Crazy Stable

The New York Times Home & Garden section is always good for a Thursday chuckle over their practical advice and heartwarming stories of domestic challenge among the affluent and urbane.  Today's edition was a whooper, featuring "extreme hosts" who subject their guests to various mortifications to preserve their posh pads from stains, dings, and scratches: a host who insists visitors  don special booties to spare the marble floors, another who won't open red wine unless you offer collateral for his dry-cleaner's house call, a hostess who turns away pot-luck offerings that are oh-so-indelible red or brown. Then there are these guys:

 Meet John Yakubik and Marc Berman, who shroud all their horizontal wood surfaces in plastic wrap before every party. (As Eddie says in Absolutely Fabulous, "Surfaces, darling, I want surfaces.")  They do endure some mockery from their guests, they admit, but find it a small price for avoiding the curse of watermarks from carelessly placed glasses.

[Ah, but notice that something paranormal has arisen to thwart their madness. It is Raffles, the Renal Failure Cat, whose lavishly applied pee has already begun the onerous work of stripping the paint off the floors of the CrazyStable! He has arrived in his party hat like the nephrologically-challenged ghost of Marley, and is ready to boogie down! Sorry, boys--hope you like distressed finishes, bwah-hahahahaha!]

Actually, we're old hands at Extreme Hosting, but here it sort of works in reverse: Guests are asked to perform heroics to defend themselves from the house. Footwear is mandatory rather than forbidden, given the whack-a-mole nails in our aging parquet. Thanks to the quirks of the Rewiring Monkeys, they must grope for lighting switches in unpredictable places.  At least one staircase remains banister-free (just sort of claw at the walls as you ascend and descend). What banisters remain must not be sat upon or leaned against (creak, splinter, crash). The haunted doorknobs have been removed from the bathroom after several guests became trapped there, but now they have to stick their fingers in the doorknob hole to pull the door shut and pray that the cats don't push the door open to join them.  (I trust no fellow old-houseblogger will be surprised to learn that our toilet flush handle has a jaunty instructional sign on it, explaining its special needs.) And once we go outside to the garden for elegant summer entertaining, everyone must sign a waiver indicating recent prophylaxis for malaria, rabies and tetanus.  Well, okay, not yet, but maybe next summer.

For all that, they keep coming back, a fact that always seems to amaze Spouse. Although you will find few flawless Surfaces around here this holiday party season, there will be toffee bars and sour-cream cookies, and homemade eggnog (sign a waiver for salmonella, I top it with whipped raw egg whites),  and homemade hot cocoa; if you are nice to the Stablemistress, she will squirt Redi-Wip directly into your open mouth. If you drink too much eggnog, you can stagger upstairs past the kitty-litter pans (which Raffles might even have deigned to use, as a novelty) to a small cozy guest room with a chenille bedspread and ball-fringe curtains and your own little bathroom with a foofy glass stall shower that hardly leaks at all.  You will be fed a Brooklyn breakfast of bagels and lox, and will be re-invited if you give a bit of lox to Lexi the Ragdoll Cat when she begs for it.  And no matter what you spill or break, you can rest assured that it's unlikely to make a dent in the ambiance. 

No Saran Wrap. No booties. RSVP.

We saw a stranger yesterday.

We put food in the eating place,

Drink in the drinking place, 

Music in the listening place,

And with the Sacred Name of the Triune God

He blessed us and our house,

Our cattle and our dear ones.

As the lark says in her song:

Often, often, often goes the CHRIST

In the stranger's guise.

                        --A Celtic rune of hospitality

We had another blessed CrazyStable Thanksgiving, thanks to the presence of Bestfriend & Family, Uncle Don (a wonderful if quirky houseguest at age 93), and our glorious new Amish-made recycled-barnwood table from these folks.  The table is a foot longer than our old one, doesn't  sway back and forth, isn't a totem of cat-splintering, and nobly bore forth its first turkey.  It thrums with a sort of spiritual goodness, which may be why I allowed us to go wild and make a major capital expenditure before the holidays.

Ah, yes, the holidays. Now bear they down upon us with shocking speed. It's not that we have a huge family to shop for, or a McMansion to festoon with stupendous lighting displays. It's just that our modest Christmas  duties seem to weigh me down a little more heavily each year, and I hate that. One wants to be Buddy the Elf, all boundless spontaneity...and instead one finds oneself squaring shoulders, girding loins, and taking a deep breath, determined to pull it off again for the Child's sake. 

Of course, I blame the house. Around here, Christmas is another benchmark for renovation futility. Hallway floor replaced, to welcome guests with gleaming new wide-plank floorboards? Nope.  Front door refinished, ready to glow fabulously beneath a swag of festal greenery? Spouse says maybe; odds are against it. Exterior trim painted, to frame a candle in every window? No, trim is flaking like artificial snow, and half the windowsills are bald again.  And, just as I want to immerse myself in crafty card-making, cone-gilding, and cookie-baking, the bathtub and I have another one of our shared nervous breakdowns, this one involving a grout-picking instrument, some weird black mold,  tubes of Pheno-Seal, and a compound that allegedly softens cement-hard caulk, but apparently only does so after 25 or so repeated applications.  Martha Stewart is not recaulking her tub for the holidays.  Probably not even Bob Vila is doing that.

Technically, I am wrestling with the leaky loathesome tub enclosure because good practice dictates that you keep water out of your walls. But I wonder whether or not I am driven, like my Druid forebears (well, I'd like to fancy I had Druid forebears), to sacrifice something to the old gods as the sun's power wanes alarmingly. No Druid, hearing the number of loved ones we've lost right around this time of year, would question the need for a blood sacrifice (a concept my fellow houseblogger at the Devil Queen is delightfully conversant with).  Groveling before the Grout Gods, disemboweling the old caulk, squirting in some sacrificial silicone, surely will ensure our solstice survival!

Thus my Christmases have grown imperceptibly into yearly battles of superstition and despair versus hope and birth and light.  The pagan elements lend a nice dark frisson to the forced gaiety of the season, but  I'm afraid I'd make a lousy convert to Wicca. (Like Camelot, it is a Silly Place.)  It is unreasonable to expect elfin frolics amid so many sad anniversaries, but quiet joy and moments of wonder are still possible. Plus, I've found a mascot.

Image: NPR/Piers Vitebsky

This is a little Siberian girl and one of her tribe's reindeer.  There he is, the real McCoy, the anti-Rudolph: skinny, reluctant, and crowned with a hellaciously asymmetrical rack.  This tribe used to worship the reindeer, believing it flew across the sky holding the sun in its antlers; this fellow looks like he'd be happier at the back of his pen in a petting zoo.

But notice: It's a child dragging him onward. She is delighted, oblivious, and determined. Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?  Damn straight you will! 

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red

For the flame of the sun is flown

The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold 

And a Child comes forth alone. 

                --G.K. Chesterton, A Child of the Snows

This Thanksgiving, I give thanks for two extraordinary women, my mother, Mathilde, and one of my "spiritual mothers," my aunt Valeska, both of whom left us on November 18--my mom in 1999, and Valeska just last Saturday evening, surrounded by the love of my cousins.  If you know or have ever known a woman like the one in Proverbs below, give thanks for her today:

Valeska and three of my cousins, Yellow Springs, Ohio

  An excellent wife, who can find?
         For her worth is far above jewels.
  The heart of her husband trusts in her,
         And he will have no lack of gain.
  She does him good and not evil
         All the days of her life.
  She looks for wool and flax
         And works with her hands in delight.
  She is like merchant ships;
         She brings her food from afar.
  She rises also while it is still night
         And gives food to her household
         And portions to her maidens.
She considers a field and buys it;
         From her earnings she plants a vineyard.

She girds herself with strength
         And makes her arms strong.
She senses that her gain is good;
         Her lamp does not go out at night.
She stretches out her hands to the distaff,
         And her hands grasp the spindle.
She extends her hand to the poor,
         And she stretches out her hands to the needy…

 Strength and dignity are her clothing,
         And she smiles at the future.
She opens her mouth in wisdom,
         And the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She looks well to the ways of her household,
         And does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up and bless her;
         Her husband also, and he praises her, saying:
"Many daughters have done nobly,
         But you excel them all."
Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,
         But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.
Give her the product of her hands,
         And let her works praise her in the gates.

 Proverbs 31:10-20, 25-31
Mommy and me, rehearsing

We leafed longlingly through this new book at the Brooklyn Book Fair back in September, and Dennis Hamill's paean in today's Daily News has made me even more desirous of owning Brooklyn's Flatbush: From Battlefield to Ebbetts Field, by Brian Merlis and Lee Rosenzweig.  (At a hardcover price of $40, it'll have to wait for Christmas to join our library of Brooklynabilia.) These guys are competent amateur historians (in the best sense of 'amateur,' one who loves), but it's their picture archive that rocks--lots of shots of the amazing town of Flatbush, from its rural Dutch roots through its Revolutionary war stories to its postwar urban-ethnic glory days (the ones recalled fondly by Hamill and evoked hauntingly by William Styron in Sophie's Choice).

Many folks, like the brothers Hamill, are drawn back to this nostalgic proto-Brooklyn because it represents their own temps perdu, and they moon after egg creams and stickball and the damn Dodgers like Marcel and his bloody madeleines. As you might guess, I've got mixed feelings about industrial-grade Brooklyn Nostalgia, for a variety of reasons.

First, it just ain't my story. My coming-of-age took place in the Sixties in suburban northeast Queens, a place that, to my knowledge, no one has immortalized in literary amber.  I moved to Flatbush as a grown-up, long after the Dodgers and egg creams and Spaldeens had departed, along with much of their era's population, to whiter--excuse me, greener--pastures.  My Flatbush is Trinidadians, Yuppies, Haitians, Bangladeshis, and the occasional Hasidim on a long stroll from Borough Park.  It's roti and Jamaican meat pies and soca music and soccer players.  Head east a few blocks, and it's also liquor stores with Lexan shields, African hair-braiding parlors, 99-cent stores, a police "Impact Zone," and once-grand Gothic-turreted apartment buildings with prison-style grey steel entry gates and busted mailboxes and buzzers.  The Loew's Kings movie palace, where Barbra Streisand was an usherette, is shuttered and rotting; Erasmus Hall, the historic high school with its long list of illustrious alumni, sunk into such dysfunction that the Board of Ed broke it up into "smaller schools" (which are, I hear, still no great shakes).   An aging housing project sits atop the site of Ebbetts Field. And don't try asking for an egg cream (although it's easy to get great ginger beer--it's like ginger ale on steroids).

And so I get conflicted and crabby when the Brooklyn Nostalgists wax dreamy over Flatbush of yore.  Best Friend had a suburban aunt who was delighted to hear that our geographic parish was Holy Innocents in Flatbush.  "Oh, that used to be bon ton," she enthused. "That area used to be  lovely. It was a very wealthy parish,  you know. Yes, it was marvelous years ago."  Got it.  Likewise, many of the spaldeen-and-stickball dreamers wouldn't dream of setting foot in today's neighborhoods, although they're fond of recalling their streetwise youth ad nauseum.  I've seen reunions for once-Irish or once-Italian parish schools announced in the Brooklyn diocesan newspaper--taking place in Florida.  Distance, whether geographic or chronological, apparently lends enchantment.  (To their credit, the Hamills still hang out in Brooklyn, I'm told--plenty of street cred for those guys.)

 Jealous? Yeah, a little. Not for a neighborhood of white faces; been there, done that in Sixties Queens, and it was narrow, stifling, and dull.  But it's hard not to long for the ruins--like the Loews, and Erasmus High--to come back to life, for the bon ton to return.  We have grown to love this place with a passion, but there is no denying that we (and many others) initially wound up here because we couldn't afford to be somewhere else.  And then there is the nagging sense of having missed some historical boat--a time and place so magical that those who experienced them just can't shut up about them.  We walk as newcomers among newcomers, over the vestiges of an era that has been nearly erased with shocking recency and thoroughness.  We hunt for clues in books, archives, walking tours and websites,  as if straining to hear the words of a conversation that ended just as we entered the room. 

 But part of my resentment for the cult of Brooklyn nostalgia is that its acolytes miss the magical now.  I can't romanticize the rough edges, but there is a lot that's bracing about living on the front lines of the American dream. Many of our newest and most struggling neighbors in this community are working way too hard to learn about  the past that's under their feet and all around them, but give them time.  They'll forge their own marvels, maybe  their own golden age.

Maybe when my daughter has silver hair, she'll recall fondly to a young resident of the Ratner Memorial Flatbush Condo City: "I remember watching kids play soccer on that field. Some Mexicans set up a tamale stand opposite our house. There was an Indian doctor on the corner, and a Cambodian temple around the block, and the Russians would take the train from Brighton Beach to shop for bargains down on the Avenue.  The Hasidic families would take long walks on holy days,  and the Chinese would let off fireworks every Fourth of July. Our next-door neighbor played the Mighty Sparrow every Sunday afternoon, and our other next-door neighbor brought us halal barbecue chicken that he killed with his own hands--or so he told us."  And the youngster will think wistfully, "Sounds like fun. Why did I miss all the good stuff?"

In my little town

I grew up believing

God keeps his eye on us all

And he used to lean upon me

As I pledged allegiance to the wall

Lord I recall

My little town 

                                      --Paul Simon

Oh, Fester, if only it were that easy.

It was supposed to be easy. I am about to create a new workspace in my study/studio, and I want to put a track light over it, and augment that with task lighting from a clamp-on desk lamp.  The Electrical Monkeys who originally re-wired the CrazyStable left a curious electrical fixture box high up on the wall, and I figured the track-light bar could go there. Spouse is adept at basic wiring-in of lighting fixtures. Piece of cake.

Then I noticed something weird about the "box," which has been sitting unused all these years: It has three taped-up wires sticking out of it, not the more customary two. This prompted the dim recollection that some other (non-simian) electrician once said it was "at the end of the line" or something, implying that fixture installation might involve...complications.  I have a mortal dread of electricity (no rational reason, no bad shock or cardioversion paddles in my past, it just appalls me), and I am particularly afraid of complications. 

And then I noticed another legacy of the Electrical Monkeys: There is no switch. I have just plastered this wall. Putting in a switch will mean putting a hole in the wall and fishing around for cable. It will also mean paying an electrician, simian or otherwise, to come to the house to put in a $24 fixture. But I get ahead of myself.  Full of resolve, I head to Lowe's, on this appropriately dreary afternoon, the Child in tow.

Lowe's has lots and lots of lighting fixtures, ranging in quality from obviously crappy to seemingly okay.  I have never shopped for a track light, and there I stand. The track lights on the boxes (none of which are filed over their correct prices) are all shown stuck to ceilings. But the display of fixtures is encouraging, because they are stuck to a wall, and the little light thingies seem to swivel satisfactorily.  I grab a "two-foot kit" ("easy to install, all parts included") and then realize--what about the wall switch I don't have?

A helpful Lowe's guy shows me that there are wall-plug conversion thingies--you slide them into the track and somehow now you can just (I guess) screw the bar to the ceiling (or wall) and plug it in like a lamp. Fine, I'll take one--no new hole in wall. (No convenient switch, either, but I've been fumbling into this little room in the dark for 20 years without serious injury; for the cost of an electrician's visit, I can keep doing it.)  Now I have to buy bulbs for the damn thing.  Back to the bulb aisle to look for "PAR20/R20," the specs on the box.  Well, there's R20 in floodlight and spotlight. R20 in halogen or not-halogen. (I have since learned that "normal, not-halogen" is termed "incandescent.")  There's PAR something or other. My eyes are blurring. The child is twitching with deeply justified mega-boredom, having exhausted the meagre entertainment value of the Lowe's Christmas tree display.  All I can remember is that halogen bulbs burn hotter than hell and caused the fire that burned up Lionel Hampton's apartment...and that we have bought only one halogen fixture, which was a total bitch to put in.  Does the lamp have to have halogen? Should it not have halogen? The box, from the "Portfolio"  lighting company, doesn't say. Waxing wroth, I pin a poor unsuspecting guy in a red weskit, who admits to being a "trainee."  He survives my interrogation quite well, actually, and I go away with a couple of cheap incandescent floodlights.  (He has never heard of Lionel Hampton, he says. What are  our urban youth coming to?)

I will let you know how it goes. Lowe's, by the way, has got a kindly online primer on lightbulbs for people like me and Fester, which makes us feel better about such things. We also got caulk...and thereby hangs another tale of woe...