| It was good to be home, especially after the trip to Kentucky. Three days on the road, one sale, one flat. The place got cold when he was away. Damn windows; old, too drafty. The one upstairs in spare room was the worst - he'd stuffed the cracks in the sill with newspapers, and he kept the door closed. Worked for now. It’s remarkable how a room almost ceases to exist if you don’t need it every day. The spare room used to be a nursery, judging from how the previous owners decorated it. Ducks and bears on the wallpaper, circus stuff. He hadn’t had the time to strip it, so he just used it for storage and kept the door shut. The wallpaper annoyed him, to be honest – it was like the kid still lived here, or something. Maybe he’d hire a guy to strip it. How long had he lived here? Three years? Three winters. No - four. Goes fast. He went upstairs to the nursery, checked the window. Shut. Drafty as ever. Maybe he’d hire a guy to hang a new window, too. Maybe he’d sell more on the next trip. Maybe Ingrid Bergman would show up in a bathrobe with a fifth of Calvert in the pocket. He left the room and stood in the hall, thinking: I couldn’t afford that hat. Not really. Not with the tires, too. He felt the cold air flow under the door. He got a towel and stopped it up. Joe checked the bin in the furnace room. Could use some more coal. What was their number again? He had it on a matchbook . . . check the drawer. Right. Ninety. Joe picked up the phone, dialed O. “Ninety,” he said, and he shivered. Brother, this place got cold. Almost as if it liked it that way. ---- Note: here I run up against my vast store of ignorance, and employ my limited powers of speculation. Telephone numbers had two-letter / one number prefixes as early as the 20s, such as Butterfield 8. I can’t imagine a two-digit phone number. But I have a theory. For many years I was mystified by the little scene that concluded the 1940s “Suspense” radio shows sponsored by Autolite. (Gee, wonder whatever happened to them?) You’d hear a ringing phone; an operator would pick up and say “Make it right, with Autolite. Good night.” Or something equally curt. I couldn’t figure out why an operator would say anything like this. Why the ringing phone? It made no sense. Many years later I heard another radio show, sponsored by Autolite; the announcer remarked that you could find the location of your local dealer by calling Western Union and asking for extension 36. Hmm: who knew they served as some sort of national 411? I wouldn’t be surprised if this two-digit phone number is connected somehow to that idea – you'd call the operator to connect you to a special 2-digit number the owner had bought for promotional reasons. I await the email to tell me how wrong I am. (fence@startribune.com.) As for the inside of the matchbook: Dorothy and Powellton were the names of West Virginia coal seams. Anchor’s office was in the Terminal Tower, a building whose unfortunate name seemed to foreshadow its role in American skyscraper history. It’s not a widely admired structure, but it is huge – 52 stories – and was part of an urban renewal / train station complex important to the self-image of Cleveland. (If you’re the sort of person who lives in a very big city as is amused by the words “the self-image of Cleveland,” you really are a provincial bore of the most annoying sort.) The history of the Tower and many photographs can be found here. And here. If Joe grew up in Cleveland, this building would have been a thing of beauty and wonder; if you came into downtown via the train station here, you’d think you had arrived at the center of the world. If you were 8, anyway. But if you were 8 you’d be right. |
|
||
 |
|
||
this is a work of fiction c. 2005 j. lileks. / joe home / lileks.com home