How was the return to normalcy? you ask. Or not. Either way that's where I'm going. Different. There had been a break. The entire trip was a Jaws of Life that pried apart the wreck of the last few months and pulled me out to revive for . . . the Last Act, I guess. The Fourth Movement. It’s hard to explain, exactly. I returned and did what I always did, but felt disengaged and indifferent. When I go to the office it’s like putting on a suit that resembles me in 2023, but it’s a disguise.

Hell, me in 2019.

Mornings at the office were replaced for a while by mornings in the gazebo, enjoying the weather, hearing the familiar sounds of summer: the planes boring in overhead, and the cicadas. Heard the first one on Friday, July 12, and smiled: ah, there you are. I still don’t quite understand the idea that we’re to be flooded with cicadas this year.

(Pauses, opened up new document, writes an entire column about it, so I'm done for next Monday, sigh heavily considering there are fewer than 10 left to write, go to gym, clang things around, drive home)

Now I’m in the gazebo where I began the day, listening to a cicada. Tooth does not hurt, which is good. Had a routine cavity filling. Okay cavities plural. It was a bit more complex than the usual drill-and-fill because its location. I took the gas. Laid there and listened to a podcast about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. It’s unusual to be prone and slack in the chair while the most extraordinary sounds and distant grinding sensations are being visited upon your person. I was stroke-faced for the next six hours, unable to eat properly. Put a cigar in my mouth and it fell out.

Great podcast, though. Learned a lot.

The dentist, a fine fellow who helped me get over my old dental anxiety (once upon a time I would have been quite nervous about the idea of getting the jab) told me that one was deep, and if I had any pain after the novocaine wore off, I should call him.

What, that means it’s a doomed tooth?

He made a noncommittal gesture. “Just call me.”

What, I have to come back the next day for more? I get Percocet?

“Just . . . call me.” He paused. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”

No, because now of course I’m intensely curious.

As it turned out, no pain. So yay. I will probably leave 2024 with the same number of teeth as I had when I entered it.

Since then it's been more of the same, minus the dentistry. Down to four columns now. I said before it was like painting the room of a house you're going to leave because of a divorce, and now it feels like having connubial relations with a mummy.

The days have been lovely. The rain has been nice. My favorite thing the last week, I think, was making a birthday video for Daughter. I took some 2008 footage of her scavenger hunt birthday party, reshot it to trace her path, hid pieces of paper that had QR codes that go to a page revealing the gift. A nice way to connect now to a bygone time. One of the locations in the hunt was the swingset with the second-story treehouse; it's gone, so I put a ladder on the spot and climbed up.

Birch accompanies me around the yard, wondering what I am doing. In the original video there's Jasper, following around the gaggle of girls. Made me smile, and not in sadness.

There you are. Good to see you.

The Mistake hotel had framed legal documents in the hallway, instead of pictures. I suppose it went with the eclectic nature of the place. The upstairs sunroom, which had at least 1.5 X the space of the minuscule rooms and no seating at all, just a jumble of stuff, had a signed letter from the Queen’s 42nd level secretary thanking someone for a poem they’d sent in.

One of the old legal docs:

I wonder if these are still legally binding. Probably not.

And I wonder what OCR can make of it . . .

Coall to mone has Posets malco screas the lands describee in the Schedule herelo are held hyEopy of bout all I the laner of Ham/stead on thebounh/ of Mitdeser and Chezeich Sever of Mainmore Ladee neur hheenun upon the bout Roll of the out land no whims the infenchisemont of the send lands has ben deby respured an topahold dels ontind Seddinalanyo

Okay never mind

To my amazement . .

There’s a record of this guy.

ABRAM, John, law stationer, Middle Temple Lane 1799H-1840+. Trading: as John Abram 1799H- I 823P; as John Abram and Sons 1824P-1840+

Middle Temple Lane was a place for lawyers, a history that goes back a ways:

The Middle Temple is the western part of "The Temple", which was the headquarters of the Knights Templar until they were dissolved in 1312.

The Temple still stands, although altered and rebuilt.

All that from one stamp.

		Speaking of stamps: these were required, I gather - but for what? To indicate payment. But to whom? A filing fee?

There’s a date below. 1974.

So it might have been legally binding then, or that states the date at which it no longer was?

What a headache. And it probably would’ve been worse if the Peasant’s Revolt hadn’t torched so many documents.

That's just one wall in one hallway of one floor of one building on one street in one neighborhood in one city.

It’s 1921.

These are ads from “System Magazine,” a business publication.

Here's a device you’d recognize right away. I’d no idea they had these a hundred years ago.

American genius, once again, simplifies a task as old as civilization.

Well, they’re not wrong.

Behold, the new Hand Machine!

And what . . . what does it do, again?

It does all these marvelous things! Watch your sales explode!

But . . . what does it do?

“Gosh, I’d love to buy maps for our company, but how would we keep them? Rolled up in tubes? Seems like a lot of work to get them out. And then there's the filth problem."

In the old days a big company would have a room with a wall full of maps, easily consulted for information on sales and territory. Another thing you never imagined.

There used to be an entry at the Indiana Historical Society about the National Map Company, but it’s vanished. I wonder why.

This company also had washable maps, which makes you wonder how filthy offices used to be. Let me just smear some hog feces on this territory here so you know where sales are soft

Confusion, lessened:

Still around! Annnnd they make recreational vehicles now? Different company. The original:

In 1894, Alexander Graham Bell's patent for the telephone expired. Stromberg and Carlson, Chicago employees of the American Bell Telephone Company (later AT&T), each invested $500 to establish a firm to manufacture equipment, primarily subscriber sets, for sale to independent telephone companies.

Gobbled up, chopped, sold, defunct.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE’RE BROKE? LOOK AT ALL THAT SMOKE

The OCR isn’t too good on this one.

A Million-Dollar Decision!
The Secret of the Big Salaries Paid to Expert Accountants
"How much can we cut the price of our
Win Promotion by the machines and still get by? Thirty dollar on a machine would make a difference of a million dollars.
Then tell me how big a cut we
the yearn they otherwis 149.7. 0t. the do you ad nice bi a 10d. 744 9 883 amar
can make and still play safe.’

'Harris, we've got to figure a way to take upour six per cent gold notes. Brooks thinks we'll have to put out an issue of cight per cent hrat mortgage bonds. In m
to pay more than seven one per cent., know, makes a difference of a bundred thousand dollars. How we save that monot nta to sell out -claim

- INOUIRY COUPON - -
LASALLE EXTENSION UNIVERSITY
Dept. 172-HR
CHICAGO,
take and fall
Brow

Take and fall, bro.

You know, I have the suspicion it might be watermarked.

Knowlton has been around for a long time. The town page says: “Kamargo is an Oneida Indian name for Black River.” Okay then.

Trust only Washburn-Goodline Steel Tab Guides:

So many inventions great and small to make business work better. So many niches filled, so many old ideas improved upon. This was the 1920s: an altogether new experience in filing.

And they had so much filing to do.