FollowGrowing up in Newark, New Jersey, summers were spent in Tom Sawyer pursuits. We had a picket fence in our backyard separating a meager lawn (width measured with several of my father’s sneakers end to end) from our next door neighbor whose backyard was used for Harley-Davidson repair work. My mother, who would’ve preferred a small replica of the Great Wall separating backyards, hands me a can of white paint and brush. The picket fence needs fresh paint. The sun is hot. I’ve got a punk in my mouth (precursor to cigarettes? It did keep mosquitoes away); painstakingly several hours go by. Too young to think about Becky (Thatcher), I wait for carnival music on the loud speaker of the whip ride- a plastered down urban contraption on a flat bed truck which travelled around the Weequahic section giving city kids a taste of excitement and anticipation. Painting was done for the day. Ten cents from discarded soda glass bottles returned to Decker’s candy store got me two rides. It was an Abbott and Costello kind of ride; slowly it moved until 12 and 6 PM; then it whipped you at centrifugal speed around only to slow down again. Once I thought about a whip ride never slowing down. Lately I’ve been on that vision of the ultimate whip ride. Nothing in modern Earth life is slowing down. I ask my mother often to make me paint the fence again. Picket fences like ours are probably worth a lot of money; don’t make them like that anymore; wood from a domestic forest, paint brush from a factory in Newark. But my mother doesn’t answer.
As metaphors go, the whip is adequate. Lately I say to myself, “Blog about the Knicks or the Nets with a new Russian connection or about the Bay of Fundy with dramatic tidal changes or the star of ‘The Office’ leaving the show. Popeye said, “I am what I am.” In a dreamy wonderful corner of my world, with Reckless Ostrich so close to me, I thought about a modern day Olive appearing at a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, looking for breast enhancement. He disapproves. She goes ahead with it anyway. The surgeon is a zealot and leaves her in a prodigious state. They fight and split. Guess who. The big guy. They can be seen off the California coast in a brand new row boat. Freshly painted on the side, the name…….. Oh, it’s too foggy. Can’t make it out.
So the news whips me. A never ending story. Or there is an end. Modern life. Western Civilization 101. I always liked when we got past 1941. More relevant. ‘Mr. Roberts’ again. So what’s this I hear about drug store chains who sell health items, RXs, vitamins, blood pressure cuffs and cigarettes? Two of the chains are on the top 10 of retailers. Madness. Money. Mercury is the number one chemical problem in the world. There are more than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico going back to the early 1940’s. Are they leaking? Is anybody checking them? A white dove just flew past me, heading towards the Atlantic. I yelled to it, “Hurry up and enjoy the flight over water. Your white feathers are doomed.” That crazy dove never turned around. In the meantime, breaking news, the Crestview Swim Club defeated the Berkeley Swim Club in a swim meet.
More whip news. Wondering, should BP give clean-up workers (like fishermen) respirators instead of hard hats? Did Exxon cover-up ‘Valdez’ symptoms, calling it ‘colds and flu?’ Deja vu a bit? Eighty percent of all our consumed fish in America is imported. FDA inspects less than 1% of them. In Vietnam there are fish farms using raw sewage. And when the fish being farmed are in close quarters they load them up with antibiotics (I remember back in the late 60’s a drug store I worked in charged $2.00 a capsule for tetracycline. Cost a few pennies. The fish in Vietnam get it cheaper.) Now I know why some of the fish we eat keeps acne away. Orange Ruffi(one of my favorites) comes from China. Being a whipped guy, I remember, before Christmas, toys coming from there with an abundance of lead in the paint. Whipped mashed potatoes. ‘Close Encounters’ had a great scene with mashed potatoes. But I was never sure whether from a box or the real thing. More breaking news. Cocoa Beach, on the east coast of Florida reported oil tar balls so I yelled to that white dove to be careful. All in a days worth of news. Oh, the United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the imprisoned population. I just feel whipped. Texas now reports oil washing up on beaches. That’s about 550 miles of our gulf coast. News coverage is less. Is good old BP counting on people to start the out of sight, mind process? Keep using those poisonous dispersants to keep oil out of OUR sight. I was dreaming of Galveston Bay, kicking off my sneaks, splashing my Jersey toes in the warm water under the most perfect Texas sky, near that wonderful creature, an Ostrich, head buried unusually deep in the sand.
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Be well and un-whipped.