Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

It was back in the day when I asked to go to the lavatory when nature called in school.

When my upstairs bedroom was cold enough in the winter that I could have flooded it and made it into an ice rink. But because I didn’t have a thermometer, I didn’t notice the cold.

It was during a time when I’d say things such as, “Nothing goes anywhere, but everything goes somewhere,” and try to pass them off as something profound.

I filled notebooks with writings in a childish scrawl. It was a show of optimism. It was also a demonstration that life is practice.

When Pablo Casals, the cellist, was 91 years old, a student asked, “Master, why do you continue to practice?”

Casals replied, “Because I am making progress.”

The phone rang. My father refused to answer it. He claimed that a telephone had no constitutional right to be answered. I answered it for him. It was a reminder of an upcoming meeting. Before hanging up, the caller asked, “Is today, Wednesday or Thursday?”

I couldn’t tell him. Our calendar was in the shop.

We attended the meeting. I got to go along. Probably because I’d answered the phone. During the meeting, there was a raffle for poor Widow Johnson. My Dad didn’t buy a ticket. He said that Mom wouldn’t let him keep the widow had he won. The Widow Johnson had a big family for religious reasons. The more kids she had, the better chance she had at winning at bingo.

I sat by a couple that lived a few miles from us, close to the paved road. The husband was a tobacco chewer and was never seen without a trickle of brown tobacco juice running down the side of his mouth and onto his chin on its way to his shirt. He was an eyesore and tended to be on the grumpy side. People couldn’t understand how his lovely, sweet wife put up with him. I remember the day a neighbor lady asked her, “How can you stand that vile chewing tobacco? It’s disgusting. Why don’t you leave him?”

The woman replied, “I’d have walked out on him long ago, but I can’t bear the thought of kissing him goodbye.”

At the meeting a woman told another, “Last week was a corker. On Monday, our neighbor Roger ended up in the hospital with a broken collarbone. He’d had too much to drink and fell from his horse. He hasn’t drawn a sober breath since Shep was a pup. On Tuesday, our old pastor’s wife collapsed and died while playing bingo. She had a gambling addiction, but now she’s put all her aches into one casket. Then on Friday, I won a side of beef in the Legion meat raffle. Things always happen in threes.”

I snuck a sip of coffee when my father wasn’t looking. It was bitter enough to turn me into a future tea drinker.

Years later, I was in England, where the signs read “Way out” instead of “Exit,” when my host offered me a cup of Earl Grey, named after Charles Grey who was British prime minister in the 1830s. It has a distinctive flavor and aroma derived from the addition of oil extracted from the bergamot orange.

He said, “It’s Earl Grey in England. Earl Gray in America. E for England. A for America.”

That’s not true. It didn’t matter. I don’t like Earl Grey tea. I’m a big fan of English breakfast black teas and PG Tips.

I digress. Back to the meeting.

The meeting introduced some innovations to farming that one attendee dismissed this way, “I think they should have waited until all the old people were dead.”

I was lucky to be at the meeting. Luck is important to my family.

The first of my kin came to this country as a young couple on a ship. The only thing of value they had was a diamond ring that had belonged to the young woman’s grandmother, presented to the new bride on her wedding day.

They were looking over the railing at the sea when the ring, a size too large, slipped from the young woman’s finger and fell into the water off the coast of their new home.

Thirty years later, the husband, helping his cousin who owned a fishing boat and plied his trade in the same waters where the ring had been lost, was cutting open a large cod when his knife hit something hard.

It was his thumb.

 

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.