by Ralph Maltese | Oct 22, 2017 | Uncategorized
“Plastics, Ben, Plastics”
“Plastics”
“Plastics.”
“Plastics, sir?”
“Plastics.”
“Plastics.”
“Yes, Ben. Plastics.”
This is what I remember from the movie The Graduate. Mr. Robinson is giving young newly-college-graduated Ben advice for Ben’s future in two syllables. “Plastics.”
How our modern culture has taken that “wisdom” to heart!
Plastics are everywhere. One of the major decisions shoppers face every day is “Paper or Plastic?” As with every technological advancement, there is a downside to the invention of a new product. My lifetime struggles with Plastics fall into generally two categories: Feats of Strength and Feats of Patience. The first Feat of Strength I witnessed involved Polley’s lovable and colorful grandfather. Granddaddy was pushing eighty and part of his morning routine involved imbibing about fifteen pills for various ailments. I watched him fail at a Feat of Strength as he tried, unsuccessfully to open his bottle of diabetes medicine. His was squeezing the top of the bottle tightly, his face scrunched up into a grimace, and as he exerted all his strength, he exclaimed, “#@$%&#$ damn childproof caps!!!”
With lots of practice, unfortunately, I have mastered the Feat of Strength involving childproof caps, but I still fail at other similar challenges. We drink a great deal of bottled-zero-calories-flavored water in my home, and twisting that white cap off tests my mettle. Believing in the power of the mind to overcome matter, including Plastics, I imagine I am crawling to the top of a sand dune in the Sahara, my eyes squinting against the oppressive sun, my khaki shirt clinging to my sweat-and-sand encrusted body, my mouth drained of all moisture. At the top of the dune is a bottle of flavored water—-Acai Blueberry Pomegranate—-the sides of the bottle dripping with cool condensation. The Feat of Strength commences as I summon what little strength I have from the farthest limbs of my body as I begin the twisting off of the cap. Eons are swept away on the winds of the Sahara, but I keep at it. My strength begins to fail as the cap refuses to budge…..I start to tire, my age and my Parkinson’s working against me. Occasionally, rarely, I hear the encouraging snap of the cap’s seal. Success! But, most of the time, failing at the Feat of Strength, I hand the bottle to Polley who, without looking, using just her thumb and forefinger, twists off the cap in a nanosecond. It’s emasculating….
Another Feat of Strength includes the administering of a pill one takes daily. Each pill is nestled in its own pod, twelve pods to a cardboard square, and the contest begins when I have to push the pill from its pod through the foil in order to release the pill from the security of the pod. The foil is made of some space age steroid-injected titanium that can resist five million pounds of pressure and was originally designed to coat the bank vault at Fort Knox. Even when I am successful at mastering this Feat of Strength, ejecting the pill from its pod, the result is a launching of the pill as if it was propelled by a Saturn rocket, the pill bouncing on the kitchen floor, and ending up underneath a table or dishwasher overhang or, worst case scenario, the refrigerator.
Feats of Patience are also high on the measuring stick of frustration. These tests of mental endurance go back, for me, to the 1980’s.
“The first commercial compact disc was produced on 17 August 1982. It was a recording from 1979 of Claudio Arrau performing Chopin waltzes (Philips 400 025-2). Arrau was invited to the Langenhagen plant to press the start button. The first popular music CD produced at the new factory was The Visitors (1981) by ABBA.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc
The compact disc was a wonderful invention. Its packaging was not. My first cd purchase (either Dynamite by the Four Tops or Mantovani Magic) involved a challenge. I tried to pull the cd case open, without success, until I realized it was encapsulated in an almost invisible plastic that was so tightly wrapped no molecules could escape….and no slack was available for my fingers to grasp. Even the tip of my scissors simply slid across the plastic. I thought I might apply the flame of a blowtorch, but wary of consuming the disc in flames, I opted for a razor. This plastic taxes one’s patience because, once removed, it clings insidiously to skin. This kind of sinister plastic seeks revenge for its disturbance by grasping fingers, wrists, arms, and I am careful to keep it away from my face lest I risk suffocation. Plastic wrapper removed I became excited about listening to either Good Lovin’s Aint Easy to Come By or Red Roses for a Blue Lady. To my surprise, the case would still not open. My patience is further tested by a strip of white plastic tape gripping both doors of the case, thus preventing the case from opening. Out comes the razor again. By the time I released the actual cd from its prison, I could have hummed all the songs on the album. Months later, while purchasing another CD, I also bought a “CD Liberator,” basically a razor glued between two pieces of hard plastic. Like many Feats of Patience, opening a cd case involves a certain amount of physical danger, what with scissors and razors. And that thin, near invisible plastic that coats everything, from dvd cases to x-acto knives (I once almost severed a pinky using a dull x-acto knife to slice through the plastic wrapping a package of x-acto knives), to charcoal lighters to batteries. In the fifties a popular game show was Beat the Clock hosted by Budd Collier.
“Okay. Give me 60 seconds on the clock. Unwrap the package of batteries in under sixty seconds and you win a month’s supply of Tide detergent. Ready? Start the clock.” I would lose every time.
I am challenged by another Feat of Patience when I visit the produce section of our local market. Want to buy five Granny Smith apples? I choose the best five from the pile of green apples. Easy enough. Then the test begins. I have to rip off a plastic bag from the plastic bag provider. Then I must pull apart the two sides of the bag so I can deposit the apples. I honestly believe that someone has invented, patented, and manufactured a plastic magnet. The two sides of the bag will not, WILL NOT, pull apart. I turn the bag upside down, sideways, and hold it up to the florescent light, all to no avail. By the time a freak anomaly of the universe occurs and an opening of the bag appears, my apples have soured. I have certainly soured.
Apples are not the only food that recalls the Plastics Syndrome. We invited family members down for a barbeque. My task was to prepare and cook the whole chickens. First I needed to extract the chicken from the tough plastic wrap. On the plastic were directions on opening the package. “Tear Here” followed by two hundred white arrows. This is, obviously, one of those pranks developed by packaging agents. I can see them on the assembling line, wrapping whole chickens in industrial strength plastic, chuckling as they applied the instructions on the label. “Imagine when the buyer tears along the arrows and the package explodes and bloody chicken water sprays the kitchen!!!! Ha! Ha! Ha!” My kitchen scissors are not up to the challenge. I rummage through our garage until I find a pair of clippers designed to cut through barbed wire in World War I trenches. I start the cutting and, well…..three days later I found dried spots of bloody chicken water on the ceiling above the sink.
Electronic devices often present the most challenging Feats of Strength and Feats of Patience. I purchased a bonding device to glue together broken pieces of plastic objects that were lined up in my home awaiting repair. I broke a pair of, admittedly cheap, scissors while cutting the tape that sealed the cardboard box which was filled with those plastic peanuts that protect objects from shipping mishaps. Shipping mishaps?! What with the box wrapped tightly with industrial strength masking tape and filled with three thousand plastic foam peanuts, I could place this container at ground zero for the detonation of a megaton thermonuclear device and bet on its being unscathed. After throwing away the plastic foam peanuts (months later one found its way through my sandals and between my toes) I found another box inside the bigger box……inside this second box was a third, smaller box….the modern version of those Russian nesting eggs. Finally, the retail box….tightly wrapped in that sinister invisible plastic. Using one of those x-actor knives that almost cost me a finger, I rip through that plastic, and while it gets its revenge by clinging to my thumbs, I begin to search the box for an opening. I cannot find it. I am inches of frustration away from going back to the store and asking its tech support crew if it can help me unleash my device, but the potential for humiliation is too great. After a decade or so, I discover the devilish trick. There IS a tab sealing the box opening, only the tab is not white or black or blue. It is CLEAR!!!!!! In a fit of rage, mimicking the deranged protagonist of Poe’s “Black Cat,” I slice the tab to shreds, open the box only to find the individual components of my bonder individually wrapped in plastic. I wept. Instead of using the bonder, I should have asked the packaging department to repair my household items that needed gluing.
I imagine that emergency rooms around the nation are maxed out with patients suffering from plastic cuts resulting from struggles with opening various cases, wrapping various objects and eating from various containers, all involving plastic.
Feats of Strength and Feats of Patience are all around us. On a visit to my grandchildren I was asked to distribute one of those fruit juice boxes. They come in packs of six. Again with the clingy plastic. Then I have to summon my strength to pierce the juice box with a plastic straw. QueeQueg, master harpooner on the Pequod, would be stymied by this Feat of Strength. After jabbing at the fruit box a couple of hundred times, my granddaughter takes the box and straw and within seconds is sucking up the apple/mango/acai juice. Humiliated once again, I decide, even though it is 11 AM, to take a nap. My granddaughter looks up at me and smiles. I place my hand on her shoulder and simply say,
“Plastics, Sweetpea. Plastics.”
by Ralph Maltese | Oct 8, 2017 | Uncategorized
A Mile High High
On the Road Part 4
We finally, after thousands upon thousands of white dotted lines have rolled past our Outback, after hundreds upon hundreds of miles have slithered beneath our tires, after hundreds of times Sentimental Journey has been played on Sirius Radio, we cross the border of the Sunflower State to the Centennial State. Funny how eastern Colorado looks just like western Kansas. We will have to drive another hundred miles, still suffering from mileage mania, past Limon, Colorado, until our straining eyes get a glimpse of the shadowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
We drop south and spend the night in Canyon City at a motel which has brass-plated labels on the doors of its rooms, the labels identifying the names of celebrities who allegedly slept there. James Caan, James Arness, Goldie Hawn, I am pretty certain that, upon our departure, on our door, there will not be a brass plate with “Ralph Maltese” on it. Canyon City is also home to the Museum of Colorado Prisons. I would like to stop and visit the museum, but there are trout to catch. Next trip….or perhaps on the way home.
It is the next morning when we step outside our motel room that we know we are in Colorado. The sky is the deep entrancing blue like the eyes of a lovely blonde….like Polley. Snow-capped mountains in the distance lure us with the promise of adventure, and the first breath of Colorado air cleanses my lungs and fills my body with a vibrancy that only the unspeckled mountain air can instill. We are happy.
A fly fisherman, I remember pools and the fish I caught in them (or didn’t catch in them which is more the norm) the way other people remember certain meals at fine restaurants. “There is a pool near a campground on the Taylor River where a sixteen inch rainbow trout inhaled an Elk Hair Caddis I tied.” “There is an undercut bank on the Eagle River near Edwards where a Moby Dick-sized brown trout broke off my tippet.” “There is a Colorado cutthroat trout on the Horseshoe Pool on the Gunnison that refused every fly I floated by it.”…..not all memorable meals are good meals.
But despite my penchant for cataloging my memories by fly fishing adventures, almost all our trips are anchored, like geographical waypoints, by the people we meet on our trips.
There is the lady, the wife of a pastor, whom we met while I was fly fishing the Lodgepole Pool on the Taylor River. She and Polley exchanged pleasantries and within minutes she alerted Polley that she was “very conservative.” Polley assured her that that stance was fine since she, Polley, was “very liberal,” and here they were enjoying fishing the same river…..except the pastor’s wife was fishing with worms—a no-no since live bait is not legally permitted on that stretch of the Taylor. Polley politely reminded her of the law, but she dismissed it. “No, fishing with worms is okay here.” I offered to give her some of my flies to use, but she refused. One of those people to whom the law does not apply….well, at least not man’s law, I guess.
On another day, at the same spot, I caught what I seem to catch on every outing—a pine tree. I tie my own flies, so losing a few to tree-fish or rock-fish or log-fish or, even better, fish-fish is no big deal, but then I have to tie on a new fly and between my eyes which suffer from myopia, hyperopia, dystopia and any other opias one could think of and my Parkinson’s, tying on a tiny fly to a thin tippet can be frustrating. Imagine Ray Charles threading a needle while tumbling around in a dryer. So in my efforts to disengage my fly from the evergreen, I found myself, almost in slow motion, sitting down in the Taylor River. The cold wetness of the Taylor River quickly caught my attention. Getting up out of the Taylor River was enormously difficult since I was still holding onto the rod which was connected to my fly, since I was wearing a heavy vest loaded with gadgets and flies for every situation, and since half of the Taylor River was now filling up my waders. I still tried to save the fly along with a second-by-second diminishing dignity. A young man and a young woman who were fishing upstream came to my rescue and helped me stand up. Colorado public school teachers, (ah, public school teachers, my favorite kind of teachers), they were not only newly married but new to fly fishing. I don’t suppose they thought much of the fishing advice given to them by a dripping veteran fly fisherman who was still attached to an evergreen, but they did appreciate the copious number of flies I gave them. I hope they read this blog and, more importantly, know how thankful I am that they helped me up.
The Fly Gobbling Evergreen
There are the three guides who took us on float trips, Eric on the Gunnison, Alex on the Colorado, and Joe on the Eagle. Every guide has his or her own style of guiding which includes tips on fly fishing and what I like to call “corrections” to my fly fishing technique. “Keep your wrist straight when casting!” “Add more power to your back cast!” “Mend your line! BIG mend now!” “Cast to that slack water!!” “Point the rod tip at the fly!” All of these “corrections” are listened to when standing ankle deep in the water next to the guide, or when I am in the boat drifting calmly down a river. Listening to the “corrections” and converting them into useful actions during battle situations is something else.
What are battle situations in fly fishing? I am in a raft, standing in the bow, fly rod in hand, balancing myself between two aluminum bars like the handlebars of a bicycle without the seat….or wheels. See picture below.
Doesn’t this look leisurely?
Now imagine standing in the bow, between the horseshoe bars, casting to prime spots (lies) where hungry trout might be waiting to engulf your fly while you are zipping down the rapids at what seems to be lightning speed. See this picture
“Keep your wrist straight when casting!” “Add more power to your back cast!” “Mend your line! BIG mend now!” “Cast to that slack water!!” “Point the rod tip at the fly!”
Time, for me, has increased exponentially. Standing up, trying to make all the “corrections,” I find myself listening to the Prime Directive reverberating in my brain which dictates I NOT join my quarry at the bottom of the river. “Stay on the raft!!”
“Cast behind that rock!”
Much to the dismay of my guide, my cast is off target, but to me, I am successful due to the fact that I am still in the raft.
“Cast to the Slack Water on the Right!!!”
I am currently facing the port (left) bow. Grasping the right handlebar and turning around while bouncing on this trampoline of a river I turn to my right and I am now well past the slack water to my right.
“Mend your line!!!”
I make a mental promise to mend my soul if I ever get out of this alive.
“Cast to the Slack Water on the Left!!!!”
I am facing right. Imagine standing on a roller coaster hanging onto a handlebar with your left hand and a fly rod raised high in your right hand facing right and holding on for dear life and you are asked to, while the ride is going down a steep slope, to turn around.
By the time I am facing left, whole geological eons have passed, the slack water on the left filled in by sentiment or evaporated.
Amazingly I make an accurate cast and a trout, who obviously received low SAT scores, inhales my fly. Now the adventure begins. The trout wants to stay in its lie, its home, and I would like to stay near his home, play him for a while and then gently release him, but the river stops for no one. I zoom past his home downriver, and now a new set of corrections lash at me.
“Don’t Give Him Slack!!” I release the handlebar which forever has the imprint of my right hand, and I try to reel in some line. The rod is over my head in back of me, I am facing the foamy water in front of me. My whole body is arched like a Russian ballerina only without the grace.
“Keep the Rod Tip High!!!!” The trout wants to return home upriver, all of us, Polley, the guide, the raft, my rod, and I are all going downriver–fast. I am determined to hang onto this fish, and I am also determined to obey the Prime Directive which has been almost violated half a dozen times since I attached myself to this trout. We finally slip into some slack water by the bank.
The guide nets my beautiful rainbow trout, and we take pictures. Lee Wulff, noted fly fisherman, said “A trout is too beautiful to catch only once.” Eric, my guide, slides the trout into the river. He calls it the Trout Relocation Program. We shake hands, catch our breaths, and look around us. I exclaim, “Let’s do it again!”
My other guides on our trip, Alex and Joe, are equally proficient and wise and offer me many corrections. I catch quite a few trout, cruise two other rivers, and slip by some beautiful country.
There are other people, other waypoints that anchor the memories of our trip west. There are Cindy and Rick, Polley’s cousin and cousin-in-law, retired National Park Rangers who are always wonderously hospitable and who offer great insight into the workings of nature, great conversation and great wine. They suggest we visit the Arches National Park in nearby Utah. Next trip…..or perhaps on the way home. Wait!!! We are leaving Cindy and Rick and going home! It is time. All the should-haves, all the places we should have detoured to, pose no challenge, no deliberation. It is time to go home.
On the trip home we again stop in Hays, Kansas, at a fast food hamburger eatery. There a young lady in a wheelchair rolls up to our table, asks us if we are enjoying our burgers, and takes our trays. She is an excellent hostess for the establishment. She returns and asks us how we enjoyed our meal. We reply in the affirmative, enthusiastically, and she tells us the vanilla custard is to die for. We order the vanilla custard. The young lady in the wheelchair is also an expert salesperson.
So the memories of our vacations are anchored by the people we encounter—-even the people we don’t encounter like James Caan, James Arness, and Goldie Hawn.
But there is something else, something perhaps belonging to a primordial instinct, something indistinct and palpable. Ironic that, as a young boy, a boy from the Bronx, New York, I felt more comfortable in the forest than anywhere else. My best sleep ever was on an aromatic spread of spruce leaves on a snow-covered slab of rock while hunting with my Dad. I have spent joyous hours in the woods contemplating the mystery of a tree. I have stared at stones and wondered what they have experienced. I sit in my small backyard and ponder the same mysteries, but it is so much easier to slide into that river of contemplation when surrounded by wide blue skies and purple mountain majesties.
I am not referring to “using” nature, although I suppose that is part of it. I am trying to explain the connection I feel…..a connection to all there is. I belong to the trees, the streams, the stones. I become the trees the streams, the stones.
Standing in the blue water of a mountain stream, listening to its voices, I travel far, much farther than any man-made vehicle can take me, my thoughts and soul searching the bottom of the stream I am fishing, my thoughts and soul caressing the distant snow covered mountains, my thoughts and soul exploring the outer recesses of the universe, and the realization returns to me….no, not the realization but the sensation, the feeling, envelops me that I am significant and insignificant at the same time. What we know of the universe, like our knowledge of a supreme being, is a construct of the brain, a perception of the mind. While the mass of its stars and the distances between them are measurable, the being of the universe remains, like any supreme being, unfathomable. Despite that truth, or perhaps because of that truth, I feel the universe is both within and without me. John Muir, naturalist, said, “Salvation can be found in immersion in the natural world.” As usual upon my return from any outdoor experience, I feel saved.
On the drive home we follow the Arkansas River and round a bend where the water snuggles up against a flower festooned bank, a green meadow dotted by purple and yellow, and white flowers. The meadows hosts a copse of Aspen. I would love to fish there. I would love to stand in that water casting toward the meadow, toward the flowers, toward the Aspen. I would love to be in the middle of all that….to be one with all that. Next trip.
Safe journey…….
