Short Thoughts by Phoebe Martone

Various thoughts that flow through the transom of my mind

When someone's telling you an outright lie and you know it, you watch their lips moving, your eyes get wider, and you have to make sure your mouth doesn't betray you – either in speech or expression, as you listen to the rest of the lie.

I love potatoes, just one of my downfalls, but what's not to like? And they come in so many colors, although I prefer either yellow or red. I'm not a potato snob, though.  Bring on those wonderful, familiar Idaho potatoes in earthtone brown, and that's what we used when Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head called for using real potatoes. No plastic potato with holes in various places for us. No, we used the real thing.

It's summer and the cats are fairly happy. They do not like the heat, but they love the summer nights after it's cooled down.  Then they roam around the yard listening for things in the grass, using the solar lights to find bugs.  In winter they are not happy.  The bugs are hibernating. No fun. They lounge longer. When they wake up, they come up to me and whine, "There's nothing to do in this one-horse town."

I was deported from Canada over 50 years ago. I was just visiting a commune of potters on Quadra Island in British Columbia for the summer. The authorities thought I was trying to immigrate. Since my daughter was in my arms at 11 months, I suppose she was deported also. I loved B.C.  All the berries and oysters and the sea.  People walked around with a little bottle of hot sauce in their shirt pocket in case they found some oysters. They'd make a tiny fire of driftwood on the beach they'd, put little stones on the fire and set the oysters on the stones. They'd bubble and squeak and pop open. My daughter took her first steps in the main house when "Maybe I'm Amazed" by Paul McCartney was playing on the phonograph. Everyone clapped. We had fun before the mounties caught up with us.

My mother took me to the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey's Circus at Madison Square Garden when I was a kid.  There were 3 rings, and a lot going on.  I thought it was wonderful but dizzying to keep track of 3 different acts. I hope that they have stricter rules about the treatment of animals in the circus now. At the time I thought elephants were having fun doing a Disney-ized version of themselves for the public.  I got to see Emmet Kelly, the famous clown. I don't have a thing about clowns. He was so cute, trying to sweep the spotlight away with his broom. I love the smell of sawdust. I'd much rather see a film of live animals in their natural habitat than a caged one close up.

I love the smells of:  geraniums, roses, sawdust, horse manure, garlic, spearmint, melon, nectarines, mustard, fried fish, loamy soil, vanilla extract, delicatessens, dark bread, whiskey, lavender soap, anise and black licorice, salty sea air, Noxema, wood, pineapple popsicles, Bing cherries, oregano, my mother when I was a kid, lemongrass, lily-of-the-valley, roasted chestnuts.
I've had big feet always.  I eventually became a 10-wide, but on my way to that size I surprised several shoe store clerks.  I had to get used to, "Well, I'll be, she is size 9," when I was in 6th grade – said in front of whoever happened to be in the shoe store at the time.  At Lafayette Junior High School I wore my oxfords as I looked enviously around at my dainty counterparts in their ballerina flats.  I finally figured out where to buy girlie type shoes and things improved. This was when we manufactured our own shoes in the American south, no doubt with terrible pay for the workers – but boy, we had some beautiful shoes.  

Shoes have become a big deal. I like shoes. I've always liked them, if I can find my bleeping size, but something more is happening. There's some kind of love affair women are having with their shoes.  You turn on the telly and, someone is mentioning shoes, showing their closet with a hundred shoes. And there's name dropping – Jimmy Choo. Manolo Blahnik. That's not anything like Birkenstock, or Skechers is it? Hey, I remember a brand from when I was little: "That's my dog Tiger. He lives in a shoe. I'm Buster Brown. Look for me in there too.  And I did. And they were."

My father's favorite song was:
When the red red robin goes bob bob bobbin' along, along,
There'll be no more sobbin' when he starts throbbin' his old sweet song ---
Wake up, wake up you sleepy head. Get up, get up, get outta bed.
Cheer up, cheer up, the sun is red – live, love, laugh and be happy.
What if I've been blue, now I'm walkin' through fields of flowers.
The rain may glisten but still I listen for hours and hours.
I'm just a kid again, doin' what I did again, singin' that song:
When the red red robin goes bob bob bobbin along.
I sing it when I miss him.

I used to sing for my mother. She loved all sorts of music, especially old standards. Sometimes we would get the soundtrack from a musical comedy and play it over and over.  As a kid, I did a fairly good Liza Doolittle, cockney and all – "ah, wouldn't it be loverly." My mother got a kick out of it. Pop didn't sing beautifully, although it didn't stop him. He'd sing love songs and stick my name in them. It was sweet. He did whistle  beautifully, like something out of a dream, clear, perfect notes.

My pop didn't drive, which made our family stand out. In the 40's and 50's many people didn't have cars, and when they did it was one family car, and the father drove it. Sometimes the mother drove, and sometimes she didn't even learn how. But my mom was our family driver. My pop said it was because of his temperament, which made sense. Mom would drive, and he would ride shotgun, yelling curses out the window at drivers when they did something annoying. My mom would say, "Albie, stop that."   I would duck down in the backseat trying to look invisible. Pop was creative in his choice of curse words and put interesting  combos together that I never heard elsewhere. He was a big softie, but boy could he curse.

On the Staten Island Ferry it was cold and windy, and I loved it. My mother would pull the car onto the boat along with many others. Once it was parked, looking forward, we could go upstairs into the top where the wind was powerful and the view was wonderful -- boats, sea birds, and the salty fragrance. Once we arrived on the other side, we were facing the right direction to go from boat to land and on to friends in Brooklyn.

I was class clown in 5th grade. We had a mean teacher, really mean, who looked like Jackie Gleason in drag.  Her name was Miss Hacket, but we called her Miss Hatchet. She was a blue meanie. I can still see her at the front of the room in her matching clip-on earings and necklace. She must've come from a punishing background because she saw her goal in life to be suppression and repression. I entertained the class and got into trouble sometimes, but it was worth it. We needed a laugh.  

In our elementary school, Winfield Scott Elementary, in the 1950's, if you lost your place in the book when the teacher called on you, you had to stand in the back of the room with the book balanced on your head.  If you got caught chewing gum, you had to stand in the back of the room with gum on your nose.  One time I was doing double-duty in the back of the room with both a book on my head and gum on my nose when my mother's face showed up in the glass part of the door. She looked dismayed and didn't enter. When I got home she said, "Oiy! I thought I'd visit your classroom, but then I looked in and saw you in the back of the room in all your scholarly splendor. I won't show up again without warning you. Oiy!"