The Graduate

Isla Vista, California [Summer 1990]

It was the straw that would break the proverbial camel’s back, as the saying goes. The last straw, but it would not be the final one.

It was the morning of day three, his new living arrangement. He graduated from college mere weeks before and had not yet won employment. Not from lack of effort, he just had not yet cobbled together success. He had awakened with the intent to skateboard to the university’s on-campus Career Center and continue searching for post-college employment. A two-mile skate from the apartment, an exhilarating way to start the day. But first, a sandwich to sustain himself for his journey, expected to be a few hours. Lunch supplies, purchased the day before, however, were not in the refrigerator where they’d been placed, but on the kitchen floor along with every shelf rack that had been in the fridge. In their place was one thing, a keg of beer in a state of partial consumption. A remnant from the prior evening’s debauching.

A keg of beer. At 23 years old he understood the esteem enjoyed by the precious carbonated barley drink and was, by this age, well acquainted. It was entirely natural, of course, if the keg has contents you do what can be done to preserve it. But the cold cuts, cheese and bread. What, there wasn’t room in the fridge for it to cohabitate with the keg? Answer was, yes, there was room. The fact was, his roommates were buttholes.

He moved in to this apartment unit at the last minute with dudes unknown. The prior lease expired and he needed another hovel to call temporary home. Last minute because he’d been hoping to secure a job cleanly coinciding with his graduation date, it didn’t happen. The night before moving in he’d been at a party, a friend introduced him to another friend. This friend, once removed, had a room to sublet for the summer. There’d be four people in the two-bedroom apartment unit, he’d be one of those four, and he wouldn’t meet them until the next day. There was no time for continued looking. He accepted the sublet. 

On the morning of that first day the four strangers sat in the living room talking. This was their first acquainting. It was proposed they get a keg and get to know each other. Seemed possibly excessive, a whole keg, but determined to give them an honest effort, he consented. That evening they imbibed.

The next morning, day two, one of the roommates, wanting to build on yesterday’s momentum, proposed, “Today, let’s get another keg . . . and let’s have a band.” It was this exchange that crystallized the dynamics of this apartment unit. Sure, I know, only two days, but clearly this incipient routine would not foster a productive summer. He would need to step up his game in the job hunt to extricate himself from the mess to which he had willfully submitted.

We return to day three, the occurrence from the opening sequence. He stood with skateboard in hand and backpack, prepared to make his sandwich. Opening the refrigerator he saw only the keg. The buttholes were scattered about the apartment in varying degrees of sleepful decrepitude. His sandwich fixings on the floor trampled by innumerable drunken feet.

He exited the apartment with resolve. His mind had been made up with a crisply defined mental line of demarcation between himself and these people with whom he shared an address. That was the last straw, day three. Sadly for our waif, additional straws would yet follow.

[1] There was the laxative-prank incident. Tainted tacos were issued to him, under the guise of a peace offering, and naively consumed. They would take effect while on a bowling outing with a chum. The belly cramps were uncomfortable, not nearly as bad as he’d expect from a belly defiled by an overdose of laxatives, but undeniably crummy. He’d heard of ex-lax pranks, this was his first experience.

[2] There was the incident where police burst into the apartment at 2:00 am looking for one of the roommates. While bundled up asleep in bed, two police officers came into his room, turned on the light and started asking questions about said roommate. The degenerate had apparently gotten into a physical altercation with a neighbor and made threats. It was this moment he realized how little he knew about these people.

“Do you know your roommate’s name,” asked one of the officers.

“Is it Levy,” he replied by way of question.

“We’re asking you,” came the volley.

“I think it’s Levy,” he said without confidence.

“We have reason to believe it’s not Levy. Don’t you know who your roommates are,” the officer said before leaving.

No, he didn’t know who his roommates were, at least not beyond their well-earned sordid character. He lay there in bed thinking, the lights having been left on. 

[3] There was the regrettable ‘wet the bed’ episode. His roommate got drunk, passed out, and the remaining conscious roommates put him in the wrong bed. The bed wetter had a rickety bunk configuration with a desk underneath. Too much effort to lift or toss the drunkard into his own bed, so he was laid down unto his roommate’s, our narrator’s bed. Drunkard wet the bed, later awoke and made no reference to having made water. There was no fess up, apology or wash the bedding as act of conciliation.

But back to evening two, “Today, let’s get another keg . . . and let’s have a band.” The keg and band were in full force as the sun went down. Before long the police arrived due to the excessive noise. Trying to be responsible, our guy put his cup of beer on the sidewalk to receive the police officers. [He knew this much of the law. Don’t walk in the street with an open beer. Approach with at least that much respect.] Advising them that he lived there, the officers said it was too loud and too late. These points were inarguable, so he took a different approach. Don’t fight a futile effort, make an ask. 

“Officers, is it OK if the band plays one more song?”

“OK, one more,” relented one of the officers hoping for a peaceful end.

Walking back to the party, he retrieved his beer and said, “We’re OK for one more song. Play one more.” Predictably, the bevy of buttholes knew no restraint.

“Hey, they said one more song. Don’t end it, keep the song going,” said one. And so went the incantation.

There were no social graces with these ones. With defeat assured, he dumped his beer on the front lawn and skated away. He didn’t need to witness the befouling of the night to know how it would end.

Extraction

He finally managed to attain post-college employment. A major relief on multiple fronts. It was an absolute victory advancing into this stage of life, on the cusp of self-sufficiency. His life was finally to move forward after five college years building the bridge to a paycheck. But the most immediate triumph was moving out of his filth-laden hovel and leaving the degenerates behind.

First order of events was the departure from this place. For an added degree of fun he wanted to leave with no warning to the roommates. Simply that he would abruptly cease to live there.

He had been planning his get away for more than a week. Knowing he’d eventually get a job he’d been incrementally stashing possessions at the apartments of local friends. He would return for his gear when he could, expected to be shortly.

The day had finally arrived. After a number of stashing trips  his on-site possessions were minimal and he was well honed for a quick get-away. He’d run the sequence over in his head so many times that his movements would be well practiced. Then, as crisp as that, the moment arrived.

“Hey, you guys want to watch the Baseball All-Star Game today? It starts in 20 minutes,” asked one of the roommates excluding the waif, who by this time was understood to be not included without the need to state as much. 

“That sounds cool. Let’s get some sandwiches and beers,” said a second.

With no further deliberation they all arose, including the waif. The three roommates walked out the front door to get their game-watching grub. Our guy went directly to his room, grabbed his backpack, valise, an armload of remaining clothes and the skateboard, his trusty transport throughout college. Deposited into his car and returned for the 2^nd of three loads, as played out in his head. He dropped his two shirts from the closet onto his mattress, pulled off all the bedding in one swift unkempt move, folded it in half, then rolled the whole thing up and dropped that bundle into the front passenger seat. Last thing. The TV. 

This was 1990, there were no flat screen TVs. This aspect of his mental play-through had not been well conceived. This was a cathode tube boob tube. He couldn’t lift the thing alone without risking collapse or a hernia. He still had time before the roommates, but seeing them again would spoil the occasion. And just like that, his savior appeared in the form of his pal, an acquaintance really, Oz.

“Hey, how’s it going,” opened Oz with his typical grand smile.

“Oz, it’s great to see you, but I can’t talk now and I need your help. My roommates are buttholes and I’m moving out. I need to get my TV out before they return. Will you help me,” he asked.

His face transformed from happiness to determination as if accepting lead on a black ops mission.

“Let’s go,” he said, practically leading the way.

They entered the apartment, unhooked and unplugged, then lifted and deposited into the car. They exchanged brief, though sincere, good byes.

Our guy enjoyed that the roommates would return to a blank wall with no TV on which to watch the game. They’d then wake up the next day to find no electricity. 

Waif drove away with three stops on the itinerary. First was to pickup one of two possession stashes and cancel the electricity at his former apartment. Second, retrieve possession stash two of two and say good-bye to a few pals. The third and final stop was 103 miles to the south. He was going home, his parents’ home. A few days to gather himself before starting the next phase of life. Self-sufficiency awaited.

[This was my life 30 years ago this summer. Things have vastly improved since then. -klem]

The COVID Chronicle, May 1-15, 2020

May 5 [Tuesday] 

The Trump UBI [Universal Basic Income] money was received today. $2,900 for the four of us. This is the COVID Federal stimulus money to assist individuals to deal with the financial difficulties of lost jobs, diminished wages from reduced hours and continued expenses. I spent my portion of the Trump UBI [$1,200 for each adult, $500 for a minor] on subscriptions to the New York Times and The Washington Post. The thought process is that it might be good to follow along what the ‘enemy’ [liberals] are saying, plus I’d like to read their Business sections. The ‘Trump UBI’ moniker is mockingly applied because UBI was presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s anchor idea. The balance of my $1,200 will be allocated to a drywall removal project seeking out the structural issues with which the home is struggling.

May 10 [Sunday] 

Happy Mothers Day! This felt crummy. I’m only 30 miles away from the Safehouse [my parents’ home] but felt inclined to abide by the Shelter In Place protocol, so I didn’t see mom today. Actually, I even called on Thursday and Friday, both days asking if I could visit. Each time I was politely declined as a Covid precaution. So, we wrote a card, mailed it a few days ago. I called today to say the nice Mothers Day things, but it was a let down not seeing her in person today even though we’re close in proximity.

         Mothers Day in San Dimas was nice, though. We took a morning walk as a team, then I later walked to Vons, down the street, for a pre-packaged wrap of flowers. Dinner was a robust batch of Red Robin burgers. So tasty. After dinner I walked down the street across from Dead Grass Park [the grass was entirely dead two decades ago when we moved here and the name stuck, it looks nice now] with a backpack and hand-shovel. I dug up a small California Poppy flower, put it in a plastic bag, brought it home and planted it in the backyard on the slope. There’s got to be a hundred or more poppies down the street there, nobody will miss one little guy. [Wife Klem] admired the poppies this morning on our walk, their big white petals and yellow center. The decision was made for the Mothers Day heist.

[Postscript: The transplanted flower died within a few days. These flowers, as I later came to understand are offshoots from the roots of other poppies. These are not freestanding flowers. So, it was compromised when I dug it out. Sorry, poppy.]

May 12 [Tuesday] 

[My daughter] has been occupying a good deal of time each day split out three ways; Animal Crossing [a video game whose format is the Nintendo Switch and played on the TV in the family room], reading and playing piano. She enjoys the game consisting of an island, which she designs and oversees, which is occupied by six animated and personified animal characters. She’s designed houses for the six animal, island residents, plus herself and characters for [Wife Klem] and [the boy]. She can tell you more about it, this is what I’ve gleaned while doing my own tasks in the background. When not gaming she’s been commendably working her way through the summer reading list for her junior high school year this fall [she’s reading Nate Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and will read, later this summer, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, plus work her way through at least one of the Harry Potter books again]. Oh yes, also, she’s teaching herself piano! We have an electric piano and she’d taken piano lessons two years ago. But lately, she’s taken a sincere interest and has been practicing. She looks at piano lessons on her computer and has been playing, and doing it well, some classic songs that are easily recognizable. Progress is clearly being made and is audibly evidenced.

May 14 [Thursday] 

[The boy] left the premises today to assist [Wife Klem] at Lowe’s. She’s starting an aboveground garden in the backyard, tomatoes, peas and banana peppers, and needed an assist lugging around the bags of soil. But so, back to [the boy]. The guy didn’t leave the premises for all of April! No joke. He’s concerned about Corona, of course, and his overriding instincts for precaution have dominated. He’d been out in the backyard, but had not left the premises, not even to the mailbox, since late March. Six weeks without leaving the house. By the time he got halfway through April I was rooting for him to complete the month. He’d been rocking [Wife Klem]’s cardio machine several ties per week to beat back atrophy. When we got to May, though, he was still resisting. I was happy to see the guy don a mask this morning to hit Lowe’s for the soil lugging.

-klem

The COVID Chronicle, April 16-31, 2020

  

April 16 [Thursday] 

Face masks are no longer recommended in Los Angeles County, they are now REQUIRED when entering a store. I still think this is overblown, but I don the mask when making my routine rounds to Vons and the pharmacy-post office to mail my EBay sales. I think it is overreach but I comply by means of the plain white N95 disposable mask I had in the garage from some prior long-forgotten project.

 

April 17 [Friday]

The stock market had taken a massive dump in February due to worldwide COVID worries, illness raging and businesses closing. The stock market [NYSE] lost 34% from late February through March 23! Huge drop, worrisome to endure. We don’t get too hung up on these wild swings, [Wife Klem] and I, but look, I’m 52 years old and we’ve got a good chunk put away in the stock market [our 401K plus two Roth IRAs] intended to fund our retirement, a hopeful seven years away. It wasn’t easy shaking off that kind of fluctuation, but we stayed in the market and it’s bounced back 29% through April 17. Anyway, hope it steadies itself out. I don’t want to have to add years of work at the end to compensate for a diminished retirement fund.

 

April 18 [Saturday]

We’re more than four weeks into Shelter In Place and the Groundhog Day effect has become significant. Every day is largely the same, minus small variations from one workday to the next, but every day abides by the same routine. Well, today, a bulwark has been established against the Groundhog effect. We purchased Just Dance, a video game played on the Nintendo Switch. It’s viewed on the TV with music and participants dance [follow along], mimic, the dancing image of a person on the screen. [My daughter] and I, it turns out, are the only two participants, [the boy] and momma decline. My enthusiasm for a break from the daily routine is matched by a waning confidence in my knees’ ligaments.

[Postscript: Just Dance lasted for two weeks then dropped out of the routine.]

 

April 25 [Saturday] 

[Wife Klem] and I are of opposing positions regarding Covid and the precautionary protocols. I would like businesses to reopen, people can continue to socially distance and wear masks, and choose for themselves if they want to go out. This would allow some semblance of the economy to struggle forward, people start working again earning an income. She suggests that it’s too soon to reopen, there are still too many new cases of Corona. Shelter In Place should continue and the Federal government should issue a second wave of UBI checks. We respectfully disagree. I love [Wife Klem] and enjoy when she plays along with my silly requests of ‘Have you a Covid update for me?’ She’s immersed herself in Covid news and will rattle off the latest update.

         We are probably years away from knowing if the cure will end up being worse than the disease. I understand Corona kills predominantly old people. Those deaths are tragic and sad. Conversely, the loss of jobs, businesses going bankrupt and people going into debt [because they are currently no longer earning a paycheck] will cause years of life, in economic terms, to be lost on the back end of lives. Studies show that wealth is a strong indicator of life expectancy. So, the economic question to be resolved in coming years will be a comparison of what was worse? The lives lost from the virus or the ‘years of life’ lost due to the precautionary measures.

 

-klem

The COVID Chronicle: April 1-15, 2020

  

April 7 [Tuesday]

Work held early excitement those first couple weeks of Shelter In Place. It was very dramatic and so sudden. The excitement of working ‘strictly virtual,’ though, has evaporated. I’ll gladly make the best of this, working from the convenience of home donning shorts and a t-shirt. I’ve had to change up my work tactics and game plan a little bit. Pre-COVID had me at agents’ offices for 1.5-hour in-office training and marketing sessions. For purposes of retaining the attention of my agents and team members during ‘strictly virtual’ I’ve decreased the Skype training sessions to 45 minutes. If someone really digs the material I can easily extend the presentation beyond the scheduled 45 minutes. But attention span is more easily retained when in person. If this is my work struggle, grappling to retain attention, I’ll certainly choose this over some of the destruction that rages in the real world at present.

April 12 [Sunday]

We’ve been taking weekend morning walks, the four of us. [The four includes Ghost Dog, not the boy.] We’d like [the boy] to come with, but we’re allowing him freedom of choice because he’s not a minor. The guy chooses not to. We don’t bristle, we allow it to go. Heck, the guy’s not a child and we certainly don’t want him to feel like it, so we allow his autonomy hoping we can get him to occasionally concede and join us. Anyway, I enjoy starting the days like this. Get up early to read, then breakfast before the walk.

April 13 [Monday] 

Work had set a tentative 4/17 sunset date for our strictly virtual. I was hoping we’d be released for at least some incidental field work, but no. Today ‘strictly virtual’ was extended through the end of May! I’m feeling beaten down with statements and orders of governmental acquiescence to COVID. It’s important to open businesses and open the economy, that too will save lives, but there’s too much ‘shut down’ inertia. I was surprised at the extended ‘strictly virtual,’ but accepted it with disappointed resignation. Oh well, Flatten The Curve, goes the mantra.

April 14 [Tuesday]

As this Shelter In Place sluggishly progresses I am frustrated in the sense of losing time that won’t be productive. [The struggle to turn Dead Time into Alive Time, as aptly vocalized by TheDailyStoic.com, a daily email to which I subscribe.] The frustration is the prospect of the Shelter In Place restrictions eventually being lifted and I would find myself in no more a forward position than when this started in mid-March. I must find a way to advance my own productivity, not just the pages on the calendar. So, I took up the challenge to turn Dead Time into Alive Time.

         My Alive Time challenge is to peruse the CA Contractors State License Board website looking for local general contractors who are licensed and have a Work Comp policy in force. This will allow me to discern business-owners operating with diligence. I want to find a contractor to tear out the ceiling-drywall in our family room so that we may find the house’s structural problem hidden within. [This project needs further explanation but this is not the place for it.] I will email those who qualify by these standards and await their email reply. At the end of Shelter In Place I want to have a few contractors chosen with whom to meet.

April 15 [Wednesday] 

The nature of my work keeps me tuned to the goings on of local business environments. Possibly over aware to being hypersensitive, but I am of the opinion that the government-induced COVID restrictions have set in place a force more destructive than the virus itself. I am sympathetic to business owners who are trying to stay financially afloat even though they have been forced to close their business. These closures, of course, causing millions of employees to, subsequently, go without pay.

         With this upwelling of inchoate tragic sentiment I find myself both thankful and guilty. As a family the four of us are going to be OK. I’m thankful that my paycheck will continue to keep us secure and healthy, also guilty because we are safe in this respect while so many others grapple with huge question marks. Oh well, we move forward.

-klem

The COVID Chronicle: March 16–31, 2020

[Chronicled for posterity.]

March 16 [Monday morning] 

My last day of freedom to roam the wilds was this morning. I conducted a field foray for work into Los Angeles and West Hollywood. A local insurance agent and I took a drive to review four large Apartment building prospects. The agent was hoping to insure them, I was present to confirm eligibility and provide binding authority, pending eligibility. We’d known each other for more than ten years in a friendly work capacity and got along very well, it was enjoyable company. We met the owner at the first location, he wore a mask, the agent and I did not. Nobody shook hands.

The drive there should have taken well over an hour, closer to two even. But traffic was surprisingly light and we got there in just over an hour. The return drive was also surprisingly light and driving through the streets of Los Angeles were rather pleasant due to the novelty of light traffic.

Shortly after noon I received a call from Wife Klem while we were on our drive back to Claremont, a 10-minute drive from San Dimas. She was advising of Shelter In Place having been decreed and the importance of us returning home pronto. We did so with no further adieu. So it began, the Shelter In Place order. The agent was later successful in writing all four of those Apartment policies!

March 16 [Monday afternoon] 

A work email to me and my field colleagues has advised that we are to work strictly virtual until the end of March. My initial impression was disbelief mixed with naïve enthusiasm for a paid stay-cation for the next few weeks. My colleagues and I had been working remotely since 2014, from our homes, but not like this, virtually. Pre-COVID I had appointments throughout the week at local agents’ offices to conduct training and marketing sessions for the commercial products. But this, the strictly virtual instructions, I enjoyed the staying home, not having to drive to meetings or dress up in trousers and wingtips. My meetings will be conducted virtually via Skype instead of live one-on-one in their offices. This took some initial retooling. Content was changed to make it more visually appealing [showing screens and data virtually instead of being there live talking and conveying ideas], also shortened the sessions to 45-minutes instead of 1:30 hours in agent’s offices.

         There was plenty of work to do, especially with questions related to policies regarding possible coverage to pay for COVID-related losses. I was of the mind that this strictly virtual work was overreaching for safety, but I would gladly comply. 

March 25 [Wednesday] 

My field colleagues and I received updated work instructions extending our ‘strictly virtual’ capacity through April 15. I was completely naïve on this and it caught me by surprise. Oh no, this is no stay-cation, this is serious! Sure, I was well aware of Wuhan, China and the deaths in Italy, but come on, the shutting down of the world’s economy? A mental shift occurred in my head, maybe this won’t end soon. The business closures, economic devastation and job losses were just now at the beginning. Businesses had temporarily closed in mid-March, but this no longer had a temporary feel to it and business closures sparked off in thick rolling waves with hopes of opening soon seeming to have been dashed. Yes, I understand, death rages due to COVID, but what of the life wreckage starting to accumulate for the living, those who would live beyond this.

I would conduct my work tasks to the best of my ability, of course, and this would be the least of my concerns. We would personally socially distance, limit, if not entirely cut-off, contact with those outside our home. Dinners every other week with my parents and brother’s family are discontinued until further notice. Also, big news, Tom Hanks and his wife are laid up in Australia with COVID.

March 27 [Friday]

Shelter In Place is wreaking havoc unto the lives of millions. [The boy], though, thrives! He’d been living in the dorms at Cal State Fullerton, college life and dining at the campus gastropods did not agree with him. Well, he was sent home in late February due to the closing of the dorms and campus. He will complete the balance of the semester taking classes online from the comforts of his bedroom, much to his preference. His mornings and afternoons are spent with classes and studying, the evenings and night often find him video gaming virtually with his pals. I know there’s a mess being stirred up around the world, but it’s a comfort to hear my guy giggling and laughing behind closed doors as he whiles away the evenings with his friends in his spare time.

         [My daughter], meanwhile, is not as keen on Shelter In Place as her brother. She had been enjoying her sophomore year in high school and the camaraderie of her Dive Team teammates. Going from a busy schedule of practice five evenings per week to being in lock-down every day and night with one’s parents is a drastic change. She’s making the best of it but understandably would prefer interaction on a larger scale.

-klem

COVID-19, In the Beginning

So It Begins [as documented on 6/1/2020]:

This is a few months late, but I’m finally resolved to document my sentiments about COVID-19, Shelter In Place quarantine, its tragedies and related inconveniences. The Coronavirus has been called a 100-year pandemic, comparing, of course, to the Spanish Flu of 1918. If so, per’aps this narrative, to be continued into the undecided future, much like the virus itself, may be of personal interest to reflect upon some day. My thoughts as documented throughout the ordeal of pandemic follow.

March 13, 2020 [Friday evening] [The following is a transcript from my voice recording made while walking the dog on the evening of March 13. I was riled up after hearing of the COVID precautions and school closures. This is what I off-gassed to myself to preserve for posterity. I was fired up.]

         “March 13, 2020. It’s Friday the 13^th. So we have a bunch of Coronavirus panic going on. A bunch of businesses closing down, Disneyland. [Work] hasn’t shut everything down but we are being encouraged to work virtually where possible. Talk of the government giving a UBI [Universal Basic Income], a monetary stipend, to the citizens. But this whole thing, I think it’s overblown, it’s a panic. I don’t like the government causing the collapse of the economy, and then at the same time calling itself a savior by giving money, a UBI. We will see six months or a year from now we’ll have a better idea is this really a panic causing the depression, a global economy being shut down. Or are we really going to lose millions of people to this thing, in which case it would not have been panic, it would not have been over reaction, it would have been appropriate steps. And my feeling, government provide information and then let people make their own decisions. Infants and old people, they’re most at risk, they maybe sequester themselves to their home confines, but to tell everyone that you can’t meet in groups of 250 or more, that’s a little overbearing. 

         And the part that really burns me, is all the businesses that are gong to be shut down and go bankrupt and have to close because of all the people being scared into not going out. You’ve got restaurants that are closing down, you’ve got Disneyland, and baseball and basketball games, meanwhile there are businesses, there are vendors who have paid for access to these arenas to stay in business, and if they’re shutting down then these businesses are going to shut down. So you end up with people losing their jobs, people losing their businesses and continuing that forward, losing their homes or their worth and then what do you have? You’ve got collapse.

How about the government just provide information, take some reasonable precautions and then get out of the way for people to make their own decisions. The government is making decisions to protect the people from themselves, but meanwhile the people have no protection from the government.

         Meanwhile, the hoarding has commenced. Toilet paper, apparently, is a tough commodity to come by, water. And quite frankly, with the water, that I don’t understand. We can still turn on the faucet, there’s water in there. As far as the toilet paper, that I don’t quite get. But I guess if we get in a pinch we could by some newspaper and treat it like we do Ghost Dog’s poop. 

         The stock market collapse is in full swing. That I’m not particularly concerned about. We’re not getting out of the market. We have moved some of our mutual funds into more conservative investments, but it’s still in the stock market. There’s going to be a swing. Most of our stock market money is in our 401K and our Roth IRAs, so we don’t need that for at least eight years. The market will certainly rebound by then, probably double by then. So that’s not a major issue.

         But sure, tough to see the paper money go away, or the value on paper go away. But, it’s going to rebound. These are the times where people can make money. If you panic and get out, then you lose, you lock in your losses. But if you stay the course and you don’t need the money right away then you’re fine. So, hey, if the collapse continues another few more months that would be a wonderful time to get deeper into the market. But we will see.

         [The boy] is going to be home for the next five weeks from Fullerton. That, I think, is a bit of a bummer. I want him to be on his own developing and accepting and coming to terms with his own independence, his budding adultness. I’m not really as keen on having him as a fifth-year high school student. I want him on his own, making decisions on his own, and realizing he can do life on his own without getting second opinions from his elders.

         And also, you know, [my daughter]’s going to be home for four weeks, three weeks. And I like having the kids home but the idea of teaching them to panic when something’s not right, I think that is a crummy message to send. I want them to be able to be presented with a situation, obtain some facts from a reasonable source and make a decision. I don’t want them to have to experience a mandated shut down.

         This is a teaching opportunity and I think those in charge are failing it. 

         OK, having that out of the way, but it’s fun with momma at home, and she’s talking about all the supplies she’s got and all the movies we can watch. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of panic happening out and I hope it is short lived, but right now it’s a Friday afternoon, I’m taking Ghost Dog for a walk and I’ll be home soon with momma and we’re going to be watching movies and having a fun evening. Maybe have a little hooch. So that, I can get on board with. But the idea of shutting the down of businesses and the economy, no, I’m not going to get on board with that.

         OK. Thank you for hearing me out.

         I am 52 at present, 52 years. Now, if I were in my late 60s or 70s, maybe I approach with a different philosophy. Maybe there are some additional restrictions under which I lead my day-to-day life. Maybe I’m not going to leave the house, maybe I’ll at that point avoid going to large crowds. But I think it’s important people have those decisions made for themselves rather than by the government.”

-klem

Lodovico

1926, Cassino, Italy

A 17-year old Lodovico answered the front door to a well-dressed man addressing himself as an uncle. ‘Uncle,’ thought Lodovico, ‘none of my people would be dressed like this. My people, the few I know, are all here, local.’ He called to his mom and dashed out the back door. He didn’t know what was brewing with this stranger, but this bewildering scene sparked his instincts for self-preservation, so he ran from it.

He and his mother lived in a house on three acres of olive trees. They made and sold olive oil. It helped to pay the bills, what little income it brought in.

Thirty minutes, maybe more, his mom and this man came to him in the yard. He was in his favorite tree when they came looking for him. His mother was crying. He figured soon, he would be, too. People dressed like that did not come to their home by accident, nor, generally, with good news.

The man had taken off his coat and was doing all the talking. There was a likable quality to him and he was straightforward. He told an unbelievable story. Unbelievable, yet Lodovico must believe it, because the story being told was his own.

The man, he explained, was truly an uncle, Lodovico’s godfather. He was talking directly to the boy now. His parents live in America, they had saved money and sent him, the boy’s godfather, back to Italy to come get him and bring him back.

“I’m your uncle, your godfather. I’m here to take you back with me to the United States and you’ll live with your family,” he was saying.

“The United States,” the boy questioned. He looked to his mom and asked, “Who is this man? Are we going somewhere?”

His mom was crying. She was inconsolable and couldn’t talk.

“Is he calling you ‘mom’? Did you never tell him? What about all the letters his mother sent to him? Have you also not told him he has brothers and sisters,” said the man glaring at the old lady.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” she finally managed between sobs. All these years, Lodovico had always wondered why his mom was so much older than his friends’ moms. She was really his grandmother!

It was fifteen years earlier when Lodovico was a two-year old infant, his parents boarded a ship from Cassino, Italy to the United States. His parents had a baby boy, Lodovico’s little brother, and bundled up all their worldly possessions. They were moving to the United States to make a better living for themselves and their family. They were so bogged down with things to carry that the grandmother was tasked with bringing Lodovico to the ship so he, too, could travel with them. The grandmother, not wanting to be left alone with nothing and nobody decided she would keep the two-year old Lodovico. She did not deliver him to the dock. The retching horror his parents must have experienced as the ship pulled away! And just like that, he’d lost his family. Lodovico became his grandmother’s son, and she, his mom. The boy knew nothing of any family other than his grandmother. Until today, and in a few days he’d leave Cassino and his grandmother for good.

He was a rambunctious young man. A handful, one might say, being raised by a single parent, but rather shy one-on-one. His uncle explained that he had two younger brothers and three younger sisters! They knew about him, but he knew nothing of them.

Lodovico sat quietly sobbing listening to the story unravel. He wasn’t angry with his grandma, she was all he had ever known. Besides, he knew that her greatest fear was now to be realized. He was going to America. She would be all alone living in the old country.

His grandmother was old and needed help. He told the neighbors across the street that if they looked out for her that they could have the acreage with olive trees and the home when she passed away. 

“What about all the letters his mom wrote to him,” asked the uncle of the grandmother, starting to cool off.

“I have them, I saved them,” she responded without moving.

His grandmother would give him the large bundle of letters before he left. His luggage was packed, what there was of it. These letters, many of them yellowed with age, would help him to pass the days on the ship. The trip to America was long, two weeks before arriving at Ellis Island. He was relegated below deck to third class.

He arrived to a degrading inspection by a bunch of disinterested inspectors standing before him and his fellow emigrants. The new arrivals stood sheepishly in a line donning only their underpants.

“Name,” asked the inspector in English.

Silence.

“Name,” he asked more agitated this time.

Silence from Lodovico as he started looking around as if asking with his eyes, ‘What’s he want?’

“Name, come on,” said the inspector getting angry.

The person standing in line behind him told him to say his name.

“Lodovico.”

“What?”

“Lodovico.”

“David. Next,” said the inspector misunderstanding what was said. He impatiently assigned an incorrect, new name by writing it down on the form, then moved on to the next man in line. And so it was. His name became David Tedesco in one swift, degrading episode.

He emerged from Ellis Island with his godfather leading the way. It was explained how his family missed him so much, how happy they were that he was coming home. A party was awaiting him. A party of strangers, he thought to himself. He felt alone, scared, but he would make the most of this opportunity. A positive attitude he would carry with him forever forward.

The taxi ride itself was amazing. So much was passing before his eyes out the window of the car. He’d heard in the old country that the streets of America were paved with gold. He had believed it, until seeing for himself this was not so.

What he did see, though, was opportunity. Work, jobs and bustling activity were all around him. He knew he’d be fine. Making and selling olive oil with his grandmother had been difficult scraping by on meager proceeds. He knew hard work and hardship. 

The taxi pulled up to the address on Cardoni Street in Detroit, Michigan. Faces in the window looking at him, people filing out the door yelling to him, everyone speaking in a foreign tongue. All his brothers and sisters and he could communicate with none of them. Except his mom and dad, everyone spoke only English.

He took a deep breath, put on a nervous smile and stepped out of the car.

[This is the story of my Grandpa Tedesco (1909-2000). I miss him and grandma very much.]

[Photo circa 1926.]

Fallen

He was falling at 120 miles per hour and the situation was beyond desperate. He was falling out of the sky without a parachute from 30,000 feet, the temperature was 38F and he had no jacket. His countenance, though, reflected no panic, just irritation and a strong look of discomfort.

A kind of black market arrangement had gone bad. Horribly bad, one might argue, but degree of awfulness was of little consequence at this point. There had been a dollar value agreed upon to pay for certain services, those services had been rendered. The other party later consented to accepting an equivalent dollar value in Bit Coin. Electronic payment was made. There was then a subsequent and considerable exchange rate drop for Bit Coin compared to dollars. The drop had been favorable to fallen man, not his former business partners. The resultant effect was that the other party ended up with significantly less than what had been originally contracted. They requested the Bit Coin payment be rescinded and revert back to dollars. Their suggestion had been rather aggressive. It had also been staunchly rebuffed.

“Nope, tough shoes. A deal’s a deal,” responded fallen man, not one to be easily swayed in the face of aggression. The thing about crooks, a deal isn’t always a deal and the customer is not always right.

The unsatisfied party retrieved him late one morning as he exited his favorite bakery with chocolate chip brownie, hot chocolate and a banana in hand. [“Yes, a banana, please. A guy’s got to eat healthy,” he teased the clerk.] A scuffle ensued out front of the bakery. It took four opposing crooks to overpower him and stuff our guy into a waiting vehicle. He somehow managed to retain possession of his breakfast despite delivering a well-connected head butt to one opposing forehead, a powerful and optimally placed kick to the crotch to a second, and a knee to the larynx of a third. The immobilized disputants were helped up off the sidewalk and into the vehicle. He sat in the back seat and, as the vehicle sped away to a destination unknown, savored his meal and hot cocoa. And he didn’t offer to share. The meal’s debris including banana peel were unceremoniously dropped to the floor of the vehicle and rigorously mashed in with the heel of his shoe. After the ordeal outside the bakery, this went uncontested.

The ride to the airfield was brief. There were weapons involved in his transition from vehicle to aircraft. He knew his fate, wondered only how much he could affect the score sheet. There were three more of them, not including the pilot, as the first four thugs had become somewhat worn out after the bakery capture. The three new ones were big fellas, bigger fellas than their spent predecessors. Also dopes, as he visually and correctly assessed. Our guy was large and equipped with well-honed street smarts, except for being picked up walking out of a bakery. But still, these odds were crummy, he figured, as he embarked the aircraft.

At 30,000 feet the side door opened. Bad planning, that kind of strong wind is tremendously difficult to maneuver. He opted to be the aggressor and took advantage of the confusion created by the high velocity wind soaring into the fuselage. He ran down the aisle toward the open door and, though unsteady, managed a flying kick launching one addled foe off the doorframe and out the door. Two more to go. He then dropped down hunching low on his feet as if preparing for a weight-training deadlift. With the soles of his shoes flat on the floor the two assailants approached and, with his chin tucked down into his chest, projected himself upward like a missile and was rewarded with a solid sounding crack. A broken nose, he guessed, based on the quantity of blood that began flowing to the floor as if someone had left a sink spigot running. He didn’t usually fight by nefarious means, but in a fight to the death different rules applied.

The fun had to stop eventually. Today it would end when the third combatant charged him and pushed him out the door. With that he was done. All done with one final act to carry out. Bubba was wearing a belt with a large buckle, an inviting handhold opportunity. He reached for it on the way out, desperately and successfully, landed the grab and pulled his adversary out the door with him. Mental note, he thought, jumpsuit instead of trousers with belt to minimize grab holds should these roles be reversed.

The melee took only 20 seconds but was conclusive. It ended three out of four of them. Our guy was not victorious, but he’d made his choice years before. He’d decided to operate on the wrong side of the law. The dark economy had its benefits. There was often ample cash, provided your offered services were dirty enough and cleanly conducted. But of course, his engagements were with those who lived by a similarly dirty or questionable code of ethics. Those ethics, in many cases were simple. ‘Do not be wronged.’ That was it. Not ‘Do no wrong,’ rather the perceivedwrong was the deed that necessitated a counter blow. That’s what we had here, one party perceived they had been wronged. And so three of them fell from the sky.

As he fell from the aircraft, he accelerated for the first twelve seconds, at which point he attained terminal velocity. Henceforth he fell unimpeded at 120 miles per hour with no slowing down until something broke his fall. From a starting point of 30,000 feet that’d be almost three minutes.

The first few seconds were a tremendous shock to his system, as one would imagine. Aside from the high-velocity tumbling toward earth, it was so cold that he had difficulty breathing. Also, he was unprepared for a chilly freefall and was caught while donning only blue jeans plus a t-shirt under a long sleeve jersey, and, of course, footwear, quarter-top Chuck Taylor sneakers. His garb was no match for the harsh elements and he struggled. There was no relaxed, full capacity inhale followed by a complete exhale. His breathing was reduced to a sequence of erratic and rushed partial inhales followed by unfulfilling, partial exhales. Then, of course, there was the fact of oxygen scarcity at this altitude.

Fallen man was no mountain climber, but he’d seen enough Mount Everest documentaries to know there was an oxygen deficiency at altitude. Mount Everest, at its peak of 29,028 feet, boasted of only 33% amount of oxygen as found at sea level. The cold temperatures to which he was being subjected was more of an inconvenience compared to the lack of oxygen. Or maybe not, pending the outlook. If he lapsed from consciousness from lack of oxygen he’d avoid the agony of the fall, matched by a corresponding never regaining consciousness. The inverse had him battling first to stay conscious despite the lack of oxygen, only then to also contend with the uninviting temperature, finally, only then to figure out what to do in the remaining 150 seconds before he stopped. There it is. Oxygen, temperature and velocity. Meanwhile, the earth approached. The only thing below him was miles of ocean in every direction. He’d leave no trace.

He was falling at a rate of speed where he couldn’t easily breathe, even without the near freezing temperature and wind chill. He would have likened it to hanging your head out the window of a vehicle traveling at 120 mph, although in the moment he did know that precise speed. Regardless, not a comfortable task to undertake. He instinctively cupped his hands and put them over his nose and mouth. Doing so allowed him to breathe the air that slowed down just enough as the air molecules collided with his hands and decelerated a tiny bit. Eased minimally, but not much improved. But still, the cold and wind chill factor were the worst part of this experience.

His eyeballs were also experiencing difficulty. They were miserable, in fact, due to velocity causing ocular discomfort. He did what he could. The horizon was vast from up there. The sky was beautifully cloudless. If it wasn’t so cold he might even enjoy the view for a while. But for only a short while, two more minutes anyway. He thought, briefly, how thankful he was not to be inclined to bouts of acrophobia, because that’d really be bad. This, of course, made him chuckle, even under the dire circumstances.

The ground approached, as did his demise. The earth looked less beautiful as it got larger, like looking at the pores on his face up close in a mirror. Better from a distance than close up, not that he considered himself to be a striking beauty.

He was not surprised at such an ending for himself. He was, after all, a self-acknowledged and unapologetic crook. There was no retirement from this profession. There was, typically, only a final day of work. It was not the nature of this conclusion that surprised him, only that it would be today . . . and from an airplane. He had peace as he fell, though. He was not peaceful, but had peace. Knowing a dramatic finish was entirely to be expected and that he’d planned well. 

He had a girlfriend of near ten years. She did ask questions about his line of work. He was dutifully vague in his answers and she was thankfully soft on pressing for clarification. She was good-natured, positive in demeanor, and yes, naïve. Maybe even purposefully so. The advance planning, though, was well conducted.

He’d been mentored, so to speak, years earlier by another crook, a respected elder of sorts. Until the elder’s mysterious disappearance as fallen man would do today. But the elder’s lessons were adeptly digested and played forward. Cars, houses, financial accounts were all in her name. He also did what he could to shape her thinking by sparking her thought process for his eventual, involuntary disappearance. 

“You know, if you were to ever be done with me you’d be OK. Everything’s in your name. You’d have no need to worry about money,” he’d try to playfully suggest.

“Why do you always say things like that? I’m not interested in getting rid of you,” she’d counter.

“I’m just saying. You know, if I got wrecked in a car accident . . .”

“I know, contact Cassidy, he’ll know what to do,” she’d blurt out knowing this to be the desired response.

Cassidy was a friend, one who could be trusted, but must also be kept at arm’s distance. The distance was necessitated out of respect for his pal and his profession. He was a financial consultant whose work was commendably regarded by colleagues. He didn’t need the cloud summoned by an association with a dark figure like fallen man. They were friends from before grade school whose lives took wildly divergent paths. A mutual respect prevented them from working together. One didn’t want to ask and officially learn of the other’s crooked source of income. The other didn’t want to impel the one to compromise his impeccable integrity and risk ruining his means of profession. Fallen man had never engaged his friend’s honest talent at finances. But if he were to pass away, his girlfriend would be well and honestly kept up with a financial adviser like this. That much had been made clear. 

As the ocean made its rapid approach he’d hope simply that the messages took root. A brief mourning, then she’d keep living life. With that, he touched down.

-klem

Piano Teacher

He’d learned piano as a little boy in South America. Lessons were conducted thrice weekly by private tutor and he reveled in the instruction. This had gone on for years, all the grade school years including the summer months. It continued into high school before ending abruptly, and involuntarily, when he was 16 years.

His father had earned a good wage as a government attorney. The job paid handsomely, enough for the family mansion, cars, servants and assorted luxuries. Then his father passed away in a car accident of questionable circumstance. Murder was mentioned in hushed tones in select company, something about payback for a successful conviction of a renowned drug dealer. Nothing could be proven and evidence was curiously absent, and the little evidence that was collected had been misfiled or lost. The results of his father’s passing, however, were ever present.

It started when the servants departed saying they hadn’t been paid dating back to the prior month’s work. Yelling expletives as they walked out the double doors carrying as much of the family silver and crystal as they could. Mother and son, too shocked at the vulgar transformation of their trusted former servants and sometimes confidantes, did not try to stop the wealth-confiscating outflow.

The expensive automobiles, meanwhile, sat immobile in the driveway and garage. His mother had never needed to drive so she had never learned. The boy was also not licensed and had never learned. Where would they need to go that servants couldn’t simply drive them?

The police eventually came to the home and allowed the bank’s representative to reclaim it because the mortgage was overdue. Overdue, of course, for there was no paycheck coming in and there were no finances saved. At least, the bank officials claimed there were no savings and no investments. The bank just commandeered those accounts, accurately accused the mother with no proof to dispel the guilty chuckles of denial. And with that, they were broke. Taking only what they wore and what could be hastily grabbed on the way out, they were evicted.

They moved in with impoverished family, arriving in exorbitantly rich garb for that part of town, and they were reluctantly taken in. Reluctant because they had not shared the wealth when times were good.

It was here the boy started dabbling in drugs. Not using, selling. He had no need for their use, his focus had become crystal clear and drug use might blunt that drive, he reasoned. A rage had been lit inside him. He wanted to get back to that lifestyle and the drugs, he saw, could help to pave the way back. There were risks, but the potentially escalated timeframe was deemed an acceptable trade-off. The irony was not wasted on him. The industry that tore his family apart was now his engine.

Turns out he was good at this new trade, possessing a knack, said some. Selling was easy for him, it came naturally and luck seemed to lead his way. He rose in ranks of the powerful cartel until he was expatriated to the United States to further conduct his illicit work. From there he would lead the drug mule program.

He had impressed management with his ingenuity and ‘can-do’ attitude. Year by year in the cartel he had gradually, and competently, made a name for himself. ‘This one gets things done,’ it was said of him. Truth is, his motivation was an enraging fire of anger. He and his family had been wronged and he wanted to get back to his privileged existence. The draw was not the power associated with wealth, but simply the luxury of not having to care about anything. It was not sophisticated, but apparently, nor was he.

His remuneration increased and his bonuses had become engorged. He had his own apartment and lived well, but remained apprehensive, tentative, after what happened to his parents and the home in which he grew up. Life still had an ephemeral sense of delicateness, like it lacked foundation and could easily be upended. He would someday buy another home, he told himself, but that day had not yet arrived. First, he must bring the cartel’s mule program to fulfill its potential. This was the 1980s and South American cocaine and heroin ruled the streets. 

The mule program entailed one, sometimes two, South Americans, often adolescents or young adults, induced to visit the United States for a vacation. Only, it wasn’t a vacation but a drug delivery. The cartel would assist the traveler to ingest as much as two pounds of drugs. The drugs would be cut and loaded into tiny balloons, the mule would swallow the balloons, often up to two dozen, three dozen for experienced travelers. They would be paid $5,000 cash or more for their trip, depending on the number of balloons swallowed. Of course, they’d be dead should there be rupture or an intestinal obstruction. They must also, of course, remember the balloon count, as they would pass normally, so say the bowels.

Poverty raged throughout his homeland. His lower-ranking colleagues would find young adults, people in their 20s, willing to take a risk for a big payday. These would be his mules. Finding the people was not difficult, especially if the details of danger were to be skirted, which they were. Their bellies were consensually loaded with drugs, ingested with cooperative difficulty despite being dipped in honey, they were then sent to him in the United States. He would gather the ‘tourists,’ procure their retrieval, pay the bonuses, then get the merchandise circulating for purchase. It was easy and hugely profitable. Until the mistake, as there would inevitably be one, dealing with humans and their affinity for mishaps.

The program went without hitch for almost a year with weekly deliveries. Then came trouble. A package opened on a flight, the traveler died while still in the air and police came looking for the source.

Without hesitation he left the airport calmly and undetected. He went straight to his apartment, packed his necessities, including a duffel bag of cash. He walked away, leaving his car behind to increase the degree of difficulty in finding him, and took a bus. He rode through the night before stopping at a diner in a university town three states away. An advertisement caught his eye on the message board in the diner’s foyer. ‘Piano Teachers Needed.’

His mind wandered reflecting back to those peaceful days of his youth. His life, his very existence, had been comfortable and well provided for. He longed for those days, his mom and dad together every evening home for supper, himself happily babbling on about his daily school excitement. Standing there before the diner’s message board, his fingers subconsciously began playing scales, the piano warm-up exercise. He pulled the tear-off and would call the phone number.

The interview went well. Meaning, the questions revolved simply around piano playing. He was asked to “Play something. Anything, one of your favorites.”

He was nervous as he took a seat on the piano bench. ‘How long had it been,’ he thought, even though he knew exactly how long, fifteen years, since the day his father was murdered. 

Play, he did, The Entertainer, his favorite when he was a carefree child, playing sometimes in an endless loop. The nervousness dissipated as soon as his fingertips hit the ivory. It was as if he was in a room by himself, just him and the piano. His fingers had not forgotten. His eyes closed, fingers dexterously swimming across the keyboard, his mind a million miles away from reality. His confidence reaffirmed, sweat on his brow, he paused, speaking no words, took a deep breathe then delved directly and deeply back to the piano into the culmination of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons’ Summer. Passionate and flawless, his heart racing. He was brought back by a double tap on the shoulder.

“You play marvelously. When can you start?”

Walking away from the cartel is, of course, against protocol.  There is only one way out of this industry, death, like his last mule. He had no aversion to death, provided it was well-earned and deserved. His mule, though, was not one of those. Everyone in the organization, however, was deserving, as was he. 

He earned only a pittance teaching piano. The hourly wage was minute and hours worked were intermittent and few. He didn’t care. He had not been teaching for the money, he did so for access to a piano and because it makes his soul sing. He wanted to help others feel how he felt as a youngster. He hadn’t experienced this since his youth prior to the eviction. Piano playing was his cause. Only, he found out too late in life to put it to a constructive purpose.

His money would easily last a year or more, but he wasn’t worried about that. He’d been living frugally and peacefully, but he had faith in the efficiency of the cartel. He would not outlive his duffel bag of cash.

His death order had certainly been issued. It just hadn’t yet caught up to him. It would some day, maybe tomorrow, next week or two months from now. Idling in his car at a stoplight with a walk up headshot. Maybe he’d return some evening to his apartment and his assassin would be seated in the dark in his leather beanbag chair facing the front door. Or a muffled shot at a nightclub some evening. It didn’t matter. 

He’d made peace with this part of his life. He’d made choices and would accept their ugly recriminations. Until then, he’d teach piano. And he’d do so beautifully.

[Inspired by a family outing perusing used books at a thrift shop. A book entitled The Piano Teacher. ‘Sounds like a boring book,’ I thought to myself. Then, the above occurred to me as a possibility for adding some spice to the tame title. klem]

Cows Be Gone

It started in the 1990s, almost as a joke, a hamburger made out of plants. “Really, a vegetable burger? Who would eat such a thing,” asked most people. The years rolled by, efforts were made to better the vegetarian option and those improvements came in great strides.

The watershed moment came in 2024. It became widely regarded that the non-beef burgers were, surprisingly, not only delicious, but just too dang good to ignore. They were tastier and more nutritious than the old-fashioned burgers made from cows. The new variety of burgers were also kinder to the environment. These one-time curiosities had been elevated from a mere alternative to a preferred choice.

The paradigm shift didn’t happen straight away, to be sure. Some folks, those who had grown up on bovine burgers their entire lives, were not interested in such silliness as a vegetarian hamburger. A generation went by and the youths, not grown up on that solitary mindset, stopped buying beef patties. As if they were just biding their time until they controlled the majority of economic activity, then almost entirely across the board, this beef-free generation stopped buying actual beef. This would seem to be a relief to the unsuspecting cow, but wait, there’s more.

The price of beef plummeted to where it was no longer even possible to break even raising these animals on a ranch. Ranchers changed out to farmers setting their efforts instead to soybean, corn and assorted row crops. Even milk was no longer a profitable product. With so many non-dairy milk alternatives the market share for actual ‘cow juice’ gave away and never leveled off.

Then there was the leather industry. So many years of taking flack for employing animal parts for a capitalistic end had been guilt-tripped into making changes. The market for leather could no longer hold it’s own. With that ‘coup de gras’ the fate of the cow was sealed. 

Their numbers did more than dwindle. After only a single generation they had became the first domesticated animal to end up on the Endangered Species list. They became a rare sighting even driving through the vast open lands through Interstate 5 in California. A conservancy group eventually purchased the remaining 100 cows known to exist. They shipped the gentle lumbering beasts to Santa Catalina Island, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California. Heck, it worked for the bison, the board of the non-profit reasoned, preserving the cows should be an easy victory.

Cows and bison are different kinds of animals once introduced into the wild, even the ‘controlled wild,’ so it was found out. The bison, for example, was capable of living sustainably once people simply stopped shooting them and hacking them apart for various means. They could live well enough alone if they would just be left alone. Bison were imported to the island in the 1920s. The herd grew and their numbers became stable. Fact is, they flourished. So well did the herd that their numbers were occasionally pared down and repatriated to the mainland. The cow, however, had spent too long in captivity. Living even in the relative congenial wilds of the island, it turned out the cows experienced high anxiety. They couldn’t mate, or wouldn’t. It didn’t matter the reason, their dwindling continued. Yes, bulls were included in their numbers, but there weren’t any couplings. They wouldn’t and flat out stopped. Even the bulls were done. Or they were just too taken with the constant beautiful ocean view to consider the alluring curves of their fairer partners.

Predictably, there was never any overwhelming alarm when it became clear they would soon be extinct. After so many years and generations demonizing the poor unaware beast, what with its troubling off-gassing of methane and its unwitting contributions to global climate change, its required occupation of so many millions of square miles of earth just to be raised, killed and eaten, or turned into fashionable handbags. The newest generation had no more emotional connection to saving such a creature than if it were a cockroach skittering out from underneath a refrigerator. A nuisance. No more concern that if they were watching fossil-fuel vehicles lose market share to electric vehicles. ‘Hey, you can’t fight technology’ was the pertinent slogan of the time. So they didn’t, nobody did.

It was decided by consensus that the final ten beasts were finally to be slaughtered and barbecued in one final fatal fantastic outing. Entertainment included outdoor movies and live music, an all-day menu of barbecue entrees from breakfast through late into the night, a very fun day for the participants. The overriding sentiment from the evening was that they weren’t as good as fake beef, but they were good enough to eat. Until now, that is, when there were finally none left to eat.

[Loosely inspired by Jakub Rozalsi’s painting, ‘The Last Mermaid of the Northern Seas’. (https://twitter.com/mr_werewolf_art/status/1128983387535040512?s=20.) It got me thinking through a few ‘what if’ extinction-related scenarios. -klem]