tarpon competing in an enclosed pool—if you could keep a flock of in-flying pelicans from trying to horn in on the food. Or you could save money and just observe the pelicans, which is what Audrey and I did. 

I don’t recommend Robbie’s very highly, but it is unique. And the pelicans are gentler and prettier than I thought they would be. Here are some I bonded with.

The scene was closer to one that involved Brett and some pigeons in Savannah when he was three. . .

. . .and less like Tippi Hedren’s ordeal in The Birds.

Before visiting Robbie’s, my total pelican experience revolved around a limerick that most of us have read or heard:

A wondrous bird is the pelican.

Its beak can hold more than its belican.

It can hold in its beak

Enough food for a week

And I don’t see how in the helican.

I pretentiously recited the limerick aloud to the birds and identified its creator—the humorist poet Ogden Nash. Wrong! 

I did some quick research and discovered that for oh-so-many years, Ogden Nash has been receiving credit for the work of another less acclaimed but well deserving comic poet and newspaper columnist named Dixon Lanier Merritt. When I discovered my error, you could have knocked me over with a (pardon the expression) feather.

Birds seem to be a big deal in the Florida Keys. In Key West, our next destination after Robbie’s, we encountered dozens of chickens roaming free on streets, sidewalks, and restaurant porches. What’s the story with these fowl, known as “Gypsy chickens”? No one knows for sure. But the chickens are allowed to roam free, and the crowing of the roosters not only greets the morning in Key West but all hours of the day. They fit right in with the Key West lifestyle. One island native explained the noisy chickens this way: “They’re like some of the people down here – they don’t know when to quit.”  

The pelicans and chickens were just two of the unusual things we encountered in the Keys. Some of the humans were pretty outrageous too!

My Uncle, the Mystery Man

Audrey and I took a trip to Key West two weeks ago. It was our first visit there, but it turned out to be a trip back into my family’s history at the same time. And it put truth at last to a family legend.

My father was the 11th of 12 children. Which means that if we had ever held a family reunion on my father’s side, there would have been a pretty big crowd. We never did. In fact, I never even met most of my father’s siblings. That makes me pretty sad because the ones that I met were friendly and funny. And the men all looked and sounded a lot like my father, as do my brother and I.

My Aunt Libby was noted for making the best fried chicken and biscuits in East Texas, according to my father. I got to sample them when I was eight, and they were great.

On the same trip to the Deep South, I met my Uncle Aaron in Greenville, Mississippi, and he and several other cousins let me win in a game of penny-ante poker. I was even allowed to keep the 35 cents I won. These are strong memories.

I saw my Uncle David several times over the years, and I am still close with his three children—Jake, Larry, and Sara Hannah.

But I have perhaps the strongest affection for my father’s brother Sam, whom we called Uncle Bookie. I am not sure why, but I am pretty sure he never took bets from anyone. It was probably the way his twin sister Stella or one of the younger children muddled the word Brother. Or maybe not.

That is only one mystery connected to my Uncle Bookie. He came and went into my life many times during my childhood. During the spring, he and a friend named Jeri, who was his travel companion and may have also been his girlfriend, would often drive to and from Florida from their home in Washington, DC. Many years, on their return trip, they would arrive almost unannounced at our house in Savannah. Actually, they did give us a brief warning. One or two hours from Savannah, they would call to say they would soon be passing through. My mother would act annoyed by the short notice, but she would always invite them to dinner and to stay over for the night.

I shared this memory with my cousin Sara Hannah recently, and she echoed it with one of her own:

Uncle Bookie would just blow in to Oil City [Louisiana] unannounced also...Mama and the rest of us were delighted. My favorite memory (or, at least, one I can remember) is when he blew in driving a new blue (maybe a Chevy) convertible.  I was in high school and lived about ten miles from school. Uncle Bookie insisted that I gather my friends and drive to North Caddo High School in his new vehicle.  Coming home, I passed a car and blew my horn. The horn would not turn off for miles and all the way into our driveway.  I was so anxious about a 'rebuff.'  Not sure, but I have no memory of any reprimands. This wonderful, somewhat of an enigma, uncle remains one of my favorites. 

Which brings me to the Key West mystery. Uncle Bookie spent many years in the super market business. He was in charge of purchasing for a large chain in Washington. My father said that Uncle Bookie had gotten his start in the food biz working as a purchasing agent for President Harry Truman’s yacht the Williamsburg. I wondered how true the story was, and I now had a chance to find out.

The Little White House in Key West

The yacht had been based at the Naval Air Station in Key West, a part of which was set off as the Truman Little White House. President Truman and his military and political entourage would spend several weeks each spring and fall in Key West, where Truman could be informal with “the guys.” Bess and Margaret were not invited, as far as I can tell, though Harry would call them most evenings.

Audrey and I toured the Little White House, and I asked the guide if there were any records of staff of the Williamsburg. He directed me to the site’s website which contained detailed logs of each of Truman’s 11 visits to Key West. I scanned the logs and found one small entry in the ninth log—March 2–22, 1951. The entry lists the Williamsburg staff who embarked with the president on a Key West fishing trip. One of them was "Chief Commissaryman S. Goodman," my own Uncle Sam.

If that weren’t proof enough, I remembered a picture that had been sent to me by a cousin from Mississippi several years before. Here it is:

Harry Truman and my Uncle Sam (plus a big fish)

Truman looks pretty relaxed in his bright island shirt, but the man behind him in uniform is a little more formal. That’s my Uncle Bookie. I know because he looks so much like my father.

I am guessing that the large fish on the dock was either caught or purchased and will become the President’s dinner that night. I can even let my imagination go wild and hope that the fish was caught on my uncle’s line. Why not?

So we found a little family history at the Little White House in Key West and another reason to have special feelings about a mysterious uncle.

Game Changer

    

    A new commercial for Wayfair has my number. The husband in the commercial notes that Wayfair offers free shipping on furniture items ordered. “Free shipping,” the husband says, “game changer.”

    I, too, am easily seduced by offers of free shipping or extra low prices. And there must be more like me out there. For example, Amazon has introduced a new curve in its used book sales area. For the longest time, amazon offered used books at ridiculously low prices as long as you paid $3.99 for shipping per item. I often ordered used books. Even some of my own previously published works, which were being offered at crazy (perhaps even insulting) prices. Imagine an original Goodman in Very Good condition for $1.98 + $3.99 shipping—under 6 bucks! Hard to pass that up, even if my work is worth so much more, at least to me. It is a little hard on the ego to be “remaindered,” but it’s better than totally out of sight and mind.

    Then, a few months ago, a new wrinkle appeared. Some sellers still offered a book at, for example, $2.00 + the usual $3.99. While others provided a bargain—$5.98 with shipping included. Doing math, even in my head, I can see that the costs are almost identical. But the idea of getting free shipping has quickly won my business each time.

A good idea but terrible spelling

    This bargain hunting habit of mine takes other forms too. And sometimes the bargains that are helpful to my wallet are harmful to my waistline and my teeth. I am ashamed to admit it, but I like some types of candy that anyone above the age of 10 often eschews. I’m talking about candy corn and jelly beans, for example. I can usually talk myself out of buying candy corn in the days leading up to Halloween, when the bags may cost $3.00 or more. But in the first week of November, when the cost drops to 50 cents or less, I often succumb. I especially like those pumpkin things. As for jelly beans, the best time to stock up is clearly the week after Easter. Oh, the shame!!!

    I come by my bargain hunting naturally. My mother, especially in her later years, had a special affection for Dollar Stores. Imagine getting anything from cheese crackers to those fried onion crisps in a can to bath brushes to cleaning supplies for $1 each (or even 99 cents at certain stores).She might not be getting the best quality, but she definitely got more bang for her buck! I even took advantage of her predilection. It was never easy to find the right present for my mother on Mother’s Day or even her birthday. She would usually say she didn’t need anything and didn’t want anything. And even when I did find what I thought was the perfect gift, it was often given a lukewarm reception. Then I decided to send her a gift card to the Dollar Store nearest to her home. Bingo—success! That became my gift of choice for several years, and it was always a hit.

Dollar Power Indeed!

    One funny story comes to mind here. My mother often bought greeting cards from the Dollar Store. Why spend $3.99 or more for a card that was going to be opened and read only once, she reasoned. But she didn’t always read the cards carefully herself. One year, my very Jewish mother sent a birthday card to my daughter/her granddaughter that opened with the words “To a wonderful granddaughter” then proceeded to a flowery message that promised love not only from Grandma but also from Jesus. “I know just where Nana got this card,” Amanda said with a laugh.

    Some people say many Baby Boomers are big bargain hunters because their parents lived through the Depression, and they passed along a certain financial wariness to us. Maybe that’s true. Amazon has picked up on that. And Dollar Stores are popping up everywhere you look. I’m a big fan of both. And I am also looking forward to February 15 next month when I’ll probably be in the market for those “teeth-rotting” Valentine Conversation Hearts when the prices drop.

Is there a right time to buy Conversation Hearts?