Old Songs in a New Cafe: Selected Essays Read online

  It seems that Ms. Roupe, formerly of Des Moines and lately of New York, has returned to her home, awaiting what the article labeled “career developments.” While awaiting, she became aware that lowans might not be handling their wineglasses properly and decided to set us straight.

  And, I must tell you, it was a shock. There I was, drinking coffee at 6 A.M., awaiting developments in my career, and mulling over the choice between wearing my dirty blue canvas shirt or my “How ‘bout Them Hog-eyes” T-shirt, when I chanced upon the interview with Ms. Roupe. Stunned at the apparent deficiencies in my repertoire of deportment when amidst polite company, I read the article with near reverence. Nay, more than that, I was riveted by her words.

  Then I immediately checked with Stanley Walk at the Sportsman’s Lounge in St. Ansgar to see if he had read and understood the instructions. He was smashing a hole through the wall of the establishment he and Allen Kruger operate and had difficulty hearing me over the phone. It turns out, though, he had missed the article and implored me to repeat the core ideas for the benefit of his customers. That, and my unceasing interest in improving the lot of all lowans, compels me to provide here the essence of Ms. Roupe ‘s wisdom. Now pay attention, this gets complicated.

  DO NOT: Do not place two fingers and the thumb at the bottom of a wineglass bowl, with the last two fingers holding the stem. That used to be just dandy, but not anymore. This is known as the Marlene Dietrich Caress, and IT IS DEFINITELY OUT.

  DO: Do place four fingers on one side of the stem and your thumb on the other side (never allow your thumb to stop touching the stem for more than five seconds). Such a grip prevents a premature warming of the wine due to your hand and also enables you to grasp the glass securely, according to Ms. Roupe. This is the Distinguished New York Authorities Clamp, and IT IS IN.

  I know, I know, change is difficult. I whined at first, too. After all, old habits are notoriously hard to break. I learned my drinking skills from emulating guys such as Red and Corny and Zip and Lefty in my Iowa youth. All of them dictated, by example, the standards of proper etiquette to be followed while sipping from assorted containers in the bowling alleys and taverns of Rockford. Sometimes they were kind enough to offer exhibitions right on the street, usually late of a Saturday evening. And with only minimal persuasion, Lefty and the others would gladly move into more advanced techniques, such as the proper handling of quart bottles and gallon jugs.

  Yet, Diane Roupe assures us that such a revision in our drinking manners is critical She even manages to tie the new, and admittedly difficult, glass grasp into economic development. The syllogism runs as follows: Industry wants to locate in sophisticated surroundings; lowans will be seen as sophisticated if we hold our wineglasses correctly; therefore, etc., etc. In other words, just wait and see if those silly old companies will move here unless we clean up our social act.

  That piece of logic alone settles the issue and ensures rapid adoption of the new grip by all right-thinking lowans. Remember Groucho Marx’s duck that used to come down from the ceiling when people said the magic word on “You Bet Your Life”? That entitled the players to a bonus. Say “economic development” in Iowa, and the duck descends like the value of farmland after a speculative binge. The universities picked up on that right away.

  But wait! There’s more. Beer and highballs are out, and ordering either of those in a fine restaurant, according to Ms. Roupe, will definitely identify you as not being a New Yorker. I’m having trouble with this part. If a Brooklyn cabdriver goes to the CafÉ Carlyle to hear Bobby Short and orders a Pabst, does that mean he’s not from New York?

  There are other things that will identify you as not being a New Yorker also, though Ms. Roupe did not point them out. Since she believes that people from Iowa will want to emulate the good manners of New Yorkers, I will provide several more guides for behavior when you visit the ol’ Apple. For example, if you know the names and locations of all the states and have a fair idea of what transpires in each of them, you’ll immediately be identified as not being a sophisticated New Yorker. This is particularly true if you know that Idaho grows potatoes. So, be careful.

  Here’s another example. You will not pass for a New Yorker if you dislike pieces of styrofoam pasted on yellow cardboard displayed in art galleries and selling for $27,542. Likewise, be careful of criticizing kitsch photography done in sort of an art deco style, featuring boring pictures of bored surburban couples sitting by bored backyard swimming pools. Be sure you like these photographs or you will be OUT.

  Obviously, I’m joshing a little bit. We all agree that lowans are not as well turned out socially as they might be, and there are serious questions that were not covered in the article. Here is a partial list of dilemmas that I hope will be answered in future interviews with Ms. Roupe:

  Is balancing a wineglass on your nose or head okay? Or is that permissible only at the end of world wars?

  Why are there sometimes two wine lists-—one bound in leather and the other in plastic?

  If you like to hold your glass down along your pant leg, what is the correct grip?

  What is the proper grasp if you prefer your wine at body temperature?

  New York waiters yank my wineglass from the table and pay more attention to other patrons right after I say, “Gimme a Bud.” Why?

  lowans chill their wine to just above freezing. Does this have any effect on the right way to hold a glass?

  How about those plastic champagne glasses where the stem detaches from the bowl? What is to be done here?

  Why do busboys often err and put a fork at the top of my plate, perpendicular to the other flatware? Should I refuse to tip the waiter when this occurs or should I just cackle and point?

  Why doesn’t my van get better gas mileage?

  Well, it’s apparent that a whole new vista is opening for the Register. To paraphrase photographer Galen Rowell, many lowans come, looking, looking. And we need directions while we’re looking, looking, so that we will never be mistaken for lowans while mingling with the tonier elements of New York society. God forbid such confusion and its impact on economic development. Thus, we will continue to seek guidance from our newspaper wherein our arbiters of taste will instruct us in model behavior. The next article in the series will deal with how to keep score in tennis.

  Oh yes, in line with this new thrust toward Iowa chic, Messieurs Walk and Kruger will begin offering wineglass-holding classes on August 1 at the Sportsman’s Lounge (students must bring their own glasses, preferably clean). I advise other such establishments to consider similar instruction if you want to be part of a future Iowa. The duck is falling.

  I think I’II stop. Writing nasty things about such nonsense is on the same order of difficulty as nailing guppies to plywood and hitting them with roofing hammers. I’m sorry to be quite so blunt, Ms. Roupe, but I have other work. You see, children are dying in the Sudan from disease and hunger. Then there’s acid rain, water pollution, soil erosion, the mistreatment of animals, child abuse, drug addiction, race relations, toxic waste disposal, the clear-cutting of the Amazon basin, students to be taught, and so forth. Besides, once the Arabs get their act together, New York will cease to exist.

  But I am troubled by a single thought. I try to reject it, yet I cannot. In a world that pays so little attention to the things that ought to matter and focuses instead on the trivial fringes of what it means to be civilized, truly civilized, I must admit to the following: Diane Roupe is probably right. And God help us all.

  In Cedar Key,

  Harriet Smith Loves Birds

  and Hates Plastic

  ______________________________________

  When Harriet Smith told her boss she was quitting her job and moving to Florida to write a novel, he offered her three months’ paid leave and psychiatric help. By contemporary standards, his reaction was understandable. Harriet was selling $5 million worth of computers each year to high-level corporate executives. She was the personification of what is supposed to
be the modern woman’s dream, slugging it out and moving up fast in a glamour industry.

  That was six years ago. And Harriet wanted neither a paid leave nor psychiatric help. She wanted to be free. So she chucked it all, sold just about everything she owned, loaded her ten-year-old son in a camper, and headed south from New Hampshire. She was running hard, escaping from a world where time is measured in nanoseconds, where worth is judged by the crackle of the bank check and the close of the sale. She never looked back.

  Now it’s late afternoon on the Florida gulf coast, and the long swamp grass behind her house turns a soft yellow-green in the fading light. Twenty feet away at her Cedar Key Seabird Rescue, brown pelicans recuperating from various injuries flap around in a large confinement. Harriet Smith leans forward, rests her chin on her hands, and says, “I want to open up people’s heads and pour some things in there.”

  It took her a while to find herself and this half-acre in the Florida scrub country. She wandered around Florida for three years, south to the Keys and then north once more. By 1983, Harriet was living in Tallahassee, picking oranges and painting houses, doing some writing on the side. But the novel went poorly, so she tried plays and short stories, then articles. None of it caught on.

  She drifted down to Cedar Key where the wild beauty of Levy County took hold of her. And, sitting on a bench along Second Street, she decided this was her place. While launching her painting business in a new market, she worked as a waitress at the Island Hotel, a place of quiet fame among those who seek gourmet food and similar comforts.

  Harriet’s Cedar Key Seabird Rescue started with an injured brown pelican on the beach. The story is a common one along the coast—five fishhooks embedded in various parts of the bird’s body and monofilament line wrapped so tightly around a grotesquely swollen leg that the line itself disappeared within the swelling.

  She waited four hours for a busy wildlife officer to respond to her call And Harriet Smith, waitress and house painter, spent that time watching over the pelican and raging within herself at her own ignorance about what might be done to help. She remembers making herself a promise: “Never again, never, am I going to have this helpless feeling.”

  An internship at the Suncoast Seabird Center south of Clearwater gave her some basic knowledge. A correspondence course in bird biology from Cornell University added to it. But most of what Harriet knows about birds has come from the day-to-day caring for them. She disdains the more clinical, drug-oriented approach of many bird veterinarians and labels her approach to bird medicine as “holistic.”

  Harriet’s landlord in Cedar Key initially was tolerant. But the birds and cages and dead fish and droppings in his backyard finally wore him down. So, now what?

  The situation presented her with a moral dilemma. You see, when Harriet Smith left the computer business, she had made up her mind to be poor. “I decided that I always was going to be poor, that I was never going to own property, that I was never going to own a new car again, never get a bank loan, and never have a checking account.” When she talks like that, you can feel the foundations quake just a little, and folks in the chrome and glass houses along the southern beaches probably sense a sudden chill in the wind and wonder about its origin.

  Yet there had to be a place for the birds. So she compromised a little with the system and scraped together $400 for a down payment on a small piece of land near Cedar Key. She makes her monthly payments of $83.68 directly to the previous owner. The tallyman again, but no banks at least.

  Connie Nelson, friend and local artist, ramrodded a modest fund-raising push on Harriet’s behalf. “Okay everybody, $5 each for Harriet’s Seabird Rescue Center.’5 Harriet was under way.

  She built her own house, a small L-shaped affair, mostly out of donated materials. Well, “built” is a little too strong, too finished. The house is sort of emerging here and there as funds permit. The posts supporting the structure are not on the square, but that bothers her little. “My great-grandfather lived in a house like this; it wasn’t square, it didn’t fall down, and he was very happy. You have to get away from the kind of mind-set that worries about those things.” Well said and noted.

  “Everything for the house seems to come in $300 chunks,” she moans. “Everything costs that much, for some reason.” The next $300, whenever she accumulates it, will go for a well. For now, she hauls water in buckets from Cedar Key.

  After that, maybe a better electricity setup. Her only supply of electrical power is carried by two extension cords running from a temporary construction electric pole. One cord goes to the house, the other to a freezer containing food for the birds.

  But her private war against suffering is what really matters. She finances that and her own expenses by working part-time as a desk clerk in a local motel, by writing an environmental column for the Cedar Key Beacon, and by selling copies of her book, A Naturalist’s Guide to Cedar Key, Florida.

  As people learn of her work, donations trickle in. Some of the money comes from local folks, some from people in Pocatello and Minneapolis who own property in Cedar Key, subscribe to the Beacon, and read her column.

  She spent $1,250 on her birds last year. She figures $3,000 a year would permit a first-class operation by enabling her to build better confinements, purchase higher-quality food for the birds, and acquire additional training for herself. Her monetary needs seem shriveled in comparison with the large government grants regularly handed out to academic researchers. Without degrees and credentials, though, she feels that kind of money is beyond her reach. “Crudentials,” she sighs.

  No matter. Harriet Smith is an expert at making do. Conventional thinking has it that high levels of purchasing by some swirling mass of procuring organisms called “consumers” are necessary to the well-being of the U.S. economic system. If you believe that, then you probably will find Harriet a little dangerous. By example, she is subversive in a gentle fashion.

  Harriet watches the rise and fall of life in the marsh to the east through windows that were given to her. In fact, most of the house is constructed of scraps and discards. Sometimes she’ll return home and find a used door propped on the stoop. Or the phone rings and someone asks, “I have an old water heater. Do you have any use for it?” “Sure, bring it out; I’ll convert it to a solar water heater.”

  So what’s the point of it all? What’s it mean in the long run? Harriet is quick to respond to such patently stupid questions. “Most of the animals are injured by some human activity,” she observes. “In some tiny way, ever so slightly, I tip the scales the other way. I talk about birds anywhere, anytime. People become aware of the birds, know their names, and call me when they see injured birds. Once that starts happening, people become more aware of what they’ve got here in Levy County; they realize how special it is.”

  She sees Levy County as one of the last few wilderness areas in Florida. “It’s eleven hundred square miles, and it’s absolutely fabulous. Essentially every habitat in Florida is here. I sometimes think, ‘Fence off Levy County.’ “

  As part of her bird lectures and columns, she actively promotes her own brand of hard-headed environ-mentalism. Plastic is one of her favorite targets—she absolutely loathes plastic. “It doesn’t work to tell people they ought to recycle and not use so much plastic. You’ve got to show them how. ‘Here,’ I tell them, ‘here are five ways to stop using so much plastic’ I go to the grocery store and say, ‘Don’t give me those damn plastic bags. What’s the matter with you, Harry? Why do you have those things?’”Fearing a full-blown lecture, Harry shakes his head and reaches for something else, anything.

  It’s early evening now, and the flashing cursors on all those computer terminals are far behind her. They blink somewhere in another time. Harriet feeds a small eastern screech owl recovering from a broken leg and an eye injury. The little guy’s beak clicks rapidly in anticipation as he waits for her to prepare his ration of stew meat marinated in a vitamin solution.

  While she feeds him, Har
riet looks out across the scrub tree horizon. Out there, she knows, the white ibises, the yellow-billed cuckoos, the ducks and owls and eagles and ospreys and the rest are up against the power of a technology-choked civilization, and they are losing.

  She knows that out there the birds are flying into utility wires, eating mercury-laden fish, and slamming into automobiles. And out there in the island rookeries and along the beaches, the wry and earnest pelicans are tangled in the trees and hobbling along the sand, fighting the fish hooks and monofilament line.

  So Harriet Smith works through the Florida days alone. She’s trying to get $300 together for a well. Trying to buy better-quality food for her birds and to find a home for a brown pelican with only one wing. Trying to open up our heads and pour some sensibility in there. She’s trying to tip the scales ever so slightly. Not much, just a little bit.

  POSTSCRIPT

  Harriet operated her seabird rescue center from 1987 to 1991. Eventually, she just plain wore out, trying to earn a living as a house painter while caring for and supporting the birds at the same time. The range of species at her center had expanded, and she was spending $25 a week on meat for her birds and animals. There came a moment when she stood looking at a red fox, a barred owl, and a Cooper’s hawk. All of them were meat eaters. The choice had come to this: feed them or feed herself. She closed the rescue center.

  I saw Harriet recently. She looks better, not so tired. She’s running the Cedar Key Book Store on C Street and conducting two-hour boat trips as a naturalist. On Friday mornings she gives talks on the natural aspects of Cedar Key. What about the birds, the animals? Several people in town have permits to transport injured creatures to other places where they can be cared for.