LAST DRIVE WITH MR.NO

Posted on October 26, 2015 by xaviertrevino

vespa

Yesterday I took my last driving class with Mr. No. I’m taking the test in a few hours.
I haven’t written about my progress, and not because it hasn’t been interesting, but because I’ve been busy with my new job.
Last week, during my next to last class, I was waiting for a light and glanced over at Mr. No because out of the corner of my eye his head seemed to be drooping. He was nodding out in his seat, possibly hung-over.
His eyes would open when I stepped on the gas and the car started to move. He kept nodding out at lights, and the one time I caught him doing it while I was moving, I made sure to step on the brake hard to give him a little jolt. He did not complain about my stepping on the brake hard.

tram street
We’ve been practicing three-point turns and parallel parking, and if he was a better communicator it would have been easier, but when you do things like say,
“Pull over here,” without any explanation, it gets a little frustrating and I end up doing the wrong thing, and he gets all bent out of shape.
“No, no! K-turn! K-turn!”
“Sorry, I thought you wanted to go to the bathroom again.”
There is a playground on East Broadway near Grand Street that Mr. No likes to pee in. The first time he made me pull over to the curb, I think it was the first time I parallel parked and he got out of the car. I started to get out too, thinking we were going to check how close to the curb I’d gotten. I can’t tell how close because I’m in the driver’s seat. But that was not the case.
“Stay in car! Wait.”

2013-toyota-corolla_100424604_h
That was the day it got warm and I took the opportunity to take off my leather jacket while he was peeing. I knew he’d gone to the bathroom because I saw him coming out of the playground bathroom in the rear view mirror.
The next time he asked me to pull over in front of the playground I knew, but that time he said, “Pee-pee” as he got out. Made me think of pee-pee dicky, for any Putney Swope fans out there.
Mr. No smokes, and I think that’s one of the reasons he gets a little antsy towards the end of each lesson, grabbing the wheel or yelling, “go, go, go,” when there’s a wall of people crossing Chrystie street in front of me. He’s got to have that cigarette. I even thought of changing his name to Mr. Gogo after that.
Another thing he did last week was try to make a phone call as I was driving.
That would be fine, except he’s got his phone plugged into the car and he has to press a button on the steering wheel to activate the phone. All while I am driving with both hands on the wheel.
It’s bad enough when someone grabs the wheel while you are driving, but it’s positively annoying when someone is trying to press a button on the wheel while you are making a turn. I should have slapped his hand away.
We got through the last lesson without a pee-pee run or him grabbing the wheel, but I almost ran a red light and he stepped on the brake.
“Pay attention! Look at the light!” I had been making a turn and was concentrating on looking for pedestrians and did not look at the light. But he kept his hands off the wheel when I turned back onto Eldridge Street from Grand on the way back to the start point. I guess that’s progress.

road signs
I got out of the car and said, “Thank you,” without adding, “see you next week.”
He grunted as he stood on the sidewalk to light his cigarette.
Goodbye, Mr. No.

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FREE LUNCH

Posted on October 18, 2015 by xaviertrevino

free lunch

If you are a regular reader of this blog, (and I know some of you are) you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been posting as regularly as usual lately.
And you probably know that I lost the job I’d held for some 17 years about 20 months ago.
I’ve written about what it was like to lose the job, what it was like to survive without a real job, about working temporarily in the same industry I’d gotten fired from. Basically, the same stuff a lot of other Americans have to deal with everyday.
I’ve seen documentaries on TV and read articles in the papers about the difficulty of finding work for those over a certain age, or people with little skills. If you are over that certain age and have no skills, I understand.
Luckily I do have some skills, stuff I’ve picked up in 47 or so years of paying my Social Security taxes.

View to the South

View to the South

Last week I did some handyman work for my friend Vivian, a lot of small stull like adding an electrical outlet to the wall, fixing a cooking pot with a loose handle (I had to epoxy the Bakelite handle holder) and change the handles on her bathroom faucet.
Vivian asked if I knew how to sew, she has a big sewing project in mind (new covers for her couch) and couldn’t get it together to plan by herself. I know how to sew and cut patterns, so I said I’d help her.
“Wow, you’re a Jack of all trades,” she said.
“Yeah, Jack-of-all-trades and master of none,” I replied.
“Yeah, you may not be a master, but you know how to figure stuff out, and that’s more important.”
I’ve never thought of it like that. And that brings me to today’s subject, my new job. I was hired I think because of that ability, the ability to look at something, figure out what’s wrong with it, and finding a solution. And I’ve been doing that for the past three weeks. So, if you think there’s no hope of finding a job after you reach a certain age, don’t despair. If you want to work bad enough, you’ll find work.

sillhouette
A few months ago my good friend Tommy the painter told me he could get me into his building as a porter, he’s on the board and swore it was a lock.
But it would have been going back to the beginning, moping floors and taking out the garbage just like I did at Rudin Management in 1997.
The guy who was retiring is 74 years old. He is collecting his Social Security check, his union pension; he has a house in Miami, a house in Ecuador, and lives in the Coney Island housing projects. He continued to work despite having all of this, and when we moved up to Hamilton Heights last year he asked if there were any cheap apartments up here, as they were raising the rent on him in the projects.
I did not want to be that guy at 74.
So I said no thanks, Tommy, but thanks for thinking of me. Good looking out, as they say in the street.
I waited and continued doing the free-lance handyman thing. I wasn’t getting rich, but I was paying the rent and bills, and writing a lot of blog posts. One day I’ll figure out how to make money doing this.
But for now, I was offered a job, and it sounded interesting, and I took it.
The day after the interview, I checked my blog stats and discovered someone had read twenty or so of my blog posts. It was the guy who’d interviewed me.
When he called to actually offer the job, he said he read the blog and noticed that I wrote about work a lot. Then he said, “We can’t have that, our clients value their privacy, and if you want to work for us you’ll have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Are you all right with that?”
Before you start wondering, it’s not a high-priced escort service I’m working for. Just FYI.
I thought about it, and I said yes, I’m OK with that. Since I’m not disclosing any client’s secrets, names or even naming whom I work for, I guess this is OK. I’ll find out soon enough.
I do quality control and test fitting of architectural hardware. It’s fun, it’s interesting, and they buy lunch.
Not only do they buy lunch, but also they don’t make me come in an hour early to make up the lunch hour like Rudin management did.

You'd think this is free lunch, but it's not.

You’d think this is free lunch, but it’s not.

There was a guy who worked for Rudin for FORTY YEARS. He was a porter the whole time, how’s that for no ambition. Rudin gave him a watch when he retired. A gold-plated watch. I’m glad I don’t work for such tight-fisted, constipated people anymore.
The people I work for now are creative, smart, and caring. It’s interesting, not the same old thing every day. It’s exciting at times, and fun. My co-workers are nice; the place is airy and has great views. I feel comfortable there and see there’s room for growth.
I’m glad I waited out the anxiety of not knowing what tomorrow will bring and didn’t jump at the chance to mop floors and take out the garbage for another nine years.
If you are out there and out of work, wondering what will happen next, think carefully and trust in yourself before you jump at the first thing that comes along. You just might end up with free lunch.

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MY PAL SAL

Posted on October 12, 2015 by xaviertrevino

sal bw

Last week I went to the funeral service for my friend Sal Romano. Sal made it to 90 and hung on for a week or so after before throwing in the towel. He was a kind, funny and talented man, and I will miss him, despite knowing him for only a few brief years.
Sal was my friend Joyce’s dad, and I first met him at one of his New Year’s Day open house parties some ten years ago. I also saw a teacher I’d known at Pratt many years ago, Ted . Joyce’s boyfriend as an old classmate from NYU in turn recognized my wife Danusia. It is a small world indeed.
When Sal discovered Facebook we became Facebook friends and had more interaction than just the once a year conversation we had for the first few years.
This past year I was also enlisted by Joyce to help out in various small ways, as Sal and his Wife Connie were both aging and not in the greatest health. We got to know each other a little better in those brief moments. They were always fun and enlightening moments, and I was glad to be of help.
The last time I saw him was sometime this past summer, when I brought my MacBook Pro over so he could show his work to a curator that wanted to exhibit some of his work. We did the work, and I was invited to the mandatory pasta and chicken lunch. Sal, being Italian was a great past aficionado, knowing exactly how al-dente he required his pasta to be.
He was also a wonderful sculptor, working mostly in metal. I’ve included one of the pieces I photographed at his last show just over a year ago.

IMG_1919IMG_1921
That was a fun gathering, and most of these photos I’ve included here are from that event.
Sadly, these others are from the funeral, I believe Joyce’s friend Camilla from Sweden took them. I borrowed them from her Facebook post.
When I last saw Sal at the Wooster Street loft Connie was in the hospital, and it seemed she was the most ill. But Sal soon ended up in the hospital himself, and he never returned home. I did what I could to help out Joyce at the loft, and kept meaning to go visit Sal at Sloan Kettering. The one day I was actually about to board a bus I got an urgent text from Joyce saying not to go, he wasn’t doing good and was rushed to the OR for an emergency procedure. That was little more than a month ago. Then his birthday came, and Joyce told me he was no longer able to speak soon after.

honor guard
He couldn’t use his phone any longer, so there was no way to cheer him up via Facebook. Then on September 18th came the sad news, he’d passed away.
Joyce is a truly amazing woman, she organized the funeral, let everyone know, put together a small gathering for afterwards all while monitoring Connie’s health.
Ironically Connie was the one who made it home, albeit still ill and in need of 24 hour care. I don’t know if I could have handled all of that.
The funeral service was simple, just some slide projected onto a screen behind a table holding one of Sal’s small brass sculptures, an a podium besides where a half dozen or so of his closest friends (and Joyce, or course) told stories or honored Sal in some small way. Ted Kurahara spoke very eloquently about what it was to be an artist and to be Sal’s friend and Sal’s philosophy of art and life.
Joyce told a very funny story about Sal’s forays into social media.
Before the ceremony I’d spotted a black sedan parking in front of the funeral home and watched as two sailors got out. They were wearing dress whites, an officer and an enlisted man. Surprisingly, they entered the funeral home, and the line that said “Guard of Honor” on the program made sense. Sal had served as a corpsman in the Navy, and they were there to do “burial detail.”
Theirs was simple, first the enlisted man, a petty officer second class held a bugle in his hands, and contrary to my expectations (I thought he was actually going to play the thing) turned on a switch in the bell of the bugle and a digital version of “Taps” wafted up from the bell. After that they unfolded the flag, then refolded it into a triangle and presented it to Joyce. I whispered to Danusia, “you’ll get a flag too. Don’t forget to let the Army know.”
When I was in the Army I had to practice for burial detail a few times, but we did the whole thing, 21-gun salute, a real bugler, and taking the flag off the casket to fold it. I still know how to fold a flag into a triangle.
Afterwards we all went to one of Sal’s friend’s loft for a lunch, where we ate Sicilian dishes and I drank coffee as some others sipped wine. It was a nice collection of old guard Soho artists (Sal and Connie moved into their loft in the ‘70s) and their kids, middle-aged people like Joyce and myself.
It was hard not to think of my own fatality, what once seemed like some far away event draws closer and closer each day I open my eyes. But I do know one thing; I will have as many loved ones surrounding me when the time comes as Sal did.

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THE LONGEST DAY

Posted on September 28, 2015 by xaviertrevino

invite

Friday morning I got up really early in anticipation of going to Central Park that afternoon to see Pope Francis. To those who knew me a lifetime ago, it would have been laughable for me to say I was excited about seeing any member of the Catholic clergy, much less the Pope. But those were different times.
I always do my laundry on Friday, because that’s the day my local Laundromat is least busy and I don’t have to fight anyone for the folding table. This Friday was no different, and after having my morning coffee, checking emails and Facebook I got the laundry together.
Before leaving I put a bunch of garbanzo beans I’d soaked overnight into a big pot and set them to boil. I went to the laundry, but the clothes in the machines (darks and lights separate) and came back to check on the beans. Lowered them to a simmer and back to the laundry to put clothes in the dryer. I always put them all in the same dryer and put an hour on it, and come back when they’ve dried.
I used to sit at the Laundromat and use as many dryers as possible and put only seven minutes at a time on each machine and fold as hey dried, and it ended up taking just as long and involved a lot of fighting for dryers with all sorts of crazy housewives. I like the way I do it now better.
Laundry and beans done I got my shopping cart and headed to Fairway on 133rd Street for our weekly supply of mineral water and other necessities. I was lucky with the buses and made it there and back in a little over an hour.
By now it was almost 11, and Danusia headed to work for a few hours after we agreed to meet at the West 4th street station after my driving class so we could make it to Central park before the cut off time of 3:30PM. If you got there after 3:30 you weren’t getting in. My class was from 1:30 to 2:15, and I knew we could be at Central Park well before 3.
Before leaving for my class I took a shower and made the best hummus in the world in Danusia’s magic bullet food processor. Recipe to follow in a future blog.
I went to the driving school office, where for the first time I found out that my teacher, whom I’ve been calling Mr. No all of this time is called Mr. Li.
Friday even Mr. No/Li was chill and didn’t grab the wheel once and let me practice parallel parking for the first time.
Once we were done I hopped on the D train at Grand Street and met Danusia on the platform, she was waiting and I didn’t even have to get off the train. I’m sure this is a New York couple thing to do, “Meet me on the first car…”
When we got off the train at Columbus Circle there were already people in NYC T-Shirts directing the crowd.The big line

“If you are going to see the Pope stay to your right.”
We followed the crowd up Columbus to 63rd Street, where we went past the first checkpoint. At the end of 63rd we waited in the swelling crowd for a while till we were channeled down CPW. The crowd was huge, thousands and thousands of people shuffling forward step by step at the direction of the police. It was like a line from The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot.
It took us hours to shuffle to the entrance to the park on 66th Street, first down CPW to almost 59th Street, and then back up to 67th Street, it was like a maze for cattle going to the slaughter.
Except we weren’t going to get slaughtered, all of us wanted to bask in the glow of a really wonderful human being, Pope Francis. I knew the closest we were going to get at this point was a few hundred feet, but at least we would be able to lay eyes on him, and that was enough for me. And the possibility of getting a picture, of course. It’s all about that pic.
After going through the security where Danusia had to give up her favorite water bottle we ended up on a bridle path, and let me tell you, the dry summer and horse’s feet have made the clay of the path into a very fine irritating dust, especially with several thousand feet shuffling through it.

Joyful crowd
We found a spot near the Port-O-potties (badly needed at this point) just after five. It had taken two and a half hours to walk less than a half a mile through people selling Pope T-shirts, flags, and other memorabilia. I didn’t buy any of that, because for me the Pope is about the human spirit and I don’t need anything tangible to make my spirit good, just the spirit of a person like Pope Francis.
We joined the crowd and I was able to make out the road where the cars would pass. Somewhere around 5:20 some motorcycles came down the road slowly and the crowd went wild. But it was only the advance guard.
Then a police car. A black SUV that drew some cheers, more motorcycles, then nothing for a while. By this point I could see where the vehicles were approaching from and got my Canon Powershot ready and focused.
Finally, there, off to my right at 300 meters I saw the white frame of the Pope mobile. I hate that name, but that’s what it’s called.
A second later most of the crowd saw him too, and wild cheering erupted. It’s official; pope Francis is bigger than the Beatles.

Pope and cellphones
I got my camera up and ready, as did everyone else in the crowd. I didn’t even look, I held the camera up as far as I could and pointed and shot. In Vietnam they would have called that pray and spray, when you held up an M-16 and fired without looking. I was praying, but at a certain point I thought, I’ll never see the Pope if I just concentrate on trying to get a picture. So I put my camera down long enough to get a glimpse of this amazing man who has touched so many lives with his words and generous smile. I got my glimpse and he was gone around a bend. The crowd immediately started to dissipate. We headed for the nearest exit, and soon found ourselves on a strangely deserted 69th Street, where we ran into my friend Sharyn who was walking her dog. We said hi and I promised to email her a picture of the Pope if I got any decent ones.

Version 2 pope
We were both hungry and we found a nice Chinese restaurant on Columbus where the whole staff were standing in front of the empty restaurant staring at the empty street. We sat outside and in minutes the street was filled with thousands of people from the event. A lot were from out of town and they wandered around looking for the subway. There were more t-shirt guys who’d suddenly dropped the price of the shirts to $10 from $20.
We ordered soups and watched the crowd, and my heart felt full, like I’d done something special. And I had done something special, I proved to myself that I can change and hope for change in the world, rather than just say, “fuck it.”
Pope Francis, I will pray for you, because you made me smile.

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DRIVING MR. NO

Posted on September 22, 2015 by xaviertrevino

dr_no_joseph_wiseman1

I was surprised today when I approached the red Toyota Corolla and Mr. No got out of the car when he saw me approach and motioned to the driver’s side.
I went around to that side, sat down; strapped in, adjusted the seat (Mr. No is much shorter than I) checked the mirror, cranked the wheel and put the car in drive.
I edged out onto the center lane of Forsythe Street and drove forward. He made me turn on Delancey, then down Essex Street to Grand, and then over to Cherry Street where we always start out lessons.

screen-shot-cherry-street2
For the next hour and a half we did left turn, right turn ad nauseam. I had better control of the brake/gas, and wheel control. Mr. No was still not happy with how fast I made turns, I endured many exhortations to “go, go, go, go!”
“You too slow! Too far away,” when I stopped more than a car length behind the car in front. Also too far away from the crosswalk lines. But at least he kept his foot off his brake, which was a good sign. He also kept his hands off the wheel, at least for the time being.
I drove around and around, a lot more relaxed and comfortable. Less sighing and teeth sucking from Mr. No. Going through narrow spaces was scary, I kept waiting for the sound of metal scraping metal and kept making minor corrections to the wheel.
“Why you turn wheel? Car straight, you go straight. Don’t look to side, look straight!” How could I impart to him I felt the car drifting and had to correct?
We passed parked delivery trucks and drove in an ever-widening circle, going up and down unfamiliar streets. East Broadway. Division Street, Pike Street. Further south than the previous lessons. I felt more comfortable pressing on the gas and making lights, rather than slowing down and waiting for them to turn red. I kept a good eye out for some of the people who think they are made of steel.

division street
There were bicycles, police cars, delivery vans, trucks, and busses. There was a line painting crew on Samuel Dickstein Plaza, and I had to wait for the gut with the orange flag to wave me through.
The few times he addressed me directly, like when he asked why I turned the wheel, I wanted to make some sort of personal connection, you know, make a joke or some kind of human observation, but Mr. No was having none of it. When you say “good morning, how are you today,” to someone and they just grunt you know to not waste your breath. So I would just do the next thing and file away whatever displeased him so I wouldn’t do it again.
Unfortunately, despite making some pretty good turns going back through the congestion on Delancey and Chrystie Streets we came to the same problem of not moving fast enough when the time came to make the left onto Grand Street.
There three bicyclists leisurely pedaling in front of me, and I stopped to let them go by.
“Why you stop? You go! Go, go!” I wondered if he wanted me to run them over or something. I signaled to turn left onto Forsythe and turned slowly. Maybe he was hungry or something, but after that turn he grabbed the wheel as I drove up to the spot I know he likes to park at.

2013-toyota-corolla_100424604_h
“Stop. Stop here.” I stopped the car, put it in park and got out.
He glared at me as I got out of the car.
“See you next time!” I said as I threw him a jaunty salute.

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LEARN TO DRIVE

Posted on September 19, 2015 by xaviertrevino

Student-Driver-Car

Tuesday I had my first driving lesson at the Chinatown driving school. I went to the office, where the office manager directed me to Forsythe Street where the teacher would be waiting in a red car.
I found the car, and there was a 60-ish Chinese man behind the wheel waiting. He motioned me to get in, and as I got in and fastened my seatbelt he said,
“You drive?”
“Well, I’ve driven before, but let’s make believe I’ve never been behind the wheel before, OK?” He grunted and put the car in gear and drove off. I was going to ask him his name since he hadn’t introduced himself but thought the better of it. If he wanted to be friends he would have asked me, wouldn’t he have?
So, since he has no name and didn’t smile and was a late middle-aged Chinese man, I took to thinking of him as Mr. No, in honor of the infamous Dr. no of James Bond fame. He does actually resemble Joseph Weisman a bit.

dr_no_joseph_wiseman1
We drove across Grand Street and turned south to Cherry Street, I don’t remember the street we turned on. He found and empty spot at the curb and stopped the car. He got out and motioned for me to take the driver’s seat.
He took a sign from the trunk that said STUDENT DRIVER and put it in the rear window. I was kind of hoping for one of those big signs on the roof, but I guess you get what you pay for.
I got in and put on my seat belt.
“Check the mirror,” Mr. No said. I did so.
“Look here,” he added, pointing to the gearshift.
“Put foot on the brake, then shift like this,” he explained as he disengaged the stick and moved it from park to drive.
“P is park, R is reverse, D is drive. OK?”
“Got it,” I said. I put the car in drive and cranked the wheel to pull out.
We went straight for a block and just before we reached the corner he said, “right turn.”
So it started, right turn, left turn. I was a little nervous, and being totally unfamiliar with the car, I would step on the brake just a little too hard at times. This would draw an angry rebuke from Mr. No.
“No, no, no! Don’t step on brake too hard! Don’t make sudden stop!”
“Got it.” I said. But that’s easier said than done. A few more sudden stops and I though the guy was going to have apoplexy. I picked the right name for him, he said NO quite a lot, and even grabbed the steering wheel a few times. No Confuisian wisdom from this guy.
After a while I couldn’t wait for the 45 minutes to be over. I kept looking at the dashboard clock and counting the minutes as we made left turn, right turn around the same five square block area.
He directed me to Delancey Street, and that was a little scary, but I got us back to Forsythe Street in one piece.
When we parked he showed me what to do with my foot.
“Look, look here,” he said pointing at his own foot that was resting on the dual brake on his side.
“Only top move, understand? Only top!” Don’t lift whole foot, only move top! OK?”
OK, lesson learned. I practiced moving my toes from the gas to the brake for a bit. It made my calf muscle even tenser than it already was. I got out of the red Corolla and went back to talk to the erstwhile Mai, who made and hour and a half appointment for Friday. My heart sank. If 45 minutes was difficult, what was and hour and a half with Mr. No gonna be like?

2013-toyota-corolla_100424604_h
So yesterday I got in the car with Mr. No, who still wasn’t interested in telling me his name or knowing mine. We drove over to Bialystoker Street (I think it’s only the corner that’s called that) and switched seats. I buckled in, checked my mirror, and put the car in gear. This time my brake and gas control was a lot better, there was less teeth sucking and sighing coming from Mr. No. It was a while before I drew a rebuke, for making a turn too soon.
“What did I do wrong?
“You turn too soon! You cut the yellow line!”
“Sorry,” I said with my most charming smile. No reaction, just the same old dour face he wears when he’s not sucking his teeth or sighing. I felt like stepping on the gas and then slamming on the brake to scare the shit out of him, and then treating him to my biggest grin and saying,
“Sorry.”
At one point we turned onto a side street and there was a big truck blocking the whole street.
“Go back, go back,” he said. I put my foot on the brake and put the gear on “R,” excited to be going backwards for the first time. The last time I’d done this was in 1982 when I borrowed a girlfriend’s car without permission and I had to put it back in the same place. I thought I could figure it out pretty easy but I was wrong.
The car didn’t move so I gave it a little gas. This galvanized Mr. No into action.
“No gas! No gas!” He shouted as he stepped on his brake. I managed to back out and turn the car onto the other street without further incident.
Eventually our time was up, and it wasn’t as bad as the first time since I was getting better at the braking and turning. We drove back to Chrystie Street and I was a little timid on some of the turns, which drew shouts of “go go go!”
This made me even more nervous and I screwed up the turn on Grand Street, stepping on the gas when I should have stepped on the brake. He slammed on his brake and shouted “No gas! No gas!”
When I got out of the car on Forsythe street he didn’t even look at me, and my right leg was so tense and stiff I really didn’t care.
I thought it was a successful lesson, I felt like Private R. E. Lee Prewitt in from Here to Eternity, in the scene where he’s taken to the stockade for the first time.
He is taken in to meet the Stockade commander by two large guards wielding scrub hoe handles. Every time he made a mistake, like saluting the commander, (prisoners are not allowed to salute) he would get a scrub hoe handle in the kidneys. As time progressed he got less pokes because he was a fast learner.
Since I got fewer no’s and less teeth sucking yesterday, I think that’s progress.

All images downloaded from the internet.

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STUDENT DRIVER

Posted on September 15, 2015 by xaviertrevino

cuckoo

Last week I went to Chinatown and enrolled in a driving school. At the age of 61 I will finally get a driver’s license.
Not that I don’t know how to drive, I learned to do that a long time ago, I even had the nerve to “borrow” a friend’s car once in a drunken stupor. Well, more like the remnants of a drunken stupor, an early Sunday morning with empty streets and four hours of sleep. Still not quite hangover time.
But that was a long time ago, and after I sobered up I had a hard time parking the car since I’d never been shown how. My friend knew someone had driven the car in her absence right away.
A few years later I made a half assed attempt to get my license when I was trying for a job with the Parks Department. To get the job you had to have a license.
A few friends tried to prepare me, Gary with the little red Honda Civic, Paul with his BMW. That was a nice car. My co-worker Carlos who took me to Randall’s Island, to the Sanitation school course and let me maneuver his big boat of a Bonneville around the cones. Carlos I had to pay, $10 a lesson or something.
I took the 5-hour class at some place on Metropolitan Ave. near my apartment in Greenpoint. I signed up to use his car for the test, and on test day on the way there he told me I wasn’t ready. I don’t even think I knew how to park.
He gave me a lesson, and I went for the test the following week. Needless to say, I failed within two minutes of leaving the curb.
That was 25 years ago. Since then I’ve driven exactly three times.
In 2001 I had to drive my friend Andy’s car about 20 feet on Broadway near the Williamsburg bridge so he could find out what was making a weird noise in the back.
In 2010 my wife Danusia let me drive the golf cart we rented on Isla Mujeres in Mexico.
The following year she let me drive our rental (a Kia Santa Fe) for a bit through Death Valley. We were the only ones on the road and I could see for at least 20 miles in front of me.

attention
I like the feeling of driving, don’t like so much the feeling that I might cause an accident. Not that I’m particularly accident prone, but being dyslexic extends to my reflexes as well as my eyes. Even when I try and dance in time to the music I’m always a beat behind and can never quite get In step, so I’m afraid of what may happen on some highway, where I think I should go left but my brain thinks it should go right. Or something like that.
But hey, if some of the people I know can get behind the wheel of a multi-ton steel projectile why can’t I? Why not indeed?
I’m good with tools and machines, and that’s all a car is, a tool and a machine. Just a little bigger and harder to get used to.
So Sunday I went to my 5-hour class in Chinatown, and I was wondering what could be so involved about driving that it would take five hours. I can’t remember what took five hours in 1990, but I remember getting through it.
I showed up on time and met Mr. Yum.
Not his real name, but let’s say it’s appropriate. There was a fan that said Cuckoo on the table with an old fashioned analogue TV. Only in Chinatown.
After we were all seated, about twelve of us, Mr. Yum came in and inserted a VHS cassette into the VHS player.

tv – Version 2
“You watch the movie and after about an hour I come back to talk to you,” he announced.
The program came on and for an hour we watched videos about stopping distance, signaling, lines on the highway, and the dangers of drunk driving.
This came at the very end, where there was a vignette badly acted out by fifth-rate actors. It was like watching a public service soap opera. I for one know what it’s like to drive after having one or two beers and I wouldn’t do it, but I can’t speak for my fellow students, half of them Asian, three other Latinos, and two white women. They were all half my age.
Mr. Yum seemed to take a liking to me, we are after all very close in age, and he seemed to get a kick out of some old guy trying to learn to drive.
It’s easy not to know how to drive in New York, I know others my age that’ve never had a license or even know how to drive at all.
When I was in the army in 1979 we had to learn how to drive an armored personnel carrier, which is like a tank without the turret and big gun. I was all excited about it, at that point in my life I had only driven a manual pickup truck on a farm upstate and couldn’t keep it from stalling long enough to get a decent driving lesson out of it.
When my turn came I got in the big APC, which is controlled by two levers rather than a wheel and a gas pedal.
“Push the one to the right forward and you turn right. The left lever turns left. Both together will take you straight ahead. Don’t go more than 5 miles an hour.”
That was the extent of the instruction before letting me have control of a 20-ton steel box on tracks. After jolting this thing up and down the track for a few minutes, the instructor who was up in the tank commanders hatch made me stop.
“Don’t you know how to drive?” He asked.
“No.” I said, looking up at him with a smile.

road signs
Hopefully this will change after I spend some time in the car with Mr. Yum.
After the video was over Mr. Yum came back in and handed us some sheets, they were the grading sheets the test givers use for the NYS driver’s test. Some girl named Amy had taken the test and failed for “poor maneuver control” and losing some 40 points for a bunch of little stuff.
We went over each point, like leaving a curb, parking, etc.
“Don’t think you have all day to park, or to make the three point turn,” Mr. Yum said.
“You have 40 seconds, and if you don’t do it in 40 seconds, you fail.
Touch the curb and you fail.
Too far from the curb and you fail.
Take your hand off the steering wheel and you fail.”
I though this would go on for another two hours, and I had to go to the bathroom badly. But Mr. Yum wrapped it up and started calling us up to sign our certificates.
“Remember, certificate good for only one year,” he chided. I signed, went to the bathroom, and scheduled my first lesson with Mr. Yum with the girl at the front desk.
Wish me luck.

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BACKSCRATCH FEVER

Posted on September 8, 2015 by xaviertrevino

monkeyclawDo you ever get an itch right in the middle of your back that just can’t be reached? Of course you do. We all do. Sometimes it seems that the itch is always there, annoyingly teasing, irresistibly out of reach.

Scratch that itch! But how, if you can’t reach it?
A back scratcher, of course.
I remember when I was a kid my mom had a wooden one carved in the shape of a monkey’s paw. It was a little scary and I think I preferred scratching against a doorjamb rather than to touch that spooky back scratcher.
I kept imagining that it would suddenly come alive and rip my lungs out.
Here’s one made from an actual chicken claw:

creepy

That’s beyond spooky.
Of course we’ve all seen bears scratching their backs on trees, I did that once and ruined the shirt I was wearing, the tree sap made the material translucent somehow. I stick to doorjambs nowadays. Or use a backscratcher!

Big_bear_scratch

This one’s a little more obscene:

bear-scratching-butt-on-tree

Here’s a telescoping one I gave Danusia a long time ago:

with pen clip

I like the way it has a clip on the end like a pen, unfortunately even fully retracted this thing is around ten inches long and is not fitting in anyone’s pocket. But a cute idea nonetheless.
Danusia likes to use this thing:

back scrubber

Of course this is a BACK SCRUBBER, rather than a backscratcher, but it does feel nice. Covers a wider area of itch as well.
When I was married to my first wife, for our last Christmas together we gave each other the same identical back scrubber, from Bed, Bath, and beyond.
We separated not long after that.
If you ever get any kind of gift from your spouse from Bed Bath and beyond, you’d better run.

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AVOCADO MANIA

Posted on September 6, 2015 by xaviertrevino

BlavatskyThe avocados have been wonderful all summer. That is until the past two weeks. And that’s strange, because late August and early September is supposed to be peak avocado season, and just about every avocado I’ve bought in the past two weeks has been bad. Either sour and black inside, or black on the outside but still hard and brittle on the inside. That usually means they’ve been frozen.
The normal test for ripeness is color, when the avocado turns either red or black it’s ready. You are supposed to press lightly on the surface to see if it gives, that works too but results in a bruise. And I hate bruised avocados.

Why-Avocados-Brown

Which is why I always buy green ones and ripen them at home. Once avocados are placed on display, they are subject to all kinds of ignorant, impatient people who paw, squeeze, and throw back avocados without regard to what their handling of the fruit will result in, mainly bruising.
If you’ve ever cut open an avocado to find hard little black spots near the skin surface while most of the meat is green and creamy, those are spots where the avocado was either dropped on or pressed on. Every time I see a store worker dump a bushel of avocados into a bin haphazardly I want to yell at them.
Ditto tomatoes. Same with customers who pick them up and throw them back.

I once watched a woman at the Union Square Greenmarket looking through tomatoes and she would pick one up, give it a hard squeeze, and then drop it back on to the pile. I moved on to the next vendor, and was surprised the guy at that stand didn’t say anything to the woman who was systematically ruining all of his tomatoes.
When I test for ripeness, of either a tomato or avocado I cradle it in my palm and give it a gentle squeeze, just enough to see if there is any give. This won’t damage the fruit.
I wish I could get a job patrolling the produce section of Whole Foods or Fairway to stop squeezing and dropping offenders. I would do it with great relish à la George Whipple in the old Charmin commercials.
There is another test for ripeness, and it’s pretty foolproof. Take the avocado in the palm of your hand and flick at the little nub on the end that was attached to the vine. If it comes off easily, the avocado is ripe. If it’s solid, or takes some effort the avocado’s not ready.
The color test doesn’t always work. I’ve seen very green avocados that were already soft and black ones that are still hard inside, but picking off the nub works 99% of the time.

With nub.

With nub.

Without nub.

Without nub.

In the middle of the summer I was getting avocados that were almost like soft butter inside. While that’s great if you want to spread it on a sandwich or a tortilla, it’s not so conducive to salads. You want it a little firmer for salads.
Soft is pretty good for guacamole, though. When I make guacamole, (and I make the best guacamole) I buy my avocados green a week ahead of time to make sure they are all ripe at the same time. As soon as the nub falls off, I put the avocado in the fridge, and by the time preparation day comes I get a perfectly green guacamole. I always add a little lime juice to it, the lime juice helps to keep it from browning too fast. A dash of mayo gives it a little zest and helps with the color too. Yum.
When I was a kid my mom always used the bigger bright green avocados. They don’t have as much flavor as the Haas avocados, but they would be OK for guacamole. I use the Haas exclusively now. I’m spoiled.

Mom's avocadoes.

Mom’s avocados.

I guess you can’t stop the stores or the transport people from freezing avocados; after all, the avocados are grown either in California or Florida, if not further south, and are trucked here. I guess your best bet is to find Florida avocados, since that’s closest to New York and are probably not frozen fro transport.
I remember watching at Trader Joe’s one day as they dumped a whole box of avocados into the bins, and the avocados were all sweating. A sure sign they’d been frozen. But I guess that would cut down on the bruising, wouldn’t it?

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SOLE PROPRIETOR

Posted on September 1, 2015 by xaviertrevino

60 centre street

My friend Tommy the painter told me I should do it a while ago, maybe last year. But me being me, it took some time to get there.
It makes sense if you are going to work for yourself you have to legally establish yourself, no matter how painful it gets.
I’ve been doing small jobs for about a year now, certainly not getting rich, just getting by. But I’ve come to the point where if I want more work, I’m going to need to advertise, make myself available to strangers. And the only way to do that is to become a business, and do all things attendant, such as getting a tax ID number and insurance.
I did some work this summer for some friends who’d hired an agency to “elder-proof” their home. The woman from the agency told me they had more small jobs available but could not use me unless I had some sort of liability insurance. She sent me a link to a provider and he in turn sent me a questionnaire, which asked for a company name and tax ID number. I decided it was time to do these things.
I asked other friends that work for themselves how they did it, and they told me about downloading forms on the internet and all kinds of stuff, but in the end it I did what Tommy told me in the first place. I went downtown to the courthouse and filed papers.
On line they describe the piece of paper as a DBA, “doing business as.” The actual form is called a Business Certificate, which states the name of the company you will be doing business as. Kinda confusing, isn’t it?
I wondered why I couldn’t just use my name, but like Tommy said,
“You can’t use your name. You gotta make something up.”
I came up with Fix-It-X. Don’t laugh; it’s better than A-one Handyman services. I chose the name because it’s got my initial and what I do in it. I fix things, mostly. Toilets, lights, walls with cracks in them. I do a fair amount of installation work. Painting. Though I don’t want to steal painting jobs from my friend Tommy, but hey, it’s just business.
It was a scary thing to do, go downtown and actually put it down on paper, become a small business owner in this city with all its attendant rules and regulations. You wouldn’t believe the jumble of licenses and permits required for a general contractor. That’s why there are so many crews working off the books and uninsured in this town. They better hope they don’t fall off the ladder.
But my thing is much, much smaller. Just small stuff around the home. Thank god for people who don’t know how to use a screwdriver or just don’t like to get dirty.
So last Friday I got dressed and left early to go down to 60 Centre Street, to become a sole proprietor. I envisioned long lines and a big wait, and hoped there would be a bathroom nearby, on account of my BPH. Another reason to work for myself, I can go to the bathroom whenever I want without hearing some asshole say, “you have to go again?”
I got to Centre Street and walked down from Canal, I should have gone straight to City Hall Station but I wanted to pick up a paper on the way. Believe it or not, the only newspapers you can get in Chinatown are in Chinese.
“No New York Times?”
“No.” I walked past 60 Centre Street, seeing a kiosk in the park. They must have the New York Times, with all of these lawyers and business people walking around. But no, it was a food kiosk. My bladder made the decision for me and I went to the courthouse, an imposing building with lots of steps and columns.

court steps

I went through the whole security thing; it’s a miracle they didn’t make me take off my shoes. I found room 109 in the basement, a big dusty room with stacks and stacks of what looked like old ledger books on marble tables lining the walls on the way to the main counter. There was no line, and just three people at computer equipped desks. As I approached a young black man got up from his desk and came to the counter. He was talking to someone on his cellphone, using the hands-free headset.
“Hang on a minute,” he said into his mic.
“Yes, can I help you?” He asked me.
“Is this where I file a DBA?” He handed me two slips of paper.
“Write down your company’s name on this one, and take this one up to the coffee shop and get a sole proprietor form c-201.”
“Is there a bathroom here?” I asked as I filled out Fix-It-X on one of the pieces of paper.
“Second floor.” I took the elevator to the second floor, where I found this sign:

men's room

I wondered why he just didn’t send me to the third floor, and took the elevator up one more. By this time my need was getting urgent. I ran off the elevator to the same passageway as the second floor, and found the same sign. Was this a joke? Then I saw the staircase just beyond the sign, and realized I could have gone up the short flight of steps on the second floor. Why are old buildings so weird?

marble hall
I found the coffee shop on the first floor, and there was a man around my age behind the counter. I saw that they had the New York Times as well. But when he saw me approaching, he turned to slowly heat himself a cup of milk in the microwave, studiously ignoring me. I grabbed a paper and put it on the counter as I waited. He finally turned to me and acted surprised that I was standing there. He stared at me blankly until I asked for the sole proprietor form c-201.
“Form c-201?” He reached to a stack of forms next to the coffeemaker and plucked one out, and laid it on the counter next to my Times.
“$2.50, please.”
“And the paper too,” I said.
“$3.00.”
“Isn’t the paper $2.50 as well?”
“$5.00. Sorry.” Ah, to work in New York. I took my paper and form c-201 and went back to room 109.
“The name is good,” said the man I’d spoken to before. I already knew that, having run it through the computer myself the day before. I filled out the form, swore it was all true and paid $131 for the original and two copies. I have to open a bank account and they keep a copy. I walked out into the sunshine of Centre Street, newspaper and business certificate in hand. The start of something new.

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