franksolich looking for a primitive for Martin Luther King's day

[franksolich]

The property caretaker brought over not one, but three, dinners of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, fresh corn, fresh peas, whole-wheat muffins with real butter, side dishes of sour cream, and one each a quarter of a pumpkin pie, a cherry pie, and a blueberry meringue pie.

“This should set you up for the next day or so,” he assured me, “because damn, you’re not looking any better.

“You got to eat, boss.”

I told him I was going to see a physician in the big city on Thursday, but it’d probably be a wasted trip and wasted expense, because he was probably going to tell me to do exactly as I’ve been doing, bed-rest, orange juice, eating the proper foods, avoiding stress.

It probably would’ve been bearable if I’d had a primitive for New Year’s, but as that never happened, I was now shooting to get a primitive for Martin Luther King‘s day.

- - - - - - - - - -

The business partner left this morning, having reported that the party at the neighbor’s last night had gone pretty good, but I probably didn’t miss much, it mostly being drinking and yak-yakkety-yak.

It was arctic cold outside, and the caretaker decided to stay a while, warming up in the house.

One of his elbows on the table, he mentioned, “Maybe you should open up another one of those presents, boss; at the rate you’re going, it’ll be your birthday before you’ve opened them all.”

I said sure, even though I wasn’t in the mood, and reached over for one of the big ones, one of those given me by his wife and him.

“Oh no,” he said; “I already know what’s in that one.

“Here’s a little one from [the femme]; I’m interested in knowing what kind of intimate presents you lovebirds give each other.

“Maybe it’s something to, you know, make hopping around in the sack more fun.”

I let the insult pass, and opened it up; it was a pair of sunglasses.

“You got to be kidding me, boss--that’s what she gives you, sunglasses?  What kind of intimate lovey-dovey present is that?  Sunglasses?”

I commented I thought it an eminently perfect gift, and one hard to find.

“See the bows on this?” I asked, pointing out the mechanics of the eyeglasses.

“I don’t have anything on which to latch the bows of other eyeglasses, and so have to tie the bows together around the back of the head.  The way I have my hair covers it, but it’s a nuisance, especially if I don’t tie the knot right.

“With these, I can just take a rubber band, and snap! they’re on and stay on.”

- - - - - - - - - -

While sitting at the table, he shoved two presents at me, one a small one still wrapped, and the other an open box of home-made jams and jellies, both from the same person, a woman who usually wins all the purple ribbons for such condiments at the county fair, and sometimes even at the state fair.

They were from Wanda, the all-purpose, with no specialty, cook at the bar, the cherubic one of Polish derivation.

“Now, tell me, boss why were you pulling Wanda’s leg about hobnobbing with lordships and ladyships when you were younger?

“I mean, sure, you’ve always hung out with a high-class sort of people, but this was going a little too far, you taking advantage of her gullibility.  You know she believes everything you tell her, and it wasn‘t nice.”

I looked at him with the glazed look of a man who’s just been shot in the stomach.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh now, boss, Wanda down at the bar told us all about it last night--”

I groaned.

Now, I sometimes misunderstand what hearing people say, but I have an excuse; I can’t hear.  One wonders what sort of excuse hearing people have, when they misunderstand something a deaf person tells them.

“I didn’t tell her that at all,” I told him.

- - - - - - - - - -

Wearily I explained to the caretaker what I’d told Wanda when she’d been here the previous morning.

When I was young, 18, 19, and 21 years old, I spent three winters in England, doing nothing but simply roaming around to see what was there.  I resented being in college; I’d go just before Christmas, and promise I’d be back in time for the second semester which at the time started in late January.

But I stayed as long as my money held out, which was about three months, give or take a couple of weeks, in all instances, meaning I’d be back in Lincoln long after college had resumed, and wouldn’t have to worry about it until June.

- - - - - - - - - -

When I was there, I used as my “headquarters” a room in a pub in Canterbury, in southeastern England.  It was called the “Shakespeare Inn” but was really a pub where the family rented out a few rooms on occasion.

A regular boarder there for part of each year, winter, was a short slight white-haired man who was always impeccably dressed in a gentleman‘s style, maybe about 70 years old at the time.  His eyes were those of a madman, although he was well-behaved.  He had to be taken care of, but he behaved.

The family that owned the pub constantly referred to him as “Lord” and “his Lordship,” telling me that he was in fact a bona fide Irish peer.  Not a major lord, but much more than a minor lord, one who’d been presented to the Queen (and before her, the King) more than few times, during his years with the British Foreign Office.

Preposterous, I thought, although being well-mannered enough to never betray my doubts.

If anything, this guy was a caricature of a Lord, nothing at all as I imagined Lords, such as Lord Curzon or the Marquess of Reading or Baron Hardinge, men of formidably heroic stature.

I couldn’t see a real peer being ga-ga, and assumed the family referred to him thusly simply to humor him.  After all, he was well-bred, he looked as if he had money, and despite that he went bonkers every so often, he was on the whole gracious and well-behaved.

And so it was just simply good business for the owners to cater to a whim, a fantasy, of his.

- - - - - - - - -

All three winters I spent in England, when in Canterbury, his Lordship demonstrated a curiosity about me, always stopping to talk when I was seated at the bar dining upon turkey.  He said I was a “novel American, different from the usual run of that breed.”

I didn’t know what to make of it; I was just a withdrawn sullen saturnine young lad at the time, with a too-high opinion about my evaluations of others.

Whenever he learned I was going to some obscure part of the country, he offered suggestions on what I should see, and expect.  Always amenable to the guidance of others, I always went, inspected, and reported back to him it all was as he said it was, and I thanked him for the illumination, a gratitude which was sincere.

There was one time I had High Tea with his Lordship, to humor him.  The wife of the pub thought it a great honor that I’d been extended an invitation, and spent far more time fussing about and setting things up than the tea actually lasted, the scheduled forty-five minutes.

It wasn’t me; Canterbury is a popular destination for tourists, and the pub had accommodated Americans for years, for decades; we were pretty much run-of-the-mill customers for the place.  It was simply that it was High Tea for his Lordship, and had to be carried out just right.

It went right; I managed to not err or offend in the slightest, but it was a trial.  On that day, his Lordship seemed more agitated, excited (about something not involving me), and his speech was very difficult to follow.  I’m sure he said a lot of interesting things, but I couldn’t grasp any of it, and my head burned for hours after the ordeal, from the stress of desperately trying to “listen.”

- - - - - - - - - -

When back home, during intervening years and after my last trip, I wrote him six or half a dozen times, letters to which he always replied. 

Sometime during the later 1980s, I learned he’d died, and sent a note of condolences to the owners of the Shakespeare Inn. 

After which I forgot about the matter, until one day when I happened to be near a Burke’s Peerage, and checked to see if the ancient lunatic was in it.

Much to my startlement, he was, and with a long string of acronyms after his title and names, and upon further query, learned that he’d been instrumental in attempts to keep Argentina neutral (rather than joining the Axis) during the second world war, and was conceded by allied foreign officials as having been the one to make the recalcitrant Peronistas behave.

[I_B_Perky]

This has nothing to do with the topic Frank. I hope you are feeling better now... over your illness. I've had the crud that has been going 'round these parts for the last 2 weeks. Liked to killed me. 

[franksolich]

The femme came in late afternoon the day after New Year’s, on her way back to the big city from Omaha.

“You look really lousy; you aren’t eating anything, making it worse.”

Whatever, I thought; but there was no point in saying anything.

- - - - - - - - - -

She filled me on what‘d happened in Omaha; she had a good time and all that.

There’s a heat wave in the Sandhills of Nebraska right now, with temperatures in the higher twenties, and I suggested I needed to get out of here, but was too sick to bother driving anywhere myself.  We decided to go to the bar in town to grab a bite to eat.

Before we left, I suddenly remembered something, and grabbed from the top of the buffet a packet of letters that needed mailed, forty-seven of them.

“My ‘thank you’ letters for Christmas presents,” I said; “I could mail them at the post office in town, but with Barack Milhous constantly cutting postal service to the smaller areas, it’d be next week before they’re received.  If you mailed them in [the big city], they’d be delivered here by Saturday.”

She took them, and glanced at the mountain of unopened presents on the dining room table.

“It’s odd--but it’s like you, I guess--sending ‘thank you’ notes before you even know what you got.”

“A piece of cake,” I told her.  “Every ‘thank you’ note is personal, some of them longer than others, some of them less formal than others, but they all follow the same general format. 

“First paragraph, something along the lines ‘Thank you for the present you gave me on such-and-such a date, which was an unexpected and delightful surprise.’

“And then the second, third, and fourth paragraphs are about how I’m grateful for their friendship and consideration, that their feelings for me are the greatest gift one can possibly get, and then I itemize a few examples of how they’ve made my life better…..or at least more interesting.

“Nowhere in all that wordage--which is utterly sincere, by the way--do I have to bother mentioning what it was, the present the recipient gave me.”

- - - - - - - - - -

Then we went to town.

The owner of the bar, Swede’s wife, looked at me, “You look like death warmed over.  You’re probably not eating because you’re sick, and you need to eat.”

I noticed the sullen Swede, her husband of Norwegian derivation, was cooking back in the kitchen.

The femme and I got a table, and placed our orders.

- - - - - - - - - -

While waiting, I described to the femme my discouragement about not having had a primitive for Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, and then New Year’s, but I was defiantly confident about finding a primitive for Martin Luther King’s day.

She thinks it’s odd at best, and dangerous at worst, that I endeavor to do such things, but as I pointed out a long time ago, whenever I’ve undertaken risky activity, I’ve always been very careful to ensure that if something turns out badly, I’m the only one to bear the consequences; nobody else goes down with me.

In fact, I’m rather proud of that artful maneuvering; in all my adult life, whenever I’ve done something stupid and it turned out disastrously, I and only I had to pay the consequences.  I suppose it’s a subconscious response to that others haven’t taken such good care to insulate me, when they’ve done something stupid.

- - - - - - - - - -

Usually a waitress, or the owner of the bar, brings orders to tables, but this time Swede himself emerged from the kitchen, a large tray hoisted up to his shoulder.  He came over and carefully placed the tray on a folding stand, near the femme.

Then he carefully smoothed the tablecloth in front of her, refilled her water, spread the silverware apart to make room for the dishes, and smiled at her.  He deftly and professionally placed everything she’d ordered where it belonged.

She was having her usual, burrata con culatello, pappardelle con cinghiale, rosticciana, asparagi alla griglia,, and for dessert, semifreddo alla nocciola e cioccolato con gelato al pistacchio.

Each of which he tenderly placed in front of her, all the while smiling at her.

Then, taking my single-dish order, a hamburger pressed down hard on the grill so as to squeeze out every drop of grease, and french fries cooked on the grill instead of in the fryer, he set it down so hard the plate wobbled, scowled at me and walked away.

- - - - - - - - - -

“You know, this perplexes me to no end,” I told the femme.

“Here, he has to spend all this time and trouble, worrying and fussing and fretting so as to get it right, preparing your order, while my order’s so simple and basic it’s no bother, no trouble, to make.

“I’m a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet, and I’m causing him no sweat at all, to fix my dinner.

“And he always resents it.”

[franksolich]

Nothing happened today (Thursday); I went to the doctor's office in the big city and paid $80 for advice and counsel I'd already been taking, about staying in bed, drinking plenty of orange juice and other fluids, and avoiding stress.

In the waiting room, the television was on, broadcasting FOX from Omaha.

There was some big fat guy with considerable body hair and a neck-brace standing in front of an Omaha police department cruiser whining about something, but I wasn't paying attention.

[franksolich]

I was grouchy this morning, Friday morning, when the neighbor and the property caretaker showed up, to work on something diesel in the garage.  I guess somebody--not one of them, though--forgot to use diesel number one fuel, or at least some sort of supplement, when the temperatures get arctic.

“You know,” I complained, “I get really tired of this. 

“Whenever I get under the weather, everybody nags, ‘see the doctor, see the doctor.’

“I put it off, trying my own stuff first, hoping to avoid seeing a doctor.

“I do the commonsensical things, things any doctor would tell me to do anyway.

“But if it lingers, there’s that constant nagging, ‘see the doctor, see the doctor.’

“Sooner or later, being a nice guy, putty in the hands of others, I succumb, and go see the doctor.

“Which costs me eighty bucks.

“Only to be told to keep doing exactly what I’ve been doing, not to change a thing.”

- - - - - - - - - -

When they were done, they came inside the house, because it’d been cold out in the garage.

While the three of us were having coffee, I described the conduct of the cook at the bar in town, Swede, the other evening when the femme and I were there.

“You know, if I had my druthers, I’d just as soon dine at the VFW Club all the time, where the cook there, Donna, has the good graces and manners to fix my order without editorial comment.

“But as everybody else prefers to eat at the bar instead of dine at the VFW Club, when someone’s with me, we have to go to the bar.”

“You know, boss,” the caretaker said, “you drive Swede nuts.  He wants you to respect him, and you just won’t.”

“Now wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute,” I replied; “I have nothing but the highest admiration and respect for Swede, and I’ve never been quiet about saying so.”

“But you won’t ever eat any of the good stuff he makes,” I was told.

“I won’t have it because it doesn’t suit me.  I like plain, basic, healthy food.  I’m not decadent.

“He makes excellent hamburgers pressed down hard on the grill so as to squeeze out every drop of grease, and his dry french fries are incomparable.  They’re excellent, and I’ve always complimented him on how good he makes them.”

“But that’s not what he wants you to respect him for, boss; anybody can prepare something for you, and it’s always good.  I swear, if some cook somewhere gave you a piece of charcoal instead of a burnt hamburger, you’d eat it and pronounce it good.

“You’re just that way, always satisfied, always content.

“You give the impression of not having any standards, any expectations, that you’ll just take any old thing and be happy with it.

“It drives Swede nuts, because he knows you have standards and expectations, exquisite tastes, and that they’re pretty high.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Well now, I always praise his Italianate cuisine to others, even though I’ve never had it.

“Everybody, including the professional Italianates from Omaha, from Minneapolis, from Kansas City, from Denver, have said it’s beyond any possible competition, better than what even they feature in their five-star restaurants, and since they know what they’re talking about, I’m eminently comfortable in parroting their sentiments.

“I always rave about how good Swede’s Italianate dishes are.”

“But yet you won’t try it yourself; you’re the last man in the county, if not all of northeastern Nebraska, who’s never tried it, and it wounds his pride.”

“Well,” I said with some vehemence, “if Swede depends upon my ‘approval’ for the food he makes, there’s something weak about his ego, and I won’t play his game.  I don’t cater to weak egos.

“I have enough problems in life without acquiring more by catering to weak egos.

“Swede is a man of substance, nearly a generation older than me, a business owner, a property owner, a veteran who’s seen things and done things I can only dream about, a truck driver who in a year makes more than what I make in five years, a native born and raised in this area, a man of popular and well-deserved reputation and character…..and an excellent cook.

“I’m nobody, a nonentity.  He doesn’t need my approval for anything.

“And since he doesn’t need it, I’m not going to give it to him.”

[franksolich]

The neighbor, the neighbor’s older brother, and two friends of theirs were here last night, to deal with unfinished business; the bar closed circa 10:30 p.m., and they weren’t completely drunk yet.

The mountain of unopened Christmas presents on the dining room table presented an obstacle to their communication and resting-places for their beer, so I kindly ameliorated the situation by opening the largest present there, in a box about the size of a 288-eggs-crate, which cleared up some space on the table.

The present was from the property caretaker and his wife; shirts, shorts, a jacket, a pair of breeks.

It was suggested it’s long past Christmas, and perhaps I should open the remaining twenty-eight of them before they got dusty, but I said no; best to take such things in small doses, one at a time.

- - - - - - - - - -

At some point, my quest for a primitive for Martin Luther King’s day came up, their consensus being that while it was probably okay to have primitives camping down by the river, it’d be perilous to have one actually staying in the house, even with my new armament, that professional baton.

“You know, the stench, their body odor and bad teeth and flatulence and all that--”

I said it’s necessary to endure hardships on behalf of medical science.

“What makes them different, less civilized, less sophisticated, less advanced, than we are?”

I supposed it was something in their brains that retarded development and maturity, but not being a psychiatrist or psychologist, that was beyond my capability to observe and analyze.  Observe, yes, I can do that, but make sense of it, no.

Now, it’s possible that physical characteristics and behavior might be a factor, and on such things I do have expertise, having watched people all my life.

“A while back, I noticed that many primitives on Skins’s island, for example, appear to be chinless; their lower jaw recedes into their neck with scarcely a chin at all.

“And more lately, I’ve noticed that of those who have chins, many seem to have a big bump in front of their chin, a bulge, a protuberance, that’s wholly unnatural, as if they’ve got an egg in there.

“But last week, I started examining a phenomenon that’s always been there, but I’d never paid any attention to; a not-unsubstantial number of them seem to have heads where the bottom half is too large for the top half, or the top half too small for the bottom half; sort of eggplant-shaped.

“And eyes where one eye’s slightly off-center; that’s a common characteristic of primitivity.

“I haven’t seen many pictures of primitive hands, but most of those I have, they had short stubby fingers.

“Never mind that most primitives are fat and have bad teeth; I’ve decided to look at the less-obvious details, because usually it’s the small, almost unnoticed, things that make a big difference.”

[franksolich]

The femme was here on Saturday evening, about supper-time, but I told her I wasn’t up to going out to dine.  However, I supposed I had enough muscle power to go into town to the secured storage area I rent, to stash some things I’d acquired the past month.

I also said I’d take a couple of things for the bank safe-deposit box and put them there too (the bank of course not being open) until Monday morning, as they’d be safer there than out here--her main present to me, and the one from my hostess for the Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinners.

“But you haven’t opened that yet,” she pointed out.

“I already know what it is, and it belongs in the bank vault, where it’s safe.”

The safe-deposit box is one of these boxes whose face is 12”x12”, and about twice that length; the largest thing it has is a sterling-silver anniversary clock--wholly of that metal excepting the glass dome and some of the things on its face--commemorating the 25th anniversary of the accession of H.M. the Queen in 1977.

There’s plenty of room in it for an 1866 music box and the diamond-crusted paperweight the femme gave me, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the accession of H.M. the Queen this past year.

- - - - - - - - - -

To humor her, since she’s the femme, I consented to open up another present, this one from the neighbor (but not his wife too).

In it were a couple of reprinted works of Samuel Morton and Dr. Paul Broca, American and French physicians, respectively, who measured human intelligence by the size and shape of the skull.  And there was a chart of phrenology, a reprint of something from the 19th century.  And finally, a wooden clamp-like tool.

“Aha,” I said; “a craniometer, just what I need, for when I get a primitive to observe and analyze.”

[franksolich]

“Hey boss, what’s this?” the property caretaker asked when he was here very early in the morning with a friend.  They had to pick up some things to deal with a problem on another property that had occurred during the middle of the night.  But as it was arctic cold outdoors, they weren’t in any hurry to leave.

“It looks like a wooden handscrew clamp.”

Oh, that, I said.  “It was a Christmas present from [the neighbor].

“It’s a craniometer,” as if that explained everything.

He looked at me as if I were Bozo from Outer Space.

“It’s a special tool to measure the skull and intellectual properties of primitives,” I explained.

“That is, if I can ever get a real-life primitive to measure.”

I showed him what I’d been doing during the night when I couldn’t sleep, using photographs of primitives to identify and assort them according to certain anatomical attributes.

“This, for example, is a primitivus supernas, the perfect primitive.

“One can’t get more primitival than that.  This is a perfect primitive.”

Then I showed him another one, this a primitivus turpis.

“A primitive can’t possibly be more ugly than that.”

Flipping through, I showed him a primitivus bardis.

“Now, that one takes the cake, when it comes to utter stupidity.”

The next one was a primitvus narcissus.

“Oh my,” I said; “rarely has a primitive had more reason to be modest.”

There were about a dozen more distinctive species of primitives, but he and his friend had to leave.

[franksolich]

The neighbor came by a little before noon today, when I was playing around with the craniometer he'd gotten me for Christmas.

"You know," I said, "for a museum replica, this is pretty good; it measures well."

The phrenological chart, the booklets, and the craniometer of course had not come from a reputable medical supply house, but rather from a museum of bad medicine and quackery.  I dunno however who defines "bad medicine," because in my own experience, all medicine has been of some value, if even slight.

Conventional medicine is fine, great, the best thing since sliced bread, but one shouldn't close one's mind to opportunities presented by unconventional medicine too.

"[The femme] measured me yesterday, and as usual, I came out utterly average, totally middle-of-the-road, nothing of any particular distinction about me, good or bad.

"Just average.

"Of course, there's the absence of ears, but to be fair and to keep the field level, when measuring a primitive, I won't take the primitive's ears into consideration."

Then I remembered something else.

"You know, use of this intrument demands a degree of intimacy with the subject that I'm, uh, rather uncomfortable with, a lot of touching.

"I'm not sure if I want to touch a primitive as much as [the femme] had to touch me, to work this thing."

My lifelong squeamishness; while others are utterly free to touch me--it can't be avoided, if one wishes to communicate with me--I've always been severely inhibited about touching other people on my own.  I won't, if I don't have to.

"But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, about how to touch a primitive."

Flipping through primitive photographs, I matched and compared for the neighbor.

"On the left, a primitivus bulga; on the right, an average person."

"On the left, a primitivus recedere; on the right, an average person.

"You know, I don't know what it is, about these two sorts of primitives; they look as if they've got eggs underneath their facial skin.

"The Las Vegas Leviathan has the same thing on his chin, but I don't have a good photograph of the Las Vegas Leviathan.

"I wonder if it has something to do with diet and pharmaceuticals."

Then I matched and compared another characteristic.

"On the left, a primitivus nasus; on the right, an utterly average nose.

"Now, these are just photographs, however.  It's going to be far more interesting to measure a primitive in real life, although I still have to figure out how to overcome that squeamishness when it comes to actually touching a primitive."

[GOBUCKS]

I liked this quote from an old phrenology text:

The size of the brain appears to bear a general relation to the intellectual capacity of the individual. Cuvier's brain weighed rather more than 64 oz., that of the late Dr. Abercrombie 63 oz., and that of Dupuytren 62^- oz. On the other hand, the brain of an idiot seldom weighs more than 23 oz.‎

This thread has pictures of a lot of twenty-three ouncers.

[franksolich]

I liked this quote from an old phrenology text:

This thread has pictures of a lot of twenty-three ouncers.

But, as I pointed out to the business partner when he was here this afternoon, while the primitives may be light on brain-weight, they're surely heavy on earrage.

Left, a primitivus auriculae magnus, right, a normal person, his good side, although the photographs's sort of, uh, old.

When watching the primitives bitch and moan and groan and whine and carry on, I get irritated.

Most of them enjoy great big huge ears; what the Hell do they have to complain about?

[franksolich]

Oh my.

Left, a primitivus pomum Adami, right, a normal person with a normal throat.

[GOBUCKS]

I doubt M. L. King day is celebrated with much enthusiasm on the eastern slope of the Sandhills.

You should have made a more concerted effort to find a moonbat for Kwanzaa.

[franksolich]

I doubt M. L. King day is celebrated with much enthusiasm on the eastern slope of the Sandhills.

You should have made a more concerted effort to find a moonbat for Kwanzaa.

No, there's no great enthusiasm for either holiday.

The holidays are simply a "place-marker," to spur me into finding a primitive by such-and-such a date.

Well, the plans are, if I don't find a real-life primitive to observe and study by Martin Luther King's day, I'll look around hoping to find one for Ash Wednesday, February 13.

It's a pain, being immobilized by an influenza strain that wasn't covered in the latest infuenza shot; it's a good thing I'm all set for the rest of January, not having to work until the first of next month.

A lot of free time, right, but if one's not up to moving around, exploring the terrain.....

Real-life primitives used to be spotted here-and-there, once in a great while, around here, but since the elections, nary a primitive to be seen.  I suspect they're all huddling in crowded blue cities, afraid to come out and show themselves, lest the wrath of the people be made known to them.

If I remember correctly, the last real-life primitive I saw around here was the morning of November 6, 2012.

[franksolich]

Still feeling the affects of an influenza strain that apparently wasn't included in the latest influenza shot, I managed to go to town this morning to take some things to the bank, and then came back home to hit the sack again.

The property caretaker came by about noon, and checking the refrigerator, said, "No wonder you're still sick; you don't have any more leftover turkery dinners.

"But the problem is, it's a long haul until Thanksgiving, before you'll get any more."

I said I'd survive.

To cheer me up, he proposed I open up another Christmas present, which I did, this one from the wife of the retired banker and her husband Grumpy.

It was a red University of Nebraska sweat-shirt wrapped around a compact disc of the movie Lawrence of Arabia, my favorite, neither of which I could possibly use.  Being a graduate of the University of Nebraska, I'm not compelled to wear the colors--the sheepskin says it all--and the movie won't work because there's no sound on this computer.

My first "dud" as a Christmas present, but one can't blame her, as she doesn't know me very well.

The caretaker sifted through the file of primitives, classified by species.

"Wow, boss," he said.

Left, a primitivus collum camelopardalis, right, a normal neck.

[Chris_]

crazy eyes

[njpines]

crazy eyes

yeah, but she probably has great peripheral vision!   

[Chris_]

Nobody's going to sneak up on her, that's for sure.

[franksolich]

Nobody's going to sneak up on her, that's for sure.

Actually, I'm surprised at the number of primitives who seem to have no necks at all, period.

The bottom part of their heads just sits atop their shoulders.

Top left, a primitivus porcus, top right, a primitivus dilato, below, a normal person.

[franksolich]

The neighbor’s wife was over this afternoon, as I’d decided I’d go and see the physician in the big city this coming Thursday…..again.  But she’s going to have to drive, as I’m not up to it.

“You know he’s just going to say, ‘Keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing, don’t change a thing, and you’ll get over it.’

“After which I pay eighty bucks--again--for something I already know.”

“Well, we’re worried about you,” she insisted. 

I admitted it was a good thing I didn’t have anything else going on in life right now--and lush in funds from October, November, and December, and not spending any of it, working for a living isn’t an issue at the moment.

“All I’ve been doing is drink a pint of orange juice, hit the sack and sleep for four hours, get up to empty the bladder, drink a pint of cranberry juice, hit the sack and sleep for four hours, get up to empty the bladder, drink a pint of orange juice, hit the sack and sleep for four hours, get up to empty the bladder, drink a pint of cranberry juice, hit the sack and sleep for four hours, get up to empty the bladder, and so on.

“It’s a good thing the cats have been behaving.”

She looked at me, alarmed.

“You haven’t been eating anything,” she nagged.

“Well, I ate something on Monday,” I said.

“I sliced up thin some of that real cheddar cheese, and dipping the wafers into sour cream, I dined on that as if potato-chips and dip.”

“You’re really ill,” she insisted, “and all alone out here.  I can get somebody to stay here with you, until you’re better.”

My eyes in speechless horror grew as big as saucers.

“No way,” I said; “I’m sick.

“In the words of that famous movie actress during the 1930s, ‘I want to be left alone.’”

And besides, as I pointed out, I’m no bitter old Vermontese cali primitive.

“She’s that hate-filled old primitive who about three years ago fell and broke her leg, and couldn’t get to the telephone to get help.

“And because she’s anti-social, hates people, chases them away, doesn’t want to have anything to do with them, and lives out in the remote woods of northern Vermont, nobody ever drops by to see her, and so she had to crawl two miles down a country lane to get help.  With a leg where the bone inside was busted clean off.

“Well, that’s not a problem where, where sometimes this place is like Grand Central Station.”

She noticed I was half-done with something on the dining room table.  I’d taken a picture out of an old frame, making the frame ready for something else.  It usually hangs on the wall in the bathroom, above the tank of the commode.

For years and years, I’ve had an autographed photograph of Alphonse Capote Gore, from when he was a U.S. Senator, in that frame, but decided to redecorate.

“That’s quite a change,” she said.  “Whose photograph are you going to put in there now?”

I showed her.  “I recently acquired this, a real-life photograph of a primitivus supernas, an ideal primitive, a perfect primitive, a primitive who exemplifies all the characteristics of primitivity, and it’ll fit nicely into this frame.”

“Yep,” I said, mimicking the oblate spheroid; “it’ll do nicely in the bathroom, on the wall just above the tank of the commode.”

[franksolich]

The property caretaker roared.

“Hey, boss, that’s something kids get, and you’ve got it?

“Maybe you should ask [the femme] to get checked out too, because it’s passed along, you-know-how.”

Screw you, I said, irritated.

- - - - - - - - - -

“You know,” he laughed, “if you’re going to go around getting kids’ diseases, you’d better get one of those shots for the mumps.

“Get the mumps at your age, and you’re toast.”

Screw you, I said again, irritated.  “I had the mumps when I was ten years old, and remember it.”

“There’s the measles too, boss,” he reminded me.  “Measles can do a lot of damage to somebody your age.”

I had the measles when I was five years old, I said; I have no memory of it, but one of my sisters had always insisted I had them, and that she had to cancel one of her high-school teeny-bopper parties because of it.

“Well, boss, the way it looks, you’re just going to have to slow down for a while.”

- - - - - - - - -

I’d been scheduled to see a physician in the big city on Thursday, but an opening came up, and I went there on Wednesday instead, along with the neighbor’s wife, who did all of my talking-and-listening for me, because I wasn’t in the mood.

She learned the score and passed it on to me; mononucleosis.

[Flame]

Ugh...Frank, I don't wish mono on anyone!  Had it my junior year in college and wanted to die.  I'll take the flu over mono any day!  At least flu is over quick, mono drags on and on.

Take care of yourself.  And the sleeping thing will probably continue for a while....

[GOBUCKS]

Do they still call it the kissing disease?

A lousy, long-lasting malady.

Follow instructions and get well!

[franksolich]

The neighbor on Friday morning brought over one of those plastic milk-crates with four one-gallon jugs of pure orange juice, and a second crate with four one-gallon jugs of whole milk, and noticed I’d already stocked up on six half-gallons of real cranberry juice.

And the freezer’s stocked with bags of all sorts of frozen fresh fruit, to be juiced into juice as needed.

“I see you’re really serious about getting over this as quickly as you can,” he said.

Of course, I said, paying him for the goods.

To cheer me up, the neighbor suggested I open up another Christmas present on the dining room table.  There’s still plenty more to go, although I sent out “thank you” notes for all of them last week.

I said yeah, sure; it’s not like I’m doing anything else anyway, and reached for one.

“No, not that one,” he said; “this one over here.”

It was one of four from the business partner, and I suspect the neighbor already knew what it was.

And it was obviously his “gag” gift.

(For the record, although nothing’s been itemized, it must be pointed out that franksolich is just as generous in giving others presents as others are in giving him presents; it’s just that I’m not a primitive, and boasting about what I give others would be primitival.)

So I opened that one.

Now, perhaps some here are old enough to remember “chemistry sets” in metal boxes oftentimes given kids at Christmas; I dunno if they still exist any more.

This was something similar, but it was a microscope, petri dishes, and glass slides.

“Aha,” I said.

“True, it’s an amateur set, but hey, I’m an amateur.  It’s still good; the microscope works great.

“I can use this in my study of a primitive--whenever it is I get a real-life primitive to study--comparing one of his hairs with one of mine, or some skin-scraping from his arm with skin-scrapings from my arm, or one of his clipped-off fingernails with one of my clipped-off fingernails, to discern the differences, why he’s a primitive and franksolich isn’t.”

[franksolich]

A guy came by early this morning to pick up a tool of his he’d left here last autumn.

A great many people come out here to work on their motor vehicles or farm machinery because it’s easier and quicker than trying to do it in their own garages and yards, and I of course have never minded it, in fact encouraged it, because of the likelihood of primitives stalking franksolich.

He asked me how I was feeling, as he’d heard I was ill.

I said about what’s to be expected, although I’m defiantly confident I’ll be back in tip-top shape by my birthday, and so I was comfortable just letting it run its course.

However, the inactivity was driving me nuts; one can read only so much before becoming brain-dead, and I’d put away a lot of big books the past week, the latest one being some 800-page tome on the life and times of John D. Rockefeller.

It was a mistake, though, because such books inevitably end, and they end with a death-bed scene.

I’ve never been sure why, but I’ve usually come close to tearing up, when reading of death-bed scenes other than those of tyrants, socialists, and Democrats.

The worst has been with biographies of Henry R. Luce and Douglas MacArthur, which usually leave me in a funk for days, melancholy and depressed.

I said I was looking around for new reading matter, but damn, of the hundreds of books out here, nearly all of them are historical biographies, and hence likely to have death-bed scenes in the final chapters.