Long Ago, With Soup

St. Petersburg, Florida was an idyll of opulent flowers, palmetto bugs, Donald Duck orange juice, scarlet red ibis, and waves, ocean salt waves which threw shells onto the beach.   It was beautiful.  I gathered tiny coquinas in a colander for clam broth, and squeezed giant, misshapen lemons to make meringue pies.   A phone call from Illinois suggested a job with more money, and so it was followed; a drive up to Chicago was done with the worldly belongings shoved into a Fiat Spyder 128, with two cats and a bag of shells still holding grains of precious sand.  I was moving to the prairie, the flattest part of the nation and it drove me mad.

Not a ripple or hummocky knoll, a hill, nor a roll in the ground that made you stretch to accomplish; the  world was flat and to sail over the edge sent you straight to hell into the maws of sea monsters, the plesiosaurs who swam in the shallow seas that once washed over this toneless tabula.  It wasn't noticeable in the city, for your neck was kept tipped back while viewing the tall buildings, the tall buildings which eclipsed the sun; and there were people.

Now Florida had people also, but these of Chicago ran and scampered and shot across intersections on foot at speeds to be admired, coats billowed forward like sails before the wind.  We had arrived in early spring, still tanned from the tropical sun and thoroughly unused to the Ice Age occurring amidst the chockablock rectangles of the city that was famous for Burning to the Ground.  That minute we found a studio apartment with a window that opened to a brick wall; it had a Murphy bed and MGB-sized cockroaches that would have beaten the sass out of the palmetto bugs.  It was the color of a bologna sandwich; I was glad there weren't any sharks in Lake Michigan.

My job to start was as an assistant manager at a high rise that charged omnivorous rent but Ha! had just as many ubiquitous cockroaches.  It was an answer the phone job that made $63 dollars a week.  If I worked at the cafe in the same building, the pay was $80; it went into the communal bank account anyways but was far more interesting than listing complaints on deliveries and lost newspapers, so I switched to working in the illegal prep kitchen in the back where I learned to further my soup making education.

The cafe needed a vat of soup every day, so I would dig through recipes and then trot up the street to a grocery that had anything I needed: odd, out-of-the-way pastes; canned conch, file powder for gumbo,  frozen rabbit, lime leaves, juniper berries, zatar.  Onions, celery and carrots were chopped and sauteed in gobs of butter by the pound, and I was able to experiment, finding the best and the challenged.  One of the usual customers that would stop in was David Mamet, the playwright; he liked chicken rice with apples and an espresso after.

Making soup everyday, it was heaven, the best part of the job.  The fellow I lived with brought home a Vietnamese boat-person who had been sponsored by a local church, but already set up in another apartment with his nine relatives and working at the cafe as a busboy.  He had been dishonored by his sister-in-law, and so was cordially invited unbeknownst to me, to live with us.  We'll tell her you're only here for a few days, she'll get over it.  He taught us some hand-to-hand combat and how to take care of a cold by dipping a quarter in Vaseline and then scraping it along one's back, raising welts on either side of the spine, and then a fishbone pattern going down.  It was supposed to draw the blood to the lungs, but left large, red stripes that eventually bruised purple.  I never let those two idiots get near me.

Chicago was fun, especially that I could walk to the Lake in a few blocks, or stick my hand up and a cab would be there.  People were out on the sidewalks at all hours, and because of the Chicago police, it was fairly safe in the area we lived; they would stop you if you were walking down North Clark Street in broad daylight and ask for identification.  This wasn't unusual at all, we were reassured.  

The cafe eventually ran out of money due to mismanagement; a move back to Buffalo created a semblance of stability and I was glad to be near my Mom again.  Neither sharks nor cockroaches visited; Brian arrived.

I am glad to be in my own place now, without insects or fish with teeth.  It's peaceful, maybe too quiet, but then it allows me to continue experimentation with my art and writing.  I continue to build, and have bought more wood for stability, just a brace here and there, nothing apparent, but like invisible hands, it will hold everything up.  I can't wait till it's done and this three day weekend will contain an explosion of creative furniture-spackle-paint-saw-and-sand business that I hope will finish at least by Monday.  Come over if you have knowledge of paint rollers or drills, or can pretend to.

Home is for recharging, a base where you know you are loved and safe from the dids and didn'ts of life.  A winter's night is for sleeping under covers and head to pillow; for dreaming questions before  falling into Nod.  Answers will come, and will most always echo yes, my friend.  Sleep well, surrender to your own, wise self.