Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin

by Calvin Trillin

  Then I happened to run into the old college classmate I call Martin G. Cashflow. In both investments and social trends, Cashflow prides himself on just having got out of what other people are about to get into and just having got in on the ground floor of what other people haven’t yet heard about. After Cashflow had filled me in on his recent activities—he had just got out of whelk-farming tax shelters and into chewing of hallucinogenic kudzu—he asked what I’d been up to.

  “Twentieth anniversary,” I mumbled.

  “Terrific!” Cashflow said. He looked at me as if I had just revealed that I was in on the ground floor of a hot electronics issue. At least, I think that’s the way he looked at me; I really don’t have much experience at being looked at as if I had just revealed that I was in on the ground floor of a hot electronics issue.

  Cashflow told me that among people in their twenties, marriage has come back into fashion. As he explained, the way things have been going, marriage is part of a sort of fifties-revival package that’s back in vogue, along with neckties and naked ambition. “Best thing you ever did,” Cashflow said. “They’re all doing it now, but look at the equity you’ve got built up.”

  I shrugged modestly. You don’t brag about that sort of thing. Then I went home and told my wife that we were in fashion.

  “Not while you’re wearing that jacket we’re not,” she said.

  I told her about the fifties package that people in their twenties were bringing back into vogue. She said that if the alternative was to be identified with those little strivers, she would prefer to be thought of as inextricably intertwined with the music of Lawrence Welk.

  I could see her point, but I still looked forward to an interview with the local paper. I would be modest, almost to a fault. I would not mention Jim Beam whiskey. The reporter would try to be objective, but he wouldn’t be able to hide his admiration for my equity.

  1985

  BEASTS OF THE FIELD, FISH OF THE SEA, AND CHIGGERS IN THE TALL GRASS

  “No, Daddy does not hate cats. That would be prejudice, and you girls have been brought up to abhor prejudice. Daddy has never met a cat that he liked.”

  Loaded for Raccoons

  When the raccoons started getting at the garbage cans this summer, I naturally consulted the man in our town we call the Old Timer. He’s the one who told me that we could assure ourselves clear water by keeping a trout in the well, although, as it turned out, I couldn’t find a trout except for a smoked trout that some guests from the city brought as a sort of house gift, and I didn’t think it would be terribly gracious of me to toss that down the well, even assuming a smoked trout would do the trick. He’s also the one who’s always saying things like “A porcupine that looks kinda cross-eyed will attack a house cat lickety-split.”

  “You already tried red onions, have you?” the Old Timer said when I told him about my raccoon problem. I really hate it when the Old Timer asks questions like that. The only acceptable answer is something like “Well, naturally, that’s the first thing I did, but for some reason it didn’t work; must be the wet spring we had for onions is all I can think of.” If, instead, you say, “Well, no …,” the Old Timer is going to shake his head for a while without saying anything, as if he’s determined not to allow wholesale galloping ignorance to upset him.

  “Well, no …,” I said when the Old Timer asked me about red onions. He shook his head slowly for so long that I thought he might be having some sort of attack.

  Naturally, I hadn’t tried red onions. I didn’t even know what trying red onions meant. Did you festoon each garbage can with red onions, as if you were decorating a squat plastic Christmas tree? Did you plant a semicircle of red onions around the garbage can area the way infantrymen set up a defense perimeter of concertina barbed wire? Did you sit at a darkened window until the patter of little paws indicated that the time had come to fling red onions at approaching raccoons?

  What I had tried was tying down the garbage-can lids—until, on the morning of the weekly garbage pickup, I found myself unable to get the knots undone, and stood there helplessly while the garbage collectors, with a cheerful wave, continued down the road. Then I secured the lids by means of those stretchable cords with hooks on the end of them—I have some for lashing things to the roof rack of the car—but it turned out that the raccoons could pull the lids up far enough to get their tiny paws in there and pull out eighty or ninety square yards of crab shells and melon rinds and milk cartons.

  “A raccoon gets ten yards from half a red onion, he’ll turn tail and run, sure as shootin’,” the Old Timer said.

  I hate it when he says “sure as shootin’.” I tried red onions anyway, though—cut in half, as the Old Timer had instructed, and placed on top of the lid with the cut side up. The raccoons ate them, except for the skins, which they mixed into some coffee grounds and spread on the rosebush.

  I wasn’t surprised. The Old Timer is usually wrong. He never admits it, of course. One time, he told us that a scarecrow with a red hat would keep deer out of the garden, sure as shootin’. So we put a scarecrow out there, and put a red hat on it, and the deer came the next night and treated our garden like a salad bar. A neighbor who happened to be awake in the early dawn hours (maybe he was sitting at a darkened window waiting to fling red onions at raccoons) noticed that one of the big bucks was wearing a red hat when it left. I told the Old Timer that the deer had demolished our entire lettuce crop, and he said, “Yup, I suppose they did.” When it comes to tempting a normally peaceful person to violence, that Old Timer ranks right up there with raccoons.

  In fact, while I was testing my next plan, my wife and daughters told me that I was forbidden to use violence on the raccoons.

  “This will only startle them,” I said, secretly hoping that it would do a lot more. My plan was to set mousetraps just under the garbage can lids. The raccoons pull up the lids as much as my stretch-cords allow. They stick their little paws in there and feel around, hoping to find some chicken bones with peanut butter on them to spread on the porch. Powee! I should have known that the gang of raccoon apologists I live with would object. A few days before, they had objected when I talked about putting the fish heads I use as crab bait into a bait bag—a heavy mesh bag that keeps the crabs already in the trap from eating up the bait while still more crabs are being attracted. They said it would be cruel and deceitful.

  I tried to tell them that there is no way you can be deceitful to a crab. Crabs don’t think. (“Hey, this smells like a good fish head. I’ll just crawl into this place, even though it seems a little like the place that Uncle Manny crawled into just before he disappeared forever. Hey … Hey, wait a minute! I’ve been deceived!”) No bait bags, they said, and no mousetraps.

  So I gave it to them straight about raccoons. I told them that raccoons are about the meanest animal around. I happened to know from reading Albert Payson Terhune’s books about collies that raccoons drown puppy dogs, just for sport.

  “Don’t be silly,” my wife said. “Raccoons are so cute.”

  “That’s what the puppy dogs think,” I said. And puppy dogs do think, all the time. (“Hey, these cute little guys want to play in the water. This is fun! Hey … Hey, I’ve been de—glub, glub, glub.”)

  It was no use. They wouldn’t give in. That’s why I finally used a padlock on my garbage cans. I wanted to use a key lock, but the Old Timer said that a raccoon could pick a key lock nine times out of ten.

  “He’s probably wrong,” I said to my wife.

  “Maybe not,” she said. “He didn’t say ‘sure as shootin’.’ ”

  So I put on a combination lock, on the advice of the Old Timer. He said, “A raccoon’s cunning, but he’s got no head for figures.”

  1985

  True Love

  The newest research shows

  (So says the Times, in Section C)

  That birds and bees and beasts

  Are more promiscuous than we.

  The birds we always thought

/>   Were faithful till the day they died

  Are almost sure to have

  A little something on the side.

  The California mouse

  So far’s the only thing they’ve found

  That’s married, you might say:

  This mouse just doesn’t play around.

  Yes, California mice

  Have just one lifelong love to give.

  It’s odd they stay so true,

  Especially living where they live.

  1990

  Talk About Ugly!

  So there I was, butchering a monkfish. As everyone knows, a monkfish is the ugliest creature God ever made.

  I realize that those are fighting words among connoisseurs of the drastically unattractive. There are, for instance, people who sincerely believe that a catfish has got all other fish beat for ugliness. I’m here to tell you that compared to a monkfish the average catfish looks like Robert Redford.

  In the Pacific Northwest there are people who think that the ugliest creature around is the giant clam they have out there called the geoduck. It’s pronounced as if it were spelled gooeyduck, which adds to its unpleasant impression—although, as it happens, gooeyness is one of the few unattractive characteristics it doesn’t possess. I won’t try to tell you a geoduck is handsome. Its most striking feature is a clam neck that seems to be about the size of a baby elephant’s trunk. Still, if I had to describe the appearance of a geoduck in a couple of words, I’d say “moderately disgusting.” That’s a long way from ugliness at the monkfish level.

  The monkfish is also known by such names as goosefish, angler, and bellyfish. Calling it something else doesn’t help. Its appearance still brings to mind that fine old American phrase, too little heard these days: “Hit upside the head with an ugly stick.”

  The head, as it happens, is the ugliest part of a monkfish. It is huge—a lot bigger than the body. It is shaped sort of like a football that has been sideswiped by a Ford pickup. It has, in the words of a fisherman I know, “all kinds of doodads hanging off it.” In Nova Scotia, which is where I come in contact with monkfish, fishermen cut the heads off while still at sea. The stated reason for disposing of the head is that the fish plant won’t buy it, since nobody has ever figured out a use for a monkfish head. (It doesn’t keep long enough to be employed as a device you can threaten to show children if they don’t quit fighting over the Nintendo.) I’ve never been able to escape the feeling, though, that fishermen cut off the head because they don’t want anything that ugly on their boat. It makes them shiver.

  If you were thinking that without the head a monkfish compares in pure natural beauty to, say, a snow leopard, forget it. The rest of a monkfish is plenty ugly. There is a skin that, by rights, ought to be on a geoduck or something that sounds equally gooey. Instead of the sort of bone structure a respectable fish has, the monkfish has something that reminds most people of a beef bone—although not in a way that makes them long for the open range. Covering the meat on either side of the bone there is a sort of membrane. Is the membrane disgusting? Try hard to think of a membrane you’ve really liked.

  So there I was, butchering a monkfish. Why? Because in our part of Nova Scotia, buying an unbutchered monkfish off a fishing boat is the only way you can get a monkfish, and monkfish, like catfish and geoducks, are absolutely delicious. Also, because I have always harbored a secret desire to have people say of me, “He’s the sort of guy who can butcher a monkfish.” If they did say that, of course, it might be misleading; I don’t actually do many other things that are like butchering a monkfish. On the other hand, let’s face it: How many things are there that are like butchering a monkfish? Don’t forget the membrane.

  Removing the membrane is my least favorite part of butchering a monkfish, although, as a veterinarian I know always says about ministering to a cow that has a badly upset stomach, “There’s nothing about it that reminds me a whole lot of opening presents on Christmas morning.” I keep thinking that there’s some sort of membrane-removal shortcut I don’t know about. I always listen to the noon radio show they have for farmers and fishermen in the hope that someday I’ll hear some home economist say something like “To get the pesky membrane off a monkfish, simply bury the fish in cornflakes for fifteen or twenty minutes, then wipe briskly with a dry cloth.” So far, nobody on the show has discussed monkfish. Probably too ugly.

  So there I am, with the membrane and the gooey skin and the beef bone. What am I thinking? Sometimes I’m thinking, “Well, at least it doesn’t have the head on.” Sometimes I’m thinking, “Don’t forget how good this is going to taste.” When none of that does any good, I’m thinking, “You’re the sort of guy who can butcher a monkfish.”

  1990

  Animal Wrongs

  I’m relieved that the talk about bringing back dinosaurs through some sort of DNA fiddling faded away over the summer. It came at a time when I was failing to cope successfully with squirrels. I don’t think of myself as having any greater than normal fear or loathing of animals. When I was a boy, I had a dog. When I kick at a cat, it’s nearly always for good reason. Still, when I look back on what I’ve written about my daily life over the years, I’m struck by how many different animals I’m already trying to deal with, almost always unsuccessfully.

  I have discussed my doubts about whether Ivory soap will really keep deer out of a garden (or merely leave them feeling fresher) and whether deer whistles will really keep them away from a speeding car; this was at a time when you might say that I was being threatened by deer on two fronts.

  Any number of times, I have dealt with the issue of chiggers, the microscopic itch machines whose prevalence on the plains is the real reason so many Midwesterners over the years have chosen to move to New York, a chigger-free jurisdiction. I have described the duration of a chigger bite’s itch (just short of eternal) and what can stop it (amputation, sometimes). To gauge the itching intensity of the bite, I even invented a unit of measurement, called the milamos—the itching strength of a thousand mosquito bites. (The average chigger bite has an eight-milamos itch.) I have revealed to those who don’t come from the chigger region that a tourist from, say, Joplin, Missouri, who is standing on the top of the Eiffel Tower and gazing down at Paris is not contemplating the beauty of the City of Lights; he is thinking, “Even if they’re over here, they couldn’t get up this high.”

  I have had run-ins with animals that I have failed to share with the reading public. Many years ago, for instance, I was attacked by a red-winged blackbird. This was not long after the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, and I think the problem was that the movie had got around to the drive-ins: Birds were seeing it, and getting ideas. Bearing no grudges, I have tried to maintain a bird feeder, only to see it turned into a squirrel feeder. I was once chased by a goose, although—to distinguish that episode from Jimmy Carter’s encounter with a killer rabbit—there was never any indication that I had been singled out for attack.

  So I was understandably unenthusiastic about concerning myself with dinosaurs. There was no question of staving off a Tyrannosaurus rex with a bar of Ivory. Forty years ago, E. B. White wrote about descending from his office, on the nineteenth floor, to an assembling point on the tenth floor for an atomic-bomb drill—a drop of not nine but eight floors, he noted, since a floor numbered 13 did not exist. “It occurred to us, gliding by the thirteenth floor and seeing the numeral fourteen painted on it, that our atom-splitting scientists had committed the error of impatience and had run on ahead of the rest of the human race,” he wrote. “They had dared to look into the core of the sun, and had fiddled with it; but it might have been a good idea if they had waited to do that until the rest of us could look the number thirteen square in the face.”

  I offer a smaller version of White’s point—offering smaller versions of White’s points being what most of us scribblers have to settle for. I’m not suggesting that scientists should abandon their DNA research and concentrate on an effective chigger repe
llent, although any effort they could put toward that end in their spare time would be greatly appreciated where I come from. I do find myself thinking, though, that it might be nice if the largest herbivores in the history of the world did not return until we had at least figured out how to keep the deer away from the begonias.

  1993

  Horse Movie, Updated

  When you can’t get to sleep—either because you still have the cares of the world too much with you or because you went a little heavy on the jalapeño peppers—there’s often a forties movie to watch on TV. The one I had on was one of those heartwarming stories about a plucky little girl whose pony grew up to be a great trotter, or something along those lines. The little girl was played by a well-known child star like Margaret O’Brien. The trotter was just played by some regular horse.

  There was a love interest, of course, provided by the plucky little girl’s older sister—Teresa Wright, maybe, or someone with that look—and the older sister’s boyfriend, who was somebody like John Agar. They spent a lot of time spooning on the front porch. Some crooked gamblers didn’t want the little girl’s horse to win. They never do. They never seem to realize that in a heartwarming movie the smart move is to put your money on any horse owned by Margaret O’Brien. So they had sent some big mug like Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom to scare the little girl into withdrawing her horse from the big race. This is another thing that crooked gamblers never seem to learn: Plucky little girls don’t scare easily.