December 11, 2009
Friday

Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor’s cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds.
— Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953
Welsh poet and dramatist quoted often this time of year
from his catalog of “Useless Presents” in A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

Compiling lists of things, as I have been doing now that I’ve finally opened and begun writing in Listography, is only part of the reason I am drawn to such a project. Each item on the list has a story, and it is my hope to come back to each list from time to time, choose one item, and write its tale.

Herewith, a list I haven’t found in Listography, with the story to go with it.

Things that are completely useless but which I cannot bring myself to discard:
1. A plastic fried egg that was part of Lynn’s Fisher-Price Toddler Kitchen. I found it after the unit had disappeared during Big Trash Week about two minutes after I’d placed it at the curb (such had been our hope for it). I keep it on the windowsill in the kitchen, and touching it from time to time brings back those growing-up years that I miss so much.

2. A corsage found in the bottom drawer of the Pennsylvania House buffet my father bought for me at an estate auction in 1976. It was fashioned of pink and red and white flowers that have faded and dried. It still has the original ribbon and the pins that were used to secure it. Despite its age — 33 years plus who knows how many more before it came into my possession — it has held its shape.

3, An empty tin that once held McCormick’s Curry Powder. I bought it at John Herr’s Village Market in Millersville, Pennsylvania, on March 7, 1969, to have on hand for the chicken curry I was making for a special dinner to celebrate my birthday and that of my boyfriend.

4. A wooden yardstick given to me in 1971 by a candidate for local office who came to my apartment door.

In 1971 I was living in my second solo apartment. That time in my life, and that magical place, is remembered in “My Back Pages,” a piece I wrote in 2001, when I was 54 looking back at 24. It was probably a weeknight, probably the fall, when there came a knock at the door. The apartment was in a structure that looked like a split-level house, with five units opening onto common hallways. There was no lock on the main door. Anybody could come in and walk about. I’d heard someone knocking on the other two doors on my floor, and voices.

So I opened the door. There stood a man who looked for all the world like Luca Brasi, the devoted bodyguard in The Godfather.That movie had not yet been made, so when I eventually saw it, my reaction to the appearance of Luca Brasi was to say, “Oh my! That’s Dominick Costanza!”

The apartment was situated in Lower Swatara Township, and Dominick Costanza was working to retain his seat on its board of commissioners. As a twenty-four-year-old childless renter, I had little interest in local politics, and probably was unaware just what municipality my apartment stood in. I’m not sure I was even registered to vote in that election, its being an off-year and all.

Mr. Costanza was probably in his forties then (I would have perceived him as an “older gentleman”) and had probably held his commissioner’s post for a number of years. Such are the ways of small communities in these parts. He introduced himself, and asked for my support, which I probably gave, because, well, why not?

In my memory, he intones “Vote for me” in a Luca Brasi voice, bows slightly, and hands me the yardstick on which is printed “Reelect Dominick Costanza Commissioner. . .  He has measured up.”

One might be able to argue that the yardstick is not useless. Although meter sticks are more common now, I still measure in inches, and the length of one hasn’t changed in all these years. But I have little need to measure anything that would call for a yardstick. If I did, I’d use a retractable metal 25-foot tape measure for the job.

The truth is that if I really did need a rigid stick measure, I wouldn’t use Mr. Costanza’s campaign piece. Like the fried egg from the Fisher-Price kitchen set, it has become a symbol of the time in which it first entered my life, too special to risk actually using and perhaps damaging. To touch it is to remember the girl I was then, to breathe its musty woodenness is to breathe the air at 6000 Chambers Hill #5 again. If Dylan Thomas’s dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing still in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds, then so is the twenty-four-year-old spinster teacher gazing still out her picture window, waiting for her life to begin.

From the Archives
December 11, 2004 — Angel Giving Tree: I haven’t been to Toys-R-Us in about ten years, since things for Lynn were better found at Circuit City or a good book store. I thought going in there again would be nostalgic. It wasn’t.

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