Petroleum Man

by Stanley Crawford

  Old Chippo, your yacht-owning liberal democrat father, must be experiencing some interesting thoughts on the occasion of our local graffiti artist striking again for the fourth time last night, probably not long before my departure for Chicago and points west. Your mother has just phoned with the news. It turns out that we may have an educated vandal with an intellectual or philosophical bent at work, of radical leftist leanings, possibly some old Marxist from my former alma mater. Though the police are more inclined, I gather, to look among the vast servant class of the area who outnumber property owners two to one, and over half of whom are illegals.

  This time the victim was the hull of your father’s yacht drydocked over on the Sound, on which our artist spray-painted in red the following inscription half the length of the hull: SOCIALISM FOr THE rICH, FrEE ENTErPrISE FOr THE POOr, in letters tall enough to be visible from the I-95 northbound lanes at a distance of a quarter mile. Quite a feat, if I may say so myself. Unfortunately your father’s ideology does not allow him to parse the statement to his advantage, to the effect that of course the rich who pay so much more of their income in taxes deserve proportionately more support in the form of those various government programs that seek to compensate them for their original sacrifice. You two are a little young yet to understand how or why the lifestyles of our major taxpayers—and mine may be taken as a prime example—are maintained and improved through educational and foundation endowments to the best schools, and transportation infrastructure improvements favoring those most able to appreciate them, plus corporate tax breaks and subsidies which keep the money flowing through the right class of citizens and their very carefully chosen representatives in government. And why, therefore, the poor must be left to fend for themselves until through hard work they have contributed enough to cover their keep, learning the ropes of capitalism at the most useful level in the process, which is to say learning to respect the value of money and indeed to accept it as our most effective god. Here, I must say, I part company with my colleagues to the Neoconservative Christian Right who attempt to hide the bounty of free-market capitalism beneath the billowing robes of Christ and the Apostles.

  But I fear I have used this delay, a forced stopover in Salt Lake City while a front moves down past Seattle, to march a little beyond the range of your intellectual capacities and still-dormant political sensitivities—though by the time I bestow these words upon you, in the form of a handsome leather-bound volume to accompany your collections of model vehicles, I trust you will be upright and articulate defenders of the vast empire your grandfather has single-handedly assembled by leveraging garden-variety subsidies and tax breaks into the stratosphere, so to speak.

  Where, the captain has just come back to tell me, we will be again in about twenty minutes. Or if not quite in the stratosphere, we’ll be a good 30,000 feet above the teeming masses of minimum-wage earners.

  I thought I would use this flight over the Atlantic again to record the resounding success of my annual show and the delight and surprise with which everyone—well, there is always an exception, of course—greeted the tripartite video projection screens which occupied the entire east wall of your grandmother’s 4000-square-foot living room, the first time we have not used our 100-seat basement screening room, preferring a more intimate space. And everyone seemed enthralled—there’s always that exception to the rule, however—by the new archival footage of the early days of Thingie® Corporation International, in film, video, and slides, as it gradually took over and modernized the old KlampTite-MagicMastic factories and office buildings. Equally stunning was the footage recording the acquisition and restoration of the historic estate of the Barbed Wire Robber Baron for our Michigan research center. It was that particular Delahunt of course who back in the nineteenth century laid the foundations for KlampTite-MagicMastic with his Barbed Wire Consolidated Corporation. This emerged, as you all know, from the strongest of the three units into which the Barbed Wire Trust was irresponsibly broken up by the federal courts in 1901. My collection of antique barbed wire and contemporary razor wire, possibly the world’s most complete, will be housed in the new fifty-eight-room annex to the recently completed fifty-nine-room extension of the Manor.

  Of course I realize there was probably an overwhelming amount of information in my three-hour presentation for children of your age, Fabian and Rowena, which is why I gave you score cards of my own design on which you could check off up to sixteen different old cars, all of which you should be familiar with from your collections and the encyclopedia, as they appeared in various film and video clips. I even made things easy for you by enhancing their images with almost imperceptible freeze-frame instants. But alas, Rowena, you flunked entirely, while you, Fabian, checked only six on the list—it would seem before you went to sleep—though three of those were wrong. I gather those marks you made were checks. I will ask your mother whether she considers those long worm-like scrawls to be signs of intelligent life in that little brain of yours. But I do appreciate your controlling your hiccup condition until the final two minutes of my presentation.

  But I don’t think your squeals of delight, Rowena, helped at all when my high-powered surround-sound system shattered one of your grandmother’s crystal vases and sent her rushing from the room in tears—though conveniently at a time when an intermission was called for.

  It was an heirloom, she sobbed in the bedroom where I finally tracked her down. Heirloom means there will never be another exactly like it.

  This of course is nonsense, I said. A telephone call will make another one just like it, only better. Utter nonsense.

  You just don’t understand.

  How very true. I don’t understand. I never have and never will. My lack of understanding has propelled me to the pinnacle of wealth and success—but no matter.

  It was my Aunt Edee’s, my favorite aunt.

  You won’t know the difference. This, it turned out, was an unwise return to the original proposition.

  I will know the difference until the day I die.

  I can hardly wait.

  Cruel beast! she shrieked.

  I’m going back out there to resume my show, I said after ten deep breaths. Do you want to come out and secure the rest of your crystal, or shall I turn up the volume and blast it all to smithereens?

  Smash everything if you want, I don’t care!

  I returned to the living room and ordered Deedums to call the housekeeper to secure her mother’s crystal either by removing it or by covering it with soft cloths, and I announced that the show would resume in exactly seven minutes and that if anyone needed a quick nap now might be a good time, as I could see that both of you seemed to be synchronizing your drooling onto the arms of your easy chairs and your eyes were looking up at the ceiling with a complete lack of focus. Ah, youth. Though you seemed to have reverted to an earlier pre-vertebrate phase of childhood by three or four years. Your father was scratching his crotch, sure sign that something was in the wind. (I was pleased to read the other day that he was finally cited for contempt of court for what he was apparently determined to make his trademark courtroom gesture.) But fortunately your grandmother pulled herself together enough to return to the living room, though she picked the armchair that was at the very end of the room, a good fifty feet away. I was surprised when you said, Rowena, I want to sit with Grandma, but equally gratified when your mother properly restrained you with a crisp, sharp command, and forcefully hissed into your ear: You’re going to sit right there young lady until your grandfather has completely finished, understand?

  Whereupon I resumed my triumphal survey of the rise of Thingie® Corporation International to its near-top position within the international corporate world. Images flashed on the screen of all the logos assembled through takeovers, mergers, and acquisitions, and the surround-sound raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Standing to one side, I waved my laser pointer like a conductor his baton, up to the climactic moment when Thingie® product identification conquers t
he world and virtually everyone from the jungles of New Guinea to the ice packs of Canada’s Northern Territories knows what a Thingie® is and what it’s used for. A brief financial summary of the corporation flashes on the screen against a background of fireworks bursting in air, and then, instead of The End, the words, JUST THE BEGINNING. Images then fade, music reaches a crescendo and then trails off into silence.

  This was when your father jumped to his feet. You were snoring peacefully, Rowena—and you too, Fabian, until the violence of his words woke you up and your hiccups resumed.

  I am not a shareholder, sir—that slimy curry-favor “sir” of his drives me up the wall—but my wife, your daughter is, and so are my two children, whose father I am. As their father and therefore their moral and ethical custodian—

  Chip, Deedums hissed, couldn’t you just stop right now? Another time, perhaps!

  He gave a quick exasperated shrug at her interruption but then plunged right on in. As their custodian, I would like to ask you, sir, just what Thingie® Corporation International intends to do about the environmental problems its products are creating all over the globe?

  What environmental problems? Thingies® create no environmental problems. It’s the environment that’s the problem. It’s been the problem since the Year One. Getting rid of your so-called environment has been the main purpose of the march of technological progress and the conversion of nature into useful manufactured objects like Thingies® and other items of our fantastic and widely diversified product line without which your law firm, for one, could no longer function in the modern world.

  This is my standard response to attacks by so-called environmentalists who merrily buzz on using the tools and fuels of the modern world just like everybody else—but then go and excuse themselves with an occasional frown and a chest-beating expression of guilt, such as your father was now attempting. I thought of course he knew better by now. But no.

  Are you aware, sir, he blundered on, that there is a glob of Thingies® all stuck together the size of a small iceberg floating off the coast of Southern California and that Thingies® have caused the deaths of millions of ocean-going fish by getting stuck in their gills and seabirds by getting caught in their throats, do you realize—

  Chip would have gone on and on of course had not you, Rowena, in a fit of anxiety pulled off the right rear wheel of the model Volvo P-122 and popped it in your mouth and then began making choking gestures. Fortunately your nimble mother grabbed you by the ankles and hoisted you as far aloft as she could and slapped your back, to the tune of you, Fabian, suddenly hiccup-free, chanting I see England, I see France, I can see your underpants. By now everyone was shouting, including your grandmother, who rushed the length of the room screaming Call 911!—until the little black wheel came dribbling out of your mouth encased in a gobbet of spit and rolled out onto the carpet, where I swooped it up and wiped it off and snapped it back on to the Volvo’s rear axle, making it as good as new again.

  With that, my annual show ended. I left everyone to soothe you, Rowena, with reassuring cooings and pettings and ticklings, while I sauntered out to the verandah to smoke a solitary cigar—one personally presented to me by Fidel, if I remember correctly—and contemplate the global reach of my endlessly profitable works, with your little jingle, Fabian, pleasingly echoing through my brain.

  You might eventually be pleased to learn that I have entertained the captain and the entire crew with it on this Transatlantic flight—and of course I was quite delighted when the first rays of the sun illuminated the Channel and the intercom phone rang and I picked it up and the captain chanted, I see England, I see France. … Right on schedule, sir

  Little Fabian, we have already had this conversation but I am nonetheless putting its substance in writing during a flight to Helsinki in order that you may look back on this experience from the perspective of future years and therefore extract more and more meaning from it with the passage of more and more time. I think I was successful in conveying to you my state of agitation when I looked up at your collection on the top two shelves of the bookcase opposite your bed and noticed that the 1:18 scale metallic blue 1954 Volkswagen Sunroof was clearly missing. You denied at first that you knew it was missing, odd since you must stare up at your collection every time you lie down in bed—well at least I hope you stare up at it—and with your exceedingly keen sense of sight you would have noticed any of the fourteen models and the encyclopedia being at even the slightest angle off from its habitual position. After all, did you not recently say to me, Why is one of your ears bigger than the other, Grandpa? You are expert in the fine distinctions, little Fabian, so don’t try to pretend otherwise.

  I do however have to admire your sophistry, in saying that it was not missing because it was now at Ricky Wong’s house, in his room, on top of his dresser, presumably now part of his collection. Finally you admitted the truth, in the weeest of voices.

  I traded it, you said.

  And for what did you trade it, Fabian? What? Louder, Fabian. Confess like a man.

  Marbles, you whispered.

  I demanded to see the marbles. You got out of bed and padded over to your closet in your dinosaur pajamas and dug them out of the dark corner where you had hid them and then dutifully brought them over and handed them to me, with a slightly proud look showing off your fine new Delahunt teeth, which sooner or later the rest of your face is bound to grow into, as if the marbles were great and valuable treasure. But, alas, they were ordinary clear glass marbles faintly tinted, a dime a dozen, a dime a gross, a dime a container load, in a frayed muslin sack.

  Trading your birthright for a mess of potage, I suggested. So it’s come to that, Fabian.

  From then on, Fabian, you were no doubt so miserable that you missed the import of my little discussion of trading. I could tell from the way you tried to pull your lips over your teeth and rolled your eyes in panic. So I will repeat how you must realize that the goal of trading is not to exchange one object of value for another which you imagine will be of equal value, when you finally possess it. No doubt there are sayings floating around your little group of third graders to the effect of Fair and fair alike and ungrammatical variations of same, but these are all ruses, tricks if you wish, to conceal the basic fact that in the hands of the strong and cunning trading is a way to have your cake and eat it too. The sense of this apparently mysterious saying is right now being revealed to you. The long and the short of it, Fabian, is that the object of trading should be to end up not with the best marbles, hardly the case here, but with all the marbles and your 1954 Volkswagen Sunroof to boot. I had thought to wait until you were somewhat older before instructing you in these techniques but I see now I have waited too long.

  Still there seemed to be nothing that could be done in the present situation except to point out that you have been screwed by Ricky Wong, who has bedazzled you with sparkling pieces of glass worth a tenth of a cent in order to pry from your grip a custom-painted scale model that could eventually fetch a price equal to the cost of the actual car bought new in 1954. None of the alternatives to reverse this transaction were savory. I did not see you having the spine, Fabian, to march over to Ricky Wong’s house in Langston Farm Lake and Turf Estates and fling the sack of marbles down on his bed and aggressively demand your 1954 Volkswagen Sunroof right back, in an act of what we used to call, before the days of political correctness, Indian giving. Nor could I see you stealing into Ricky’s bedroom and dropping the model into the knotted sleeve of your jacket and then deliberately tripping the Wongs’ security alarm and wandering away in all the confusion as successive waves of security guards from Langston Farm Lake and Turf Estates and police down from Fairlawn-Fairview Lake Village roar in with sirens howling and lights flashing. As I might have done.

  Under the circumstances, I had no choice but to personally intervene. The Wong money, you should have known as it would have saved you some grief, comes from commodity trading. You have to watch those people like a hawk.


  Mrs. Wong, this is Leon Tuggs, Fabian Hoch’s grandfather, I said on the phone, I need regrettably to report that your delightful son Ricky engaged in a grossly unfair trade with my grandson Fabian, passing off to him a worthless sack of glass marbles in exchange for a priceless custom-made model of a 1954 Volkswagen Sunroof, a family— but here I hesitated to utter the word “heirloom”—part of a family collection I have been painstakingly assembling for my grandchildren. I wonder if you could send it back as soon as possible. We’re all quite sick at heart about the misunderstanding.

  She dropped it by the next morning when I happened to be stopping by your house for a minute but she was probably so overwhelmed at meeting your famous grandfather—the covers of two national magazines this week—that she failed to ask for Ricky’s marbles back.

  I hope it isn’t damaged in any way, she suggested with a little smile, pulling it unwrapped out of a leather shopping bag and handing it to me.

  No, at first glance it looks just fine, Mrs. Wong, I said, flipping it over on its back. Other than perhaps a bent axle. But just to be sure I’ll go over it later with a magnifying glass.