Closet Parrothead

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We got a roll of tape yesterday. You wouldn't think that's anything to write home about, except that the stamp business requires industrial size tape. This roll is double sided tape nine inches wide that we use for attaching rubber stamp dies to sponge rubber cushion and the cushion to the wood mount. Maybe there's somebody closer than Phoenix we could order it from, but those people have put in lots more time in customer service for us than a couple of tape orders pays for. The cushion is eighteen inches wide so nine inch tape works perfectly; it also goes well with six by nine inch and nine by twelve inch sheets of rubber. We were going through the stuff quickly getting ready for the stamp convention. Today we got, well, almost got, because nobody was here to pay the COD, a can of the ink I use for indexing the stamp mounts. I still need to order some more wood and cushion.

This morning in Highlands I went into the store that used to be Bay State Beauty Supply to check the 60 to 80 percent closeout sale. That store used to be the closest thing to a five and ten in town, but was bought by a big distributor not too long ago. Last year for some reason I sprung about five bucks for a Kent hand-made comb there. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but wow! It really felt different from a 79 cent comb, on my scalp and going through my hair. I went back the next week for another one so I could keep one in my gym bag and one at home. I was hoping they would be marked down at least 60 percent today, but the salesclerk only charged me fifty cents each for one moustache comb and two pocket combs. I would have had an even longer talk with her than I did about why the parent company was closing the store (good retail location but poor for wholesale), the neighborhood, who was moving into the space when they left, and what she did back at her office in Portland ME, but I had to get to work and there was another customer anyway.

I was in a great mood when I got to work because -- oh, it was a beautiful drizzly day (now, why not? not all clear blue sky days are beautiful, and not all drizzly days aren't) and I drove rather than bicycled -- I had a Jimmy Buffet tape in my tape player. It was a 25 cent yard sale purchase. I'm not a parrothead, but the guy has a bunch of good songs. One in particular cracks me up, “Why don't we get drunk and screw.” The only time I can remember hearing that until it turned up on the tape (and I hadn't looked at the list of tracks -- for a quarter I didn't really care) was in a country and western bar in Tokyo. I had asked the piano player if he knew “Margaritaville” and he said, “Everyone knows that, here's another Buffet song instead.” If Her Shelleyness pesters me enough, I'll tell you more about that evening sometime. Call me lowbrow, I admit it. My taste in poetry runs to Kipling and Robert Service, too. Wanna hear me recite “The Cremation of Sam McGee”? Uh, I didn't think so. Give me a new computer system and a strange text editor to learn, and I'll type in the first few stanzas for practice.

One steady reader will be happy to hear that I was just wearing an apron which was a father's day present in 1988 from a younger Anne (duh! I know what year she was born, I can figure out exactly how young!) that's decorated in puffy paint with “Happy Father's Day! What kind of bread are you baking?” and a drawing of a horse. Tonight it was the second rhubarb pie of the season, not any kind of bread. I'm sad to say I got a little too engrossed in writing this (you may not be able to tell that from the writing quality) to check the pie, and the crust got a tiny bit overdone. I think one of the heating elements in the stove is burnt out, though. It takes an awfully long time to preheat.

At lunch a co-worker called my attention to a necklace ad that said “These are not your mother's love beads” and said, “We're old!” That wasn't news, but his next statement was a shock: “The hippies are now what the flappers once were.” Aieee! He's right. 1999 - 1968 = 1959 - 1928. And the real hippies were about five years younger than me.

I can't even keep one day in chronological order (and I don't see any reason to drag and drop the paragraphs around to do that, either. If you can't stand the chaos, get out of the kitchen.) Right after supper I went to the library and got out Blue Highways by Willian Least Heat Moon, recommended by some journaler or another (I have a feeling it may have been Janet Egan). There was a librarian right at the top of the stairs, so I showed her my notes and asked what letter the author's name would be filed under. I was guessing M, but they had his last name “Heat Moon”. That makes no sense to me. I could go for “Least Heat Moon” or “Moon.” She found me the call number, and the book was there, though. They can file it any way they want as long as they'll help me find it. I also got out Basin and Range, and found the definition of “craton” in the first dictionary I tried.

For years Newton had a crummy library -- small, antiquated, with only five parking spaces, in a building that rambled on and on with the first floor on six different levels and dark claustrophobic stacks. The new library is spacious and well lit and has a big parking lot and lots of computer terminals with an on-line catalog. On snowy days it seems to be the first place people go after digging out their driveway -- the parking lot is at least half full no matter how bad the weather. The city was really starved for a good library.