TheBanyanTree: more stories

[Tobie Shapiro]

September 14, 200000000006


Dear ones,

	Hoping I am not boring the living delete keys out of you, I 
offer another couple of stories from my crowded life.  Let me know if 
I should stop, O.K.?

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	My brother, Daniel, and I were driven to the movies by my 
father.  He was a bad driver, took all his emotions out on the wheel. 
It wasn't uncommon for him to slam his foot on the gas when he was 
particularly agitated.  And he didn't pay attention to the road.  My 
mother usually drove so she didn't have to worry about his fits as a 
driver.  But on this occasion, my father drove Daniel and me to the 
movies.  I was fourteen or so, making Daniel seven.  The theater was 
in downtown Oakland, an area that is now all torn up for new 
construction which looks for all the world like destruction now. 
Anway, after the movie, our bad driving father picked us up, and 
Daniel and I both slid into the back seat and sat there, contentedly, 
with our popcorn, passing it back and forth, full of movie and snack.

	The traffic on the way home was thick.  Thicker than thick. 
There must have been some accident on the lower deck of the freeway, 
because once we got up the ramp, all we could do was park there with 
the myriad others.  This upset our father quite a bit.  He ground his 
teeth and revved the engine, honked, inched forward.  It got so bad 
that some drivers were taking the entrance ramps and using them as 
exits, just backing down out of the mess, anything to extract 
themselves from the traffic jam on the lower deck of the freeway. 
This is the same freeway that collapsed during the Loma Prieta 
earthquake in 1989.  My father got past the first entrance ramp and 
followed suit with the other disgruntled drivers who were backing 
down the ramp.  But I think he went down head first.  After he drove 
off the ramp, a police car turned on its lights and sirens and had my 
father pull over.  The policeman was going to write out a fat ticket. 
Our father got red in the face with anger and chagrin, the veins in 
his  neck were standing out.  This was third degree Justin.  He 
announced loudly and with great urgency to the officer, "I'm on an 
emergency mission!"  The cop looked in on the two children liesurely 
munching on popcorn in the back seat, shook his head, wrote out the 
ticket.  "Tell it to the judge," he sneered, as he handed the ticket 
to the burning man in the front seat.  It was a jerky, dangerous ride 
home.

	Hmmmm.  He didn't do well with authority figures.

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	Yvonne and I used to walk home to her apartment from Berkeley 
High School.  Our first stop was the main library, where we cavorted 
among the stacks and studied at the tables.  Often, lengthy 
conversations took place among the infinite echoes of the ladies' 
room.  After we were done with the library, we'd walk up to the 
apartment that she shared with her mother at the corner of Dwight Way 
and Telegraph Avenue.  It was an old victorian separated into three 
apartments: two below and one up the stairs.  When we got there, I'd 
cool my heels outside the apartment sitting on the stairs, waiting 
for Yvonne to assess the situation.  The situation was how her mother 
was doing.  Yvonne's mother was a paranoid schizophrenic, but it came 
in waves.  She could be sitting in the dark smoking endlessly, 
rocking, or reading: that was doing well, or she could be climbing 
out the window ready to jump: that was doing badly.  If she were 
doing fine, I was invited in, and we'd spend our time in Yvonne's 
room, talking, laughing and going over our private miseries.  If she 
were doing not fine, I either went home on my own, or the both of us 
chose to do something outside her apartment.  Usually, when Ellen 
wasn't doing well, Yvonne was required to stay home to take care of 
her.

	For a number of months, the forward apartment on the main 
floor was empty, and Yvonne and I brought our instruments in there to 
play duets.  We'd play anything we could find, one or the other of us 
transposing as we played, if necessary.  There was a Handel 
Passacaglia for violin and cello that was very good to play, and of 
course, there was the Brahms double concerto.  When we were done, 
we'd put down our instruments and leave the apartment.  The front 
door to the building was locked, and so they were safe.

	One day, we came back to find the cello gone, and the owner 
of the building out in the driveway, depositing the cello in its case 
into the rear of a  large truck filled with broken wood and pieces of 
the building.  If we hadn't have arrived when we did, I doubt if the 
owner, a recently arrived immigrant from China, was going to toss the 
cello out.  He was not a stupid man by any means and had probably 
figured out where the cello came from and how to return it to its 
rightful owner.  But he chose to feign ignorance:  "How I suppose 
know?"  We rescued the cello and ceased playing in the vacant 
apartment.

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	There is more.

	Later though

	Yours,

	Tobie
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net