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Because I can't bear to eulogize Doug - 2008-08-19
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11:30 p.m. - 2004-05-21
I’m so tired I can hardly keep my mouth closed. My jaw keeps dropping toward my sternum. Be drooling soon. But I wanted to check in and say, “I had a really great day.” It was one of those serendipitous days when everything goes smoothly and even goofs turn out for the good. Example: we missed the exit for IKEA and took the next turn into the Garden State Plaza-the granddaddy of the Paramus malls. I saw we could get back across Rt 4 and into IKEA from the mall parking lot so we decided to eat lunch there before taking on Swedish Paradise. And POOF! Right in front of us was a lovely Italian place. The service was prompt. The food was wonderful. The conversation enjoyable. SIL talked a lot. Something I was grateful for. I’m not really in anecdote mode and obviously don’t have many recent “To think I saw it on Mulberry Street” tales to tell. Very few zebras pulling chariots past the Hobbit House. (If you are totally confused I suggest you re-read your Dr Seuss.) I like hearing about other’s jobs. Work stories are nifty. Maybe that sounds dumb. But when I worked I talked for a living. It’s interesting to me what other people do for work. I never made anything. I never ran a large company. I never used heavy equipment. So people who do are cool to me. I like finding out how people ended up doing what they do, as well. Hardly anybody is what they wanted to be when they grew up. No 9 year old ever said, “When I grow up I want to be an information coordinator.” Or a route salesman for a dry ice manufacturer. Or an accounts receivable clerk. Yet folks do those jobs. How did they get there? Not being in anecdote mode wasn’t entirely true, it was more like a log jam of stories and I couldn’t break the right ones loose at the correct time. The Rt 17 strip from the NY/NJ border on down to the GSP is very familiar ground. Technically I grew up Catholic, but Shopping was our true religion. And we worshipped in Paramus, NJ. Bamberger’s. Gimbals. Loehmann’s. A&S. Sterns. B Altman. Lord & Taylor. Syms (‘Where an educated consumer is our best customer!’). Each of these were temples, but our Mecca, the holiest of holies was Alexander’s. Alexander’s, the big white box with the mural across the front. Alexander’s parking lot was always fissured and pocked with axle busting potholes. It was ringed by a rusty chain link fence 9 feet high. Set in the hollow beneath the 17/4 junction there was a constant swirly breeze scudding bits of trash across the broken tarmac. Going to Alexander’s was like entering an urban war-zone. But this was just. Bargains so good it only seemed fair that we brave a little danger to win them. Except our trips to Alexander’s were cursed. Never normal stuff like a dead car battery or forgetting the checkbook. No, we excelled in the absurd. Some weird shit went down at Alexander’s. Like the time my little sister got her head stuck in a circular clothes rack and the janitor had to come and dismantle the thing to get her out. Mortified? You betcha. But not as mortified as our friend Leah and why she was standing around with no pants on. It was because of the woman with no bone in her nose. Or cartilage, whatever. The point is that woman had nothing holding her nose steady. It just hung there like a dewlap in the middle of her face. And when she bent down the nose dangled. It was the freakiest thing we’d ever seen. Okay, not nice. We followed her around. Gawking like idiots and being rude as hell. Of course we got to laughing. Leah had this terrible control problem. When she laughed really hard she wet her pants. Not like floods. But noticable. The lady with the floppy nose had us dying. Leah wet her pants. We all trooped to the ladies so Leah could clean up. She rinsed her pants at the sink and held them up to the dryer. It takes a long time to dry denim with a bathroom blower. (Why somebody didn’t simply go off and buy her a cheapy pair of chinos I’ll never know.) We’re hanging around trying to be cool and supportive. Leah’s dying a 1,000 deaths standing there holding the crotch of her jeans up to the hand dryer. Then this tiny old lady came in. She nodded pleasantly. She eyed Leah’s bare thighs and jazzy striped toe socks and said, “Look at that! I didn’t know go-go boots were in again!” The mural wasn’t the only technicolor acid trip aspect of Alexander’s Department Store. That’s for sure. Alas Alexander’s is no more. IKEA is there now. True, it’s a worthy shrine to commerce, but safe sane IKEA has none of that other wordly feel like Alexander’s had. Lutfisk is about as dangerous as it gets at IKEA. Whereas at Alexander’s you had to be up for anything. It was just that kind of place. My kind of place. Tonight’s Pick: “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell ‘They paved paradise…and put up a parking lot.’
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