At the New Braunfels Folkfest – under the trees to the right of the furniture museum!
(In which we go back in time to the 1930s, when Letty McAllister and Stephen Wyler were young teenagers, and together with their friends were peripherally involved in international intrigue and a political murder…)
If anyone – such as Dym’s mother – worried that the boy would be the odd one out among his new schoolfellows, such fears were allayed within the first week of school. Of course, the sponsorship of Stephen Wyler, son of the wealthiest landowner in the county, and the ready friendship of Douglas and Letty McAllister, might have had a lot to do with it. But left to himself, Dym Marcus was adept at ingratiation – intelligent, charming and with wide-ranging enthusiasms. Madame Katya Marcus should have nothing to worry about – and the walnut-shaped and sweet-cream-filled cookies, and the many-layered jam-filled pastries that she made for the children would have ensured a welcome among his peers for a child less socially-skilled. Within the space of that week, he was accepted as one of the unofficial club, even though their established meeting place and club-house, the teepee constructed out of river wrack had been demolished a year or two ago in a spring flood, all the bits and pieces that had made it their little refuge washed away. If they couldn’t go to that place anymore, there was always the wide acreage of the Wyler ranch … and then there was Dym’s house, with Madame Marcus, Pilar Gonzales, the Mexican housekeeper, the hovering older brothers, and Professor Marcus.
“Mr. Hyde told us all about ancient sieges,” Douglas remarked one day, as the four of them walked from school to the Markus house, tagged along by Artie Vaughn and shadowed by Dym’s older brother. “Back in the old days, they built enormous machines to batter down walls. The ancient Romans had all kinds of keen stuff to break into enemy strongholds and throw stuff at their enemies. I never heard about all this … have you ever seen any of them, Dym?”
“No,” Dym admitted, sounding regretful, but his face brightened. “But I’ve seen pictures in books, and Papuch says he built scale models of them, when he was a boy. A battering ram, and a ballista … I’ll bet he and Mikhail would help us build ones that would really work.”
“That would be a keen school project for Mr. Hyde’s history class!” Douglas sounded terribly excited. “And we could bring them to school and demonstrate how they really work … do you really think your Pop would help us build them?”
“Oh, for sure,” Dym replied, and Stephen enthused,
“There’s an old shed at the ranch with the roof all busted in. Pop’s been talking about knocking the rest of it down since forever! We could try out the battering ram on a real wall, if we can make it big enough!”
Letty sighed, to herself. Boys – all about building things and bashing things down. But still – she was intrigued at the thought of building something historic and mechanical. She and Douglas often built model airplanes together: Letty was exceptionally skilled at painting the tiny details. Sometimes Letty wondered about herself – why she wasn’t really interested in doing girl-things, like embroidery, fussing with her hair and clothing, giggling about the attentions of boys, and trying inexpertly to get the attention of a certain boy. Letty already had the attention and respect of the boys that she knew; she liked doing the things that they did, and was interested in a lot of the same things they were interested in. She didn’t want to be a boy – she just wanted to go places and do things, adventurous things, just like her brother and Stephen and Dym did. Mama often sighed and said that Letty would be a confirmed bluestocking, whatever that was. But Papa chuckled at that, saying that Letty knew her own mind very well, and that he always liked women who knew their own mind and spoke in their own words. Which made Letty feel so much better. And actually, she really did want to see how a life-sized model battering ram, or a ballista would really work.
It turned out that Dym’s father was just as interested himself, although Madam Marcus tut-tutted under her breath. Professor Marcus was lean and gnomish, almost the age of Letty’s grandfather as she remembered him, but with a turn of enthusiasm for projects of a nature such as the one to build an almost-full-scale battering ram and ballista which seemed to transform him into a boy hardly older than Stephen, Dym, Artie, and Douglas. Upon hearing about this latest enthusiasm over lemonade and those sweet walnut-shaped cookies, the professor announced,
“Then we shall build it, my lads! To my workroom! I have some books – Katya, bring me the book from the study – folio-sized, red cover, second from the left on the bottom shelf under the window … yes, yes – it’s about siege warfare in the medieval era…”
The Professor hustled off to in the direction of his workshop, leaving Letty hesitating, as Madam Marcus rang a small silver bell, resting on the table in the cluttered dining room. In a moment, Pilar appeared from the direction of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth.
“Pilar, you may clear away the tea things,” Madam Marcus sighed. “I will bring the book to him – his library is organized on methods that are only apparent to his closest. My husband has been overtaken with yet another enthusiasm.”
“Yes, Madam Marcus,” Pilar replied, although Letty sensed that the younger woman’s countenance was carefully blank, even as Madam Marcus went off to search for the particular red-covered folio.
“Let me help,” Letty suggested – the McAllisters didn’t have servants of any sort, although there was a woman who came to help with spring cleaning, sometimes. She and Mama always worked side by side. Madam Marcus looked faintly shocked, but Pilar nodded an assent, as she tucked the towel into the waistband of her apron, and took up the tray upon which the teapot, milk pitcher and sugar bowl sat, with the empty plate adorned with crumbs which had contained cookies and little squares of frosted cake. Pilar added the empty cups to the tray, and Letty stacked the abandoned plates and added the dirty silverware to the top plate and followed Pilar into the kitchen.
Letty was intrigued by the Marcus’ housekeeper. She didn’t look like a housekeeper or a maid at all. Instead, Letty thought she seemed more like who Letty imagined to be the something-heroine in the opera Carmen. Pilar was young, slim, with her dark hair pulled back into a bun high on the back of her head. Pilar had hazel eyes and a fair complexion; she didn’t look in the least like the Gonzales and Gonzalez kin in Luna City. Perhaps she was a distant cousin since Pilar looked … exotic. Letty could imagine her, with a bright red flower tucked behind her ear, singing in a vibrant contralto about her many lovers; soldiers, smugglers and bullfighters alike. Letty’s parents loved listening to radio broadcasts from New York on Saturday afternoons, from the Metropolitan Opera company. Stephen’s parents had even gone to the opera house there and told them all how splendid it was to see in person! The spectacle and the music! Letty’s parents could never in their lives afford – or even want to travel all the way to New York for anything, let alone to see the opera. But they loved listening to the radio; a touch of the wider world, Papa often said – and what a blessing it was! When he was a boy, he often told Douglas and Letty – all they had was the magazines and newspapers which might be anywhere from a week to a month late! What a miracle, the modern age and technology!
As Letty set the stacked crumby plates down in the kitchen sink, she turned to Pilar, and inquired in all seriousness, “Are you really kin to Don Jaimie, of the Rancho? Everyone here in Luna City called Gonzales with an s or a z hereabouts is kin to them. They have been here since forever, my Papa says.”
“Your papa is correct in that,” Pilar answered, as she took the various elements of the tea service and plopped them down in the metal sink, careless of whether she chipped the fine China or not. “I am indeed a very distant cousin to your Don Jaimie – my father is Don Pedro Rodriguez of Morelia. He was the Alcalde there, for a brief time. It was all very complicated…”
“I know complicated,” Letty replied, and then she heard someone calling her name from the little yard in back of the house. “I have to go, Pilar. The boys want to show off to me … or have me help work something complicated, I think.”
“A familiar feeling, hija!” Pilar responded with a smile, as Letty went off towards the workshop shed, across the little garden in back of the house, where Professor Marcus and the boys were pulling odd bits of lumber from behind the sturdy shed which seemed to serve as his workroom/laboratory, while her brother and Stephen were intensely studying a picture in an enormous red-covered book.
On the first day of school in the autumn of 1934, Letty McAllister and her older brother Douglas rode their bicycles from their home – the old stone house standing in a garden on the outskirts of Luna City – into Luna City proper. The big red brick consolidated school building sat on the far side of Town Square, which had once been intended to accommodate a courthouse. Luna City had once been intended to have a station on the San Antonio – Aransas Pass Railway, and be the county seat, but that had never come about. Town Square was now a lovely green park, with a bandstand in the middle, and all the tall town buildings – the Cattleman Hotel, the old fire station, Abernathy Hardware, the Luna City Savings and Loan, the McAllister’s Mercantile Building, and the school itself overlooked that space. The steeple of the First Methodist Church hovered over one corner, like a girl too shy to join the crowd.
Letty would be starting the seventh grade – her brother Douglas, who was clever and bookish, was in the nineth grade. The pair of huge sycamore trees which shaded the paved school playground in front of the school were just beginning to shed their crunchy autumn leaves and prickly round seed pods over the areas marked out on the asphalt in painted squares and circles for games. Letty looked ahead, as she and Douglas wheeled their bicycles through side gate into the playground, looking for friends. Douglas had a new pair of long trousers – his first pair of grown men’s trousers for school, and Letty a pretty blouse with puffed sleeves, worn under a plaid jumper with a pleated skirt. They both had new leather shoes; Letty had her hair cut to a neat bob, and Douglas had his hair cut at the barber shop on Town Square – as he was nearly grown up now, and too old for a home-done trim with their mother’s sewing shears. The first day of school was an important day for the two, even if they expected no real changes.
The first real surprise waited for them, just inside the gate; their good friend Stephen Wyler, who was four months younger than Letty, stood there, with his hands insouciantly in his pockets. With him stood another boy, a slightly taller boy that Stephen, who was still wiry and compact, and had yet to get his growth. Letty had gotten her growth and stood half-a-head taller, which she found obscurely embarrassing, looming over the boys her age. This new boy was exactly her height. though. A tall young man in a suit of a vaguely foreign-looking cut lingered just outside the school grounds, looking through the railings and watching the group with intense interest. Letty wondered why – the young man didn’t look old enough to be a father.
“Hi, Stephen,” Douglas nodded towards their friend. “Ready to be lectured by Miss Horrible for not understanding an algebra problem?”
Miss Hornby, an aged and grey-haired spinster with an uncertain temper taught math, algebra and geometry to the upper grades. She was notorious among Luna City school students for her impatience with error and the furious tongue-lashings which the smallest error or carelessness on the part of a student would trigger.
“No, but Miss Horrible is like a blue norther – just bundle up and get through it,” Stephen replied. “Dym – these are my friends, Doug and Letty McAllister. Letty’ll be in the same grade as us. Dym’s the new kid this fall. His family moved to town last week. His Pop’s a scientist … and Dym has even ridden in an airplane! He’s been to everything there is a picture of in our history book of all those foreign places in Europe!”
Dym, with grey eyes and angular features, stared at the ground, appearing to be wholly embarrassed. “Wasn’t my fault,” he replied, when he brought his gaze up from to meet theirs. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. Dym is just short for Dimitri. Papuch an’ Mama took me. I didn’t care – just another moldy old building.”
“Dym lived in foreign places,” Stephen explained, unnecessarily. For Letty and her brother knew right away that the new boy had, for he didn’t talk quite like they did; but careful and precise, without the customary drawl.
“You should tell us about them in class,” Letty offered. “I’d like to hear about foreign places. Maybe I can travel to them myself, someday.”
“Maybe,” Dym offered a shy, yet wholly charming smile. “But Sergei … that’s my big brother,” and he gestured towards the young man who was still watching them from the sidewalk. “He says that I shouldn’t start folk talking about our business, lest the wrong people hear about it.”
“What kind of wrong people?” Douglas was intensely interested, but just then the school bell rang, and it was time to go inside – Douglas to his class, and Letty, Stephen and the new boy to theirs.
Dym shrugged and replied, “Just wrong people. Bad people.” He turned to wave to the young man watching from the other side of the wrought-iron and brick fence which marked the boundaries of school grounds. The young man returned the wave, and then strode away as the group of children mounted the stairs towards the main school doors – a portico held up with four tall white pillars, and the words “Science – Religion – Patriotism” engraved in gold letters across the entablature.
That night at supper, Letty’s father said the blessing over supper dishes, and Mama got up to bring in a basket of fresh hot biscuits straight from the oven. Mama set down the biscuits, wrapped in a clean cloth, and Papa unrolled his dinner napkin and looked at Letty and Douglas.
“And how was your first day at school, then? I understand that Letty’s class has a new student.”
Letty wasn’t startled that Papa knew everything. He was the mayor of Luna City, and knew everyone and everything, so it wasn’t a surprise at all, that Papa knew of the new boy, Dym.
“He’s nice, Papa,” Letty replied. “I like him, lots. He’s been to all kinds of foreign countries. And he said something about not talking too much about it – because of bad people. Why, Papa – is it dangerous to talk about bad people?”
“In a way,” Papa replied, with a most serious expression. “It’s called political persecution – and your friend Dym’s father is a refugee from political persecution. His family thought that they would be safe, here in Luna City. And so they shall be, as long as we all do our part to keep them so. Never talk about him and his family to strangers. Say nothing about them to anyone that we do not know – to outsiders. Professor Marcus and his family are all good people. And we don’t want to see any kind of harm come to good people as they are, do we?”
“No, Papa,” Letty and Douglas chorused, and Papa took a biscuit from the basket of them, split it and spread it with butter.
“Good.” Papa took a bite from the biscuit and helped himself to the casserole which Mama had set in front of him, at the head of the table – a layered casserole of potatoes, onion and rice, interspersed with a little bit of ground beef, over which a quantity of tomato sauce had been poured before being consigned to the oven. “But if you see or hear about any strangers in town, asking about Professor Marcus or his family – you must tell me at once, or go straight to the police station and tell Chief McGill – or any of his police officers. Promise me that you will.”
“Of course, Papa,” Douglas replied, and then Mama scooped out a generous spoonful of the casserole to everyone’s please, and they talked then of other things.
My daughter will insist that I have been watching too many restoration videos on Toob of Yew, but honestly, it’s fascinating to me, watching rusty and ruined bits of this or that being brought back to life. I also have developed a serious case of power tool envy, after seeing what could be done with a sandblasting unit, when it comes to destroying rust. Wee Jamie watches these with me – I hope that the concept of repair and reuse sticks with him, also the fun of using power tools.
Anyway, there is in my kitchen a rolling kitchen island; a solid piece constructed of oil-finished rock maple with a butcher-block top. I bought it through the Williams-Sonoma catalogue sometime around 1986, mostly because my kitchen in Spain was dinky, and there was no place to put the microwave oven, having fallen for that bit of cooking technology when on leave visiting my parents, who had a lovely large one. It’s in my mind that it came at least partially assembled; and it must have been a bit pricy because Williams-Sonoma. For about a decade I dedicated my yearly income tax return towards solid pieces of furniture, and that unit might have been the pick of that year. Anyway, it was a sturdy piece, with double doors on each long side, a small drawer just below the butcherblock top and movable narrow shelves on the short sides. I kept spices on the narrow side shelves, and an array of French porcelain cooking dishes inside, and the rolling island followed us from Spain to Utah and then finally to Texas, where my kitchen is still small and woefully short of counter space.
Alas, although the rock maple parts of the cart have endured rather nicely, certain of the panels which were of thin maple veneer over composition – have not aged at all well. For a good few years we had a cat who was addicted to peeing on things, and for totally ruining household items, noting quite beats the power and stench of male cat urine. So it came to pass that we were both tired of looking at the ruined finish, not to mention the way that the bottom shelves and side panels were warping out of shape … and yesterday in a fit of exasperation and ambition, I emptied out the contents into boxes, and disassembled the cart.
“I was bored,” I said to my daughter when she got home with Wee Jamie, “And I thought I’d take the furniture apart.” (It will be at least three weeks before Roman the Neighborhood Handy Guy can come and re-do the back fence, and I was all afire to get SOMETHING done!)
For all of today, we used the palm sander by turns, sanding off all the stains on the various pieces, and using every bit of Liquid Wrench and WD-40 on hand to pry out wheels, which had rusted practically solid due to regular applications of cat pee. A trip to Lowe’s for some small birchwood plywood panels, some passes with the circular saw, and … only exhaustion plus an uncomfortable tingling in the hands kept us from doing any more work on it today.
Tomorrow, I’ll finish putting it back together, paint the base white and finish the butcherblock top with linseed oil – did I mention that I have a new paint sprayer? New rollers and a set of metal knobs are to be delivered tomorrow. When I eventually redo the kitchen, it will be all be in white-painted cabinets, but for now, the revamped cart will do.
Pictures to follow. The “Before” pics were too ghastly to unleash on an unwary public.
The sins of Microsoft are many – but since their Office suite is practically universal, one almost has to use it, especially if one is not technically adept in matters of a programming nature. I do understand that there are means of working around, involving Linux and some open-source word processing packages, but frankly, it’s all too much for a practicing writer and small publisher to process and still get useful work done, for myself and for clients.
I am, as a matter of fact, completely happy with and sufficiently skilled with Word, with Excel and Publisher themselves, although I wish that they hadn’t gone with the new hotness and ongoing income stream of the subscription model – that is, pay yearly or monthly for the privilege of using the programs. (Yeah, when I started with all this, you bought the package straight up, on a DVD/CD which you installed and used – forever, or as long as the computer lived, or until they came up with a physical upgrade.). I’ve been working with the various versions and so-called upgrades for at least three decades, with Photoshop for at least that long, and Adobe Acrobat Pro for half that long. Not a genius with either of the last two packages, but well enough to get by. What has lately frosted my cookies is the utter dogs’ breakfast of Microsoft’s consumer account system, and their customer service when things to do with the subscription go sideways.
To be brutally frank, it sucks sweaty pustulent donkey balls. It’s calculated, apparently, to avoid having to deal with a customer’s problem or complaint, much less actually do anything to fix the problem.
To recapitulate – early last month, I had to switch to a new computer, since the one I was currently using was beginning to glitch and had not enough memory to run several essential programs in the manner to which I would have liked them to run. Switching over all the saved documents which were on a detachable hard drive – no problem. Porting over all the bookmarks and settings – piece of cake. Going to my subscription accounts for Adobe Acrobat, and Photoshop, and re-installing those services on the new computer, no problem at all. But signing into my Microsoft account and trying to get the Office suite installed … headache on top of headache. I absolutely had to have those tools on my computer, being halfway through two different projects. My first intimation that Microsoft’s customer services sucks donkey balls – I went around and around on my account, but always came back to – having to pay for the subscription service again. (WHY? Adobe.com was perfectly transparent, and the services that I had already paid for were readily installed.) Bit the bullet and paid for the subscription anew.
Straight, so far? On Friday, Microsoft charged me for the yearly subscription, even though I had just two weeks previously – paid for a new subscription, because I couldn’t install the previously existing subscription package on the new computer. I signed into my account and tried to file a complaint, and request for a refund … and this time I went around and around for more than an hour. They are insidious in their customer service, you see. I twice tried calling the help telephone numbers I eventually found … and got a recorded message which sent me a link which referred me to another Microsoft website page … which circled back to where I had been before. I couldn’t cancel the transaction, couldn’t even change it to a monthly billing, they didn’t even recognize or accept my phone number (what? Although they could send an automated text message to that number.) Eventually, I found a page where I could file my complaint and describe my problem in a hundred characters or less. How very generous of them. No other option for filing a complaint or notifying them of a problem, which seems pretty measly, considering how large a company it is, and presumably stuffed full of technologically knowledgeable employees.
I did get an automated email answer – but one which asked that I type my reply above a line above … which couldn’t be done. Yes, Microsoft customer service sucks donkey balls. Even Amazon has better customer service; yes, they do low-key the contact email and number to call, but with a little persistence, you can eventually speak to a real human being. AT&T, my own bank, our local utility company – all do a much better job. Frankly, I’m convinced that Microsoft doesn’t really want customer interaction of any kind. They just want your money; customer satisfaction isn’t anywhere in the same room, or the building. Monopolies can operate like that, for a while, anyway.
Me, I hope for a refund, eventually, or just for communication with a human being in customer service – or for the SMOD to land on Redmond, Washington State. At this point, I figure the odds are equally split.
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