October 1, 2007

• Windfalls with a Catch

  The first of these stories has an obvious moral:  “Be careful what you ask for.”  The moral to the second one, if there is a moral, is less obvious to me.

  One cold winter day a decade or so ago, during a very rough time in my life — Greyfox’s NPD and addictions were in full expression and I was trying to maintain a household and pay debts on what I could earn from mail-order readings without spending money on ads — in a conversation with my Spirit Guides, I said something to the effect that we could really use a windfall about then.

  A few days later we were in Wasilla on a shopping trip.  The wind was so strong that I could barely open the car door against it, and when I did, some papers blew out the open door on Greyfox’s side.  He moved to catch them as I started picking my way across the icy parking lot.  Hit by a big gust of wind, I lost my footing and fell on my back, hitting my head on the ice.  It took me a while to realize I had a concussion.  Then I went to the emergency room.

  The concussion was confirmed and I was warned not to sleep that night.  The store had been advised of my accident and had given Greyfox their insurance info.  On the next trip to town, we went to see their adjuster.  I was handed a form to fill out, on which there were many blanks.  I filled them in and watched as the man read my answers.  At one point, he paused, looking startled and a little pale.  That was when he came to the line for my attorney’s name.  Roger Aloysius McShea had represented me in a car accident about ten years previously, and although I hadn’t consulted him in this case, when I came to the line marked, “attorney,” I wrote down his name because he was the only attorney I knew.

  I was more interested in a settlement and some ready cash right then than extended negotiations and/or a lawsuit and whatever that might bring farther on.  Once the man was reassured on that point and understood that Roger wasn’t (yet) representing me in this matter, he made an offer that sounded okay to me, I asked for a little more, and he accepted my suggestion.  We weathered the existing financial crisis and I learned a valuable lesson about language.  Further crises and further lessons have ensued.  I still get sloppy with language, but I no longer go around looking for windfalls.
  

  ---

  Two or three summers ago, a prosperous middle-class man down on his luck moved into the cabin beside Greyfox’s at Felony Flats.  I never spoke to the guy beyond a few casual words as I browsed through the stuff in his yard sale.  Greyfox didn’t really get to know him well, either, but there were things we could surmise from the stuff he was selling, other stuff he threw in the dumpster, and some passing remarks he had made.

  He was recently separated or divorced, evident from the monogrammed silver and engraved crystal he was selling, and some disparaging remarks about marriage.  He had moved from much larger and more luxurious digs to this one room cabin with a loft, which was big by Flats standards but forced him to pile a lot of furniture on the porch and set up an Easy-Up shelter beside the cabin to hold his overflow. 

  I knew the house he had moved from, because I was used to passing that place with the big “INCENSE” sign on its front on my way to and from town.  That the sign came down and the house was vacant around the time this man moved in next to Greyfox trying to sell massive amounts of incense and the materials and equipment for making it, were all the clues I needed to draw that conclusion.

  I saw the same stuff on his yard sale tables week after week through the summer, with the same optimistic price tags.  The guy apparently wanted to get a satisfactory return on his stuff and wasn’t too familiar with yard sale pricing.  Then Greyfox said the guy had made him a super deal on a bunch of videos and DVDs, before stuffing all his furniture and remaining impedimenta into the Easy-Up and moving out.  He had told Mike, the landlord, that he would be back for his stuff in a month.

  He did not come back at all that winter.  The Easy-Up was blown apart in a windstorm, and its contents buried under several feet of snow.  Greyfox and I, and other neighbors, salvaged what was salvageable as the snow and ice melted during breakup.  I was reminded of him and that Easy-Up windfall yesterday as I was trying to close an overfull drawer in my kitchen.

  I hadn’t asked for that windfall, but as I dug around in the slushy remains of it, I felt as if it had been meant for me.  I have a weakness for kitchen gadgets, pots, pans, dishes, and such.  A quarter century ago, I converted an old school bus into a mobile kitchen using salvaged materials — junk, frankly, and served nutritious natural food from it at the Alaska State Fair. 

  Since my teens when I started working in commercial and institutional kitchens, I had dreamed of my own eatery or catering business.  Six years was all the time I managed before my junky infrastructure and other considerations forced me to close the Beanery, but I had gone right on collecting pots, pans and kitchen gear since then, on the theory that it might come in handy someday. 

  I could, today, with a few hours notice and some kitchen help willing  to labor in this ill-designed, inadequate kitchen (since I am still not breathing normally due to pneumonia, and must take it easy) provide a balanced meal for a hundred or so people, providing they’re willing to eat beans, rice and cornbread.  If necessary, I could cook for a large crowd over an open campfire, which might be easier than trying to do it in here.

  The gear that guy left behind in his Easy-Up was not junk.  I was the perfect patsy, the person most likely, of all those who picked through that pile of  icy stuff, to appreciate the small appliances (ice cream maker, rice steamer, etc.), utensils (cake decorators, meat grinder, ladles, etc.) and the pots and pans.  With things I recovered from the windfall Easy-Up, I could, if I wanted, bake and decorate a 7-tier wedding cake.  I could make donuts, or muffins in any size from mini to maxi.

  I used one of the cake pans yesterday, but just using it was not what made me think of the catches attached to these windfalls.  It was the difficulty I had in closing that drawer that made me pause and look around at the ladles in the hanging basket, the bundt pans and racks of mini-tube pans hanging from hooks, and wonder if I’d ever get around to dusting them, much less using them.  That was what set me to thinking about windfalls with catches.
  

  • 6:37 pm
  • 4 Comments