My Readers Weigh In

I went into Jenny's Coffee Clutch yesterday. I was alone. It was not a day for a meeting of the Greybeards Club. Boaz and Boulos, two of the workers, found time to talk to me about the old Blogstead. Jenny herself, whose real name is Hanaan, or the sympathetic one, but she is not the antitype of her name, I assure you!-watched us with cats' eyes; to us, to the clock, us, clock,..tick...tock. I asked B & B whether they'd better be working. They laughed and said let the 'ajuuz stare all she wanted! (They did not say this loudly enough that the 'old crone' referred to actually could hear them, however.) They picked some paper up from the floor. There were three crumpled daily local newsy blurbs that infest this type of eatery, stating what shows on which A.M. radio station, some F.M., country music, news of the Whirled, and so on. Mixed in with them was a print-out of my Blog! This is not as nice as it sounds; remember that these papers were on the floor in an advanced state of crumplitude. "How nice." I said, meaning anything but. "We got a question...", Boulos said, and placed the print-out flat on the table and ironed it flat with his hands. He had some oily substance on a finger, and it smeared the ink, but it remained legible. "What is this...," he pointed with the offending digit. "What is this...peace dividend spring? " Silence for a beat or two. Boaz added, "We know 'hurrah' . Just what is this peace dividend spring? Spring of a car?" I sensed this would take a bit. There were 45 minutes until closing. I ordered two of the best BLTs imaginable: one fer me, one fer the missus. This quick transaction allowed us the time to speak, for Hanaan knows that if I were not talking about myself, I would merely have had a finjaan of her wretched tea. We traded talk-time for 2 BLTs, and this order would probably be her last today, a rain day, maybe an ice storm day; only mad dogs and Americans go out in the midday ice storm. Hanaan busied herself at the grill. She jerked her head around and growled. "Hulwaiyaat?" This was her way of letting me know that the sweets for desert she had from the Pain d'Or ( Khubz Dhahabi) delivered by the young Indian (South Asia) delivery service from Shatila Bakery in the early morning still graced her boudoir...I mean her dessert kiosk wherein sweets twirled in a decadent glow of crystal. There were more crumbs than sweets by this time of a Sunday.

Crumbs caught in a Kiosk, I though to myself. Like butterflies caught in a web? Possible headline for a post here, about what I do not know. I had to acquiesce. I told her to put them in a tiffin box. ( Way too many lingos here!) Now as the bacon sizzled and snapped and Hanaan pecked her fingers into the revolving kiosk of sweets, grabbing far too much baklava for me, I spoke to B & B. I explained the origin of the phrase "Peace Dividend". This was something that we were supposed to experience when the Cold War abruptly ended. Since arms budgets would be vastly reduced, we would have more money in our pockets. Of course, the dividend was only declared for a few years; then the company ceased issuing dividends. Boulos smiled. "We doin' O.K." Boaz smiled, too. "Yeah," I said, "...but we coulda been...rich! We coulda been...contenders!" They stared at me, goggle-eyed. I had gone too far. "O.K. We could have kept more of our money. And we could have used it for good purposes. You guys could have had medical insurance...like, now..." This seemed to strike a chord. Their smiles faded. They nodded their heads. They began to understand. So much for Peace Dividend. Now the word 'Spring'. It was the season of Spring and it was an echo of a short story by Ray Bradbury 'Rocket Spring'. The story was written in a time so long ago and so innocent that people could believe that the burning of the rocket's engines as they lifted off into space could melt the snow and moderate the cold, causing the flowers to bud early, causing the sap to rise- a time when technology had not yet put on the right-hand glove of Rotwang...(O.K. The glove of Dr. Strangelove, then.) It was a type for a long gone golden age of innocence, never to come again. At this point, their long faces indicated I had gone too far. They may have been about to cry. Or weep. Or ululate. Hanaan brought over two tiffin boxes and plopped them unceremoniuously on the table. She handed me a brown bag of sweets. Already a oily stain was beginning to stretch across the paper of the bag. "Cash or charge?" She said as she waddled back to the counter.

She spoke from habit.

I said "Charge."

She shook her head. "Not enough. Cash only." She glanced at the clock. Twenty more minutes and she would be rid of us.

I pulled my pockets inside out and explained in Arabic that I had gambled all my coins on sporting events. B & B giggled. Hanaan snorted and turned to clean the griddle. One more thing: the title for Father Ghraib and Mother Gitmo was based upon an erroneous identification between me and the brilliance of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil.

photo: falseprophet.typepad.com