Time Fries!

by Fay Jacobs

  August 18

  Luxuriated at the waterfront and readied ourselves for the trip home. Cleaning out the RV fridge was like Survivor Nova Scotia, due to their complex and stringently regulated recycling system. There’s a compost “wet” bin, a plastics/aluminum “dry” bin, a paper bin and, as if that’s not enough to put me in the loony bin, a garbage pail for the rest. Panicked we’d goof, leaving a hostess gift of a $200 fine or jail, we drove to the grocery store and furtively—as furtive as you can be in a 27 foot recreational vehicle—started lobbing trash into what we hoped were the right slots. Luckily, Bonnie and Clyde weren’t nabbed.

  We’ve loved our stay in Nova Scotia and the two weeks before that in Montreal and Quebec…but we are happy to be heading home. The very last days of the trip, we had plenty of moxie. Read on and you will see why.

  August 2013

  NO WALK IN THE PARK

  It started with the soap. A friend said her Mom often had nighttime leg spasms and somebody suggested she sleep with a bar of Dove soap in the bed to quell the cramps. Mom laughed until she tried it and reluctantly admitted it seemed to work.

  So, after walking the hills and climbing the Quebec City ramparts, when my mate complained of an overnight charley horse, I returned from the store with a solution.

  “I bought you a Dove Bar.”

  Her eyes lit up with a vision of the wrong kind of Dove Bar. Realizing my error, I quickly added “No, no, not ice cream, a bar of Dove soap!”

  “Excuse me?” she stuttered, crestfallen.

  “I heard that sleeping with a bar of Dove soap in bed can lessen or even prevent leg cramps.”

  Then it was her turn to laugh so hard she got a cramp in her side.

  This episode would have been forgotten if it weren’t for the cruelty of mapmakers in Fundy Park, Nova Scotia. The park map showed color-coded walks and hikes. A purple dotted line offered a short stroll “suitable for everyone.” Surely we could up our game to the green level, promising a 2.5 kilometer walk, “comfortable for almost everyone.”

  Now look, I know I’m a senior citizen. I’ve been happily accepting discounts the whole trip. But the map specifically did not say “except you, grandma,” and in fact went on to list three higher levels of black, brown and red walks in the park.

  You know where this is going, which, obviously we didn’t.

  We started along the path, all alone in the forest, stepping between chunky roots and hefty rocks. About five minutes in my mate asked if I had bars on the cell phone. Was she concerned we’d finally see the moose we’d been hunting at the highway moose crossing signs?

  From a path littered with tree roots and boulders, going straight downhill, I might add, the terrain changed with the addition of mud holes rivaling the La Brea tar pits. Crossing brooks and rivulets with ungainly Olympic broad jumps, I wondered just how gracefully the rest of the almost everybodys had handled this part of the green line.

  Hearing foot traffic behind us, we were quickly overtaken by a pack of laughing twenty-somethings skipping down the rocky, rooted trail like it was the yellow brick road.

  “I think the easy purple line meant for people over 30,” I muttered.

  “You want to turn back before we see the waterfalls?”

  “No, in for a penny, in for a hip replacement.”

  We continued our downward spiral through gunky mud puddles and giant root canals when I stopped to take a few notes on my iPhone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Channeling Henry David Thoreau. Walden Pond was probably a dotted purple line.”

  When we came to a clearing with a great big toppled tree across the path I tripped getting over it. If Fay falls in the forest and there’s no one there to laugh is it still humiliating? Yes, yes it is.

  Now mind you, this whole time we hadn’t seen anybody coming back up the trail. We had gotten an early start, but the lack of return trippers did worry me. Finally, a family with fit-looking parents and two fit-looking teenage boys rose from the depths, looking no worse for wear. Their golden doodle wasn’t so lucky. The poor thing was panting and drooling with his tongue hanging out.

  When they were safely out of earshot my loving mate said “I hate to tell you, but right now you’re looking a little like that doodle dog.”

  I would have said something snarky but I was too busy panting and drooling.

  Finally, we made it to the falls, where those twenty-somethings were swimming and laughing. We took the requisite photos of the falls and steeled ourselves to head back up the green mile and three quarters. It was agony to realize that 2.5K had been only half the ordeal.

  Without going into further torturous detail, the climb out of the great dismal swamp took a long time and was very nearly our waterloo. Not only were we exhausted but, having been drinking water like good hikers, a loo was exactly what we needed. I knew if we followed time honored tradition to stop in the woods to relieve ourselves, that’s exactly when other hikers would catch us with our proverbial and actual pants down.

  So we soldiered on, taking as much time as our bladders would allow, hoisting ourselves back up to civilization. Reaching the parking lot, we patted ourselves on the back for a job well done. Also to stop the coughing.

  I cannot imagine hiking the park’s black or brown dotted routes and the thin red line must be for mountain goats and mental cases. And speaking of craziness, I’m back at the bar of soap thing again.

  Later, as our sinews stiffened from exertion followed by hours of sitting on our butts around the glorious campfire, it was time for lights out.

  “Hey,” I said, feeling the first twinges of leg cramps. “Hand over the Dove bar.”

  And for the first time ever, I would not have preferred chocolate.

  September 2013

  MAKE MINE MOXIE

  For a carbonated soft drink I didn’t taste until recently, Moxie—Distinctively Different, has played an enormous role in my life.

  By my late twenties, I’d heard the vocabulary word “moxie” of course, a noun synonymous for determination, courage and spunk. And at the time, I’d surely lost mine. I was fleeing a suffocating marriage, questioning my sexuality and had pretty much nowhere to go.

  I was a scared, closeted lesbian in her twenties, who showed up on the doorstep of a liberal, socially conscious, recently widowed, heterosexual friend in her mid-fifties. I stood there with two cat-carriers (inhabited), the clothes on my back and the need for a place to reinvent myself.

  My friend Mary Jane invited me to make a nest in the basement of her home and I stayed for over four years. We’d been casual friends before but became grand lifelong family members.

  I adored Mary Jane’s wicked sense of humor and her adventurous nature. She taught me to drink booze without mixers, got me to grow up a little, proved absolutely nonjudgmental in a hostile and homophobic world, and gave me the courage and good-natured push to come out of the closet.

  Gay male friends took us both drinking and disco-ing at DC’s Lost and Found and other glitzy 70s gay bars, where we had Saturday night fever and loved the night life, loved to boogie.

  Back at home. Mary Jane had an elderly Schnauzer named Max, who I also came to adore. After he passed, she brought home one determined, spunky Schnauzer puppy which she promptly named Moxie.

  One day, Mary Jane and I wandered into an antique store to find an old embossed bottle that said Moxie Nerve Food on it. A hobby was born, as we discovered the history of the New England soft drink called Moxie and started trolling antique stores seeking Moxie memorabilia. We collected cans, bottles, ad posters, paper fans and promotional materials. We even found a wooden Moxie yardstick.

  Enter Bonnie. By 1982, Mary Jane had had a ringside seat to much of my coming out angst and dyke dating dramas. Mary Jane liked my lesbian and gay pals and she especially liked Bonnie when she came into my life. We all partied together and Mary Jane loved her status as mother hen and token straight.

  When Bonnie and I bought our f
irst home, I left most of my Moxie memorabilia behind with Mary Jane and she sent us off with a puppy sired by Moxie as a housewarming gift. The housewarming gift was more of a house wetting gift and we named the little pisher Max so the cycle could begin again.

  For the next twenty years or more, we dined weekly with Mary Jane, often sought her advice and counsel and especially sought out antique stores on our New England travels to enhance her Moxie collection.

  In 1998, just before we lost our beloved Max to old age, we’d gotten a Schnauzer puppy, and of course, his name had to be Moxie. A year later, our second puppy arrived with the name Paddy and we just went with it.

  Clearly, along with my Moxie memorabilia compulsion, Mary Jane also gets alternating credit and blame for my Schnauzer addiction.

  Bonnie and I remained close to Mary Jane through the years, until she passed away in 2005, taking with her a large chunk of my heart. Aside from the legacy of dog names and breed specificity she left me boxes of Moxie memorabilia. Our home has had a certain Moxie decorating panache for years.

  My Moxie and Paddy are gone now too, and Bonnie and I are on temporary Schnauzer hiatus.

  Ironically, just a few weeks ago, preparing for our downsizing move, I hosted a yard sale and sold most of the Moxie items to a collector who was thrilled to have them. I kept the original embossed Moxie Nerve Food bottle, the Moxie yard stick and the memories.

  But here’s the astonishing thing. On the last day of our Canada/Maine vacation, a Wednesday, we saw a sign for the Union Blueberry Fest, happening about 15 minutes from our Maine campground.

  On a complete whim, we drove to the fair, where, at the entrance, we saw a banner across the road. Wednesday is Moxie Day! it said, in the logo print of the soft drink. I grinned.

  “What does that mean?” I asked the ticket-seller.

  “Oh, at the museum, free samples of Moxie today.”

  Museum? Yes, it was the Blueberry Fest, like a state fair, with goats and chickens, a midway and funnel cakes. But on the fairgrounds stood the Matthews Museum of Maine Heritage, featuring “our extensive Moxie Collection.”

  I’d say it’s the largest Moxie Museum in the world, but I have a feeling it’s the only Moxie Museum in the world. The entire exhibit hall, almost as big as the RB Convention Center, was crammed with thousands upon thousands of Moxie bottles, ads, posters, soda wagons, soda fountain signs, crates, antique photographs and objects I’d never seen before.

  Having inadvertently stepped into paradise, I chatted with the docents and learned about all things Moxie. Among the plethora of treasures and memorabilia, I was stunned to learn they do not have a single Moxie yardstick.

  Needless to say, I spent much more time at the museum than at the blueberry spitting contest or the oxen vs. tractor pull (although that was a first for me). And I bought a bright orange souvenir Moxie hat and orange Moxie museum shirt. The staff, thrilled to have a visitor so fascinated with the collection, gave me several complimentary orange Moxie stickers, a drink cooler and more. As the new TV series says, orange IS the new black, so I’m all set.

  Oh, and I tasted Moxie soda. Let’s just say it’s a cross between Coke and root beer, with quite a bit of fizz. I have a feeling it’s been sweetened over the years to satisfy the contemporary palate. In the old days, to earn the moniker nerve food, it probably had a lot more, well, moxie.

  So I’m still reeling from the lucky coincidence that had us in the backwoods of Maine, stumbling across a Moxie Museum on Moxie Day, so I could indulge in this mini Moxie memoir.

  We’re heading home this morning. And when I get home, the first thing I will do is donate that Moxie yard stick to the museum. Downsizing, you know. In fact, from the minute we arrive home, we have ten, count ‘em, ten days to pack and vacate the house. On your mark…

  September 2013

  BEWARE MERCURY IN RETROGRADE

  We’re home, working frantically to get the hell out of one house and into another. And I am having a figurative attack of Mercury poisoning.

  All I know about mercury I learned from my 7th grade science teacher. I know it’s a tiny planet, often called Quicksilver, and an element on that periodic chart. It’s found in fish and the silver stuff in thermometers, which wiggles around the floor if you break the glass. Oh, and there was Freddie Mercury, but he’s gone now. Ditto the Mercury auto, now extinct. Yes, I’ve heard the phrase, “Mercury is in retrograde,” from astrology, but that’s a subject about which I am clueless.

  Back in the 60s when everybody asked “What’s your sign,” I’d piss off the hippies by answering “slippery when wet.”

  But after the week I’ve had, when somebody suggested my problems might be caused by Mercury being in retrograde, I was willing to give it a cursory nod.

  Apparently, when Mercury is in retrograde, which has something to do with an illusion that it’s moving backward through the sky, our plans go awry. Bad stuff happens. Specifically, one astrologist reported, that since Mercury governs all transportation and communication issues (who knew?), anything to do with those areas can go maddeningly wrong. And this year, the planet was in retrograde at the exact time when every communication, transportation or even plumbing device I owned broke.

  First came the iPhone. The Verizon store couldn’t fix it, making me iRate. Fuming, I came out to the parking lot and my electronic key wouldn’t open the car door. I had to dig the lock open like a safecracker with the tiny metal stick buried in the fob. That set off the car alarm which launched me into a frantic hunt for the button to shut it off.

  A snide teen in the lot had fun yelling “Help! This car is being stolen!!!” and by the time I shut down the screaming buzzer and retreated to the steaming hot car I was humiliated as well as irate. When I ordered a new electronic key for the car it cost almost as much as the iPhone. I want a key, not the whole freaking door panel.

  Next, as I drove toward Annapolis and an address I’d never visited, Mercury did what the Incredible Hulk couldn’t. It detached the Velcro from my windshield, allowing the EZ-pass device to commit suicide by landing on the floor of the car, where I stepped on it as I accelerated.

  By the time I realized Mercury had my GPS in retrograde too, I was headed for an address from a month ago, requiring me to cross the Bay Bridge a second time to right myself. I had plenty of time in the cash line on the bridge to dig the EZ-Pass pieces out of the driver’s side foot well.

  Back home, as we prepared to empty the house for our move, I pushed print on one last document and my computer printer, after a decade of exemplary service, ate a ream of paper. I watched in horror as it disgorged pages around the room, gagging and choking and grinding to a halt. There’s nothing half so stupid as using two hands to try and yank a wad of paper from an inanimate object and losing the fight.

  On the day before we moved, I made the error of flushing a Kleenex down the guest bathroom toilet, and after 14 years of exemplary service, water gushed from the base of the device.

  “Dammit, we need a wax ring!” hollered my mate. Now there’s an item I’d never shopped for before. Minutes later I’m in the Lowes plumbing department grabbing for the wax ring (so unlike the carousel’s brass ring) so we could spend the next hour power lifting the porcelain horse and trying to reset it. That’s the Royal we. I just watched in fascination.

  Following that episode, the vacuum stopped sucking, which totally sucked. Not only did it not inhale, but it spewed last month’s dirt all over the living room like a scene from some Ken Burns’ dust bowl documentary. If Mercury in retrograde is the illusion of moving backward, we were suddenly worried we wouldn’t be moving at all.

  I was cleaning up the vacuum dirt with a broom, when my Sirius radio remote quit working. It stranded the radio broadcasting the XM Sex Channel, which previous to the panting sounds I heard, I never knew existed. I was so startled by someone panting louder than I was at the vacuuming, I ripped my earbuds out and broke them.

  Okay, Mercury baby, this has to stop. Thinki
ng there was some credence to this whole planet moving backwards stuff I consulted that paragon of factual integrity, the internet. After wading through pages of astrological advice to the lovelorn and Zodiac based investment tips, I froze at this sentence: “We don’t tend to get all the information we need at this time, so it can be hard to make big decisions; it’s not always the best time to sign a contract, either.”

  Great. What about the real estate settlement? OMG.

  Luckily, Mercury stayed at the old house and all went according to plan. But I was still wary of the following internet warning: “Mercury also rules industries like publishing, writing and editing.”

  Great. Now Mercury is my editor? When I push send on this column, will my real editor actually receive it? It’s enough to give me a low retrograde fever. My apologies to the astrologists among us. Like for Tinkerbell, I am clapping my hands. I believe.

  October 2013

  REMEMBER ME TO HERALD SQUARE

  My only blood-relative first cousin passed away this week. He was only 66 which was hideously depressing. But he had been in poor cardiac health for years, so it wasn’t quite the shock it might have been.

  I loved Kenn dearly; he was really, really odd in a fabulous way. A bona fide opera and theatre junkie, Kenn, a rotund funny man, quick with a naughty joke and even quicker with opera and Broadway trivia, knew how to make us laugh. And think. As Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum from New York’s gay synagogue said at his service, he was a humanist, a classical, Renaissance scholar devoted to our world and the people in it.

  However, scholar and writer, though he be, the rabbi knew he was not above loudly and flamboyantly booing Maria Callas at the Met or standing up at the family Thanksgiving table singing, “I Yam, what I Yam” in a Harvey Fierstein baritone. Graveside, the rabbi mentioned that she hoped when he got to where his soul was going, he would meet up with his idol, singer Renata Tebaldi, and the two of them would be able to avoid Maria Callass.