Woodstock and Going to the Farm

I was walking in the Pennsylvania Mountain’s with my granddad the summer of Woodstock.  He told me his life was complete for one reason, “He lived to see Tommy Dorsey and all the other Big Bands!”  His eyes danced describing the scene. “That’s exactly how I feel hearing my generation’s music and going out,” I told him. During this mutual sharing, my granddad reached down and dug a root out of the ground. After he washed it in the river, he told me to chew on it. He then asked me what it tasted like? I responded,” root beer.”  He explained that each spring he would make tea from the root of the flowering sassafras that made him high for a couple days. “Now where getting somewhere Granddad,” I thought. The idea for the tea was passed down from Indian’s who considered it a spring purification and medicine.  Just when I was thought I was being given the tree of wisdom from my medicine man granddad, he said there was one problem, too much will make you ill. I still tried making the tea a few times I don’t think I made it strong enough out of fear. (It was the basis for root beer until banned in 1976.)

During Woodstock, I was in the traffic jam making my way to the concert when the police closed the New York Turnpike. We were told to turn around.  It was probably a good thing for I had jumped into a car and hadn’t told my family. In my mind, it will be bad for the rest of eternity in what I missed though. After that summer, I started college and was in musical bliss listening to all my generations Big Bands. I can still picture myself in the University of Pennsylvania’s quad when Ina-a-Gadda-Da-Vida was the anthem coming out of every open dorm window in a surround sound cosmic stereo. It was brilliant. You didn’t have to move for seventeen minutes and change a record while it played. The songs length was a factor that contributed to the haze of smoke coming from those windows.

The next few years, I was part of my own little Woodstock. A group of friends rented and lived on a farm outside of Philadelphia. Though we all didn’t live on it, we shared going to “The Farm.”  I actually drove a tractor and we had meals from food we grew, sort of. It left such an undeniable memory that we just got together to celebrate forty years of friendship this summer! To attempt to write about these friends feels part of a sacred trust. We are still hippies in the very truest manifestation of it’s meaning; People who give and get energy from each other, who have not dropped out, nor lost our ideals, still share a sense of common goodness, and now have a feeling of having been through the trenches and reaching the other side. I lost contact with the group, though many of the others had stayed in touch.  When I thought of my friends, it was through a sense of nostalgia. It was like yearning sensation to return to a good dream. We shared a time in history that was both the best and worst.

When we got together again, I realized people don’t change that much. I heard the same laughter and show of concern. It is good to feel part of something that no one can take away. Time moves on for all of us, but we are essentially the same people. And, we still question authority.  Maybe, we should reexamine the government’s role in the sassafras studies? What did the Indians get out of that herb that they drank for hundreds of years until we killed them? Tea party anyone?

Lighting A Fire

Last Saturday night, my husband attempted to light a fire in our outdoor table with a fire pit center.  It started off bad. Through the corner of my eye, I saw him walking out of the house with an electric candle lighter and lighter fluid. We had company and I didn’t want to yell, but I had to say no! He proceeded to tell me that there was water in the copper fire pit well and he wanted to burn it off. My response was cautiously optimistic, after I handed him matches and took back the lighter. If he threw a match from a safe distance, he stood a chance!

Later I walked up the path to our gazebo with the fire pit. My guy managed to get a half lit fire going with wood logs, store bought for the occasion. I walked up as was explaining to friends; he couldn’t get a good fire going because we don’t have kindling. Here is where I have the problem. We are in the middle of the woods. Pick up some sticks from the ground! He continued by saying, he really only likes to use the compressed paper logs you buy, but couldn’t find them that day.  Our neighbor then said, “Oh, Jew logs!”

As they sat there laughing, I’m thinking, you have a doctor and judge unable to make fires without man made product intervention. We live in the woods and have had many trees and branches cut down. We have paid to have it all hauled away and then buy logs. It annoys me, but what annoys me more is, being unable to make a comment like that about the log!  Childhood jokes started popping into my head. When I was growing up, for some reason all our jokes started with using Polish people. I never knew why. Now, I wanted to say a joke like, how many Jewish men does it take to start a fire?

I know. I know… these jokes are totally politically and ethically incorrect! My husband and friend can make the log comment to each other because they are both Jewish. I’m not, so can’t chime in. I watched George Lopez last night and started thinking about all this. His entire act was making fun of the Latino’s. He can do this because he is Latino and don’t get me started on being Black and who can use the N word.

Being an Anglo Saxon Protestant, we crack me up!  In this political climate, we are often becoming the butt of the joke.  As a matter of fact, we just keep getting funnier, the more we become closer to a minority.  For the first time in my life, I am going through a white ugly complex! I think someone needs to point out that some of the political hysteria these days has something to do with the white elephant in the room. White Democrats and White Republicans are loosing dominance in the US.

As we squirm, we should start looking at ourselves differently and let’s go for it and be more different! Let’s ponder why one needs to be like their neighbor. Why in the affluent area, I hoped my whole life to live in: the women create fish lips through injections then starve themselves, teenage boys and girls all look the same, most social functions bring tears to my eyes in attempt to divert yawning, much of the art, furniture, clothing, houses, stores, and street’s all look alike. I love the word schmuck. I learned it from my guy: schmuck, schmuck, and schmuck! I still believe it’s good to learn how to light a fire though.

Back To The Future

When I was sixteen I went to my High School prom in Chappaqua, NY. A new musician played the whole evening named Jimi Hendrix. It was a few months before Hendrix’s career broke open.  It was through this prom night I learned what an epiphany meant for the first time.

When Hendrix first began to play, something happened. Everyone became quiet. It was exactly like the scene out of the movie, Back To the Future, when Michael J. Fox stepped back in time and was at his Mother’s prom. Michael J. Fox picked up the guitar and played music from a future era. To understand the sequence of time in history for my prom, I was wearing hair piled up so high, the only thing missing was a model ship as Marie Antoinette wore. I was also wearing white gloves!

Hendrix had just come from Europe and was wearing clothes from another world. As his hands went up and down the guitar, he had a crazy smile. His grin just kept getting bigger, as our jaws kept opening wider in a, what the hell am I witnessing way. I honestly remember the evening’s importance because it changed my thinking. It was for me the realization that there was a whole other world out there that I wanted to know more about. I was hearing the wild, savage, future.

It was also the only time I was a stalker. I followed Hendrix to the parking lot and to the men’s room. I smelled pot coming from his van as he went back and forth between set brakes. I didn’t know what pot was. I remember going to see the Vanilla Fudge, Chambers Brothers, and Credence Clearwater concerts at the Electric Factory some months later. Every concert I went to, I would think, there’s that smell again. I got in trouble for going into the parking lot that prom night and had my first experience with detention. Later as I went home to change out my prom dress, I honestly remember ripping my “hairdo” apart and feeling the sensation of a crazy rage need for change.

A couple months later it was summer. I went with my family to Cap Cod. I saw that Jimi Hendrix was playing in either a Hyannis Port or Yarmouth club. I went and waited outside until he drove up in what I think was a silver Corvette. I followed him to the back door. In my NY hometown, girls could get into a bar at 16. This was not the case in Cape Cod. I asked him to please get me in. He ignored me. The next night I waited again and did the same thing. This time I said, as he walked by, “But you played at my prom!” He stopped and actually looked at me. He said, “ How old are you?”  I said, “16.” He then said, “your ******* jailbait” and had the sense to walk away.

I’m not lost

“Arthur Young is, in my opinion, the greatest theoretical genius since Einstein…” this quote was made by Tom Robbins, author of Another Roadside Attraction. Young and Einstein had in common another fact besides genius, they could not drive.  This is funny to me for two reasons. Arthur Young invented the Bell Helicopter and I learned why he couldn’t drive while driving him down a country road.

I had the privilege of taking one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, on a ride through the country. Young had an old Rolls Royce, or I think it was.  I couldn’t see over the long hood with a sculpture at the end. (I don’t know cars.) He told me the police had taken away his license. After getting lost, Young would call the police to pick him up. He said his problem was that when he drove, “he forgot where he was going.” If you are inventing a theory of the universe in your head, you can forget where you are going, this I understand.

Young and his wonderful wife (she did the driving) were both at the country home of someone offering a weekend retreat. It was for a dozen people to further their mind expansion. I was there furthering my capabilities also. It was in the early 1970’s when mind control and expansion was being taught in various forms. In the right atmosphere, to a small degree, I learned to feel someone’s thought. I had enough proven examples to interest me, but not enough insight to know what to do with it.

Young had recently written the first theory that unifies consciousness and physics. (Described in his books: The Reflexive Universe and The Geometry of Meaning.) Young was chosen to be my partner for an exercise we did. We were in a living room holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. Young got tired of attempting to look into my brain. This was when he said, let’s go for a drive and I learned his driving story.

Another time, I was driving my friend, Tim. We were talking and I was happy to see him. We had a destiny. I was honing in on it, in some kind of wide circle. Tim asked me, if I was lost. I said, ”I’m not lost, I just forgot where I was going,” and the statement seemed logical to me. Later, at a dinner party together, we played a game of what should be written on your tombstone. Tim told the people what I said. They thought it was funny and agreed this should be carved in stone on mine.

I am not writing this story in self-defense of my driving that has taken many on long journeys. I am making a statement that is logical to me and at least one other. “There are those that are not lost, they just forget where they were going.”

It Is All In The Delivery

It was a day like any other. My husband was on his first clinical rotation as a third year medical student. He was covering labor and delivery. The rotation group consisted of the chief resident, the intern, and two medical students. Residents deliver the babies. My husband was watching.

The resident was dealing with a severe back injury. After the delivery, which was difficult enough in that situation, he asked my husband to deliver the placenta. My husband attempted to, but then something went wrong and the placenta tore. The resident had to take over. While the resident was bent over and in extreme pain, the woman went into spasms. She clamped down and the resident’s hand was stuck within the woman.

Both the resident and the woman were screaming! He remained bent over in agony, until the woman was given morphine and relaxed. While observing the result of his actions, my husband thought about becoming a radiologist.

The Easter Bunny

I was living in Lancaster, PA and became single with a two year old. Not willing to move with a baby, I went to the library to try to figure out what a sculptor and jewelry designer, that couldn’t travel, could do. I studied the most lucrative companies in the area. It was by far all the chocolate companies. Wilber Co. (Wilber Buds), Palmer Co. (the largest seller in the world of Easter Candy), Hershey (well just the largest in everything else), Bortz Co. and Godiva (they don’t want anyone to know, but it’s made in Reading.)

I decided to call Wilbur Co. asking to speak to the President. I didn’t even know enough that this is not what you do. Having studied design in college and being desperate, I decided to say I was a chocolate designer. For some reason, I was given a meeting with the president. He told me, he had never heard of a chocolate designer. I realized at that moment, that’s a good thing. I had made up a new endeavor. Systematically, I met with all of the companies’ presidents, saying I was a chocolate designer. They each said the same thing, they hadn’t heard of a chocolate designer either. It served me well enough for twenty years. I had a new professional life designing and sculpting chocolate molds. Only a few people know, that for a while I was the Easter Bunny.

Been There, Done That

My friend, Dave, was an artist, but felt he had the calling to become a Buddhist monk. He spent approximately ten years moving in this direction. He was able to arrange a meeting with the Dali Lama’s brother to discuss his quest.

Dave anxiously anticipated his moment meeting the Monk, considering it a great honor. He had to wait six months for the interview. The day came and Dave went into the room. The Monk was sitting with an interpreter standing next to him. The Monk could understand English, but had trouble being understood when he spoke it. Dave told the Monk, he felt it was his calling was to become a Monk. The Monk said something back, but my friend couldn’t understand what he had said. He asked the interpreter to repeat it slower. The interpreter said the Monk had replied only four words “Been there, done that!”

The Monk must have felt that Dave had already chosen this path in one of his previous lives. Dave was also told, if in more time, he still felt the same calling to come back. Dave told me the Monks four words with emotions of laughter and sorrow.   A few years later, when I could not get in touch with Dave, I asked a mutual friend what happened. Dave has since become a Monk.

That’s Where Babies Come From

Two children were in a bathroom being updated at an airport. There was a hand written sign over a recently installed baby changing station. It said, Babies Here.” The sign was obviously temporary, until the construction was completed.  Pointing to the changing table folded in the wall, I overhead the little girl slightly older then the little boy say, “That’s where babies come from.” After a long pause of consideration, the boy responded back, “I don’t think so.”

Once while I as a jeweler in Philadelphia, I was standing waiting with for a woman to get completed her business with a stone setter.  The stone setter knew me and introduced us, saying you two should talk, being that you are both single moms. Actually he said, you two’s should talk, in a South Philly accent. We did. I found out as we had lunch together, that she owned a business as a sex phone operator.

At some point she said to me, “you want to try talking to men?” I come from a long lineage of competitive people.  Whatever the endeavor, I’m up to a challenge. However there was a problem this time. I can’t talk about sex. Never have been able to. Now married to a doctor, not a chance. Unable to say no, I lasted long enough to get one paycheck while never discussing sex. Finally, some man called the women I met complaining, and saved me from myself.

With these few men I told longwinded fairytales, my version of classics all the while watching a timer. Here is my example of the Princess and Pea; there once was a young woman that had porcelain skin and shiny red long hair to her waist. She was so fragile her sensitivities had reached inhuman like potentials. If she opened her hand and toes, butterflies that were protected in the curves of her fingers, spread their wings and fluttered out around her. Lightening bugs would link around her neck, arms and legs giving her a golden glow.

When the princess slept, her body could barely touch anything without feeling in every pore of her being, that she was different. Every moment, she felt a supreme stimulation to all that was around her. She needed an additional mattress added to her bed for each month she matured. She reached the point where she needed a hundred and fifty to lie on at night. One evening to test if she was a true Princess, a pea was put in between the mattresses. She woke up, having felt the pea and it was removed. As time went on she was becoming more and more restless but she didn’t know why.

It was about at this point I said, Oh, I’m really sorry, I enjoyed talking to you but our time is over. I hope you will consider calling back and asking for me again. They didn’t. I think it was a good lesson for me. Scared senseless I might actually have to say something, I learned a good story is like a seed pod floating in the wind. The white feathery forms surround the pod and drift it along until it sensitively decides to land and germinate. I think this is also the extent of what I said to my daughter when explaining where babies came from.

Walking the Plank (Dating Advice)

A friends Mother told her when she was sixteen,” Never let a man see you in the daylight.”

My Mother told me when I was sixteen, “Never let a man know you are more intelligent then he is.” Considering she was Valedictorian, I wonder how that worked?

I am going to give dating advice based on too many years of experience:

Efficient Dating

While on a date, with each new person, go to the same location. It is easier to compare people. Warning though, it can cause memory problems.

For those that serial date, it will brake you of the habit out of boredom.

Do your thing. Do only things your interested in. I met my husband at an art museum. If he didn’t like art, it was a deal breaker.

Remain open. On my second date with my soon to be, he said, “ I’m a very smart man” (a radiologist by trade) “who occasionally does really dumb things. “ Within 30 seconds after speaking, he made a turn and drove the wrong way down a one-way street in the center of Philadelphia. We laughed. I then felt cupid’s arrow sting me like it did in archery class when I forgot to wear wrist guards.

Go shopping for an appliance together. Anybody can be romantic in the right atmosphere, too easy. Cut to the chase. See if you still like a person after doing stupid things you have to do in life, which is 95% of the time.

Meeting people and dating is a numbers game. Don’t give up. No, give up and don’t be sad about it. Lonely sad, perpetuates lonely sad. Just go out.  Remain playful. Kiss a toad. It happens. Move on.

Ask every one you date to walk the plank, or some equivalent. I lived near a railroad bridge that crosses the Susquehanna River. It’s a wide river and the bridge is very high up. I would ask my dates to walk the bridge with me. There are openings between each wood beam so one can see the river below. (I’m not sure what would have happened if a train came.) If a man didn’t do it, he was out . My husband did it on our third date, after we got mango water ice. He told people he fell in love with me because I ordered mango water ice. I know it was the excitement of doing something different and surviving that made him feel in love.

Inefficient Dating

Marrying the second person you ever dated. (I did this with my first husband. My brother successfully married his High School sweetheart but the odds are next to zero)

Obvious:

20 years younger then yourself, 20 years older then yourself, recently separated, drinks too much, and /or doesn’t like his Mom.

Going to gay bars when your not.

Not Obvious:

Internet dating  can be efficient and actually old fashioned. You write for a while first and get to know the person but it can be loaded with problems.

My personal experiences :

-After writing, seeing a photo, and talking, you arrange to meet. He is half your height, a” little person.” He said he was 5’4.”

-After 3 dates with another Internet man, you step on his foot and apologize. He then says; that’s OK, I have no feet. (They were prosthetics.)

-After seeing a photo and then you meet. He is twice the age of the photo and thinks he still looks like that person.

Listening to anything someone tells you in a bar. (This also falls into the efficient category at a certain point when your hearing starts to go and then you don’t have to hear one more annoying story.)

I have watched two women, in a bar restroom, take off her wedding bands and pass the makeup to each other to fill in their band tan lines.

Most Fun

Throwing a person’s shoes and coat out the window after they tell you they are also seeing someone else.

Most Frightening (All my experiences)

Going to a hotel club alone where there is a used car salesman convention.

Tiki Bars. Especially Tiki Bars with men with hairpieces and a breeze.

Men who ask your heritage, you tell them. They then say, “We can build the perfect race again!”

Flying in a small plane, first date, he’s the pilot.

Men who check the stock market fifteen minutes after meeting you.

Men who camp out on your porch after you tell them you don’t want to go out on a third date.

Men that give you love notes with photos clipped out from magazines. Notes in which they have pasted a photo of their head and your head, with glued stars and cut out pasted sayings.

Christmas in July

Do not ask a Jewish man, unaccustomed to Christmas, to start to “ trim the tree.”  Especially, as you leave the room to answer the phone. I came back to find our first tree together, that we had hand cut from the woods, re-cut to a perfect cone about half the size.

By coincidence, a tree fell on our house one Christmas eve. It cracked through the ceiling and missed my husband’s head by five inches as he was using the toilet. I was standing at the kitchen sink window. I saw a big dark thing coming at me and hit the floor. I do have to admit my only thought was, the terrorists had landed, in OUR back yard, in Villanova, PA. Our whole house shook. I then ran upstairs. I saw a tree over my husband’s head. I asked if he was OK. He was not bothered in the least.  Confirmation, I thought, that nothing bothers a man when he is on the toilet.

During the next day’s Christmas dinner both our dogs went to the bathroom all over the house. I had been cooking during the afternoon for the family.  I asked my husband if he had let the dogs out. He said, no, not today, because they were afraid of the tree leaning on the house.

He remembers this story differently. That the dogs went in the house because they were afraid of a battery operated barking dog I bought them for Christmas. In any case, at dinner with the whole family, I thought to give thanks. Thanks for the tree sparing my husband on Christmas.  I then thought, maybe it was because I asked a Jewish man to share Christmas that this all happened. At that moment, I was still too mad at him for not letting the dogs out to give thanks for his still being with us

Now, it’s July. My husband loves lights and anything that sparkles. Last Christmas, our house might have been one you see from space. I was the spoiler of some of the ideas he had.

If you grow up from a very difficult childhood, as he did, there are always ways you need to heal your wounds. He maintains a childlike wonderment in everything he does. “As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone,” is his motto. As I sit in my lounge chair, on a beautiful summer evening, I am staring at the twinkling glow balls still high in the trees from last Christmas. Rather then being mad that he never took them down, I now get it. Between the twinkling fireflies and the twinkling glow lights, it doesn’t get any better than this. I give him thanks. We don’t have to live what some call a normal life!

Manhattan Stories

Pyramid Power

I was riding in a car, ready to go through the Lincoln tunnel in the 1960’s. I was going to see my family, back to my home in NY after my first semester at college in Philadelphia. Something caught my eye and I looked over. There was a man driving next to me, in a very nice car, in a very nice suit, with a pyramid on his head. I said to myself, “I’m home.”

The Wiper Guy

I had just met my future husband. We were taking out first trip together to NYC. Going through the Lincoln tunnel, I told him the pyramid story. There was a windshield wiper guy trying to wash our window on the other side of the tunnel. He then told me his story of what happened at the same spot years ago.

He was with his young family and he did not roll down his window after a wiper guy washed his window without asking. His young wife told him she was afraid for the family and not to do it. In order to avoid a confrontation, he pulled out of the line and made a wrong turn into the bus depot. This meant he had to go back the same path by the washer guy. He drove fast past the washer guy and made another wrong turn that took him back through the Lincoln tunnel. Not wanting to face the wiper guy for the third time, by going through the tunnel again, he drove north to go over the Washington Bridge. He then drove all the way downtown through Harlem to Times Square.  By the time they got to their destination of Times Square, they were too exhausted to do anything and drove home to Philadelphia.

The Roach

While on our first trip together we spent the night in a beautiful hotel near Central Park.

In the morning, we walked down the street to find a restaurant for breakfast. We ordered pastries from the counter bar to go with our order of eggs. Our waiter went in the back to the kitchen and was taking a long time. Restless, I got up to look at the other deserts. I saw a huge roach walking across the pastries and then another. I told my mate, and we looked at each other, got up, and ran down the street laughing.

We went back to our hotel and ate breakfast in the hotel lobby. When we were done, the other restaurant waiter/chef/owner was waiting for us outside the door of the hotel. He confronted us, asking why we left his restaurant while he was cooking. I told him because we saw a roach on the food. He just stared at us and said, “so.”

Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger

A friend once offered me a ride to NYC.  The ride was in exchange for helping him watch his out door weekend market stand of modern antiques.  The event was in an empty lot around 20^th street.  The time came when my friend left and I was on my own with the “shop.” I’m sitting at the table reading some notes. I hear, excuse me, could you help us, Looking up Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger are standing in front me.

At that time in my life, these men would have been THE two people I would most like to meet.  To have both of them standing there together, in front of me, was too much. It was equivalent to winning a safe trip to the moon and a million dollars. Mick Jagger looked fashionably perfect, contrasting sharply with the freak of nature Andy Warhol was in daylight.  Streaming sunshine glistened off Warhol’s famous black and white wig. In the shadow was his chalk white death mask of a face with black eyeliner.

It was my job to try to entertain them both until my friend came back.  I just remember talking a mile a minute about nothing, trying to keep them in my presence forever. At a certain point, I was too exhausted pretending I had something to say. They moved on before my friend got back to his outdoor shop. When he returned I told him what happened. He said nonchalantly, “That’s OK they come every week.”

A Missed Opportunity

I was once waiting in the line of a matinee in Manhattan to see an uncut, never seen, first time opening, of a movie which I can’t remember the name. There was a long line. When the person in front of me went to pay for his ticket, the ticket agent at the marquee told him they were sold out. This man quickly turned around and bumped into me. It was Paul Simon. We were nose to nose. I just looked him in the eyes and heard myself say, ”Gee, I thought you would have had a key to the city by now.”

He laughed and said, “since we have both missed the movie what are you doing this afternoon? “ I heard myself say to him, ”I’M BUSY.” I was single and lonely. I don’t know why I said this. I guess I froze. How could one of the rare quick good lines to ever come out of my mouth, be followed by one of the stupidest?

Gallery Owners

Once while with an artist friend, we walked into a gallery that advertised all “natural art.” The gallery owner came sliding down a pole from the second floor to meet us. She was wearing a see through mesh dress, huge breasts and nothing else.

While in another gallery in Soho, I happened to walk into a back room and see one of my favorite paintings. I had loved the painting for thirty years after studying it in a book. It is by Leonor Fini and was privately owned by this gallery owner. My husband and I became acquainted with the owner, who appreciated my love of the artist Leonor Fini whom he had been a friend with.  After having bought a painting at this gallery, we were invited to a party at the gallery owner’s home. In this NYC condo was the most amazing room I had ever seen. It had floor to ceiling windows, with a Jacuzzi in the center. Surrounding the Jacuzzi were giant perfume bottles. It was the largest private collection in the world. The sun and city lights sparked through the bottles so you were looking through perfume light.

The Mannequin

I was walking down the street with my husband in Soho. We went by a window where I saw a mannequin sitting in it. There was something about her look; I knew that if real, she would be my husband’s perfect woman. I said to him, “I have seen the woman of your dreams.” He found out she was for sale and got the store’s card. When we were home he never forgot her. There was something about her look.

After a few weeks, he called the store and negotiated a price and bought her over the phone. The next time we went to NYC, we went to pick her up. There was no parking on the street. My husband said, look, you double park at the end of street, and I’ll run in and get her, reassuring me she would come in a box.

After awhile, I see my tall guy walking down the street.  He is holding the mannequin that can’t straighten her legs, bent, straddled across his chest. She is naked.

There is a parade of people following him. He walks up to me proudly holding her with a very old, tiny, Jewish woman that was the mannequin’s owner. She stands next to my husband who is twice her size. She looks up lovingly patting the mannequins face. She looks at me and says in a heavy Yiddish accent, “Isn’t she gorgeous, just gorgeous. I’ve had her for twenty years and now she is yours.”

Travel Rules

When traveling, borderlines can be established in a hotel room between couples sharing the same space. There can be a time out, in which there is a mandatory no speaking allowed clause. And, occasional separate walks are a must.

When you are traveling across country borderlines, a further set of rules applies. First, get your passport in a timely manor. Don’t get yourself in the position that you have to beg your State Representatives for help to get your passport in time. Think, before the morning you are leaving, that your passport might be in the bank vault. And, know where the American embassy is in each country, in case you accidentally drive off and leave your mate at a rest stop and then feel guilty.

When eating, menus don’t have to be explained in English by someone who only speaks French. Site seeing does not include reading all historical plaques. You cannot say your tired, one and a half hours into an all day tour. You cannot travel to the ends of the earth for Starbucks coffee because your new I Phone has an application to tell you where the nearest one is, even in another country. You cannot laugh when you take a travel photo of your mate.  Especially, only to use the photo in a new I Phone application that takes their face and puts it onto different bodies.

If your mate chooses a hotel far from anything, additional rules apply. I call them new rules, homage to Bill Maher. New rules that I declared at 10:30 last night, after we were driving home with no dinner because I had given up.  There should be times when you just eat. I guess this is what older people do. I am not saying it has to be the early bird special, but by 10 at night, it’s too late. It’s unfair to then say,” lets just grab a hot dog at this point.” Then, you have to attempt to eat some weird European sausage thing that has crunchy skin that sounds like your chomping into roaches.

Here though, is where it gets complicated. If you’re the cook at home, vacation should be a brake. Food should include good food. Food should not come out of a Petri dish even if your hotel is modern with machines that give you everything.  When you say let’s go out and get some eggs this morning, (because you didn’t eat anything for dinner the night before except a few attempted bites of roach skin,) your mate should not say, “But they have eggs downstairs in the machine.”

When you are driving, three people cannot give three different directions, at the same time, to the same place. No believing everything a GPS says, especially when you can see your destination, but go in the opposite direction because the GPS tells you. And, just because your car GPS has a walking mode; do not walk with it in your hand through a city.

Most importantly, when you cross The American Border, you have to agree with the border guard’s rules. If the sign says stop here, stop. When you are told to drive backwards, do it. When the border guard gives you a lecture that there are reasons you must not have your car within certain lines, just listen. When the guard tells you it takes hours to turn off the Radiation Portal, listen. Though I have to say, as I am now driving through the Catskill Mountains, hours after the Adirondack Mountains, I’m still trying to contemplate what a Radiation Portal does. Maybe, I shouldn’t have nudged my mate to stop asking just what is a Radiation Portal to the border guard