Tales of California Long Ago - Blaise Moritz

7/31/2019 Tales of California Long Ago - Blaise Moritz

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TALES OF CALIFORNIA LONG AGO

by Blaise Moritz

blaisemoritz.com

(Originally published as a chapbook by Lemming House, Toronto, 1990)

Contents1. The Lumberjacks Decline ..................................................................................................................................... 12. Outside the Confines of Official Science............................................................................................................. 33. Secret Origins ........................................................................................................................................................ 64. The Precarious Tenure of Fame............................................................................................................................. 75. Unknown Migrations .............................................................................................................................................. 96. A Common Error Among Ignorant People ............................................................................................................ 11

7. The Consequences of Filial Impiety ..................................................................................................................... 128. Extravagances on the Road ................................................................................................................................. 139. The Pleasure of Grand Designs ........................................................................................................................... 1610. The Dilemna Reptiles So Often Engender ......................................................................................................... 1911. The Current Play of Light Gossip ....................................................................................................................... 2012. Death in the Palace of Language ...................................................................................................................... 21

1. The Lumberjacks Decline

The lumberjack had once been a great writer. He often dreamt of those happy days as

an expatriate in Paris, delighting in the sub-aquatic light of the city's back alleys, all gone now,

where he walked with comrades discovering the forgotten cafes that became their strongholds.

His legend was just beginning to form then. At the wild, bohemian parties, where all the now

famous authors used to get together, he would put on his safari gear and get out his elephant

gun and talk about the thrill of big game hunting and what it was like out on the savannah and

how he hoped to go to Africa someday.

On one such occasion the lumberjack made a bad impression on Dalgerson, a well-

established colleague, by shooting the head off Dalgerson's chicken, which he claimed was a


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valuable writing aid. This was the beginning of the lumberjack's decline. Minus the chicken,

Dalgerson was worthless and his publisher, not about to take this loss kindly, made it

impossible for the lumberjack's work to get into print in Europe.

Desperate, he came home and took a job writing for the movies. There in the luxury of

the studio's writ ing den, with one boy to take the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, another

to open the pack, another to remove a cigarette, one to hold his lips apart while another put

the cigarette in his mouth, and finally one to light it with a solid gold lighter, his inspiration

deserted him. The final blow came when after many unproductive months he found that he

could no longer meet the payments and a man came from the agency and repossessed his

boswell.

Without a boswell he was afraid to think or say anything--he felt sure that he would

suddenly have a flurry of brilliant insights and they would, tragically, go unrecorded.

Therefore he retired to the woods and became a lumberjack in an attempt to keep his

mind blank until such time as he had enough money to employ a boswell once again.


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2. Outside the Confines of Official Science

Pollo kept a diary of everything he had ever eaten. He had not been able to start until

he was six for it was not until then that he had achieved the necessary degree of literacy. But

his first memory was of having this idea. Once he started he threw all his energies into the

project. His discipline and enthusiasm at such an age made his parents uneasy. They wanted

him to slow down, to have a normal childhood. Pollo, however, was determined. They then tried

to interest him in other, in their opinion more worthwhile, activities. They had never understood

him.

He still enjoyed his entries from those early days and only occasionally regretted the

lack of detail compared to the level on which he was working now, recording calories and

temperature upon ingestion, drawing diagrams of the arrangement of the food on the plate,

pasting in the recipes and noting any changes that had had to be made due to the discovery of

an unexpected shortage of some ingredient, expressing those intangibles--taste, smell,

consistency--in what he considered his mature literary style.

In his teens, Pollo's project had shaped the course of his education. He was plagued by

the thought of those missing years and almost two thousand unrecorded meals and snacks.

He felt sure that deep in his mind or in the minds of those who had fed him lay all those lost

meals. A way to tap the hidden recesses of the human brain was needed and to this end he

studied mesmerism. He majored in the ideas of Puysegur--hypnotism and somnambulism. He

was able to extract from his own memory the names of everyone who had ever fed him and

traces of the meals themselves, but the pictures were vague. Dissatisfied he spent ten years

gathering together all those people and cross-referencing their memories to build at last a

comprehensive record of his diet in his first six years. He always treasured the moment when


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the nurse had finally, after being kept in a deep trance for a potentially harmful period of time,

come up with the brand and flavor of the baby food that was the first meal he had ever eaten.

Pollo decided that his children would never have this difficulty. He kept their diaries for

them until such time as they would be able to take over and do it for themselves. As they came

of age, he would tell them how proud he was to turn the work over to them. He endeavoured to

instruct them also so that they would never have any regrets as he had. He had hoped to

found a family tradition but each child in turn rejected him.

That the world never took any interest in his project did not disturb him. Pollo had to

eke out a living working for a company that sold car phones. In the store there was a

demonstration model so that people could try talking on one and see the quality for

themselves. Pollo's job was to drive around all day, receive these calls, and make small talk. It

had its advantages though. Unlike more high profile, more high powered jobs it demanded no

time outside of business hours, leaving his evenings free for his real work. Convinced of its

importance, he was happy to live on in anonymity.

But the attitude of his family, their lack of understanding, was hard on him. At the end

of his life he was a broken man. He still had his youngest son, at the time just an infant, but his

wife, his other children had left him. He held no hope for this last child. Pollo died a young

man. He choked to death, unable to record his last meal.

The son, however, learned of his father's diaries. And it was he who has taken the idea

and fashioned it into something of true importance, brought it out of the realm of eccentric

hobby. He has developed machines to probe the mind, eschewing his father's unscientific

methods. He has travelled the world, recording the memories of a large, representative sample

of people. From this data he has pieced together the contents of the race memory. At last he


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has been able to start work on his long-dreamt of project, a project he does not expect to live

to see completed, a catalogue of everything the human race has ever eaten.


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3. Secret Origins

A water filter walked into an employment agency looking for a job. "Why don't you go

into water filtration? With your double-pass, ultra-violet cleansing unit, you're a natural," said

the clerk.

"That's what everybody says. Listen, these days just the fact that a guy looks like a

particular appliance doesn't have to determine his whole life! A face lift, a hair transplant,

some dental work, I could be a knife sharpener or a food processor."

But the operations failed and the water filter returned a man. "We only have the one job

for men: water filter salesman's assistant. That should suit you, you can draw on your personal

experience."

At the end of the day, when he and the salesman have finished their rounds, they stop

at the bar. And when the salesman has gotten very drunk he confesses that he never wanted

to be a salesman but he was born with plaid skin and patent leather feet.


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4. The Precarious Tenure of Fame

A one tonne leatherback turtle which washed up on a Welsh beach last week could be

the largest of the species ever recorded, the National Museum of Wales says. It measured

nearly ten feet from flipper to flipper and eight and a half long. It was thought to have come

from the Caribbean in search of jellyfish.

A fisherman went out after dinner one night when the sky was red. Three months later

he returned, the charter company long since having hired another in his place to captain his

head boat. With him he brought the largest shark that had ever been caught and he claimed

he had done it the honest way--with rod and reel. He was the toast of the talk show circuit

where he would show off the jaw minus thirty of its teeth which he wore around his neck on a

necklace.

No one recognized him for he had changed much since his youth. But much earlier he

had been famous. He had had a TV show of his own, on which he and a giant leatherback

turtle taught the principles of higher mathematics. The turtle performed the arithmetic, he

provided the equations. He had caught the turtle and befriended it and then had discovered its

remarkable talent--not only for the four basic operations but also exponents, logarithms, and

trigonometric ratios. But it soon became so popular that it let itself be convinced that it could

strike out on its own. Over the next few months it did some commercials while waiting for just

the right job. Five years later it admitted its career was dead and returned to the gulf and

hunting jellyfish.

It was the largest of all the leatherbacks and had been a great hunter. During its

absence it had become a dominant figure in its species' mythology. It hunted little when it

returned, it had little appetite, it was weary and the adoration and scrutiny of its fellows was


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not altogether appreciated. Sometimes it swam up into the swamp to a spot where the reeds

grow such that it could it swim to the boardwalk trail and unseen watch the people. It loved

their shirts which it felt helped it keep up to date onthe topsy-turvy goings-on in that celebrity

fast-lane it had once been a part of. It still longed for the bright lights though it knew this could

never be.

Hunting was bad in the gulf the next year. Word was it was bad everywhere. The jellyfish were

scarce and the younger turtles could no longer afford to show their idol any respect or

deference--they had to look out for their own interests. Its dreams of stardom shattered,

desperately hungry, it hoped in vain to be delivered to a place not so full of memories and

where the fishing was easy.

The fisherman relates how a trail of jellyfish had led him to a dead whale and there he

had found and caught the magnificent shark. Now he gets to dress up in stupid caps and high

rubber boots and go to parties where everyone else is wearing a tuxedo or gown.


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5. Unknown Migrations

As a boy Zucha had escaped from the East. For a time, he had lived on the landing of a

staircase in an empty building with a family of rats and a cabbage. When it rained the water

would come in through the broken windows and the holes in the roof and he would sit there as

the water flowed down the steps around him. The rats would find discarded shingles and use

them as rafts. This would draw Zucha out of himself. He would pass the rainy days teaching

them water sports. But winter came and he left. Alone on the streets after curfew on a bright,

snowy night, the soldiers inside, close to their stoves and their radios, out of the city and onto a

plain, where the snow was ever deeper, to an old wire fence and stepping over this obstacle,

without knowing it, he was free.

He awoke in the spring and continued till he happened upon a railway line. An empty

coal car took him to the coast. There he saw sheds four stories tall, inside of which, stacked

one on top of the other, were hundreds of pleasure boats and also the arcing ramps that carry

crates of grain and ore to the cranes that lower it into the giant ships. After a time, he came to

the New World on a cattle boat, received his citizenship at a sports bar and years later I met

him.

His yard was enclosed by crab apple trees. On his heavy, Transylvanian door was a warning in

his language. He had a dog, a wife, two children, and a flag. Occasionally, I could hear him

playing the trumpet. He never learned our language well, but well enough to talk in the early

days about his exciting escape and his political opinions. I was very young when he and his

family disappeared.

Just before I moved out of that part of the city they returned. I ran into them at the bus

stop. A fancy car passed by and Zucha said that it belonged to a famous local radio


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personality. He knew because, in anticipation of his leaving the city, he had sold it to the

fellow. He hadn't thought he would be back.

Zucha had gone home to show the rats what he had accomplished and to plot a

revolution with them. His wife and children had stood behind him ankle deep in water,

watching as he, on all fours, talked to the rats in broken English. But the rats did not recognize

him because he now smelled of white carpets and plastic chairs.


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6. A Common Error Among Ignorant People

When the lumberjack came to buy his new shoes he found that he had forgotten his

shoe size. This made things most difficult. Dr. Gorgeous the Shoe God had to put the

lumberjack's feet into the foot measuring machine. Then he picked out a nice pair of slip-ons

with fake bows on them for the lumberjack, only to find that the radiation had expanded the

poor fellow's feet and the shoes were much too small. But what was his new shoe size? The

whole thing had to be done over again. Soon the lumberjack's feet were quite unusually large.

Dr. Gorgeous saw that they were too big for even the biggest shoes in his stock. Thus he

got some silk, some wood, some plaster and some nails. He put two boards of appropriate size

under the lumberjack's feet and then plastered over them. He wrapped the two shoes all in silk

which he nailed to the boards along the edges, and painted everything black. Examining his

handiwork Dr. Gorgeous became dissatisfied. He was about to apologize to the lumberjack

when he noticed his customer had fallen asleep.

Seizing his opportunity, Dr. Gorgeous took him down to the cellar and laid him on a

table. Then he called an employment agency for a nurse. She arrived shortly and he instructed

her to keep the lumberjack under sedation. He left her to her work. He paused on the steps at

the point just before the lumberjack would be out of view. Lumberjacks will settle only for top-

quality foot-wear, thought Dr. Gorgeous to himself. Better that he spend the time until I have

gorgeous shoes for his giant feet in blissful sleep.


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7. The Consequences of Filial Impiety

Gambling Siamese twins sold their mother to finance a trip to Las Vegas. They weren't

bold gamblers, they just played the penny slot machines. They sat inside in the air conditioning

and complained to a boxing manager from their home town they had happened to meet. For

his part, he just talked about fighters whose names he couldn't remember, who hadn't been

any good, and who'd died long before the twins had been born anyway.

One day they did venture out to the suburbs. On an empty lot was a gipsy woman selling

paintings of unicorns. After they had spent their meager winnings, she invited them into her

mobile home. There, a giant slug, following the directions in a book he'd bought up north,

divided them.

"Excellent!" they exclaimed. "Now we will win twice as much!" They became big time

gamblers and a cut of their winnings always found its way to the slug and the gipsy wherever

their wanderings had taken them. But there was nothing for the long-forgotten mother who,

nagging and complaining all the while, rowed the imperial barge and kept Assurbanipal's

zigurats and friezes dusted.


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8. Extravagances on the Road

I got a lift from a guy who said he was driving a bunch of artichokes to Sacramento. He

was their chauffeur. They were from Seattle, he claimed, but I could tell they were lying. It is

highly unlikely that anyone you may encounter is actually from Seattle. So much of what I was

taught, all of it no doubt more useful and sensible, has faded but this has stayed with me. No

people live in Seattle, no more than there are rooms in houses seen from the outside, no more

than the earth is round.

The artichokes have an exceptional car for members of the vegetable kingdom. I have

no car, I say. They mock me. The chauffeur speaks for them, changing his voice to distinguish

between them. People had been quite confused before he had gotten to know the artichokes.

He had just mechanically repeated everything they wanted him to say. They had been very

dissatisfied. It hadn't made it any easier that he was the first person to work for them after a

terrible accident had made it impossible for Paffo, their talented, longtime chauffeur to

continue in their service. Now, however, he had developed not only voices but also gestures

for each which he feels reflect the individual personalties of the artichokes.

They speak constantly of the celebrities they hope to meet in Sacramento. I tease them,

claiming to see celebrities standing on the paved shoulder of the highway. Every time they

insist on stopping and having their man take them outside. They are only satisfied that I was

lying when they have searched the road carefully and thrashed about for hours in the ironweed

in the ditch by the roadside. Having no eyes, they are quite content to do this even once night

has fallen, leaving me alone in the dark. Talk shows are all there is on the radio. By morning I

have tired of my game. It greatly impedes our progress.


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Now we discuss the fur-bearing fish of Urtig Bay, found years ago by fishermen. What a

magnificent creature it was, how unfortunate no other has been found, the artichokes run on. I

wish I had been the fisherman who had caught it, one says. I remember that no fisherman

caught it and there never was such a fish. "There are photographs."

"Yes, but it was a hoax. The fish was a fake."

"If there are photographs, in what sense was it not real? It was as real as the bay where

they pretended to find it, as real as the men who pretended to find it, they too only exist in

photographs. Besides does it matter? It is such a lovely story, the kind of lie history is made

of."

We have crossed the State Line. Which State the man would not tell us. There was a

sign that read State Line and a man in a toll booth who looked at our passports, asked where

we were from, the purpose of our visit, if we were bringing anything in, charged us fifty cents. It

was a scenic State with great canyons or perhaps it was great mountains, I forget now which.

There are mailboxes by the roadside, decorative I suppose, as there are no houses to be seen.

Wait, I see one through the trees, and another. This street is supposed to end soon, one

artichoke claims.

"We are planning to stay with a friend and our directions to the house say that we drive

on this road till it dead ends and then take a right."

However we have been driving this way for many days now.

"I think perhaps we turned at the wrong light back in Bath."

"I heard that the light we were supposed to turn at had a food terminal and an empty lot

on the corners. We turned at one with a school and a police station."

"I did not hear that." The Artichokes are in disarray.

"Here is the postman. Let us ask him. He will know."


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9. The Pleasure of Grand Designs

Unbeknownst to the city I have extended my cellar out beneath my front yard and that

of my neighbors on either side and even right out underneath the street. Here I have built a

casino where for twenty years now I have been honing my skills. One day I will break the bank. I

will wear tuxedos and never get drunk and introduce myself last name-first name-last again

and be murdered in my bed in Europe by an elegant woman. But I must be patient. One must

be prepared for such things.

"Do we all come from outer space, professor, or only some of us?" Genteel, southern

laughter. A private party at my house, socializing before dinner, aperitifs the way only Rudolfo

can mix them, the new age small talk I love so much. The chandeliers, her teeth her jewelry,

Professor Paffo's glass eyes, everything glitters, like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver

braid, like crystals of snow. The room is an empire of light, bright as a fallen piece of sky.

"The latter is the prevailing idea," says Paffo. He is only a head, nailed to a board which

rests on one those carts one drives slide projectors around on. Wired to him are a speaker and

an omni-directional microphone. Later I stand by the grand staircase, surveying my guests and

brooding in my pink suit. She approaches in her rental gown, smiling. "I am so sorry, dahling.

Paffo just insisted on tagging along. Oh, and he brought along some turnip that was with him.

Say you don't mind."

I return to Paffo and notice, as I had not before, a turnip lying on the cart beside him,

hooked to him by a wire. Paffo is barking, attracting everyone's attention. Butch is trying to get

the turnip.

"Oh Monsieur, give me your sympathy and counsel. I am wanting to use this turnip in

the salad."


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"Can you imagine anything so horrible!" cries Paffo.

Only my aversion to this variety of root saved the turnip from the salad. "I like

vegetables in general but happily there are exceptions to every rule."

Then Butch leaves and people gradually settle back into their conversations. I ponder

the turnip. Guests of unwanted guests of guests never bring anything but trouble and

embarrassment. There was something ominous in the way the turnip lay there--the angle of it

against the cart, the distortion of its shape, part of it being in Paffo's shadow. A fanciful

thought. I try moving it around, arranging it in different positions to see if there is something

particularly expressive of impending tragedy in its original position. Paffo starts up suddenly, I

had forgotten about him, and asks me what I am doing. I explain and he exclaims, "How

intensely interesting!" For once his attention pleases me.

The gong sounds. Dinner, excellent, I'm sure--Butch is the best--but of little interest to

me. I must learn to live on finger sandwiches and appetizers. I want to stay and talk with Paffo.

She looks blankly at me for a second, rendered inoperative temporarily by this assault on

decorum. But then she smiles, says, "How droll you are!" and leads me off to table.

After dinner, as I customarily do at such events, I open my casino and let the guests

amuse themselves, playing at being gamblers. Paffo rolls up to me. The turnip wants to play

blackjack and not just for fun. I try to dissuade him from this foolhardy challenge but Paffo tells

me the turnip gets these notions occasionally and is well enough off to cover any damage he

does himself. I call Rudolfo away from the bar to deal. It is four o'clock in the morning the next

time I notice the clock.

Looking around I see there is only Rudolfo and I and Butch sweeping up and Paffo with

the turnip. Everyone else must have slipped out at some point. The turnip reeks of gin and the

air is thick with the smoke from its cigar. Paffo asks it repeatedly to put it out; he can't stand


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the smoke. But the turnip is gradually revealing itself to be a domineering, self-important type.

Paffo appears to be arguing with himself, no, he explains, it's just that he must speak for the

turnip, it not having the capability to speak for itself. The turnip's last card is turned over.

Twenty-one again.

I had beaten it soundly for two hours straight. Then it had won a game, by chance I

assumed, but I complimented it on its play and it wanted to continue. It had apologized and

said it didn't know how it was fluking it off when it pulled ahead. The dawn found me heavily in

debt to a turnip. When Butch whispered in my ear that the sun was rising, as he does every

morning, I had staked almost my entire fortune. I realize now that I have fallen prey to a

hustler.

I excuse myself for a moment and go up through the manhole on the street for some

air. I run to the corner where there is a payphone. I dial Dr. Jarred's emergency hotline number.

If anyone can save me it is my mentor, the world's leading expert on the science of blackjack,

whose program of audio cassettes lies behind the success of all the great modern gamblers.

The line is busy again. I am lost.

I hail a taxi and leave the country, working my way across the ocean on a cattle boat. All

the way over, while teaching the cows Spanish and preparing them for the shock of a strange

culture, I am daydreaming. The turnip at Monte Carlo, unbeatable, living off the sandwich tray,

the sorrow of casino managers and I, pushing past the bouncers, there beneath the fancy

chandeliers in the rags of a Catalonian peasant challenging the turnip, the turnip's shock upon

recognizing me! Then I fall asleep, there with the cows which are sadly free of the pleasure of

grand designs.


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10. The Dilemna Reptiles So Often Engender

The iguana has not said anything for days, he has not come down from the ledge above

the window, he has not moved. There are basically two camps of thought among those

present. Some say he is plastic, others say he is dead. The only one undecided is Dr. Gorgeous

the Shoe God. The water filter salesman's assistant, usually reticent, explains that dead the

iguana would make a great loafer but plastic it would be the kind of family heirloom Dr.

Gorgeous has always wanted.


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11. The Current Play of Light Gossip

The climate of the desert is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere. For the

benefit of the fossil record, however, the bones of the deceased are returned home by airmail.

There, scientists walk out into the desert blindfolded and scatter the bones so that they and

their successors will have something to discover.

The current play of light gossip is around the idea of going back to the desert. A million

years from now it will split apart and the sea will rush in. There will be an ocean there and

everyone knows about the moderating effect of large bodies of water. Yes, yes concur the

rhinoceroi, sitting around the elegant card table, taking contemplative draws on their cigars,

sipping their whisky and sodas, adjusting their monocles, much more comfortable now that the

buttons of their waistcoats have come off.


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12. Death in the Palace of Language

"Don't think I am unappreciative of your kindness. We trust you will not consider us

unduly strict. So many requests of a similar nature come to us. But seriously speaking of what

use is it?" shouts the chicken, come to answer the door. I have succeeded in teaching it a

rudimentary form of the language by having it memorize fifteen thousand useful phrases. I

stand there on the threshold facing the chicken. I say nothing. I have sunk to this--bluffing,

trying to engage the chicken's self-doubt, make it think it's made a mistake. The chicken looks

me up and down and I see a smile of deep enlightenment spread across its beak. "I stand

corrected. I shall be glad if you will join me."

I suspect I was welcomed first with skeptical contempt because it thought I was the

man who delivers junk mail. Once I would have considered this a grievous blunder and in

despair might have resolved not to continue my work. But now it is only understandable. I am

the man who delivers junk mail.

I didn't used to be. I was a top student and I graduated a master craftsman. But my

exquisite narwhal tusk carvings of the evolution of life on earth have yet to be appreciated. I

am denied my museum and my knife business and the worship of my bad manners and

meaningless, but down-to-earth, aphorisms. When I was young and full of hope, I taught the

chicken to despise junk mail carriers. Now I cannot bear to tell it that I myself am reduced to

holding this most menial and disreputable of jobs.

When times were good or when I still hoped that one day they might be good, we would

spend pleasant evenings together. I would carve and drill the chicken and later read to it. But

recently all I've wanted to do is lie around in the big chair and drink beer, watch TV and plan to

buy everything that is advertised and argue loudly about sports. Through all this the chicken is


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always silent. As I get drunker I shout, "So what if I was to get married three times and sell

insurance, wouldn't that make me happy? Don't give me that stuff about being disillusioned. I

can't go on like this." I think even its mean intelligence perceives the tragedy of my life and

this weighs heavy on its simple, sympathetic soul.

The anemone that weeps at day-break, like a silly girl before her lover, wakes with its

sobs. Staring at the ceiling, it comes to me dimly that last night was particularly bad. I seem to

remember delivering a lengthy harangue to the chicken and am glad I can't remember what I

said. I start to get out of bed, only to find the chicken standing there by my side in the half-light.

A faintly quizzical look comes into its incisive stare. I have a foreboding of some destined

change. Yes, it cannot continue, we are no longer master and disciple. I can see in its eyes that

it thinks me pathetic.

It comes back to me. I told the chicken last night, my reason temporarily off l ine, my

defenses down, I confessed. No, it is too horrible! "If you think I really meant it when I said I'm

a junk mail carrier you're dumber than you should be!" I stammer. But the time for denial is

passed.

"Please continue to be frank. As you were at the crimson close of day," said the chicken.

"I do deliver junk mail now but do not circumstances justify it? Tell me you think it 's all

right."

"Excuse my bluntness. I can think of nothing more disagreeable." It pecks at my foot. I

draw my foot away. It trots up and pecks again--more vigorously.

"Die, monster, die!" it says. That phrase! I never taught it such vulgarities!

"Oh chicken, one cannot always live in the palaces and state apartments of language

but we can refuse to spend our days in searching out its vilest slums."


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It does not answer. I am helpless as it pecks me to death. My life--a strange mixture of

carelessness, generosity, and caprice, a failure despite my admirable mastery of technique in

narwhal tusk carving. It seems intolerably tragic.

"Goodbye, chicken. Now I drift out into the eternal sea..."

"...which like a childless mother, still must croon her ancient sorrows to the cold white

moon," it finishes for me.

Documents

Tales of California Long Ago - Blaise Moritz