THE RED BELT

An Experience in the Life of a Salesman

By Charlie Raskin

“The rain in Spain, mainly from the plain” couldn’t even touch it.  The fury of that downpour drenched every inch of me.  Right down to the bone.  No wonder my wife Kathy looked worried as I entered my home in Wayland, back in April 1970.  The loving emotion on her face was comforting.  But I never got the hug and kisses I so needed at that moment.  All of her worry and love was washed away five seconds later when she told me that the Boston Police Department was very much in need of my presence.

“My name is Detective Murphy,” the officer said.  “I’m heading a murder investigation here in the city of Boston.  We found a red belt, manufactured by a firm called ‘Paris’ and was informed by Filene’s Department Store that you were the salesman for this company.  We’d appreciate some information concerning this piece of evidence.”

At this point, I excused myself and reached for the telephone to call my wife.  Detective Murphy immediately obstructed my motion and informed me that a call to the suburbs cost money.  I used my A.T.&T. credit card to let Kathy know that all was well.

The credit card led to another call—this time, to my Chicago office.  The belt was small (30-32”), and it was red.   A cotton fabric comprised the body of the belt, and it was attached at each end with very soft, supple leather.  One part of the leather was attached to a buckle with a hook that slipped easily into any one of the three holes in the leather on the other end.  The soft leather showed a deep crease behind the first hole and a very slight crease in the third.  The middle hole showed no wear.  The few numbers stamped on the belt showed that it had been delivered to a military PX in Hawaii.

I asked the detective if they had made any assumptions about whether either the victim or the assailant was gay.  A crescendo of voices in the room responded with the same question:  “How did you know?”

In the 70s, as a salesman, I had come to recognize that a number of gay men who were out of the closet wore clothing in the high color range.  And, in my estimation, a good many of them knew how to coordinate colors.

It turned out that the victim was a well-known gay man in the antique business.  He had been left, nude, on the floor of his apartment.  The only item that didn’t belong in the apartment was the red belt found near him.  It was much too small for the victim.

I was asked for more impressions.

Well, I told them, the well-worn creases in the leather showed that the owner had lost a great deal of weight.  That and the evidence that it had been purchased at a PX led to my thinking that the owner had been in the U.S. Navy.

The detective told me that the department had a huge supply of other clothing stored in a cell in the basement of the building and asked me to look it over to see if I could make suggestions about their original wearers.  I came back the next day and took a look, offering a comment here and there, but nothing that I thought provided the detective bureau with any inspiration.

About a month later, I was called by the department to thank me for the investigative road I had suggested to them.  It led to the conviction of three young servicemen stationed in East Boston.  And my comments about the other clothing actually produced detective action on other cases.

It occurred to me that, in addition to holding up the weight of the world, the belts and suspenders and ties that I sold added a lot of high color to our daily lives.

Since this is the first piece I’ve ever written for any publication, it might be my last.  Inspiration to write came from Liz David, who happens to have an inside track to aging.  Also, thought it might be another road to “Conviviality.”

Hope others will take a stab at writing too!

THE BODY SHOP

by Maxine Weintraub

Not another trip to the body shop.  Well, in my social circle, to call it a body shop is a bit pretentious.  It’s just a local garage, and I seem to be there more and more often.

It all started a few years ago when I began to notice little things I had never seen before–the scratch along the driver’s side door, the small crack in the windshield.  Where did that small dent in the bumper come from, and what was that peculiar lump in the floor carpet?

Last winter, the handle froze after an ice storm, and I couldn’t open the door.  That was frightening.  It seemed to me that it was time to start taking better care,  paying more attention.  I bought one of those coveralls that keeps the sap and the bird poop off and might keep ice from forming inside the door handles.

Now what?  A large stain on the front seat.  Purple.  And a funny rattle somewhere.   Not enough to keep me home but enough to make me very nervous.  Should I be out and about?

A flat tire in the supermarket parking lot.  The garage sent the large tow truck–the one with the flashing lights–so that everyone could see my distress.  Humiliation.  And over nothing!

Okay.  It was time for preventive medicine.  High test instead of regular.  But the cost was high, and, sometimes when I filled the tank, I forgot.

Then, the final straw.  A stain on the driveway.  A leak.  Wasn’t my garage doing its job?  They didn’t see these things when I got my sticker?  Did I need a specialist?

My friends laughed and told me to relax as I rattled down the local streets.  They said that this aging process could not be avoided.  But I raged.  I found a real body shop.  An expensive body shop.  I had a major paint job.  A valve job.  Flushed those pipes and relined whatever could be relined.  Was I losing control?

And at night, as I lay, fearful, in my bed, those old words from childhood rang in my head:  now I lay me down to sleep…

Oh! What if I just didn’t start in the morning?

Maxine has been taking writing classes with both Betsy Campbell and Marjorie Roemer since joining BOLLI three years ago.  She has been an active participant in the Writers Guild and was the editor of the 2018 BOLLI Journal. As Maxi Blue Cabot, she is the proud author of the recently published “Grammie Lives at the Mall” and “The Round Happy Smiling Lady” now available on Amazon.

                                KNEES

By Donna Johna

The day of my second knee replacement, I arrived promptly at nine, swapped my clothing for a johnnie, and climbed up on the gurney.  I was not particularly nervous because I knew what to expect. The antiseptic smells mingled with the nervous murmurings of patients as the nurse expertly inserted my IV and taped it down. The IV was not bothersome, but I hated having to remove my earrings and hand them over to my daughter. A scant fifteen minutes later, an army of nurses, anesthesiologists, and orderlies wheeled me down the hall to execute the spinal block.

I do not love people poking around my spinal column in an effort to paralyze me from the waist down.  “Now, honey child,” the anesthesiologist crooned to the young woman standing behind me, “remember everything I showed you.”  Oh my god, a trainee is about to paralyze me! Then a rush of cold moved down my legs, and I watched my feet go limp.  Well, so far so good…unless it’s permanent.

The trip into the operating room was a blur as the knock-out drugs began to take hold.  Time for a nap, old girl, and a new knee. Some time later, my eyes fluttered open, and I heard hammering of metal on metal, like a blacksmith making horseshoes.  Holy crap, the doctor’s hammering my prosthetic into place, and I’m awake. My eyes instinctively moved to the end of the table to watch, but a surgical drape blocked my view. In my drug addled state, I decided that the only sensible thing to do was to sing.  I hummed to test the waters, and nobody seemed to mind; the steady hammering continued.

 So I belted out “Do You Hear the People Sing” from Les Misérables in perfect time with my surgeon’s hammer. It seemed to go over well…nobody complained, and nobody put me under. I sang the rest of the score, and when I ran out of songs, I moved on to Camelot. My surgeon must not have liked Lerner and Lowe because he abruptly left the room, and I got very sleepy again.

I woke as I was wheeled into recovery and transferred into another bed. I poked at a wadded up blanket next to my side until I realized it was my absolutely numb right hip. “OK, hon, can you wiggle your toes?” my nurse asked. Not likely, since an anesthesiologist trainee paralyzed me for life. She and I looked expectantly at my digits, but there was no movement.

“It’s early, yet,” the nurse said. “You can go back to your singing.” I had kind of hoped that my singing was a drug induced dream. Guess not.

“I really was singing? I asked her.

“Like a canary,” she replied.

TOMATO PLANTS

by Maxine Weintraub

“Hey, Susan.–’tis I.  The usual used-to-be-grammatically-correct greeting.”

“Oh, Alice–hang on for sec while I check on Charlie.  Charlie?  Charlie?!”

Being put on hold at our age is a scary thing.  What looks like a small blip on the radar screen could end up being a rogue wave of epic proportions–a ship sinker, for god’s sake.

“Susan??  Is everything okay?”

“Oh, sorry.   Everything is fine except that I think Charlie has somehow flipped out.  Do you know what he has been doing in this heat?  Lugging the tomato plants around from shade to sun.  And he’s talking to them.  i really think he is getting dotty.”

Did I dare tell my friend what I had been doing before I called her?

I had been walking my tomato plants around the front courtyard, chatting with them as I moved them from full blistering sun to partial shade.  Chatting with tomato plants like a crazy old lady who lives alone with piles of outdated newspapers.  Well, I am a bit of a crazy old lady, and I live with my crazy old husband, and I am really into nurturing those tomato plants.  Believe me, I understand my friend’s husband Charlie.  Charlie–balding, rotund, and full of life in his eighties–lending a hand to those tomato plants, supplying that life force we once provided the children.

Now, I don’t talk to geraniums or day lilies, although I may whisper to them from time to time about their beauty and steadfastness.  A rose bush can be verbally scorched for a thorn-pricked bleeding finger.  But the tomato plants are different.  And I will give them all the help they need.  The real problem is the weight of the pot.  As the summer progresses, the pots get heavier and heavier.  If I let them stay in one place, i cannot go away for even a day–in that heat, they need water several times a day.  And that much water is not good for them either.  It tends to leach ]calcium from the soil in the pot, causing blossom end rot.  Now did you REALLY want to know all of that about those damned tomato plants?  And if not, think about the  black spots on the bottom of the tomatoes.  You caused that.  Bad nurturing.  Failure.  Wrong.

Tomato plants need to be raised, cared for, talked to, and moved out of harm’s way.  Be it too much sun, too much water, too much shade, tell them not to worry.  And drag them around.  You’ve got their back.

But oh, Charlie, don’t you sometimes get to the end of your rope?  Sometimes the plants can no longer be lugged around.  They are too heavy, or they don’t want to produce, or the blossom rot just breaks your heart.  Can’t you just look at the darned plant and say it’s time to sink or swim,  Early Bird or Big Boy.  You are on your own.  Leave it be.

Let it go.  You don’t have to care anymore.  Stop dragging them around.  It will kill you.  You will have a heart attack.  Too heavy a load.

They will either thrive, or they won’t . . .

Maxine has been taking writing classes with both Betsy Campbell and Marjorie Roemer since joining BOLLI three years ago.  She has also been an active participant in the Writers Guild and serves as the editor of the BOLLI Journal.  In her spare time, she talks to tomatoes…