Bon Ton Roulet

"Don't go," she says. "You're getting too much exercise. You're always tired."

The chill dawn sky has segued from purple to magenta to orange to yellow. Sunlight sneaks through grey clouds.

"I become more tired when sedentary," he says.

The pull of the ocean. He sees peaks rise on the surface. They could break. And there's only a single person out. Or is that a seal? A dolphin? Or a swimmer, one of those mermaids or mermen who enter frigid water bare-skinned? They're undaunted. And old. That gal, the one with the hour-glass figure, is in her eighties!

The invitation. The urge. The call goes unattended.

Ralph Anybody on the radio reminds that it's Fat Tuesday. Plays Clifton Chenier, his Zydeco number with accordion, Bon Ton Roluet. Let good times roll.

Party today 'cause Lent starts tomorrow. Splurge before fast.

The call is too great, despite the low-40-degree air temp. He slips into the neoprene suit, zips it tight, slides his 10-ft white, single-finned vessel off the rack. 

She waves from inside the house. He waves back. 

At the shore he walks on sand, still firm from the tidal rise. A young, pale woman in black one-piece suit, stands staring at the watery horizon. He believes she's going in. Will she?

The one from outside is coming in.

"Catch any waves?"

"Not much. Just cold hands."

He recognizes the guy, seen him in the lineup.

The surface of the water begins to texture from the offshore that is blowing cold air through the micro-fibers that cling to his skin. He knows he'll warm up once he starts paddling.

"It's always a blessing," the guy says.

He nods. "For sure." Thinks the guy must be Christian, acknowledging to himself how we interpret words, place labels on others without really knowing them. He's Christian for sure. Knowledge based on experience, like the guy from IBM who would always say, "Have a blessed day." It annoyed him. Like he's selling something. Why was he so prickly? She would say that about him.

Lying on his stomach he paddles into the bumpy bay water, feeling free from the ground, floating, thrust  by his arms and shoulders rather than his legs. A release from gravity. Part of the sea.

He believes man comes from water. Amniotic fluid. Considers all the sea-farers who discovered new worlds -- the Polynesians, Europeans, Sumerians.

His body warms with motion, riding up and over small swells. Loose relaxation. He is surprised by how quickly he distances from the beach.

Breeze is colder than water. Sun rising, peeking behind clouds. A large harbor seal fans out of water, their home. Those guys have fun, the wilder the conditions the happier they seem.

He paddles, his shoulders and back stretching releasing stiffness. Tide has filled in. He pauses to observe the scene he’s seen a million times yet never appears exactly the same, the phenomenon of nature, our ever jostling environment of waves and wiggles, net of jewels.

Lineup markers of cypress and palms, cliff caves and rooftops, how different their relationship to waves becomes with the shifting sands on the bottom that determine where the waves break. Kelly Slater says he carefully studies each surf break before every contest. Knowledge is key.

Sitting upright he becomes colder. Lying prone he avoids wind. He remembers wind surfing here 40 years ago, being blown like a leaf out to sea.

No waves today. Too cold to bob like buoy.

Catching the barest of surface currents when the swells roll through, he paddles toward the beach, into the biting breeze, stopping occasionally to observe coordinates, arriving at the shore with a rush of white water.

He steps quickly across the firm sand, empty, save for the guy who is scratching a birthday message into the sand with a rake. His business comes from hotel guests who observe the beach from above:

Happy Birthday

Ter...

His body shivers as he completes the name in his mind, Terry, or is it Teri? Male or female? A Mardi Gras birthday!

Lent begins tomorrow. He wonders if the blessing guy will be making a sacrifice, a fast of some kind? Giving up an earthly pleasure to connect with something transcendent? 

Will he, himself? 

His hands hurt from the harsh air as he peels the skin-tight rubber off, anticipating the comfort of a hot shower.

She welcomes him home.

"How was it? she asks.

"Cold. Very cold. It feels good.”

He feels so good that he reconsiders his judgment about the blessing guy. Maybe he had a difficult situation, the loss of a loved one, even a child, and he called upon his faith, a higher power, to help him cope. It worked as a gift to him, a blessing. The guy found strength, a transcendence.

He vows that he will try to see the good in everyone he meets, no matter what they say, at least until Easter.

 

A Type of Love Lost

If you ever used a typewriter, you know what I'm talking about.

Once a useful tool of secretaries (old fashioned word for office manager or admin), crime novelists and newspaper reporters, the typewriter has become an antique of the analog age. BD, before digital.

Besides pounding out sentences, the typewriter made beautiful music --- tap-tap-tap-ring, throw carriage back to left margin with a bang, continue typing next line. The typist operated the desk-top machine through pure hand and finger power. No batteries required. A beautiful relay of mind to fingers to paper.

Remember paper?

The typewriter served as printer, too. Known has “hard copy” to wordsmiths of lore.

Esther Walker, who ran the Women's Pages for the San Jose Mercury News from 1958-1984, typed her notes on 3 x 5 file cards, single-spaced, filling the entire white-colored cards with correctly spelled words summarizing next Saturday’s Women’s section.

As a wide-eyed novice placed in my first "career" employment at said newspaper, I was hired to write promotions about upcoming sections and stories and further plug our ginormous classified section, the largest in the U.S., or so I was informed. The classifieds contained as many pages as the big fat phone book. These ads were the newspaper's bread and butter during a period of rapid growth in Santa Clara Valley.

Esther was typically in her cups by the time I caught up with her, following the midday, after-deadline break during the era of the three-martini lunch. A peek around the newsroom revealed many a glassy-eyed reporter and several red, bulbous-nosed editors. They were consummate professionals performing the worthy task of informing the public of the news of the day. And they took their work seriously.

Face to face with Esther was like looking into a crystal ball whose depth was far beyond me. Her hair perfectly coiffed in a wavy bubble. She remained precise in every aspect. And I feared her. I imagined all the women writers in her department did, too. A man wouldn't have stood a chance. 

I would hustle back to my typewriter and compose three paragraphs plugging her pages. This short promo appeared at the bottom corner of the front page. I had my own front page box.

Women’s Pages have gone the way of the typewriter, archaic, as well as mysoginist. That section of today’s newspaper (mostly read online) is called Style, Living, or if you’re reading the Wall Street Journal, Off Duty, which would be an insult to the women who worked so hard to put the pages together. They were on duty, especially under Esther, who won accolades for her informative section.

Esther's editorial extravaganza was covering Paris Fashion Week, the famed semiannual expo, on the publisher's dime, bringing the very latest styles and trends to the metropolitan readers of greater San Jose when it was still considered an agrarian region of prune-pickers. Here is where she shone and won awards for her exceptional fashion coverage.

Across the clattering newsroom of reporters, copyeditors and illustrators sat metro reporter Jim Choate, a formidable Hemingway-esque fellow, loud and hirsute. A natural spinner of yarns, Jim was particularly known for his impersonation of actor Marlon Brando in the film On the Waterfront directed by Elia Kazan.  

It was the classic heartfelt scene in which he tells his brother, played by Rod Steiger, how he could have been a contender in the boxing ring, but instead took a fall for the man, "It was you, Charlie..."

Choate had memorized every word which he delivered with poetic drama. I'd seen him do it at the bar over on Taylor Street in Japan Town by the railroad tracks where the guys liked to go for lunch. Martinis were served in milk-shake glasses. 

When the computer monitor was introduced to the newsroom to replace the typewriter (circa 1975), Choate grabbed the ugly smooth-coated machine, lifted and hurled it across the floor, creating a hush that nearly stopped the presses. This is according to reliable sources. I was not there.

I view the replacement of the typewriter by the computer as the line of demarcation, and Jim Choate's irreverent reaction the last hurrah.

I hung on to the manual typewriter as long as I could. I left the Mercury News in September of 1972 with Tom Graham, because we refused to cut our hair. As a promotion writers, we were considered tools of management, which was still operating according to a dated conservative ma-and-pa posture. I took a position as Information Officer for the San Jose Unified School District under supervision of Jerry Weltzin. We got along swell.  By then I had a full beard as well shoulder length hair. 

In that role I edited the district's monthly newsletter, a four-page publication for which I wrote stories about special teachers and classrooms and other district news. I reported summaries of public school board meetings for distribution throughout the district. I enjoyed composing the newsletter but not sitting through tedious board meetings. I discovered I would not make a good city-beat reporter.

I was given a Minolta SLR camera for shooting photographs. A Selectric Typewriter became my writing tool, a plug-in electric machine. I loved the camera but hated the Selectric. Writing with it didn't feel right. It lacked the tactile connection of hitting one key for each impression on paper. The music was gone. Despite my expressed reluctance, I was urged to go electric.

Skipping ahead, when I was introduced to a computer monitor in 1979 as editor for Santa Cruz Publishing, I balked, but never threw it on the floor. 

Under publisher Lee May, we produced two periodicals — a weekly newspaper for the senior community (Santa Cruz was an affordable retirement enclave) and the Visitor’s Guide, a colorful account of local doings and culture. We created specialty issues -- soup to nuts -- including Bay Monthly, the Christmas Guide and Diner. Our young staff had fun doing what we loved. Our offices were located in a house on Porter Street in Soquel.

As writing gigs became ever more scarce due to changing times and buyouts, I hit the freelance market.  I wrote stories for the Mercury News Adventure Section, edited by Jody Meacham, an easy man to work with. I stopped by the plant one afternoon hoping to meet him, since our correspondence had only been by snail mail and telephone. It was the same building where I had been employed years before, yet once inside I was faced with cubicles and deafening silence.

The music of clacking typewriters and vocal chatter had vanished. The lighting was dark, cave-like. Jody wasn't in that day. It was pretty much of a bust all the way around. Today that same building, once a modern newspaper plant built in the late Sixties, houses a Silicon Valley company from China called Super Micro. 

Silicon chips had officially replaced the typewriter and the alfalfa field across the street had been plowed under for one of many cube farms that had sprouted throughout the valley.

Note: While composing this piece, I Googled "Esther Walker San Jose Mercury News." I was curious about what I might find, and I did locate a page devoted to her. Esther is no longer with us, but a trove of her stories, notes, expense reports, etc. are available through an archival portal. I was amazed by her diligence to save everything, but not surprised. Due to my lack of wanting to produce a password, etc. etc. I chose not to go any further, preferring to simply recall through memory her precisely typed, single-spaced 3 x 5 cards with everything I needed to know.

I write this blog on a MacBook Air laptop, which I appreciate for its portability. I can write just about anywhere without disturbing anyone. I have a world of digital images and dictionary at my fingertips. The price we pay for this convenience is that everything we write, say or do is surveilled by our phones and computers and can be used for or against us*.

I get a warm cozy feeling when I recall my noisy Smith-Corona.

*Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley copyright 2023.

The Super Bull

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

If only.

The upcoming Super Bowl set for Sin City on Sunday, Feb. 11 in which the San Francisco Forty-Niners will bash brains against the Kansas City Chiefs may linger like a hang-nail on your baby toe, or more likely a bad hangover in your frontal lobe.

The bruhaha so far forebodes lasting trouble.

We already know that the game has been fixed by super-liberal donor George Soros, the secret quarterback for the Chiefs. Word up, he will be sending signals to Chiefs' QB Patrick Mahomes by wireless AI vibrations, that will be shared by Taylor Swift in the luxury box from where she will have a view of the entire catalog of plays arranged by 49er coach Kyle Shanahan who is bonafide socialist directing a fake attack on the Chiefs.

Why?

Because Taylor endorsed Joe Biden in 2020.

Boyfriend of Taylor, Chiefs' tight-end Travis Kelce, and his brawny bearded brother What's-His-Name who looks like a Proud Boy, have fallen prey to the Deep State, like everybody else who is not registered with MAGA, an acronym for My Aching Giant Arsehole.

Their immunity from the Deep State has been traced to the only vaccine MAGA feels safe being poked by, a strain conceived in a basement laboratory 8 miles north of Boise, Idaho. Robert Kennedy, Jr. has been surveilled on the premises. He and wife, actress Cheryl Hines, will be joining the throngs of humanity attending the Super Bowl in Vegas. They will be incognito. Hint: keep your eyes peeled for a long straight blue and a curly red wig, waving through the crowd. (It turned out to be a surprise $7 million 30-second TV ad.)

Halftime headliner, vocalist Usher, may seem like an innocent pop singer, however, MAGA investigators have learned that his song list for the extravaganza show is coded with Deep State instructions to vote Democratic in the November elections. The set list will be subsequently used to nullify the National Election should Joe Biden or Pete Buddajudge win.

The San Francisco Forty-Niners are further under suspicion, based on the gay liberal reputation of their hometown and their former quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who disgraced America by starting a fad of kneeling during the National Anthem, a so-called peaceful expression of support for Black Lives Matter. 

If you want a piece-full-of demonstration, according to MAGA spokesperson Steve Bannon, storm the US Capitol with arms and bats and spears and make a little hay. 

Hey, I'm personally staying clear of this conspiratorial political posturing. Why can't we have a day of football between the two best teams? What's the problem with a slew of clever subliminal and subversive TV commercials designed to make you buy and ingest things you don't really need but feel cool about?

I'm just hoping for a close competitive game that will result in a win for the 49ers. I've got nothing against Taylor or Travis or Usher or Patrick Mahomes. Playing Super Bowl LVIII in Alligiant Stadium in Las Vegas in the year 2024 makes it more of a spectacle. 

Yuh Think!? 

Let's just KEEP IT THERE and forget all the extenuating bull.

Do you think Taylor wears too much lipstick?

Only 10 more days!

Post Game Note: the Chiefs won 25-22 in overtime. Travis went apeshit during game barking at and bullying his coach, after drinking a quart of spiked Gatorade. Taylor remains a figure of debasement for MAGA. Half of the 49er team were confused with overtime, believing it meant “game over.” An investigation is underway, or way under the craps table. Only in Vegas.