The Wrong Hat, The Right Hat

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2010 Elliott Joseph

January 2010

Remember how strawberries used to taste? If you do, you've been around as long as I have, because it's been an age since they've had any real flavor.

And what about tomatoes? The last time I sliced into one of those pulpy monstrosities my knife didn't even get wet.

Just when I was about to give up eating anything that didn't have to be cooked, my friend Phil told me he had figured out what's been causing the problem.

"Those farmers are wearing the wrong hat!" he said.

He pushed me into his jeep and drove us to a local produce fair at the edge of town.

"Follow me," he commanded.

In the course of an hour I was treated to the most delicious strawberries, figs, melons, peaches, apples, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and other greens I had tasted in years.

"Now," he said triumphantly, "look around. See any plastic caps here?"

Indeed there weren't any.

Not one of the local growers was wearing the familiar, baseball type peaked cap that has become the mark of the big corporate farmer. Not one had that full crown of banded plastic netting on his head, its high, stiffened, cotton fronting, so often emblazoned with some company trademark.

Every one of the local growers was wearing a straw hat.

"Good old fashioned farm hat, the straw hat," said Phil. "There you have it. The big farmers who supply our supermarkets aren't wearing the right hat."

"It can't be the hat," I chuckled. "If anything, it's the logistical demands of distribution, the need to harvest crops before they're ready. It's the pressure of big loan payments. It's the accelerating requirements for efficiency and increased production," I went on. "That's what has turned our farmers away from growing foods that have taste to foods that are big, heavy and look good. It's the tragedy of our times."

"It's the hat," he repeated, "pure and simple. Chefs, police officers, the clergy. We are what our hats say we are. And the same goes for farmers."

"Never mind the hat," I said. "If there's any solution to this problem, it rides with the consumer. What we have to do is encourage people to insist on tree-ripened flavor and quality."

"It's the hat," insisted Phil.

"Excuse me," I said, not without a bit of sarcasm in my voice, "are you implying that all we have to do is get the farmer to change his hat and our troubles will be over?"

"Precisely," he said. "The straw hat will put the lid, so to speak, on the problem. It's big and clumsy. It'll slow the farmer down. Right now, with that handy adjustable strap in the back of the plastic cap, the farmer can go flying off in his high speed tractor, even in a big wind. The straw hat would come right off his head if he tried that.

"Now he can walk into his glass-walled, chromium-lined bank wearing that plastic representation of corporate mentality and even these days get that loan he's got himself hooked into needing.

"Imagine him strolling into a bank wearing a straw hat and trying to get credit for a million and a half. He'd be lucky if they let him open a checking account. The straw hat would keep the farmer small enough to once again think in good old-fashioned terms."

"You're making it sound rather easy," I said, trying a bit of irony.

"It's really not so easy," said Phil. "The farmer likes that home run image he thinks the plastic cap gives him."

We got into the jeep for the ride back.

"Once people make the farmer realize that they won't accept anything less than good tasting produce," I said, "the farmer will find a way to deliver it, whether he's big or small."

"You've got a lot of faith in the farmer," said Phil.

"I do," I said. Then I reflected on the delicious fruit I had tasted at the fair. "Maybe, just in the the meantime, mind you, I'll start buying some produce from the people wearing the 'right' hat."

Phil laughed, satisfied that he had made his point.

# # #

Quotidian

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2009 Elliott Joseph

December 2009

Actually, I like the daily routine. It frees me up, leaves my mind clear.

I don't wake up too early. I wash my face, brush my teeth, of course. Because deodorant irritates my skin, I shower or simply wipe under my arms with a damp cloth, which keeps me fresh throughout the day and evening. Never a complaint. There's also shaving the cheeks and trimming the beard, whether I'm going out or not.

Breakfast is my responsibility. My wife does dinner and doesn't eat lunch. The night before, I plan the breakfast and my midday meal. I use the pages of a 3x5" pad for this, as well as for my to do list for the day, after checking the calendar. I don't trust my memory any more.

Then there's the day. The morning stretching and exercises. The pills to take, the mail, the computer, the newspaper, shopping for food and supplies, maintenance.

If there are chores, like taking out the garbage, dusting or vacuuming, they get worked in somehow. I'm not rigid about them. After a while they get assertive. Once a week there's the laundry. We have machines in the garage. I make sure I have enough quarters. That's another thing that gets on my list. I get four rolls at a time, so I have a cushion.

There's the doctor and the dentist to schedule.

So you ask, don't I ever do anything important? I do. I do. I am a writer, and there is always a project, projects, I should say. Some writers, some artists, sacrifice their daily life, even their family life, for their art. Perhaps my talent, such as it is, isn't worth the sacrifice. Is that small of me?

Maybe I could have done more. Would that make a difference?

Certainly, if my work brought the world to a better place. Health care for those not covered, help for the homeless, the economy, peace, a light that opens the way for the lives of others. Those might be reasons to let the house and its occupants fall apart -- for the greater good.

What does quotidian mean anyway? "Occurring every day. Commonplace. Ordinary."

I don't do everything every day, but I guess I'm programmed, though a bit of delay now and then doesn't hurt. Do I leave time for serendipity? There's movies, theater, lectures, books, music, museums, gardening, recreation, friends, family, and my work of course.

Get maid service to do the quotidian? That's an option, I suppose, but who'd pay the bills, balance the checkbook, manage the credit card statements, get gas, wash the car? Maybe someday when we can't turn the mattress. It's getting heavy, but so far we can manage. My wife has her photography, and is able to do her quotidian part, more than her part, in fact.

I'll bet there are a lot of people for whom the quotidian isn't so bad. Those folks don't want to let their home life disintegrate. I don't think it's compulsiveness. For me it's just a welcome sense of control that gives me tranquility, some shielding from an otherwise chaotic, alarming world. I do wonder sometimes, though, about those people who just let things go.

# # #

Early Retirement

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2009 Elliott Joseph

November 2009

My friend Dave is the youngest in our crowd, but he was first to get a job, first to get married, first to have kids, and six months ago the first to retire.

"Early retirement, heh?" I said when he told me the news. "I knew you were making a bundle, you rascal." Now starts a life of debauchery, mindless travel and excess, I envisioned, leading to boredom, anxiety, desperation and premature demise.

Dave insisted he wasn't loaded.

"They've forced you out. Discrimination!" I yelped.

It wasn't anything like that, he said. It was his own decision to retire.

The poor guy, I thought. He must be terminal.

"You can tell me, Dave," I said, putting my arm around his shoulder. "How much time have you got?"

He guessed about thirty-five to forty years. His father had lived to be ninety-two and his mother was in good shape.

"You're going into business! You've invented a substitute for soap!"

He smiled.

"Hated your boss's guts, didn't you?"

No, he said. He had worked very hard all his life. He had seen to his children's education, and at last they were on their way, each in his or her own style. Now he just wanted to do whatever he felt like doing.

I had to save him. He was my friend.

"OK," I said, "go through your drawers and get rid of every pair of socks you haven't worn in two years. Then, after you enjoyed your little respite, take a serious look at your future."

What else can you say when your pal, barely into his fifties, says he's wrapping it up?

The first thing he did was to take a six weeks trip to Spain with Betty to study Spanish. I saw him briefly when they got back, but then they took off for Cleveland to see family and old friends. We talked now and then but not that much. Finally, last weekend, I was able to stop in to see how he was doing I prepared myself for the worst. How much free time would a person who's worked all his life be able to take?

As I entered his house an exquisitely delicious aroma filled my nostrils.

"Betty baking?" I asked.

No she was out. That's a snack loaf he has been experimenting with and it's just about ready.

I regarded him suspiciously until I noticed how well he looked. The crease on the left side of his face was gone. The rims of his eyes were a healthy pink instead of the raw red I had gotten used to seeing over the years. He seemed trimmer and sort of bounced on his tennis shoes as he moved about the room.

"So what have you decided to do?" I asked.

Well, he thought he'd continue with the Spanish. Such a beautiful language.

"O.K., O.K., but what are you going to DO?"

Did I mean tomorrow? He didn't know. Maybe take a walk in the woods. Did I want to play some golf or go to the game with him?

"What are your plans, David?"

He'd been doing some volunteering. He liked that.

"Good, good, but what are your PLANS?" I repeated.

Then he told me about the four men he had seen at a cafe on the island of Kos ten years before. Nearby was the great plane tree, a descendant of the one under which, it was said, Hippocrates had taught medicine to the youth of ancient Greece. The men were sitting on simple wooden chairs at a simple wooden table. He thinks there was a famous painting of a scene like that. Each had a glass in front of him, though it was ignored for the most part. They talked, sometimes earnestly and sometimes perfunctorily, and they laughed and they looked at the people passing by. The next day they were there again.

Dave said he had thought about taking a picture of them, but decided that if he did it would probably wind up in an envelope someplace and he'd forget all about it.

"Are you saying you want to sit around and just do -- nothing?"

"Is that nothing?"

"It's a waste. You'd atrophy. After a while you wouldn't know what time it was."

I looked at my watch. "It's a quarter to two," I said.

He knew.

"It's Saturday."

He knew.

We shook hands.

"If you ever need me," I said, "if ever you need a job. If ever you start chewing off your fingernails, I want you to call me."

He assured me he would.

Well, I thought, it's only a few months. Let's see how he's getting along a year or so from now.

Imagine. Retiring early and doing whatever you want to do. That can't be good for you, can it?

# # #

Only When I Laugh

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2009 Elliott Joseph

October 2009

As you may know, I have been a writer of humor all my life.

I've laughed, I've giggled, I've laughed so hard I've almost choked. So what was I laughing at?

The loss of jobs? The houses all but gone? The tent cities? The futures shattered? The battles against hopelessness? What was so funny? The rising cost of food? The fraud? The so-called health care debate? The big lies? What passes for music? Afghanistan? Iraq? The shouting of newscasters? The mindless speeding of cars in TV commercials? The lack of common courtesy?

The lack of taste?

Why did I always seem to have such a bellyful of laughs? Was it that I didn't care? Was it that I was ignorant? That I saw how difficult it was to get the right thing done? That I saw today's crazy human behavior as remarkably similar to the experiment I witnessed in a college psychology class -- where the environment of laboratory rats was made to be crazy, resulting in crazy rat behavior?

Or was it simply that I laughed because if I didn't laugh I might go crazy myself?

# # #

What I Don't Know

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2009 Elliott Joseph

September 2009

They say that when you reach a certain age you realize that wisdom is knowing what you don't know. If so, I am very wise. The trouble is that there are far too many things I don't know. Here's a partial list:

- - How television works.

- - What "a 30% chance of showers" means.

- - What to say when a stranger calls during dinner to sell you something.

- - What my wife is thinking.

- - How to make money.

- - Why we see only one side of the moon.

- - Why there's never enough time.

- - Which witness in a jury trial to believe.

- - How some people get elected.

- - Why someone else wins the lottery.

- - Why after a coin can land heads up twenty times the odds on the next toss are still 50-50.

- - How to sell something.

- - How to negotiate.

- - How long it takes to get sick from something you ate.

- - The difference between hysteria, paranoia and schizophrenia.

- - Why so much music ignores the ear.

- - Why so much poetry can't be understood even by people with a good education.

- - Why laughter is so good for us.

- - Why so many people cheat, steal and lie.

- - Why so many people drive so aggressively and with such lack of courtesy.

- - Why so many people always seem to be on the phone.

- - Why so many people don't return telephone calls.

- - How to harvest alfalfa.

- - Who makes up all those metaphors for politicians.

- - Why some people talk so much.

- - Why some people never listen.

- - Why the stock market goes down when interest rates go up.

- - Why the stock market goes up when interest rates go down.

- - Why the stock market goes up or down altogether.

- - What a vitamin is.

- - What the smallest particle is.

- - Why some people grow old and others remain kids.

- - How to live with injustice.

- - Why logic has a dirty name.

- - Why following directions doesn't work.

- - Why other people don't know how to water your plants.

- - How to be one of the boys.

- - What Infinitesimal Calculus is.

- - How to speak a foreign language.

- - Why there are always at least two sides to every question.

- - Why some people have no sense of shame.

- - Why there are so many species.

- - How Mozart could possibly have composed so much, so magnificently.

- - Why it's fun just taking a walk.

- - How a ship floats.

- - How an airplane stays up.

- - How we can learn to ride a bicycle.

- - Why we like some people but not others.

- - Why some people like us and others don't.

- - When to say yes and when to say no.

- - How to build a house.

- - How to play a musical instrument.

- - How to play bridge.

- - How to fix a noisy radiator.

- - Why so many men don't flush the toilet in the rest room.

- - Why naming something makes us think we know what it is.

- - What it's all about.

If there is anyone out there who can enlighten me about any of these things, please write me without delay. If, on the other hand, you have a number of things that you don't know yourself, shoot me a copy of your list. I don't know what I will be able to do about it, but perhaps a sharing of our ignorance will have a salutary effect.

# # #

Song of The Sexual Revolution

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2009 Elliott Joseph

August 2009

"Excuse me, but do you think the sexual revolution is over?"

The question came from a mature gentleman sharing the small restaurant table with me. He was looking at me earnestly, his thick gray eyebrows raised in polite expectation.

I was just about through with my lunch and not altogether surprised that a stranger would reveal such an intimate thought. There are many friendly little restaurants in my town, and it is not unusual to talk about personal matters with someone you don't know, protected as we are by the proverbial shield of anonymity.

I replied that I had been married for a good many years, and although I had of course been aware of the sexual revolution I could not speak with authority about it.

"I was thinking of joining it," he said, "but I wonder if it's too late.

"To tell the truth," he went on, "I never got into it because I kind of liked the way things were before it started. With sex not quite being so much in the open there was more of a mystery about it. We had romance in those days. One looked forward with anticipation to a goal that was not too easy to attain. There was more to long for, so to speak. One could buy flowers, dream, fantasize.

"One could be moved by songs like IF THIS ISN'T LOVE, EMBRACEABLE YOU, ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE,

"The droll risque argument that was presented by LET'S ALL DO IT had some validity, some point."

He chuckled a bit nervously.

"Then there was the other side of it," he continued. "Not that we were prudes, but we could get a good laugh out of sex. I mean you could tell light, bright sexual stories and hit someone's funny bone. You could hint at sexual misconduct and actually hear giggles. It was fun.

"I guess the fifties couldn't last forever."

He took a quick sip of his glass of wine.

"On came the sixties, the Flower Children and the revolution. I was tempted to become a foot soldier and march right in. One doesn't want to be left out of what's happening in one's time. But I held off.

"And then came the seventies and the eighties. Talk about ANYTHING GOES!

"The pill, teen-age pregnancy, abortion, the single parent phenomenon, explicitness - - it got confusing. And the language! It was just plain filthy. To get a laugh at a party you had to appeal to a sort of humor that was not really funny.

"In spite of all that, I recently considered going for it. The cure for VD had been found, and the very idea of consenting adults doing whatever they felt like doing with impunity, had some appeal. And then came the disaster - - AIDS. That stopped me cold.

"But now I'm thinking that today, with sexual education at a new high, with the concept of safe sex understood by so many people, I might be able to don the colors and charge ahead - - if it's all still going on, that is."

There was an unmistakable lack of conviction in his tone.

He looked at me, waiting for an answer that unfortunately could not be forthcoming.

Just then a woman about thirty, slender, with curly, chestnut hair and sympathetic blue eyes approached our table. The restaurant was crowded and we had the only free chair. I suggested that he ask her if it was all over. She sat down. He hesitated, but only for a moment.

"Over? The Sexual Revolution?," she replied with a friendly smile. "Why it's only just started. The biological clock is ticking and America is on to something new and exciting. All those years of adolescent self-indulgence and mindless promiscuity are done with. LOVE WALKED IN for me and all I can say is 'S WONDERFUL!"

The old gentleman looked hard at the woman for what seemed a full minute, and then suddenly lit up as though coming from under a cloud.

"You mean people are dancing CHEEK TO CHEEK?"

"Oh yes," she said. "And if they're not, they want to."

He thanked her, and bidding me farewell, strode off whistling a happy tune.

# # #

Good Old Fashion

By Elliott Joseph

Copyright 2009 Elliott Joseph

July 2009

My friend Phil has loosened fashion's grip on me.  And not a moment too soon as I consider the frightening prospect of having to replace any part of my wardrobe.

He walked in the other day, looking like a million.

He was wearing a smart, single breasted, gray glen plaid suit, white cotton dress shirt with spread collar, deep red silk tie with tiny black dots and a pair of shining, wingtip black oxfords.

"New outfit?" I asked.

"Not on your life!" he said, smiling.  "I got these clothes right out of my closet.  The suit is Jacques Roy, Paris.  Bought it in Barney's New York in 1976. The shirt is eleven years old.  The tie, fourteen.  And the shoes, twenty. That's years, man, years."

"Is there a message there?"

"I just put on this combination to make my point.  I'm not suggesting that you should match the age of your clothing to your birth date.  It's the principle of the thing.  Take your old clothes out of retirement.  That's the way to beat fashion."

An interesting idea, I mused.  But can it work?

My mind raced to the half dozen old suits I had waiting unworn on shaped hangers.  The piles of shirts I couldn't wear out if I lived three lifetimes.  The rows of ancient shoes with hardly a mark on them.  And the ties.  How in the world had I accumulated so many ties?

The combined age of my clothing would suit Methuselah.

"I've got plenty of old clothes," I said,  "but..."

"But what?" he interrupted, opening my closet door.  "Look at that suit.  Perfect condition."

"That's my Marty Sullivan," I said proudly. 

 
"Tired of it?"

"Actually, I love that suit.  I bought it for a song in eighty-one, but have been afraid to wear it.  A shame," I admitted.  "It's as light as a feather, and can be worn all year 'round."

"Elegant!" he said.  "Love the vest."

"Yes, but the jacket has a two and five eighths inch lapel."

"Three and a quarter.  Three and seven eighths.  Four and a half.  Why should we care about the width of a lapel?"

"Some of my trousers are tapered below the knee," I said.  "Some are flared."

"And some, I'll bet, are straight," he said, laughing mischievously.

It was an exhilarating moment as I thought I might be able to wear these great clothes that I've cherished over the years.  But it all weighed heavily on my mind.  Could I stop believing that the day of my old clothing had passed?

Phil must have understood my dilemma.

"I say to those who feel they have to dress down, go ahead if you feel you must dress to conform.  Forget who you really are.

"Guys like you and me should dress for ourselves.  You wear your Marty Sullivan.  And I'll wear my Jacques Roy.  We'll stay trim so we can fit into them, and we'll knock each other dead in the process.

"The alternative," he went on, as he made for the door, "is to go out today and pay eight hundred and seventy-five dollars for an off-the-rack, two-piece wool and synthetic blend suit, sixty-four dollars for a shirt that doesn't even have your exact sleeve length, forty-five dollars for a tie and over a hundred for a pair of shoes!

"Or worse, drop your self respect and get a pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt.  Ugh!" 

Flushed with excitement, after Phil left, I wondered what it will be like when I come out of the closet with my Marty Sullivan suit, my Ascot Chang custom shirt, the foulard I got years ago in Los Angeles and my brown English loafers, class of seventy-nine.

Will my age be showing?

So be it!
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