The world is filled with
things we don’t yet know we’re interested in, which for those of us with
explorer mentalities is the fuel for the fire. The dictionary in my computer
gives me one word at a time, and out of convenience I use it almost every day.
But a printed version, of which I have a few, gives me a hundred or so words at
a pop, and this why I love them.
Is a potato a tuber? I’m
editing a document claiming it is, but for some reason I have rhizome stuck in
my brain. I need to know which it is, but I’m out for a coffee and my phone is
not a “smart” one. Not particularly dumb, but not smart. Writing in “rhizome?”
will have to suffice. When I get home my curiosity has me, the laptop is shut
down, so I go to the shelf and pull out my copy of The American Heritage Dictionary, blow the dust off the top and
open it. The binding cracks, it’s been a while.
Looking up potato seems
like a good place to start and the thumb cut for “OP” gets me pretty close. I
open to the pages for “Pathan” through “pay.” As I write this, Word’s
spellcheck doesn’t know what a Pathan is and gives it a red underline. Huh.
Must get a note to Bill about this oversight. Fully aware I won’t find a potato
here, I scan the pages anyway, thinking, “Wow, look at all these cool words!”
Patisserie, patriclinous, patroon, patulous, pavid and pawnshop, to name a few.
A patroon, by the way is “A landholder in New York and New Jersey who was
granted certain proprietary and manorial powers under Dutch colonial rule.”
Just sayin’… after all, you never know when this one might come up.
In the far right margin
are black and white photos of a pawl and a pawnshop. I get out a magnifying
glass for a closer look. The pawnshop is Uncle
Ned’s Money To Loan. Oh, this is too good, I want to know about this place so
turn on the laptop. Uncle Ned’s used to be on Washington St. in Boston. An
interesting coincidence, Houghton Mifflin Company published the dictionary, and
they’re a Boston institution if there ever was one…
I can see Carole, the picture
editor, right up against the deadline and Jeff walks by her door. Jeff, a sweet
Midwest kid, is a summer intern from Cranbrook. Pawnshop is clearly on the photo
list for the dictionary, all the others are checked off, but not that one. How
did this happen? “Damn it,” Carole hisses under her breath. No time now to get
one from a stock agency. “Jeffery!” she shouts. Jeff does an abrupt about face.
“In my office, please.” Carole is already digging through her bottom desk drawer
for the camera, she beckons Jeff into the teetering stacks of contact sheets,
prints and manila envelopes otherwise known as her office with a vague wave of
her hand. She spies the camera underneath her lunch and yanks it out of the
drawer by the neck strap, forgetting there’s a ripe peach in the paper sack
along with her standby peanut butter and pickle sandwich. The sack falls to the
bottom with a moist “plop.” Jeff’s standing there gawking at her, wondering if
he’s in trouble.
“Jeffery, we need a
picture of a pawnshop. As of yesterday.” This is before digital and she’s
sweating it. She thrusts the camera in Jeff’s general direction. “And get the film
to the lab before they raise the drawbridge!”
It’s 11 a.m. Everyone
knows the in-house lab closes at 3, and those guys understand the meaning of
punctual. (“The door locks at 3 p.m., got that?” the lab manager made quite
clear to Jeffery when Carole was introducing him around on his first day.)
“Yes, Ma’am,” says Jeff,
smiling, albeit meekly. “Any particular pawnshop?”
“No,” says Carole. It
feels like yesterday she was an intern at HMCo., and now this one’s calling her
“Ma’am.” She peers at him over her spectacles and purses her lips into a smirk.
The kid’s looking a little bewildered. “Now go!” Jeff skidaddles, and she
calls, “thank you…” as he vanishes down the hallway.
On his way by the
copier, Jeff stashes the paperwork he was taking over to Pronunciations in his
mail tray. He runs out the door with the old Pentax swinging around his neck.
“This could be my lucky break,” he thinks. He stops short on the sidewalk, amid
the crush of people, most in smart business attire, and the traffic. Downtown Boston traffic. “But where am I going to
find a pawnshop?” he asks no one in particular. A man in a three-piece suit
walking by turns and says, “Southie,” without skipping a beat. Jeff’s a smart
kid and has started learning his way around, so he heads for Tufts to catch the
Orange Line for the South End.
The wheels of the hard
worn Pullman howl on the track, the car pitches from side to side. Lurching
along, Jeff pops the cap off the camera lens. It is filthy. He pulls out one of
his shirt-tails. This is not how they taught him in school, but this is no time
to stand on ceremony. He blows on the lens, then breathes on it and then gently
wipes it with his shirt tail. It’s an improvement. He checks the light meter
and it works, then advances the film thinking he’ll take a test shot. The thumb
lever cranks around too easily. He studies the camera for a minute before it
dawns on him, “Oh crap! Is there film in this thing?” he says. The grizzled old-timer
hunched across from him with a tattered Macy’s shopping bag between his legs
looks up. Jeff cranks the rewind knob and there’s no tension. “Crap!” he
repeats and stamps his foot. Now he’s on the train to Roxbury, on his first big
assignment with a camera but no film. Somewhere, somewhere there has to be a place to buy film in Roxbury.
But Jeff doesn’t make it
to Roxbury. From the elevated track he can see the South End is not what he’s
used to. Forlorn people, seemingly without purpose walk the streets. Junk cars,
places of unsavory business. As the train presses on, rather than seeing any
indication things are getting better, by the minute they’re looking worse. The train
stops at Northampton. This neighborhood is downright rough. Other passengers
get on the train and sit down, some blankly stare at him. Jeff looks at
himself. Nice button down shirt, khakis, and his favorite Top-Siders, and no,
he’d tucked his shirt back in. He looks around at the people and smiles, but
they do not smile back. Although one young woman is grinning, a thread of
friendliness, he hopes. When Jeff makes eye contact with her he blushes. She
snickers, he waves and slowly she turns to look out the window, shaking her
head. “I’d like to get out of here,” Jeff thinks.
The train remains
stopped for what feels like forever. He studies the storefronts, Skippy White’s
Records is the one cheery place all painted up. But CD’s are in and LP’s are
out; Skippy, poor guy, must be headed down the drain. Just as the train starts to
move he sees next to Skippy’s, Uncle Ned’s Money… He strains his neck but the
view is lost. Could that have been a pawnshop? Rolling along, Jeff feels hot
and antsy, it might just be worth taking the chance. He gets off the train at Dudley
Station, he’ll walk back, it’s no more than four blocks. With some luck he’ll
find a place that sells film and Uncle Ned’s will save the day.
With the usual bounce in
his step he runs down the stairs from the elevated platform, he’s on a mission.
But now he’s on the street, and in the scene. Watching it flash by from
the train was one thing; this is another. It’s dirty, there are bad smells.
Trash blows around and pigeons skitter. Listless panhandlers sitting in
doorways call to him for money. “Bud, spare some change… my car’s broken down
and…” He shakes his head and keeps moving. A man is curled up on the sidewalk,
in full sun with a newspaper draped over his head and he does not move. A
stream of dark yellow urine trickles across the pavement into the gutter. Jeff’s
heart is pounding, gripped in fear and pain he’s on the verge of tears. An
inbound train crashes by overhead, he wishes he was on it.
He hurries on his way,
scanning the storefronts for a place to buy film, and spots a sign down a side
street with big red letters: CVS. Making a beeline for it, he ducks in, it’s
air conditioned and a lot of people are milling about, they’ve brought their sweet
and sour smells in with them. People are lined up waiting to have prescriptions
filled, the pharmacists work behind steel bars and thick safety-wired glass
windows. There’s a bullet hole in one of them. Red-faced men and women with
their bottles wait patiently at the liquor checkout. A sign says, “WE CARD.”
Jeff doesn’t see a photo section, so nervously walks up a clerk who’s stocking
magazines.
The clerk gives him an
gauging look. “Hey man,” he says in a voice as graveled and deep as his face is
lined. A cigarette dangles from his lips.
“Excuse me, do you sell
film?” asks Jeff.
“Used to.” The man
mashes a dozen copies of Tiger Beat
into the rack. Jeff starts to turn. “Wait a minute,” says the man, “we might
have some leftovers out back.” Rubbing his hands together in a cunning way, he
says, “follow me.” Jeff tags along with him to the back of the store. The man
presses a sequence of numbers into a lock on the storeroom door and pulls it
open. “Wait here.”
Jeff looks around. Racks
of asthma inhalers, pain relievers, sleeping pills… humidifiers, bottles of
bright green mouth wash, condoms, diapers, light bulbs, hair color, laundry
detergent, motor oil, rows of nail polish, every color of the rainbow.
Another clerk comes out
of the storeroom, a sweaty plump woman with long wavy black hair. She looks
Jeff up and down, sucks her teeth, says nothing, and saunters away. The man
comes back with a dusty cardboard box. “This’s what we got,” he says, holding
it out for Jeff to dig through. Jeff sees a spot of green among the little
yellow boxes. He grabs it, a roll of Tri-X, exactly what he’s looking for. He
studies it, the film is out of date but he knows it will work.
“I’ll take this,” he
says, smiling broadly, holding up the box. But a wave of apprehension fires through
him. “What do I owe you?” he asks, knowing the man might gouge him.
The man looks at him,
narrows his eyes but then smiles. “Take it,” he says. An ash falls off his
cigarette into the box. “Put it in your pocket and get outta here.”
Jeff’s hand shakes as he
stuffs the film in his pocket. “Thank you, Sir!” But as soon as he’s spoken he
knows this alone has made too big a deal of it.
The man doesn’t look at
him. He nods his heavy head once and starts unlocking the door again. “Kid.
Just get outta here.” And he disappears.
Back on the street Jeff
finds a doorway to sit in for a moment and loads the film in the Pentax. He
clicks the back of the camera shut, advances a few frames and with this feels much,
much better. He jumps up and is again on his way. In the midst of all this hardship
and suffering he found a friendly and generous person. He has a block to go,
and there is Uncle Ned’s… Money To Loan. It is
a pawnshop.
A big LTD coupe is
parked in the shade of the elevated. It’s gold metallic, it has lots of chrome
and it is polished and dazzling. Three gold balls hang from the inside mirror,
it must be Uncle Ned’s car. An outbound train grinds to a stop overhead. Jeff picks
his best spot to shoot the picture. A man loiters by the door, studying the
window display. Ned is inside, feather dusting the jewelry chest with mother of
pearl inlay, the off-brand boom box and the prize Fender bass on display in the
window. He looks out and sees a kid on the street, too clean-cut to be from
here, with a camera. Slowly the kid raises it to his eye, he’s taking a picture
of the store. Too young to be IRS.
Without thinking about
it, Ned straightens his tie. He has class.
.
. .
Uncle Ned’s is no
longer, Skippy White’s is still in business at a new location and a potato is a
tuber. I’m still thinking about rhizomes and remember visiting the Wentworth-Coolidge
mansion on the New Hampshire seacoast. In a heavy morning fog stood the first lilac
to come to North America, gnarled but alive and well, dripping, resplendent in
the fragrance of deep amethyst bloom. At least I think lilacs have rhizomes.
And lest we forget, the
Pathan: “An Afghan, especially one of Indo-Iranian stock and Moslem religion.”
