The one funny moment of Valerie M. Blake



The Fotheringham House in Spokane, Washington.
Built in 1891, it was a bed-and-breakfast in the early
2000s, until my ex-wife ran it into the ground and it
had to be sold as a private home.

This essay concerns Valerie M. Blake, and the only funny thing I ever heard Valerie M. Blake, who was my second wife, say.

By the way, I'm not talking about Valerie Blake the porn star here; I'm talking about Valerie Blake the real-estate seller. They are two different people.

Never destined for stand-up comedy, Valerie did nevertheless make one classic quip.

I noticed last week that my ex-wife, Valerie Martha Blake, (born Valerie Martha Blatt), recently made a misleading claim on her website, http://www.dchomequest.com/.

This got me thinking about certain other things that she had said, including the only humorous thing I ever heard come out of her mouth, (which was usually so stuffed with pizza that she couldn't have said much of anything in any case.)

On her website, Valerie claims (among other things) that in addition to having sold real estate in Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland, she also sold real estate in San Diego, California and Spokane, Washington.

She did not. She was licensed to sell real estate in California and in the State of Washington, yes, but she never sold a single property in either place.

She also claims on her website that she ran a bed-and-breakfast while selling real estate in Spokane.

Well, that's partly true. But she makes it sound like she ran the B&B all by herself.

My ex-wife Valerie. Yes, there

was a time when she was very

pretty.

Uh-uh, as the French say.  I was Valerie's husband from 2005 to 2010, and I can tell you that we ran that bed-and-breakfast together; Valerie did NOT run it by herself.

She did the booking, the billing and the laundry. I did the grocery shopping, the cooking and also tended the rose garden.

Pictured above is The Fotheringham House in Spokane, which was a bed-and-breakfast until Valerie ran it into the ground, spending more money on it than we could ever recoup. After we had been running it for seven months, my bipolar ex-wife got bored with both it and me, and decided she wanted to return to Washington, D.C. and get back into the real estate business on her familiar turf. Her idea was to jettison both the bed-and-breakfast and me at one fell swoop, and get back to her familiar life.

But she didn't know who she was dealing with. You can sell a house, but you don't just "dismiss" a husband. Valerie thought she could do that, because her second husband was a weak-willed little fellow who vanished when he was ordered to.

But To Valerie's dismay, I turned out to be made of slightly sterner stuff than her second husband Peter was. I wasn't going to be "fired" by my wife, as Pete quietly allowed himself be. I knew my legal rights. It took Valerie three years to get rid of me. And it cost her a lot of money. She had to pay me alimony, which she had not had to pay Pete. He was terribly in love with her, and he was afraid of her. I was neither. I loved and admired Valerie, but unlike Pete (whom I knew), I was not so madly in love with her as to be afraid of her. Valerie didn't like that. Oh well...

Once, when we were running this B&B in Spokane, Valerie said the only funny thing I ever heard her say. We had a wedding party as guests one weekend. We got the bridesmaids. They occupied all four of the rooms we had for guests on the second floor. Girls, you know, twentysomethings, all of them.

At a bed-and-breakfast you expect a good breakfast. That's why it's called a "bed-and-breakfast." If I were staying at a B&B and was offered Special K and a Pop-Tart for breakfast, I'd feel cheated. Guests at a bed-and-breakfast expect some well-prepared treat in the morning. I had a repertoire of them, from French toast to quiche to huckleberry pancakes. I was the cook.

By the way, we also hosted "Victorian teas" in this place, and again, I did all of the cooking: the salads, the soups, the tea sandwiches, the sweets. Valerie would like her website visitors to believe that she did it all alone. She did not do any of it alone. I was her husband, and I was the cook.

Anyway, on the morning after our bridesmaids had checked in, I prepared one of my usual breakfasts. Coffee, tea and fruit juice were laid out, and then I sent something in from the kitchen. I don't remember what it was, but it was probably something hearty. B&B guests expect that.

But our guests' plates began coming back to the kitchen still full, or nearly full. Our guests had hardly touched my food!

No cook likes to see that. No cook likes to see his or her carefully-prepared dish sent back to the kitchen untouched.

I protested. Not to our guests of course, but to my then-wife, my "partner" in this B&B, who is now trying to tell the world that she ran the B&B by herself.

In the kitchen, in whispered tones, my ex-wife hissed at me, "They're GIRLS, Kelley! Half of them are anorexic, half of them are bulimic, and the rest are on diets!"

It was the only funny thing I ever heard her say.

And by the way my ex-wife Valerie should have been so "anorexic." She weighed 230 pounds when she divorced me, and is probably stuffing herself with ice cream even now.

Ain't No Shelter Under This Sky

The absurdity of it: a 56 year-old man backpacking around Tunisia like some college kid.

But I was there. I saw it. I saw that old guy dragging himself around North Africa.

You see, I was that old guy.


How dead-to-the-world have I been since the 2008 general election in the United States? (That was when I "pulled the plug" and swore I'd never watch the news again. Or read a paper. Or vote. And I haven't.)

This is how: when I announced my plans to join my co-worker Jason Fazzio on a trip to Tunis this month, some people warned me about visiting Tunisia. "They had political upheaval there recently," I was told. "Are you sure you want to go there?"

It was the first I'd heard of it. The political upheaval, I mean.

Oh, yeah, I'd heard something about an uprising in Egypt, one of Tunisia's geographic neighbors. Hosni Mubarak was tossed out (arrested, in fact) as president of Egypt after 30 years. Somehow I knew about that, don't ask me how. Maybe something on the Internet reached my eyeballs.

But I knew nothing about Tunisia outside of the fact that the early scenes of the movie Patton took place at Kasserine Pass, in the southwestern part of that country.  Surely I knew nothing about any "revolution" there, certainly not that it was actually "revolution" in Tunisia, a year ago this month in fact, which fomented the "copycat" events in Egypt that we all read about. When the Egyptians caught up with Mubarak, they were imitating the nearby Tunisians, who had just tossed out President Zine El Abidine Ben, who in turn had been dictator in Tunisia for 23 years. 


The Grand Mosque in Tunis. We got close to it,

but never actually got inside.

 

I had no idea. I'd never heard of Zine El Abidine Ben, or the "revolution" that ousted him. Nor would I have cared if I had. Stay away from Tunisia? For my safety? Why? I'm at an age where I don't especially care what happens to me anymore. I have no family. What's to be gained from being "cautious" at my age?

Besides, the Tunisian "revolution" was a year ago. The old man is gone. Everyone's still poor, but satisfied that they "won,"  so the mood on the streets is generally good. What's the big deal? Let's go.

And by the way, I must say that I do not understand these dictator-guys at all. Someone I met on this trip told me that Egypt's Mubarak, for example, had stolen 80 billion dollars. That's more than Egypt's GNP.

He didn't steal it all overnight, of course; he had plenty of leisure time for embezzlement. Mubarak had been president of Egypt since 1981, when Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the Libyans.

But my point is, if I had stolen that much swag, I wouldn't wait around to get caught; I'd stick it in a Swiss bank and abscond for some neutral country where they couldn't touch me. But world leaders just don't seem to have my level of common sense, for some reason. Hubris makes you greedy for more than just money, I guess, but I'll never understand it. I don't even understand why Jerry Brown wanted to be governor of California again after 30-some years. If I were his age and had his money, I'd retire and go enjoy it.


This is where Tunisia is: in North Africa, between Algeria

and Libya.


Anyway, off Jason and I went, backpacks our only luggage, as I say, like a couple of fraternity boys.

My timing is so bad that I have written poems about it. Combine my bad timing with my natural tendency to lose things, and you have in me the traveling companion from hell.

Our Turkish Airlines flight to Tunis, with a five-hour wait in Istanbul, left Tbilisi at 5: 40 a.m. Jason didn't want to spend the money it would have cost to take a cab to the airport, so we took the bus, then sat in the terminal all night. I managed to take a nap between Tbilisi and Istanbul. Can't get in much trouble there. But when we reached the airport in Tunis that afternoon, fatigue combined with my natural absent-mindedness, and I went off and left my jacket in customs. My jacket had my wallet in it. I had to go through a bureaucratic gauntlet to get back into the terminal and retrieve it. Jason wasn't pleased, having to stand out in the freezing wind waiting for me to retrieve these items.

"Don't fuckin' lose it again," he growled.

"Don't fuckin'  lose it again?" I repeated, incredulous that this 36 year-old punk would take such a tone with me, 20 years his elder. "Okay, Mom."

It wasn't the last time Jason would speak sharply or disrespectfully to me during this trip, and goes to show that if you want to find out what someone is really like, go on a trip with them.

But more of that later. I came close to slugging Jason a couple of times for the way he talked to me. But I didn't, and as far as I know we're still friends.

This was North Africa, the desert, right? One expects the desert to be warm. We found pretty quickly that it ain't necessarily so. As we stood waiting for the bus to take us into town, a wind was blowing that could charitably be described as "arctic." Howling. We zipped up our jackets and shivered. Jason had told me on the plane that he had packed swimming trunks in case the opportunity to jump into the Mediterranean should arise.

"It'd be like jumping into the White Sea at this point," I told him.

And in fact that night Tunis had its first hailstorm in years. See what I mean about my timing?

We got into central Tunis on the bus at last, and hiked to our "quarters." Jason had found a place on the Internet where we could stay. We had agreed that, again to save money (we're a couple of poor teachers, Jason and I) that we would stay in the cheapest dump we could find.

Oh, Jason found us a cheap dump, all right. A "youth hostel" in the Medina quarter of the city, where the souks are. We had to walk through maybe half a mile's worth of narrow, cramped, crowded cobblestone streets lined with pesky, hawking vendors to get to our digs.



The Medina section of Tunis. We had to run a gauntlet

of streets just like this one to get to our "hostel."

 As for the hostel itself, "horrid" would be putting it mildly. For about 25 Tunisian denarii a night (around $14) we got to share a room with three other guys, four wooden bunk beds stacked right on top of each other. It was like spending a weekend at Stalag 17. The place had no hot water, provided no towels or toilet paper, and it was completely unheated. A shower was available, but if you used it any time other than 0730-0830, there was an extra denari charge for it. I didn't use it at all. Even if I had brought a towel, and I didn't, I wasn't about to undress in that frozen food locker and walk around on those cold marble floors. I decided to just stay dirty for the time being.

Jason was hungry; he wanted to go find some dinner. I was not; I was merely exhausted and wanted only to go to bed. So Jason went off in search of a cafe, and I closed the window, put on two sweaters, crawled underneath two blankets and lay there, shivering. One of our roommates came in. He spoke only French. No chance for conversation there. It was while I was trying to sleep that I heard the great roar outside. That was the hailstorm, as Jason informed me later. He'd gotten caught in it.

Avenue Habib Bourguiba, Tunis' version of the Champs-Elysees.

Jason and I strolled along this avenue, dining in some of

its cafes. What this picture doesn't show is the French embassy,

with razor-wire, tanks and machine gun-toting soldiers in front of it.

The next day was Saturday. The storm had passed. It was still a little chilly, but we no longer felt like members of Admiral Peary's expedition. We found a cafe and had an American-style breakfast of omelets, toast and coffee. After breakfast we wandered into a bookstore, where Jason shopped for a tour guide but couldn't find exactly what he wanted, so we pushed on, discussing what particular sights we might want to see that day. Strolling along Avenue Habib Bourguiba, Tunis' central boulevard, we wandered into Tunis Cathedral, which faces the street just across and up a short distance from the French embassy (which, by the way, is still surrounded by razor-wire, troop carriers and guys with machine guns in the wake of last year's upheaval.)


Tunis Cathedral. Built in 1896, it's in a mixture
of architectural styles that did not appeal to me.


The cathedral in Tunis, completed in 1896, is one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen. But that's just me. It's typical of the late 19th century in that it couldn't make up its mind what style it wanted to be. It's sort of a queasy concatenation of romanesque, byzantine and I don't know what-all else. It's far too ornate for my taste as far as architecture goes. But there are some interesting things about it. For example, I read that when they were building it, they found the ground beneath to be too soft and swampy to support the cathedral's weight, so they hammered 2,377 trunks of Norwegian fir trees into the ground to make a firmer foundation.

The cathedral has some nice modern stained glass inside, and (my timing being "on" for once) when we went inside to look around, someone was playing the organ. Built in 1921, the organ has 42 registers and 2,400 pipes. The organ was playing softly, a few of the faithful were praying, and it was a pleasant, quiet moment on the verge of a long, wandering day.

We had decided -- actually, Jason had decided, (remember this was his trip and I was just tagging along) -- that we would devote Saturday to visiting the ruins of ancient Carthage, about a 20-minute train ride from downtown Tunis.

This was fine with me. I'm a history buff; in fact I majored in history at San Diego State University when I was a kid, and I wouldn't have dreamed of visiting Tunis without visiting Carthage, the city whose army, under Hannibal, scared the daylights out of the Romans when it defeated them at the Battle of Cannae during the Second Punic War, around 200 B.C.

Rome and Carthage fought a series of wars, and at the end of the Third Punic War ("Punic" being a Roman designation for "Carthaginian" -- wars are always named by the winners) Rome finally razed and destroyed Carthage in 146 B.C. The expression "Carthago delenda est," ("Carthage must be destroyed") has been credited to Cato the Elder, but actually it was a slogan commonly heard around Rome in those days, like "America, Love It Or Leave It."

Once the Romans had destroyed Carthage, they rebuilt it and made it the administrative center of their North African empire for centuries. So you have three Carthages: "Punic" Carthage, which pre-dates Rome's conquest; "Roman" Carthage, roughly 146 B.C. -- 500 A.D. and then "Byzantine" Carthage, that which survived for a few centuries after the Roman Empire fell. "To Carthage then I came," is one of St. Augustine's most famous lines from his Confessions, circa 400 A.D., and T.S. Eliot echoed it in The Waste Land 1,600 years later.

The Romans destroyed Carthage. More recently,

weeds, litterbugs and graffiti-sprayers have had their shot at

it.

I wasn't going to miss this. Jason and I hopped on the train.

When we got there, I was appalled. Carthage is a cultural treasure to Tunisia -- a link to its ancient past. You would think that such a "cultural treasure" would be well-preserved.



Well, it isn't. It's been allowed to go completely to seed. Yes, there is a museum there, atop Mount Byrsa, where a few Carthaginians made their "last stand" against the Romans in 146 B.C. But by and large the ruins of ancient Carthage are in miserable condition. The Antonine Thermal Baths (second century A.D.) are a central tourist attraction. There is an archaeological "park" on the site. But the site is a complete mess. Overgrown with weeds, strewn with trash, covered with graffiti...you would think that a country with such a high unemployment rate as Tunisia would at least hire somebody to come in and pull the weeds. But no; at the Antonine Thermal Baths the only official presences are the ticket-takers, the guy guarding the toilet, and the usual guys with machine guns, guarding the presidential palace when they aren't talking on their cellphones.

We wandered around Carthage most of Saturday. As well as the Antonine Baths, we visited the museum on Mount Byrsa, which commands a wonderful view of the Gulf of Tunis, with its endless water-caravan of freighters in the distance, plying back and forth between North Africa and Sicily. And it was there, in the courtyard of the museum, where I saw a Muslim with his prayer rug, barefoot, facing Mecca and saying his afternoon prayers. Tunisia is a predominantly Muslim country, and every city and town has at least one mosque, but during our entire visit, this was the only time I saw a Muslim actually praying. Three times a day the loudspeakers atop the mosque towers issue the call to prayer, but most Tunisians simply ignore them.

"This is a Muslim country," I remarked. "Why do most of these people ignore the calls to prayer?"

"I think most of them are secular," Jason said.

Maybe, but for a "secular" country I saw an awful lot of women keeping their heads covered with scarves. And on that subject, Tunis does not crawl with "supermodels" as Tbilisi does. No evidence here of women in skin-tight jeans and three-inch heels. Secular or not, a standard of modesty seems to prevail in Tunisia that does not in Georgia. Women wear flat heels in Tunis, and they do not wear skin-tight jeans.


Roman amphitheater in Carthage, 3rd century A.D. It's being
refurbished, and was not, to my relief, as trash-strewn and
weed-choked as the Antonine Baths, which date from the
same period.


On Sunday we wandered about the Medina, the section of town where our youth hostel was located. We wanted to visit the Grand Mosque, which is located in the Medina, but this being Sunday it was closed. However while we were roaming the narrow back streets looking for the entrance to the mosque, we let ourselves get steered into a "government store" by a local character who promised us a spectacular view from the terrace on the roof.

There was a spectacular view all right, and Jason took lots of pictures. (Jason was the only one of us with a camera.) But this "spectacular view" was not to be free; the moment we came back down from the roof, the guy who ran the "government store" was all over both of us: buy rugs, buy jewelry, buy this, buy that. buy, buy, buy. I kept saying "No" "No" "No" "No" and "No." Finally, exasperated, he said, "You don't want to spend money?" "That's right, I don't want to spend money," I said. Jason looked at a few items, but he didn't buy anything either. This guy seemed genuinely puzzled that Jason and I didn't start throwing hundred-dollar bills at him. The world thinks all Americans are rich.

Jason and I each make about $300 a month.

And I've been around the world a bit, but have never encountered vendors as aggressive as I found in Tunis. They're like sharks in a feeding frenzy. One guy even waved a pair of sunglasses at me when he could see clearly that I was already wearing a pair. Their standard opening is to try and find out what your native language is. "Francais? Italiano? English? Deutsch?" Jason speaks French, and he was too polite not to answer them, so the vendors were all over him everywhere we went. I ignored them when they tried to talk to me. I just kept on walking like they weren't there. I can look surly when I want to, so that deterred them as well.  But they pursued Jason, the moment they realized he spoke French, with a vengeance.

All modern mosques come equipped with loudspeakers.
"A hundred years ago that would have been some guy up
there yelling," Jason observed.



We took a tour of the Tourbet El Bey mausoleum in the Medina, which dates from the 18th century. Our tour guide was a seedy little old guy with bad teeth and a raggedy sportcoat. He spoke only French, so the whole tour was lost on me. In any case there was nothing to look at there but the sarcophagi of a lot of people I never heard of. We pushed on.

"Hey, look!" I said when we were back on the street. "Up there, at the top of the mosque tower. See the loudspeakers?"

All the mosques, big and small, are equipped with loudspeakers. Before our visit was concluded, I began referring to the thrice-daily call to prayers as "the air-raid siren."

 "A hundred years ago that would have been some guy up there yelling," Jason said.

Once again, Jason had decided our next move. He was set upon seeing the ancient Roman colisseum at El Jem ("Thyrsdrus" to the Romans.) According to the tour guides, this was the third-largest colisseum in the Roman Empire, and it's located right there in Tunisia, amidst...well, not much. El Jem is about 90 minutes south of Sousse, the next city of any size that you come to south of the capital. Logic would have dictated that we take the train to Sousse, perhaps stay overnight there and then proceed on to El Jem.

But Jason was following a peculiar logic of his own. We had X number of hours to kill, he reasoned, and Sousse, by itself, wouldn't kill enough of them. So he proposed (insisted) that we take the overnight train all the way down to the port of Gabes, about two hours further south than Sousse on the Mediterranean coast, and proceed to El Jem from there. Gabes is about 300 miles south of Tunis. The idea of the overnight train made me blanch. I'm the world's greatest insomniac, and I was already tired.

"I can't sleep on a train," I said.

"You can't sleep in a bed, either," Jason replied.

A Tunisian train - how Jason and I got from Tunis to Gabes,
overnight.

There was no arguing with his merciless logic. The night train for Gabes left Tunis at 10:30 p.m. At 5 p.m. we checked out of Stalag 17, shouldered our backpacks and headed for the train station to buy tickets.

We still had several hours to kill, so we went to an Internet cafe. Jason wanted to check his e-mail. There we met "Mark," an American who currently works in Moscow. Mark was friendly enough, but tiresome. He repeated his stories, and couldn't get enough of telling us how much he hates Russia and the Russians. He invited us for a beer; we went with him, but I was already getting tired of Mark by the time we reached the cafe, and incidentally, fatigue had me so firmly in its grip that I was starting to "phase:" it felt almost like I'd been smoking a joint.

For some reason the one beer I had cleared my head a bit. But while we were sitting in this smoky cafe with Mark, a drunk came weaving up to our table.

It was our tour guide from the mausoleum earlier that day. He wanted to be friendly. He was as plowed as a beanfield -- babbling in French and unsteady on his legs. Jason bought him a beer to get rid of him. He left, all right, but then he stood out on the sidewalk, waving at us through the window.

The overnight train from Tunis delivered us to Gabes at 4:30 a.m. It was freezing cold, and of course, everything was closed. We had to wait around the train station for so much as a cafe to open. There was a little "geedunk" there in the train station, and we managed to get coffee. We watched a French-language documentary on the TV monitor about the building of the tunnel under the English Channel.

Gabes is a little city on the Mediterranean coast of

southeastern Tunisia. I still don't know why we went there.

Jason finally proposed "Let's walk," and we did. We walked around Gabes in the dark, freezing pre-dawn. What were we doing there? I still don't know. Gradually the sun came up. We wandered down to the ocean. Jason took some pictures of derelict fishing boats, and then we wandered back. The zipper on my jacket was broken; we found a tailor (open at that hour!) who agreed to fix it and have it ready by 10 a.m. But other than getting my broken zipper fixed, we accomplished nothing in Gabes. I still don't know why Jason insisted that we take this horrible detour. We walked and walked, all over Gabes -- our train for El Jem was scheduled to leave at 11:15 a.m.

We were hungry, but coffee and croissants were all we were able to get. None of the cafes had food ready yet. It was too early. After getting shakes-of-the-head at a few places, we were finally steered toward a little hole-in-the-wall cafe that did, in fact, have food ready. Chickens were roasting on a spit out front, and they were already cooked! At 10 a.m.!  "Want to split a chicken?" Jason asked me. "Sure," I said.

We had a lucullan breakfast. Roast chicken, and the trimmings included couscous, tomato salad, cold potatoes, French fries, fried eggs and bread, all washed down with Coca-Cola.

As we sat there, a roach began crawling up the wall next to me. No shock there; I'd be surprised not to see a roach in a place like that. Initially I was inclined to just let him go his way and live. But he smelled the food, turned south and started heading toward the table. I will suffer a roach to live, but I will not share my lunch with him. I took a napkin and squashed the little bastard, not without a certain sigh. The older I get, the more reluctant I am to destroy nature's little creatures. But I'm not going to dine with a roach.

Well,  this is how they often look, but our Tunisian bus, which took us

to El Jem, didn't look quite this bad, despite long delays.

Leaving the cafe, Jason and I got turned around. We were going away from the train station, not toward it. By the time we realized our mistake, got turned around the right way and made it back to the gare, our train for El Jem was pulling out. Bye-bye. Jason gave it the finger.

What to do? We decided to take the bus to Sfax, then pick up the train to El Jem from there. So we got a taxi to the bus station and boarded the bus for Sfax.

But the bus took so long to get to Sfax that we knew were not going to catch the train there, so we just stayed on the bus all the way to El Jem.

On the bus to El Jem, punchy with the delicious cocktail of fatigue and boredom, I blurted out to Jason what I had been thinking for hours.

"Your French is too good," I said.  "I think you're CIA."

Jason smirked. "I'll never tell," he said.

I doubled over, laughing. It sounded so much like something you might have heard many years ago on Get Smart. And it convinced me that Jason was probably honest and clean. No real CIA operative would give such a risible response to such a statement. Having been for years a State Department employee, I've known my share of CIA people, and they are more noteworthy for their bug-eyed, hysterical paranoia than they are for any trace of a sense of humor.

My traveling luck continued to hold: when we reached El Jem (keep in mind, this is the middle of the desert) a cold rain was starting up. I mean a cold rain. We bald guys hate cold rain, especially when we aren't wearing hats, and I wasn't.



The Roman colisseum at El Jem, Tunisia (circa A.D. 238). The

proud olive merchants of Thyrsdrus (what the Romans called

El Jem) wanted to show what they could do. So they built this,

reportedly the third-largest colisseum in the Empire.

But we had spent the better part of a day just getting to this place, so, rain or no rain, Jason was going to reach that coveted pile of rocks, the colisseum that the Romans built here in the third century.

Once we found the colisseum, Jason proceeded to climb all over it like a mountain goat, taking pictures. But he didn't have much time. It was late in the day, starting to get dark in fact, and the colisseum closes to tourists at 5:30 p.m. It was 5:00 when we bought our tickets to go in.

I looked around a bit. Of course I was interested; fatigue or no, I'm a history buff, and this was History, in my face! I wondered why in the world the Romans would build a colisseum in El Jem, anyone's definition of the middle of nowhere.

The answer turned out to lie in the miles and miles of olive groves that Jason and I had observed on the bus coming in. According to the tour guides, Thyrsdrus in the third century A.D. was as big an olive-growing region as it is now. The proud and prosperous Roman olive merchants of ancient Tunisia wanted to show the world their ... well, their prosperity. So they built themselves a big colisseum, in which they could rival Rome itself in such entertainments as butchery and sadism, you know, the usual wholesome Roman family stuff: gladiator combat, wild-animal fights and the slaughter of Christians. Roman baseball.

But I was too tired to explore much, in fact, with my backpack on my back, I had to lower my head a couple of times to get the blood flowing back to my brain -- I was getting faint. Finally I decided to hell with this; Jason can take all the pictures he wants, but I need a break. I left the colisseum by myself and went to get a Snickers bar while Jason continued to snap away.

Jason finally came out of the colisseum (it was getting dark and the place was closing.)

He'd already decided on our next move: we would take the train to Sousse and find accomodations there. I was for that, let's go. The train was delayed, of course, and we went to a pizza place, one of those spots you see many of in Tunisia, where the counter faces the street and there is no inside seating, only a couple of tables outside. That would have been okay were it not for the fact that it was windy and chilly. But we zipped up our jackets, ate pizza, had more Coca-Cola with it, and then we walked down to the train station to catch the train back up to Sousse.

Why had we not just gone to Sousse in the first place, then proceeded to El Jem from there? You'd have to ask Jason. Going from Tunis to El Jem by way of Gabes is kind of like going from San Diego to Los Angeles by way of San Francisco. But this was Jason's trip; I was just tagging along.

On the train to Sousse, a fat old old Arab guy in the seat in front of mine, robes, turban and all, had his iPhone tuned to Arab television and would not turn it off, even when he was dozing. So I listened to Arab TV all the way to Sousse. At one point I mimicked that I was going to smack him, and a pretty little Tunisian girl, sitting on the other side of the aisle, saw me and smiled.

In Sousse we decided to splurge. After two nights in that horrible "youth hostel" and then another night on a train, Jason and I opted for a one-star hotel about a block from the train station.

We got separate rooms, after learning that two rooms would cost the same as sharing one. 24 Tunisian denarii for the two of us, or about $8 apiece.

Sousse, about two hours south of Tunis, where Jason and I
spent our last night in Tunisia.

It's worthy of note, how quickly a one-star hotel can seem luxurious if you've been sleeping, first at Stalag 17, and then on a train. It was now Monday night, and I had not had a shower since Thursday. Never mind that this was a warm shower, not a hot one. Any kind of shower would have been a luxury at that point. And after the shower? ... A clean bed. In my own room. Heaven. It took me a long time to fall asleep, since neither alcohol nor sleeping pills were available, but when I did fall asleep, I slept well.

On Tuesday morning I was up long before Jason, and pleasantly surprised to find that this one-star hotel served breakfast, although it was breakfast on the Arab model: coffee and stale bread with some butter and jam. But that was okay; good, strong coffee was all I really wanted. With hot milk (oh, yes!) I had my coffee and then went about getting my things together. Jason finally began to stir. He went downstairs to have his breakfast. I joined him just to visit, but the hotel staff noticed me sitting there and ... served me again. So I had some more coffee, which was welcome.

We wandered around Sousse all day. Jason let himself be talked into buying a tiny gold trinket. I got a haircut. Yes, I was long overdue for one. I was beginning to look like the office manager in the Dilbert comic strip. So I let a Tunisian barber work me over for 10 denarii. The only part of the process I didn't like was when he tore loose a strip of what looked like dental floss, wrapped one end of it around his fingers and clenched the other end of it in his teeth, then proceeded to remove hair from my face using this dental floss as scissors. When he went after the hair on my ears in this fashion, it hurt, and I told him so at the top of my lungs.

We had lunch at a terrace-top resaurant in Sousse which promised a great view of the Mediterranean,but mostly offered a great view of TV dishes and solar panels. Still, the food was good: broiled fish, couscous and potato salad with onions and olives. The lunch cost 50 denarii, twice what we were paying for our rooms.

We spent the remainder of Tuesday afternoon wandering around Sousse. Late in the afternoon we lingered over coffee at a cafe facing the Mediterranean.

I had had just about enough of Jason at that point. He continued to be very froward, and I wanted to get rid of him.

We spent Tuesday night in Sousse. Our flight back to Tbilisi, by way of Istanbul, was scheduled for the next afternoon. That meant we had to get up very early (5:30 a.m. or so) and catch the train to Tunis. Being the world's champion insomniac, I knew that I was not going to sleep in Sousse that night, not knowing that I had to get up at 5:30 a.m. And I didn't. I was awake all night.

But I was ready to go at 6 a.m. And we took the train back to Tunis.

We had, once again, several hours to kill before "plane time." We had a fine breakfast at a cafe, then proceeded to the souk, where Jason shopped but neither of us bought anything. In front of the Interior Ministry there was a political demonstration going on. Maybe 2,000 people. But it wasn't a "protest" demonstration; it was an "encouragement" demonstration. The crowd was chanting, chanting ...

I approached a guy and asked. "Do you speak English?"

"A bit."

"What's this about?"

"We are encouraging the minister to ... rid the ministry of ... those elements of ... of..."

"The old government?" I prompted him.

"Yes. The old government. Those elements of the old government, which..."

"I understand. A kind of a purge."

I thought I understood. The crowd was encouraging the regime which had replaced that of Zine El Abidine Ben, to rid itself of all remnants of El Abindine Ben's influence, the last of his cronies. Some in the crowd were waving brooms, as in " a new broom sweeps clean."

Jason and I passed a group of young scarved Tunisian women who were holding up placards. Jason took some video. They all looked so grim. "Smile!" I yelled, and a couple of them did.

A man who was obviously with them said to me, "We Tunisians always smile."

And with that, Jason and I were off to catch the bus to the airport.

Our flight departed Tunis at 1:30 p.m. I had some Tunisian denarii left in my pocket which I had not managed to spend in the souk because I didn't want any of their tourist junk. and even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to fit it into my backpack. Still, while Jason was doing some last-minute shopping for souvenirs, and I was waiting for him to get his ass in gear so we could head for the airport, some of the souk vendors started in on me: "Italiano? Francais? English? Deutsch?" I answered each question with a curt "No," and then finally, after the fourth one, rolled my eyeballs heavenward.

"Oh!" One of them said. "Mars!"

I had staked Jason and myself to a good breakfast at the  Le Grand Cafe du Theater on the main drag upon our return from Sousse, just to get rid of some of my extra denarii: coffee, orange juice, eggs, toast, cheese and turkey slices, croissants. But I still had plenty of denarii left. Treated Jason to a beer at the airport, and a Turkish coffee. But then, trying to unload the rest of the denari at the duty-free shop, I was informed that the duty-free did not accept Tunisian denarii, only Euros.

"Well, I'm stuck with 50 denarii," I said.

"Keep 'em," Jason said. "I'm coming back to Tunis later. I'll buy them from you."

Attatul Airport in Istanbul, Turkey. Flying Turkish Airlines,

with its long waits here, I've gotten to know it well. Ask me

where Popeye's and Burger King are; I can tell you right away.

Tunis back to Istanbul. Another two and a half hours, and Istanbul is an hour ahead of Tunis, so it was 5:30 p.m. when we got back to Istanbul. We had six hours until our connecting flight to Tbilisi. We had talked about getting a cab and going to see the Hagia Sophia and other sights of central Istanbul rather than hanging around the airport. But the cab would have been forty minutes each way, and we would have had to get $20 visas to go, and in general it just seemed like more rush and trouble than it would have been worth. We decided to make a special visit to Istanbul some weekend and just spend a day and a half seeing Istanbul. For now, we would stay in the airport.

That we did, for six hours. Sat for a long time in an airport cafe. I had declined the meal on the plane from Tunis, so I bought myself a meal of chicken tenders, French fries and beer. Jason, who had eaten on the plane, got a Turkish coffee. He had picked up copies of an English-language Turkish newspaper and the French Le Monde, and he sat there for a long time reading the papers. I was so bored that I even read through the Turkish paper...and Le Monde, although in the latter I could only read the pictures. We shopped in the airport bookstore. I came close to buying a cheap Nikon digital camera. But the computer rejected my American debit card, so to tell hell with it, I walked away. I don't want anything that badly.

Our flight to Tbilisi from Istanbul took off at at 1 a.m. Tunis time, 3 a.m.Tbilisi time. I almost did fall asleep on this flight, about 40 minutes before landing. I read Proust, and to my surprise givn the late hour, they served us a snack: smoked salmon and potatoes, sandwiches, crackers and little cakes. I never expected to be served food in the middle of the night. But it was quite good; Turkish Airlines ranks second, I would say, to Air France in serving good food.

We got back to Tbilisi at 4:30 a.m. local time. Of course public transportation hadn't started running that early, and neither nor Jason and I was inclined to spend 35 Lari (about $20) for a taxi ride into town. So we plunked our selves down in the airport cafe, Jason ordered a Turkish coffee and again, read the papers. I ordered a Kasris (Georgian) beer, and napped in m chair.

A 7 a.m. the buses started running. We got on one, got off it at the Samgouri Metro station, and took the Metro back to Rustaveli, my stop, Marjhineshveli, Jason's stop, was next.

"Well, we had an adventure," I said, shaking his hand.

I got off the Metro and walked back to my studio. Jason went God-knows-where. And I don't know what he did, but I'll tell you what I did: It was 8 a.m. when I came back through my door. I stayed up until 11 a .m., then took three Optimal tablets ..;.and slept until six O'clock the next morning. This despite the fact that my landlord and his buddy were trying to fix my front door, hammering, drilling and sawing. I wasn't getting up for anything. I stayed in bed for 19 hours. That's how draining the Tunisia trip was. But it was worth it. Oh, it was worth every denarii.

Now that I've seen Tunisia, bring on Morocco. I just gotta see that souk where the guy chased Ingrid Bergman down the street, waving a piace of lace that he was trying to sell her, while Humphrey Bogart was trying to have a serious conversation with her. I've seen how that works, now.

And I know what I'd say when he turned on me: "English?" "No." "Francais?" "No."

"Mars!"

What'll It Be, The Forest Or The Trees?

My ex-wife Valerie once referred to Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris as "the butter movie."

Huh?

Yeah. I brought up Last Tango In Paris one day, I don't remember the context. Perhaps I was just asking if she'd seen it.

"Oh, you mean the butter movie," she said.

"The butter movie?" What the hell are you talking about, woman?

The "butter movie?" Well...

Well....evidently there's a scene in that particular flick in which Marlon Brando sodomizes Maria Schneider, (they're both dead now, by the way) and before doing so, he lubricates her anus with butter.

Now, how did that detail escape me? I've seen this movie maybe three times, and somehow I never remembered that detail. Maybe I was in the kitchen making a sandwich. Probably with butter on it, if you want to be grossed out.

But the butter thing was the ONLY thing Valerie remembered about Last Tango In Paris. To her, this was "the butter movie." Well, Valerie tended to think in such categorizing terms. When I got The Guns of Navarone from Netflix and put it on the DVD player, Valerie's comment when she saw what I was watching was "War guys." That's all it meant to her. "Butter movie." "War guys." I suspect that  my second wife was autistic. But never mind.

It just goes to show you how some of us notice certain things and some of us don't. And some of us remember certain things, and some of us don't. And for some of us, certain things jump out at them and make an impression, and for others, they just don't.

This picture came out in 1972, and when it did, middle-class America threw a hissy-fit, because middle-class America considered this film to be pornographic. Never mind the fact that middle-class America is the world's largest consumer of pornography. Guest-hosting the Tonight Show one night shortly after this film came out, Sandy Duncan expressed her outrage that such a "dirty" movie could be considered "art." Sandy Duncan. America's girl next door. If she's still alive, I would refer Ms. Duncan to http://www.pornhub.com/ if she wants to see "dirt."

But my subject today is memory, not the hypocrisy of middle-class America in the 1970s. So let's move on...

Once, when I was about eight years old, my father took my younger sister Lynn and me on an overnight camping trip. He had a tiny "teardrop" trailer hitched to his 1950 Ford pickup truck, and the three of us managed to sleep in that trailer. (Lynn and I were small.)

In the morning, when my father was cooking breakfast for all of us, (I believe it was scrambled eggs and hot dogs, yum yum) I made the mistake of imitating my admired older cousin John, who routinely addressed his father as "Pop."

My father dropped his frying pan, grabbed the front of my shirt and screamed in my face, "Don't EVER call me 'Pop!' I am your FATHER!"

Just one more reason to hate my dad. He gave me several hundred more as the years went by.

But for some reason I, who have a reputation for having a good memory, blocked out that one. I forgot it.

Many, many years later, Lynn (who died in 2004), reminded me of it. She remembered. She was there when it happened. She described, in vivid detail, how Dad grabbed me that morning and screamed in my face that I was NOT to address him as "Pop." But for some reason, I did not remember it. It was Lynn's most significant memory of that overnight camp-out. But I had blocked it out.

It was a revelation to me. I didn't know I could do that, block out a memory. I thought I was incapable of it.

Makes you wonder. Many years ago I had a conversation with a psychologist. I told her that I admired people who could do that. I envied them that ability. The ability to wipe away memories, just refuse to remember some things. I told her that I did not have that ability. I remember everything, I said, and I can't forget anything. And I do have a reputation among my family and acquaintances for having an excellent memory, probably because I've been keeping a journal off and on since I was 13. I told this psychologist that people who can block out memories have a talent that I lacked.

"But," she replied, "it's not necessarily a good thing to be able to do that. Because when people block out a memory, it usually resurfaces somewhere else."

In other words, there is no escaping the past. It isn't lost, it isn't even past, as William Faulkner pointed out. It's always kind of hanging there, waiting to come and get you. (Faulkner's masterpiece, Absalom, Absalom! is all about the past coming to get you.)

And apparently, it will get you, one way or the other. You either remember the moment at age eight when your brother pushed you into the pond and you almost drowned, or 30 years later some variation of that memory will come back and send you into a midnight, screaming sweat.

And sometimes we remember things the way they were supposed to be, rather than the way they were. I had this conversation years ago with my friend Jim. Way back in 1977, when the first Star Wars film came out, I was living in Ventura, California, not far from Camarillo, where Jim grew up. We planned to go and see this movie together. About 20 years later, Jim swore up and down that we had, in fact, gone to see Star Wars together that night.

But that wasn't the way I remembered it. The way I remembered it was, he and I were getting ready to go and see this picture, in fact we were on our way out the door, when suddenly my telephone rang.

It was my employer, Wells Fargo Security Services. They wanted me to come in and work a swing shift.

That took care of the movie. Jim went to see it with his "other" best friend, Oliver. I went to work.

Twenty years later we were hashing this out by e-mail. Jim SWORE that he and I saw that movie together. I remembered that I had been called in to work at the 11th hour and didn't see the film until many weeks later, in San Diego, in the company of my older sister.



R2D2, who always reminded me of a trash can, cute
as he was.


I didn't want to get into an argument about something so silly, so I said, "Well, you may be right, but this is the way I remember it..."

Jim came back and admitted that I was right. Jim is an attorney, and has some professional experience with this kind of problem. "You see," he explained, "I was remembering that you were there because you were SUPPOSED to be there. This often creates problems in court cases. People sometimes remember things the way they were supposed to be, rather than the way they actually were. That's why sometimes, if you're investigating an accident, for example, you'll hear four or five different versions of how it happened. Because people remember things the way they were supposed to happen, rather than the way they did."

Well, so that's the way memory works. Not too well, and not too reliably. And it would seem that many of us anyway, are not reading from the same sheet music. My ex-wife Valerie, who only remembered Last Tango In Paris as a film in which somebody buggered somebody else using butter, would probably tell you that she was a forebearing angel, while I was a lazy, loudmouthed, verbally abusive drunk. I would tell you that she was a selfish, manic-depressive, egotistical, overweight, loudmouthed, lazy old sow who wanted to do nothing all day but lie on her fat butt watching cable television and stuffing her face with pizza and ice cream.

And we'd both be right.

Or wrong. Depends on what you decide to remember. And not.

My Evening With The Cleavers

1958.......What a year.

I've had an active imagination all of my life, and while I've had as many sexual fantasies as anyone else, I can safely say that most of my copious fantasising has had nothing to do with sex.

I have a whole series of "pet fantasies." One of my favorites is the good old "time-warp" fantasy. I get to go back in time like those guys did in that stupid Irwin Allen television show The Time Tunnel back in the 1960s. 



...1966...One of the dumbest TV shows of all time.

  
If you're old enough to remember The Time Tunnel, it was one of the most idiotic shows ever filmed. (Well, everything Irwin Allen did was idiotic; "idiotic" was his trademark.)

On this show, the government was (secretly, it goes without saying) working on a massive boondoggle, "Project Tic-Toc," (underground, in the western desert, of course, you know, where they see all the UFOs?) trying to build a "tunnel" that could transcend time.

As the plot would invariably have it, rumors circulate that the government is about to scrap this project. (I would. Wouldn't ANY taxpayer?)

Then James Darren, (whom those old enough to remember will recall as "Moondoggie" in the "Gidget" movies with Sandra Dee), a young idealist who fervently believes in the project, decides to prove to everyone that it works. So, without permission, he twiddles the dials, dashes into the Time Tunnel, and disappears into the past!

Robert Colbert goes after him, and for one TV season anyway, Whit Bissell and the rest of the gang back in subterranean Arizona try to retrieve these two characters as they, Darren and Colbert, bounce around everywhere from the Titanic to ancient Troy (and I think they meet Billy the Kid somewhere along the way.)

I have had this fantasy, the fantasy of going back in time.

But in my case, the fantasy usually does not involve significant incidents in history. That was one of the most idiotic things about the idiotic Time Tunnel; these guys seemed to always land in some historical spot that was famous, you know, like the deck of the Titanic or the walls of Troy.

They never seemed to land in the middle of some unknown farmer's field in Mesopotamia, circa 4,000 B.C., where nothing special was going on except cows shitting.

My time-warp fantasy only has one significant historical locus: I wonder how I could have messed with history if I had been in Pontius Pilate's position in first century Judaea.

Knowing what I do about Roman history -- and I have studied it -- I could see myself refusing to turn Jesus over to that mob..."just to be a prick," as my father used to say.

"Who's procurator here? You or me?" I could hear myself shouting.  "Beat it, all of yiz! Hit the bricks!"

Then we'd see how Jesus, determined to get himself crucified, would get me out of his way. (Or if he'd even bother.) I could see myself putting him under my protection, inviting him to have supper, maybe even washing his feet (just to be a smartass.)

About that time, God the Father would probably strike me dead with a thunderbolt for screwing with his plans, (again, just to get this nuisance out of the way.)

But if you gotta go, tweaking God's nose can't be beat as a great way to do it.

Besides, dammit, I'm an American. I have a better sense of justice than the Romans did. And Jesus was innocent of any crime! I'd like to think I would have told the lynch mob to get lost. You know, faced 'em down, like Wyatt Earp. Or John Wayne, Or one of those cool guys.

Anyway...

Hugh Beaumont (1909-1981) played the father,
Ward Cleaver, on the TV series Leave It To Beaver.

My favorite fantasy is the one where I go back in time, not to some big event like the Crucifixion or the Titanic, but to some imaginary scenario where I get to fill in the chronological "locals" on stuff that's going to happen in the future. Not the big stuff, usually: the small stuff.

But, then again, the small stuff often IS the big stuff, isn't it? Who, in 1876, thought that this new gadget the telephone was going to redefine modern life?

Who suspected that the internal combustion engine was going to make the blacksmith, a town-and-village fixture for centuries, into a man looking for a job?

Ask any twentysomething today what the word "blacksmith" even meant. They won't be able to tell you, because they don't know. They don't know anything. They weren't taught anything in school except that they should have high self-esteem.

Barbara Billingsley (1915-2010) played the
mother, June Cleaver, on Leave It To Beaver.

Twentysomethings know how to send text messages, and they know how to play games on their cellphones. Oh, and they can identify Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez.

That's about all they know -- I'd be willing to bet most of them never even heard of Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the prototype of that very gadget on which they're now breathlessly telling their friends, "OMG! Jessi told Sarah that Ashley likes Mason, lol!!!"

Yecch.

Okay, now that I got that out of the way, here's my fantasy:

I follow Darren and Colbert into the Time Tunnel, and after the requisite pops and bursts of smoke to show that Project Tic-Toc still isn't working right, I'm deposited into ...

the living room of Ward and June Cleaver on Leave It To Beaver, circa 1958. The Cleavers were very nice people, and if I had to land somewhere in the past, I think I would just as soon it be the Cleavers' living room as Golgotha. We could even do a Pleasantville thing here, and I could appear in black-and-white, like Ward and June themselves.

In fact, that might make it even more fun.

They wonder who I am and where I come from. I'm not sure myself. But we could borrow a page from The Time Tunnel and have Ward and June remark, (sotto voce to each other of course because they're too polite to offend me) that I'm dressed strangely: they're not used to seeing an adult wearing blue jeans and a San Diego Padres T-shirt -- suits and ties are all they ever see men wearing. (Besides, in 1958 the San Diego Padres were still a Pacific Coast League team and the Cleavers probably never heard of them.)

But they quickly perceive that I'm as harmless as I am dazed, and June offers me coffee. I don't want them to think I'm crazy and call the butterfly-net boys, so I'm not going to come right out and tell them that I appeared out of the future. They'd never understand Project Tic-Toc. I still don't. Still, they can't help but notice that there's something a tad unusual about me.

Thinking quickly, (which I've never been able to do, by the way) I tell them that I'm on the faculty of -- quick, what state was Mayfield, the Cleavers' home town in? I always thought Illinois, but the show never said so -- uh...State University. (There's a nice generic term.) We've been doing some research on a government contract (very hush-hush, like every stupid, idiotic, wasteful thing the government does) and...uh...uh....that's how I came to be here. Can't tell you much more than that.

"How do you take your coffee, Mr. Dupuis?" June politely asks.

"Black, thank you," I reply, shaking my head theatrically to emphasise that I'm still a little bit dazed. "I'll just call and have someone come get me, if you'll tell me your address."

Here I pull my first faux-pas: I reach for my cellphone.

This is now considered an antique. But prior to 1970,
just about every telephone in America looked like this,
except the wall units, of course.

"What is THAT thing?" Ward asks. My flip-phone looks a little like one of the communicators from Star Trek, but Star Trek itself is still eight years away.

"Oh, THIS thing?" I say, hastily shoving it back into my pocket. "It's a....a cigarette lighter. I forgot for a moment that I gave up smoking."

I think of asking to use their good old, standard black Bell Telephone unit, but who would I call? "We've no place to go in this time," as I remember Scotty telling Captain Kirk on an episode of Star Trek in which the U.S.S. Enterprise found itself in a time-warp situation similar to this one, only they weren't being hosted by the Cleavers. (Come to think of it, that might have been a lot of fun, too.)

June offers me more coffee.

"Well, Kelley," says Ward, humoring this goddamn nut in his living room, "What sort of research are you involved with, up there at State University?" (Or down there, as the case may be.)

"Uh, well, it's....uh, electronics."

"Electronics, really?"

"Yup," I sip my coffee, trying frantically to think of how I'm going to con my way out of this.

"Well, what can you tell us about the electronic world of the future?" Ward asks, with that feigned chuckle he used to use on the show when he was more anxious than amused.

"Yes, Kelley," June chimes in, ever the faithful spouse-as-sidekick, "What wonders are you electronic geniuses cooking up?"

Geniuses? Oh, yeah! Us guys! Well, okay, uh....

At this point there's no longer any question of my being able to bullshit these nice people. I might as well just uncork the whole nauseating vision and let them call the loony bin.

"Let's see. As of this year, the transistor has already replaced the vacuum tube. That was a step forward, obviously. We no longer have to wait five minutes for our radios and television sets to warm up, and don't have to worry about them overheating either. But...um, um, let's see. Well, we're working on a concept (yeah, right: Bill Gates was three years old in 1958, in fact he's two weeks younger than I), we call the "microchip." It's going to replace the transistor."

"Really? 'Microchip?' " says Ward politely. "What in the world could that be?"

"Believe it or not, it's going to be, if we ever get it developed, a sliver of silicon smaller than your pinkie fingernail, which will hold more information than any of today's (1958's) room-sized computers. Computers are going to get smaller and smaller and faster and faster in the decades ahead of us. You'll live to see it. At least one of you will live to see a day when the computer is as accepted a part of the average American household as the TV set is now."


In the 1950s, laptop computers
were still some distance away.


"Which one of us will live to see it?" June asks.

I blanch, then panic. "Even if I knew when someone was gonna die, I wouldn't tell them, and I don't claim to know," I add hastily. (Barbara Billingsley outlived Hugh Beaumont by close to 30 years.)

Geez, if I claimed to know when these people were going to die, one of them would call 911 immediately, were it not for the fact that in 1958 there was no such thing as 911.

"You guys are working on a silicon chip that will make computers that small?" Ward asks.

Ooh. Who the hell are 'us guys?'  I stir my coffee.  "Well, it's only at the talking stage. Nobody's actually tried developing any such thing. It's just something we, you know, yak about over coffee." I'm hoping this establishes my bona fides as a sane person, distracting the poor Cleavers from the fact that I just dropped out of The Time Tunnel and into their living room.

"But it is possible?" Ward presses me.

"Yeah, theoretically, it is. It's just that nobody's figured out a way to do it yet." And wouldn't, for another 15 years or so. "But if and when it does happen, I think it's going to really change the way we live. Imagine a world in which you can sit down in your living room and access, well, basically, the entire Library of Congress. I mean, everything will be out there, and all you'll have to do is type a few words on a keyboard, and there it is."

"Unbelievable," says June.

"Yes. But it's coming. I really think it's coming. Your sons, Wally and Beaver, (how do I explain knowing who THEY are?) will watch their own children cheating on their homework by copying stuff off the Internet, you know, the way kids copy stuff out of the encyclopedia now."

"Internet?" says Ward.

About this time, I'm wishing that the guys back in Arizona would get that Time Tunnel gadget working again and zap me to ... well, probably the wrong place. But I'd rather be telling Napoleon that he'd better postpone Waterloo than try to explain to these people about the Internet.

Still ... this is kind of fun. I ask June for some more coffee. She's a wonderful hostess. She not only brings me more coffee, but a cinnamon roll, baked just that morning at the Mayfield Bakery, to go with it.

"Thank you," I say to her. "By the way, do you really do housework in high heels?"

"No, but the network insists that I wear them," she replies. "Their reasoning is, in another season or two, Jerry and Tony are both going to be taller than I am, and they don't want me to look like the boys' kid sister."

I knew there had to be a reason.

Ward's still humoring me. "Are we going to see things like flying cars and space travel?"



I had to tell Ward Cleaver that we haven't seen anything like
this yet, and probably won't.

"Space travel, yes. In fact as you're well aware, the Soviets put a satellite in orbit just last fall.

Will men walk on the moon? Yes, and the Americans get there first. You'll both live to see that. But it didn't last long. After a few moon-landing missions, Congress cut off the money and, as of the early 21st century, man has not been back to the moon in some 30 years. There's just a lot of junk lying around up there that we left, including a golf ball. Yeah, one smart-aleck astronaut decided he just had to experience what it would be like to hit a golf ball on the moon. He did it, and in one-sixth gravity, the thing carried probably farther than one of Babe Ruth's home runs.

"Flying cars? No. In fact, you'd be surprised at how little the technology of the automobile is actually going to change in the next 50 years. I mean sure, there will be design and engineering changes, reflecting, among other things, an outrageous increase in the price of gasoline which makes people want more fuel-efficient cars. But the car of 2008 is still essentially the car of 1958, just without the fins. It's a thing that burns gasoline, and gets you a speeding ticket if you're not careful.

Air travel is with us to stay. In fact by the mid-1960s nobody, in the United States anyway, travels by train anymore, or crosses the Atlantic on an ocean liner. They fly. It's faster. It already is. That's not to say the railroads and shipping companies will go out of business; of course they don't. They just sort of get themselves out of the passenger business and concentrate on the freight business instead. Because believe it or not, in the year 2000, the steel wheel on the steel rail is still the most efficient way to move large amounts of freight. And as for ocean ships, well, if you have 250 automobiles manufactured in Japan, and you want to get them to San Francisco, sticking them on an enormous freighter is a better idea than flying them over one at a time. So trains and ships are still with us, even though for most people, travel of more than a couple of hundred miles usually involves an airplane, not a train or a ship. There are cruise ships, but that's just for people who want to take expensive vacations.There's a federally-subsidized passenger rail service called Amtrak, which seems to stay with us year after year although it loses money like a sieve. Basically it operates between Washington D.C. and Boston. It's not efficient anywhere else; America's just too big for trains. Everyone flies."

About this time, Ward starts to get seriously suspicious.


How I might have landed in the Cleavers' living
room.

"Mister," he asks me, "where did you come from? I mean, June, Beaver, Wally and I just finished dinner; the boys are upstairs doing their homework, and all of a sudden here you are in our living room. You're not dressed like anyone I ever saw -- I know where San Diego is, but who the heck are the 'Padres?' -- and I didn't even hear the doorbell ring. How did you get here?"

Sigh. I can't tell them about Project Tic-Toc.  "Have you ever heard of a 'wormhole?'" I ask.

"No."

"It's a concept in physics. Theoretically, it's possible for someone to move from one time to another. I think I might have encountered one. It wasn't my idea, believe me. I wasn't trying to travel in time, it just happened. Ten minutes ago I was in the year 2011, now here I am in 1958.

"Now, BEFORE you call the cops, let me show you something!" (Thank God, my wallet is still on me.) This is my WALLET I'm pulling out, folks. It is NOT a gun! I don't own a gun!"

I pull out my driver's license. "Look at that," I say, handing it to June, who looks at it and then, with the same astonished look on her face she had when Wally and the Beav came down to dinner wearing stocking caps in the episode where Wally gave Beaver a haircut and just about scalped him, hands it to Ward.

"That's my driver's license, issued by the State of California," I say.  "Look at the dates on it. It gives my date of birth as October 12, 1955. It expires on October 12, 2015. Now, according to that driver's license I'm not yet three years old. But look at me, I wouldn't carry around a thing like that as a gag. My sense of humor isn't that weird."

"So, you..." Ward begins

"I'm thinking I stumbled into a wormhole," I say. "Don't ask me. We've been messing with some things up there (or down there) at State University that even I don't understand. All I know is what I just told you. Ten minutes ago I was in the year 2011. Now I'm here in '58. By the way, is Groucho Marx on tonight? You Bet Your Life? That's still on, isn't it?"

"Yes, but not tonight," Ward says.

"Well, I'm sorry. As you can see from my driver's license, in 1958 I was not yet three years old. I've seen some of the old shows, but mostly I only remember them from DVD or videotape."

"I've heard of videotape, but what is DVD?" June asks.

"Oh, it's not even worth getting into," I say. "Just a gadget. It stands for 'Digital Video Disc.' Just a gadget."

Ward hands me back my driver's license. "You...you're really from the future?"

"It would seem so. Your future, not mine. I could tell you the year you're going to die, but I won't. Don't worry -- it isn't for a long time yet. You're going to be around for quite a few more years. My own date of death I don't know. That's part of my future, not yours. So...You gonna call the cops and have me picked up?"

"I don't see why," Ward says. "You may be nutty, but you seem perfectly calm. You're not raving. Finish your coffee. Then we'll decide what we should do next."

"Thanks, I appreciate that."

June straightens her dress. "Well," she says, "assuming this crazy story is true, and you did just....land here from somewhere in the future, tell us...what is life in the future going to be like?"

"Not as different as you might imagine," I say, thankful that they're not running into the street screaming for the National Guard. "We have more gadgets, and things move a bit faster, but basically, life in the early 21st century is still just life. People get up, go to work or school and come home just as they do now. They get married, have children and die, just as they do now."

"What about the Cold War?" Ward asks. "Did either side ever win?"

"Our side did. But not the way you might imagine. There was never a Third World War, although plenty of people were predicting it. The Soviet Union was never conquered, it just ran out of money. The USSR shut down in 1991. Incredible as it may seem, the map of eastern Europe in 1992 looks pretty much like the map of eastern Europe in 1912. The Russians simply realized that they couldn't afford to maintain an empire anymore. They were running out of oil money -- oil, that's what modern history is really all about. Some historians think the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because they were afraid that American naval power might threaten their sources of oil in southeast Asia.

"Anyway, the USSR officially went out of business on Christmas Day, 1991. After that it was just Russia again."

"Does Russia become a democracy?" June asks.

"Not the way you and I understand it, no. Russia in 2011 is basically being run by a tightly-insulated circle of crooks, mainly for their own benefit. But they're no longer trying to convert the world to an idealogy, like the Soviets were. They're just stealing fortunes for themselves. But the Iron Curtain came down. Stalin's idea of sealing off Russia from the rest of the world turned out to be just too expensive."

"And the Red Chinese?" Ward asks.

"Oh, yeah. China. China made its own particular deal with the devil. China in the early 21st century is still officially a communist country. There's no political freedom there. But economic freedom, well, that's another story. The Coca-Cola company, believe it or not, moved into China in 1978. By 2000 China was swarming with private companies, making money like crazy, and the Chinese government went along with it, because they were making money too. And being essentially a slave economy, China became for western companies -- guess what? -- a source of cheap labor. Today, in 1958, 'Made In Japan' is the sobriquet for cheap goods, right? By 2005, 'Made in China' has replaced 'Made in Japan' as that sobriquet. 'Made in China,' 'Made in Bangladesh,' anywhere companies can get buck-an-hour labor."

"Where in the heck is 'Bangladesh?'" Ward asks.

"Oh, that's uh...I think today it's called East Pakistan. It broke away and became a separate country around 1970 or so. A number of countries in south Asia and Africa are going to get new names as colonialism sort of recedes. Can I think of some more? Uh, what's now Upper Volta is going to become Burkina Faso. Rhodesia becomes Zimbabwe. A lot of those countries renamed themselves when they gained independence. South Africa is still South Africa, but they finally got rid of apartheid."

"Apartheid? What on earth is that?" June asks, her pearl necklace jiggling.

"Official policy of racial segregation. You never heard of it? It's like what we have in Mississippi now, in 1958. Well, A lot of people in the United States are going to start raising hell, just a few years from now, about racial segregation here -- it's already started, in fact; you may have read in the papers a few years ago about Brown vs. Board of Education in, I think it was, Topeka? That's just the beginning. There's a lot more of that coming. Segregation in the American south is going to be done away with after much, MUCH trouble, and the same in South Africa, only it takes longer. But Nelson Mandela, a black guy who kind of spearheaded the campaign against apartheid in that country, after spending a lot of time in prison, wound up as South Africa's president before he died. History pulls funny stuff that way." (I almost said "funny shit," but then remembered who I was talking to.)

How do I explain 900-channel cable
TV to Ward & June?

"Kelley, you said something about life going 'faster,'" Ward says. "What did you mean by that? Were you talking about everyone traveling by plane instead of by train, or what?"

"That's just part of it," I explain. "Mostly, the speeding-up of life results from all those damned gadgets I just mentioned. Okay, look..." I reach back into my pocket. "This isn't really a cigarette lighter," I say, brandishing my Verizon flip-phone. "This is a telephone. Here, look at it," I hand it to Ward.

"This little thing is a telephone? But it's not connected to anything! Where's the cord?"

"It doesn't need one."

"But how on earth does it...work?"

"Today, in 1958, it doesn't. That thing's just a paperweight in this world. And I almost wish it would remain one, because if you ask me, the cellular telephone was the most obnoxious invention of all time. Essentially what happened was, they created a global network of microwave systems, and these tiny telephones work by means of those microwave networks. In 2011 you can make a phone call from your car as easily as you make one from your kitchen now. And a lot of idiots do, and it causes a lot of traffic accidents. Convenience encourages stupidity. People do stupid things because they can. Imagine being on the subway -- and in 2011 we do still have subways -- and being forced to listen to some idiot sitting next to you, having an argument with his wife on the telephone. Happens all the time. I hate those damn things. I wish I didn't have it. I'm glad I'm in '58 for the moment, where the stupid thing doesn't work."

"So...People are making telephone calls from their cars, and on the subway," Ward says. "I can see where that might get to be a problem."

"You have no idea," I say, rolling my eyeballs.

"What else makes life...faster in your time?"

"Television is a biggie."

"Yes, yes. Tell us what's going to happen with television."

"Oh, you don't want to know. It just gets worse and worse, because there's more and more of it, and it's all the same garbage," I say. "Starting about half a dozen years from now, something called 'cable' begins creeping into our lives. We folks here in '58 all have antennas on our roofs, and we get NBC, CBS and ABC and that's about it. Look at any suburb from an airplane and it looks like a chicken coop, all those antennas on all those houses. Well, the antennas gradually start to disappear as cable services become available. They will hook a cable up to your TV set and you'll be able to get more channels. Of course, you have to pay for that, like you would a magazine subscription, but over the years it greatly increases the number of channels everyone is able to get. The two things feed each other: the more cable, the more channels. By 2011 you can hook up to maybe 900 channels. But it's all the same old trash. It's just that there's so much more of it, it becomes specialized to an incredible degree. Ward, do you like to play golf?"

"Yes, I do play on the weekend sometimes."

"Well, by 2000 there's a Golf Channel. You can just watch golf all the time if you want. There's also a cooking channel, a real estate channel, a couple of channels just for women" -- I nod at June -- "a channel for African-Ameri- sorry, I think here in '58 we still call them 'negroes,' -- a channel for surgery...you name it, it's sickening. Because it has totally fragmented our society. In 1958 almost everybody watches The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday night. By 2005 no two people are watching the same channel at any given time. Everyone's just watching the channel that panders to their particular interest. A country in which 900 people are watching 900 different channels is no longer a country.

"But you asked about the speeding-up of life. Television advertising time eventually gets so expensive that commercials get shorter and shorter and louder and louder. In 2010 I watched an old film of some television commercials from 1963. That was the year Leave It To Beaver went off the air, by way."

"We're going to lose our jobs in 1963?" June asks.

"Yeah, but don't worry about it," I say. "You'll both find plenty of work. So will Jerry and Tony. Anyhow, when I watched these 1963 television commercials from 2005, I couldn't get over how slow they were. TV still hadn't completely severed the umbilical cord that attached it to 1940s radio, and television ads were as leisurely in 1963 as radio ads had been after the Second World War. It wasn't unusual in 1963 for a TV ad to go on for two full minutes. By 2005 that was long, long past. TV advertising time is so expensive in the 21st century, and people's attention spans are so short, that advertisers have basically 15 seconds to BLAST their message at you, and believe me, they do. It's one of the reasons I stopped watching TV."

"I almost hate to ask this, but...in 2010, is there still baseball?" Ward asks.

"You might wish there weren't," I reply. "Yes, there is still baseball. There is still Major League Baseball. In fact, this T-shirt I'm wearing, which I'm sure you wondered about? The San Diego Padres, who are currently in the Pacific Coast League, joined the National League as an expansion team in 1969. Since Mayfield is (I think) in Illinois, correct me if I'm wrong...(Ward and June both turn away, embarassed--they're not sure where Mayfield is, either), you probably never heard of the Padres. Well, Ward, if you're a baseball fan, you have heard of Ted Williams. He played for the San Diego Padres in the 1930s before he signed with the Red Sox. He's going to retire in 1960, and hit a home run in his last game, by the way.

"But baseball will look much different in the future. The 'reserve clause,' which has kept players in a state of virtual serfdom for more than 50 years, owned by their teams and unable to improve their lot, was abolished in 1974. After that, player salaries skyrocketed to such heights that fans began to complain. When a pitcher like Kevin Brown signs a contract with the Dodgers for $100 million --"

"$100 million?" Ward's eyeballs just about pop out. "Well, when they moved to Los Angeles last year, I could have predicted something like that would happen. But $100 million???"

"Keep in mind, Mr. Cleaver, that $100 million in the currency of the year 2000 is considerably less than $100 million dollars here in 1958," I say. "History, as Will Durant said, is inflationary. Money always gets cheaper. By 2000, a dollar won't buy what a quarter will now."

"Still. $100 million dollars?"

"Yes. Even in the year 2000, some eyebrows went up. But Brown's payoff was spread over a seven-year contract, and as so often happens when ballplayers sign these 'monster' contracts, he promptly disintegrated as a pitcher. The game remains the same, by which I mean there are still nine players on the field, and four bases 90 feet apart. But by 2011 there are 15 teams in each league, the American and the National, stretching all the way from Miami to Seattle. That means divisions, and playoffs. The World Series is still played where I come from -- in 2011 the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Texas Rangers -- but with all the additional teams and the layers of playoffs, the Series is played close to Halloween, rather than in early October as it always has been."

"Doesn't it get COLD?"

"Yes. Sometimes, when you're watching a World Series game on television in 2011, the camera will pan across the audience and they'll all be so bundled up you'd think you were watching a football game."

"And the players?"

"They put up with it. After all, they're being paid millions. And it is TV."

"Like this."

"Yeah."