Neanderpundit

Last weekend we found “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” for five bucks. The ogwife, having heard of it but never seen it, buys it. Fine by me!!

Annyway, she watched it with the Oglet, and they both liked it. What’s not to like? And now I have I think every Audrey Hepburn movie on the shelf.

Now if I could buy ‘Carbine Williams” for $5, I’d be in fat city.

The first grown woman I ever fell in love with was a polynesian/hawaiian woman who was a waitress in the local restaurant. I don’t remember her actual name, nobody could pronounce it, everyone just called her Linda. She pronounced it “Leen-da”

Not horribly often, we would follow Sunday mass with breakfast. She was usually our waitress and our usual breakfast was waffles for mom, biscuits and gravy for dad, and cereal for my sister and I. She was tall and slender and she came to the table balancing that big tray on her hand in her short gold skirt and white apron, her order pad sticking out the back of her apron tie accentuating the curve of her backside.

I never really noticed it, for a long time.

One friday night they played “South Pacific” on the local affiliate, and I watched it sprawled out on the orange couch. Suddenly Linda, who was the only non-round eyed person I had ever met, became unspeakably exotic, as I watched Lieutenant Cable mooning over Liat. My saturday was filled with daydreams and as Sunday mass approached I managed to get my sister whining about breakfast; they wouldn’t go out for me, but for my sister, Dad would take us all to the restaurant.

So we went.

When we got there, (Mass seemed to take an awfully long time that morning) I sat next to the window, opposite my sister, next to Dad. Linda, as usual, came to take our order, and when she got to me, I deepened my voice as deep as a thirteen year old kid can and ordered “Two eggs and bacon with toast and coffee, please”

Mom and dad looked at me as if snakes were coming out of my ears, but let it stand.

I had had hot tea before, but never coffee. Dad drank it with milk, so I figured that was the way to do it. When it came, I carefully poured a splorp of milk into my coffee, and went to work on my eggs. The idea of drinking something hot with a meal was fairly new to me, but i sipped and discovered that it didn’t taste nearly as good as it smelled, but it was OK. I certainly wasn’t going to act like a KID, and ruin my new image. I did enjoy breakfast enough that I don’t think I ever ordered cereal again.

For a lot of years after that, every time I went to the restaurant she would look at me and ask “The usual?” and i would smile and she’d bring it, exactly as I had ordered that morning. We had developed an understanding.

The restaurant changed hands several times but she stayed waitressing there until I was in my 20’s. My first job, in fact, was a bagger at a local grocery store, and I would walk to the restaurant for lunch, and eat on my tip money.

Over the years I learned that she had met and married a man who was on leave from Korea, and he’d brought her back home from exotic Hawaii to bland and bleak Northwest Indiana, the area unique in all the earth in having absolutely no tourist trade whatsoever. Not long after he’d brought her there he died, and instead of escaping, she put down roots and stayed. I was painfullly shy and would never have been so bold as to be personal with her, but in retrospect I think there was a summer during which if I’d asked her out she would have said yes, and one of my very few regrets in life is that I never did.

I still remember her smile, and I still remember her voice. I never knew how old she actually was, nor what ever became of her. Sometimes the memories are better than the reality anyway.

if I came to the way I am honestly, or if I’m a bad seed.

Truth is, this is genetic, and if you meet my family, it explains a lot.

When I was about 14, one of my father’s best friends Chuck had decided to build a new garage- he did a lot of side work in addition to his usual job, so his planned garage was an impressive affair, two stories and lots of room for heavy equipment.

Painfully, the old, garden variety two car garage was in the way. So he planned the demolition with the help of his son Theo, and when Theo arrived, he said “This thing is too nice to destroy, why don’t you sell it to me?”

Chuck made it plain he could have it. Theo made plans to dismantle it, but Chuck had a better idea.

Chuck always had heavy equipment, so he backed his aging International flatbed truck into the old garage, and closed the door. He let the air out of the tires, and sat beams on the bed, attaching the beams to the walls of the garage. He refilled the tires, lifing the garage neatly about 6″ off the floor.

Dad’s job was to occupy the one and only policeman who would be on duty in town that day. Lyn, the cop in question, would commonly have breakfast in the local all night restaurant. Dad as often would get up early and have a bite at the same place before work.

This morning Dad offered to buy, and Lyn, built like a horse and with a similar appetite ordered the Texas Stack, four plate sized pancakes with bacon between layer one and two, sausage links between two and three, and corned beef hash between three and four, with two poached eggs on top. Dad excused himself to go to the bathroom. The payphone was between the mens and womens, and he called Chuck to let him know the one and only cop on duty would be busy for twenty minutes.

And that is how I ended up hanging out the window of a two car garage being driven 6 miles up US 41 at four in the morning.

Well, someone had to hold the light. Chuck couldn’t have the truck’s lights on, they;d just reflect off the inside of the garage. He had to have darkness inside the garage to see through the garage doors windows, and i had a magnetic base mounted tractor light I used to illuminate the road ahead while Theo drove behind, lights flashing.

By the time the call came in on Lyn’s police radio that there was a a garage headed northbound on US 41, the deed was done, and the garage was already bolted down to its new foundation. Lyn ignored the call anyway, knowing the caller was a drunk.

No, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I still have the magbase light in my shed.