TheBanyanTree: Happy New Year. More stories

[Tobie Shapiro]

September 24, 2000000006


Dear Revellers,

	Happy New Year.  It is officially 5767, a likeable number. 
And time goes on no matter how you count it.  I have more stories.

                           vyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyv

Scaring the Baby Sitter

	Joel Lubar was the worst babysitter.  He was mean to us.  He 
enjoyed scaring the bageezus out of us with his stories about black 
widow spiders in the garage, and atomic bombs that were going to land 
on our heads as we slept (we would not sleep).  A cheeky big boy of 
15 with a prominent cowlick and no good in his heart, he told us that 
if we didn't want the black widow spiders to bite and kill us, or the 
atomic bombs to land on our heads when the Russians came after all 
the Americans, even the little ones, we'd better learn how to pray to 
Jesus.  Joel was Jewish, but we didn't find his advice strange. 
Nothing trumped the strangeness of his eerie and wicked stories.  We 
didn't know how to pray to Jesus, so he showed us by pressing our 
hands together and bowing our heads, instructed us on getting down on 
our knees and begging for our lives.  He got a big hoot out of this. 
Who knows what he was getting even for, and why he was using us.

	We didn't like him, and we told my mother never to have him 
sit for us, but he kept getting hired, and he kept coming with his 
tales of death, doom and destruction.  We had to do something to him 
that would establish that we had some power over him.  It was my 
suggestion that we chose.  Dana loved it.  We waited until he was in 
my parents' bedroom calling somebody on the phone.  Then we took off 
all our clothes and leapt into the room, stood in front of him and 
did the hootchie kootchie dance:  "When the maid in France, does the 
hootchie kootchie dance...."  We waved our arms around and wiggled 
our hips like we were the concubines in a harem.  Joel jerked his 
head away, hid his eyes, turned red and cowered in evident fear.  We 
had embarrassed him into submission.  Our little naked bodies were 
going to bite and kill him, or land on his head and vaporize him with 
the ol' fission and fusion.  We won.

                           vyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyv

Weather at the Amusement Park

	There used to be an amusement park on top of the mall at 
Stonestown, right near San Francisco State College.  Yvonne and I 
were both going to S.F. State in 1966, both making our way through 
the music department, trying to sidestep Lazlo Varga, the very famous 
cellist who was serving as the conductor of the San Francisco State 
Symphony, and as the cello teacher for the department.  He was a 
fabulous cellist, and a reprehensible teacher and conductor.  He 
favoured all the boys and came down hard on the girls.  There were 
talented young women who quit their aspirations to become musicians 
because Varga bullied all their confidence away.

	One day, Yvonne and I needed to run off steam from our 
oppressive day under Varga's baton.  So we went across the street and 
down the block to Stonestown, up above The Emporium at the amusement 
park, or, the Fair, as they called it.  There were some rides, the 
typical things that make little kids dizzy and giddy, and there was a 
merry-go-round, and a Ferris wheel.  We decided to try the Ferris 
Wheel.  We got in line with our tickets and watched as the lowly 
attendant helped the couples in each swinging compartment disembark. 
As there is always someone on the bottom getting off, there is 
someone suspended at the top of the wheel getting a good view of down 
below and far and wide.  We watched as a very unhappy passenger got 
out of his little car.  He had gotten sick and vomitted all over 
himself.  All that good healthy carnival food was sprayed on the seat 
and sides of the bucket.  The attendant hosed it down thoroughly, and 
then hosed away what he'd hosed down.  We were seeing the precursor 
to the concept of a leaf blower.  And the show must go on.  The next 
car was unloaded and the next, and the next, and the next, until the 
car that had had the accident in it was far up in the air, directly 
over the bottom where the attendant was taking tickets and placing a 
fresh pair of inhabitants in the emptied car.  Then the safety bar 
swung down into place and the Ferris Wheel moved another notch.  The 
fresh couple, newly loaded, were happily talking to each other when 
one of them stuck his hand out over the side of the seat.  "Oh!  It's 
raining," he announced.  Yvonne and I looked up above them and saw 
the unfortunate empty car, glistening with its recent hose down, 
dripping water and God knows what else upon those below.  We turned 
away from the Ferris Wheel and sought less excitement elsewhere.

                           vyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyv

Fannie at the Top of the Stairs

	When  Dana and I were little, so little we were still living 
in San Francisco, before our move back east in 1949, we used to visit 
Gramma Fannie and Grampa  Benny who didn't live far from us, in fact, 
just down the road a bit.  Whenever we'd come over, Gramma would meet 
us at the top of the stairs with both hands behind her back.  She was 
tiny: four foot ten inches, though a lot taller than we were, and she 
was heightened by her tiny french heels that she wore on her 
miniscule feet.  Like toy shoes, she clicked along in her spikey 
heels, hiking up her straight skirt when she needed to reach down to 
pluck a speck of schmutz up off the floor.  She could hear dust 
falling from two hundred yards.

	When we met her at the top of the stairs, she would bring out 
the treats for us that she'd been hiding behind her back: ice cream 
bars, or ice cream sandwiches, something cold and creamy on a stick. 
I always loved seeing Gramma Fannie at the top of the front stairs, 
decades after I'd grown out of ice cream surprises.

                           vyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyvyv
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net