This is the link to a blog and photographic and manipulated images display set to Ari Dane's "Venice SciFi"

http://ari-dane.blogspot.com/

This link to "Playa Kittens"

http://thearidaneblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-was-catching-my-breath-in-between-my.html

Dear One and All,

Roxy is looking at me like she wants to go for a walk but I don't really believe her since I just opened the patio door for her to go out and take care of biz and she just stared long and hard at the puppy deep puddles and opted to hold it...What a grey and gloomy day for our usual sunny CA...maybe we'll just play a little game of indoor catch and hope we don't destroy another lamp (but that's another story)...

Roxy sure loves her little soft leopard-colored squeak ball and all in all she's pretty good with it. Good...but not like Ripley. Ripley was incredible!

The Case of the Creaking Chair

© Ari Dane 2010

            Ripley!

            Woof! creak…

            Want to go for a walk?

            Woof! creak…

            Ripley!

            Woof! creak…

            Supper time!

            Woof! creak…

            Ripley!

            Woof! creak…

Personally, I never cared much for that old rocking chair and the way the damn thing creaks when you get out of it. For the life of me, I can’t remember how it came to be in our possession though it must have been at least three moves and twenty some years ago. I guess it’s the kind of thing you always say you’ll get rid of when you find the right thing to replace it with and then never end up finding, so you just sort of hold on to it till it becomes, as they say, part of the furniture in your own personal universe. 

The frame was still good but the cushions and springs were shot long before we ever jerry-rigged some towels and rags for padding and covered the sorry affair with an eight dollar Mexican woven rug we picked up on Olvera Street in downtown LA. Didn’t really look like much but then again it didn’t look bad either, just sorta’ blended in with the rest of our, I suppose you might say, eclectic décor, which is a euphemistic way of saying it’s a bunch of weird stuff we like with one thing having nothing to do with the other, but somehow or other makes sense, if you know what I mean, and if you don’t, then you probably shop at Ethan Allen, not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, if you do shop at Ethan Allen, then your rocker probably doesn’t creak like mine does which becomes real pertinent later on in this story. 

Anyway, like I said, I didn’t care for it near as much as did Ripley. He absolutely loved it and at times it seemed like he just lived in it. Curled up, happy as could be, dreaming his little doggie dreams. Oh, yes, you non-pet owners, they do dream. Those little front paws twitch with the rhythm of running a mountain trail or through a summertime meadow and their breathing fluctuates and sometimes you even see a smile upon their face. 

He could have been a circus dog. Half Cairn Terrier like Toto from the Wizard of Oz and half Basset Hound, hence the name Ripley for, of course, Believe it or Not. Didn’t look like either one but definitely closer to the former than the latter and weighed in at just under sixteen pounds most of his adult life. 

To say he was bright, affectionate and as loyal a companion one might hope for in the canine persuasion would not set him apart from any of his ilk you might have the pleasure of acquaintance of in your own experience. But, this little guy was special and some of his skills were worthy of comment, in particular, his athletic prowess with a bouncing blue rubber sphere. 

In his prime he was a natural and marvel to behold and if parallels were to be drawn it would have to be with the likes of a Michael Jordan for, to quote some of my friends who engaged him on his own turf, “Ripley doesn’t play catch…Ripley has moves!!!” 

For instance, if the ball were thrown just right over his shoulder, he would rise several feet in a floating motion, pluck the missile from thin air, execute a perfect back flip, gently place his prize on the tarmac and with laser precision, gently kiss the tip of the ball with his nose and roll it in the direction of your cupped hands as surely as if he were sinking an eight ball in the center pocket. Yeah, he had “moves” and was without question the master at his game which he would play incessantly and, even without a human partner, he would amuse himself for hours on end rolling and nosing that ball around. 

Many’s the time I observed him planning and experimenting as he lined up his shots and executed various angle filled combinations across the slick, tiled kitchen floor. Again and again he would practice each move till he could pull it off with an unerring perfection.  What do I know? Maybe in a prior life he was William Tell or Robinhood. If he was as proficient with a bow and arrow I would have confidently stood with my back to the tree and smiled as I placed the apple upon my own head. And they say dogs don’t have deductive reasoning. Bull. Anyone who says that never knew Ripley. 

I’ll give you another few examples of my observations, like Raleigh, a white shepherd named for the hotel in the Catskill Mts. where I found her sitting on the front steps abandoned, along with her nine darker colored siblings, waiting for the local dog catcher to cart them off to the pound. 

She was such a pretty little thing and the perfect pet, I thought, for my friend Lora Lee, who I felt sure would fall in love with her… but…didn’t… and so, Raleigh became ours. All, eventual ninety, white, fluffy, shedding pounds of her. 

Raleigh’s spark of genius and claim to fame was a rather complicated game of her own invention involving perhaps ten or so doggie toys of bones, balls, tied rags and twisted rawhide. Noteworthy here is she had a specific hiding place for each item in her collection and would always return them when finished with her play. Who ever knew dogs could be neat? 

With an obvious single mindedness, she would gather her treasures from beneath the couch, behind the drapes and between the cushions of the living room chairs and line them up in an exact order at the top of our split level flight of wooden stairs, and then… one by one…nudge them over to bounce and clatter to the landing below where she would bound after them, and…one by one, retrieve and return them to their assigned place only to repeat the process for sometimes what seemed like an eternity. 

We were enthralled with her ingenuity…that is until the time she started to perform this little miracle at 4:00AM and we decided to curtail her Sir Isaac Newton experimentation. Still, I dare you to tell me she was not thinking and reasoning every bounce and clatter of the way! 

And then there was Crispin, a character if ever there was one. He was supposed to be a Yorkie when, in what seemed like overnight, these long legs dropped out of his body kind of like a little furry stork and he topped out at twenty eight pounds and we exclaimed, Whoops! That ain’t no Yorkie! Matter of fact, he kind of looked a lot like Tramp from the Disney flick. But, by then we were more than attached and so he stayed around for about seventeen years, which is pretty decent in dog life expectancy. 

Yeah, he was an independent little cuss who had an incredible attention span and more of a fascination with the working of any hand held tool than I ever did. Pliers, scissors, hammer, screwdriver, drill and bit, it didn’t matter. Work with anyone of them and his attention was rivited. He also could and would obey any command with the caveat being…if he wanted to… Like Ripley, Crispin also enjoyed a good game of catch …only thing was, if you threw it, or anything else for that matter, he figured if you threw it away you obviously didn’t want it, so… he’d never bring it back. Once, when he was a puppy,  I tried to entice him to swim in a lake and he refused to dive in. In a last ditch effort, I threw a stick out over the waves and he fetched. From that point on he was a water puppy…but only if I threw the stick first… and…  I’ll never forget the day we went fishing in a reservoir in up-state NY.  

I parked off the side of the blacktop and unloaded the trunk as an excited and impatient Crispin darted ahead while I struggled with my fishing gear down the embankment through the dense forest, arriving at the rugged ten to fifteen foot escarpment overlooking the choppy water in time to see Crispin dragging what appeared to be a redwood in his mouth, drop it over the edge of the cliff with a splash great enough to alert any hookable fish in the county, and dive in after it!

Did he want to play? Did he want to swim? Was fetch and swimming part and parcel to his way of thinking even if it meant he had to throw the stick himself? As funny as it was to watch, whatever the answer, he knew what he wanted and acted accordingly. 

The examples I have cited thus far , Ripley’s expertise with a ball and elevating it to an art form, Raleigh’s inventive cause and effect game, Crispin’s initiative in going for a swim, are all based on their natural instincts of hunting, gathering and retrieving. It is how they built on these attributes and applied their knowledge to problem solving that amazes me. 

On another occasion which seems right out of a Lassie movie…In the mid-seventies my wife and I were living in a trailer, I won’t dignify it by calling it a mobile home, on the grounds of the Green Acres Hotel, formerly the Roxy, on a winding, dangerous stretch of two lane black top called route 52 in Loch Sheldrake NY, with a pretty shade of short-haired blonde with big brown eyes and floppy ears little  Heinz 57 mixed breed girl puppy named Calev…which , in case you were wondering, is the Hebrew word for “dog”. 

Calev had a friend named Rikki who belonged to the family who owned the resort. She was a very small German Shepherd and without question one of the brightest canines I’ve ever known. For one thing, she had street smarts. She understood what traffic was all about. A useful skill considering where we lived cars appeared from out of nowhere and zoomed by at high speed. You could see the intelligence in her eyes and demeanor. When you spoke to her you had the distinct feeling she not only understood what you said,but if she wanted to, she could hold up her end of the conversation. 

Rikki was mostly a loner and outside of her immediate human family didn’t care for a lot of people or other dogs, for that matter. The exception was me and Calev. We had a connection. I remember how her family was surprised on the occasion she had a litter and would allow no one to venture near her off-spring. Yet, when they were less than a week old, she left them long enough to come to my trailer, bark at my door to get my attention, and then take my hand in her mouth to lead me to her house and the closet where her puppies awaited her return. Make of this what you will, but I know she wanted to show them off to me. 

Unfortunately, the next time she came for me was on a tragic note. This time when I opened my door to her insistent bark I could tell from her tone and action it was a more urgent need. Once again, she took my hand in her mouth, but this time she led me down the long steep driveway to the highway and around the bend to where Calev had been struck by a car. I’m sorry to say there was no happy ending. With tears in my eyes and hoping against hope I rushed Calev to the vet, but it was too late. Still, in my book, Rikki will always be a hero. She recognized a problem and figured out the best solution was me. 

Ripley, Crispin, Raleigh, Calev, Rikki, I loved them all. Each in their own way was special and each at one point or other displayed an unexpected flash of intelligence by utilizing deductive reasoning to solve a problem. How else would you explain their actions? 

For those of you who do not have the desire or opportunity to share your lives with a pet, I feel a great deal is missed by their absence. Granted, they are not always convenient and it hurts so much when they depart, but hey, that’s the price of admission.

*

Gotta’ give it to him, Ripley was cool to the end. Yeah, in the last year or so he slowed down. His eyesight and hearing failed and he retired from his game. And, although he still had a good appetite for dinner and would rally for a short walk, it was a far cry from the five to twelve miles a day he ran with me on the local Southern California mountain trails. I’ll be the first to admit it was sad to watch him fade. When the end came it was peaceful. In the Vet’s waiting room, moments before his appointment, he took a deep breath, stiffened and was gone.

            Ripley!

             Woof!

            Creak…

            Creak…

            Creak…

            Creak…

I don’t remember exactly when it was, but a few months before he died he stopped sleeping in our bed and moved into that chair… 

It’s not that I don’t appreciate sunrise, but my inner clock plus a lifetime as an entertainer make me an inveterate night person. Every few years or so I steel my resolve to reverse this cycle but eventually and inexorably find myself adrift in my natural currents floating back to the vampire hours. Most nights I am to be found writing till one or two in the morning in my office adjacent to our living room and, through the always open door, in a direct line of sight with the rocker. 

It was during that hour Ripley would wake from his sleep and within a few minutes of coming to himself, with the afore-mentioned creak, vacate the chair and head for the kitchen and doggie-door, return a few moments later, drink some water from his bowl, glance in our bedroom to reassure himself my wife and other dog, Cassidy, were still where he had last seen them, visit me for a brief pet and scratch behind the ears and then return to his chair and one final creak before settling down till daybreak.

 It is now almost six months since Ripley passed.

Witnesses will attest that between one and two o’clock in the morning the chair creaks.

All explanations would be subjective.

            Creak…

            Creak…

            Creak..

  ** 

I think it might have been in the Seth Speaks series of books by Jane Roberts when I first came across the concept of pets being fragment personalities. In other words, when a soul passes on to another level or existence but still wants to retain a bit of the material plane, it leaves behind a small piece of itself in the form of a domestic pet. I don’t know if I really believe that or not but it is a comforting thought and I’ve heard worse ideas. I could see doing that.Leaving just a bit of myself behind to keep tabs on things. Maybe that’s what people really mean when they say he or she is a dog or a cat person. Of course, where this leaves the folks who like hamsters and parakeets, I haven’t a clue.

(Here's a little video of our Puppy Pals. I hope James Taylor won't mind if I borrow one of his songs...)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIwSowpAqPs

Dear One and All,

Hiya'!

This is my second blog and it's a two parter:

First - a comedy performance up-date: Tomorrow, Saturday, the 16th of January I will be appearing at "The Waterfront Cafe" on "The Waves of Comedy" show and on Monday the 18th, I will be at Marymount College for the "Bravo" organization...I'm looking forward to both programs and intend to generate a real good time for one and all.

Once again, I realize that for so many of you who would like to be in attendance, it is just not feasible...so... the next best thing I can offer is for you to go to my website http://www.aridane.biz  click on the "Video" page and take your choice of my several show links posted on "You Tube." My performances go from the present back to the early eighties and if you watch them all in sequence (even I can't do that!) you will notice that my act hasn't changed nearly as much as my haircuts! Look at it this way...Sure, I'd love to see you there...but...this way you don't have to get dressed up, get a sitter, travel, deal with parking, and pay a cover charge!

Now, for part two of this blog...Your response to my short story, "No Christmas In This House" was overwhelmingly positive. As I've said in the past, my main intention with my website and blog is first and foremost to entertain (OK...and I really, really, really wouldn't be upset if you decided to visit CDBaby and purchase one or three of my CDs!)...meantime, here is one more short story/riff/comedic routine/or essay  I hope you enjoy called, "Won Ton."

(Oh, one more thing...comments are welcome, but if you want to see them posted...the way this thing works is, you've got to do it on screen while logged in . If you reply with your comment in regular email I don't have the capability of posting.)

WON TON

©Ari Dane 2010

OLD JOKE: A hooker approaches a senior citizen and inquires if he would be interested in super sex and the old guy thinks for a moment and then replies, "I'll take the soup!"       

It all started with my grandmother Bubbe's kreplachs.  God knows what the ingredients were.  I used to watch her prepare them and on occasion she would let me help her, but I honestly can't say what the combination was that she rolled into those little squares of dough, because every time I observed her it appeared to be a batch of different stuff, yet somehow it always came out tasting like hers and no one else’s. When she did stop to explain, she did so in Yiddish, of which I speak and understand but a bit, and the rest was lost in her brief rudimentary English phrases such as "a little bit of this and a little bit of that" and if you asked her, for instance, how much salt you should use, you would invariably get a response on the order of, "not too much".          

It reminded me of a song I learned in summer camp:                       

                        Oh, Dunderbeck, oh, Dunderbeck

                        How could you be so mean?

                        To ever have invented

                        The sausage meat machine

                        The pussycats, the dogs and rats

                        Will never more be seen, for

                        They've all been ground to sausage meat

                        In Dunderbeck’s machine.

Then she'd take the stuffed kreplachs and deep fry them in chicken schmaltz and fill up a plate to be doled out into a bowl of chicken soup and, yes, for a few moments it was heaven on earth, to be topped only by her deep dish apple cake that was covered with at least two inches of granulated sugar. No wonder people in my family died young. Happy, but young. Trust me, you eat enough of this stuff, you drop like a stone. God bless Bubbe. The words "bran flakes" never crossed her lips...

And so it came to pass in the Sixties, as I wandered the streets of Manhattan in search of fame and fortune in general and a low priced meal in specific, I discovered Sam Wo's, a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant tucked neatly away in Chinatown where, for the price of one dollar, I could purchase the largest tureen imaginable of won ton soup, chock filled with enough good stuff to see me through another bone chilling New York winter’s day.           

The aromatic warm broth of chicken and pork was enough to entice a dead man and yet it but set the culinary stage for the rest of the cast:

Slivers of Chinese barbequed roast pork swam through forests of deep green and ivory colored leaves of bok choy to join the flotilla of perfectly ringed scallions and, yes!  The large pink, succulent shrimp bobbing in place called my name and echoed off the straw mushrooms and occasional mountain top of squid.  Yet I say, these were but bit players, for the undisputed heavyweight champion and star of this magnificent creation was...the won ton:

Ground pork, diced shrimp, ginger root, water chestnuts, soy sauce, white  pepper, encased in a thin dough, dropped into boiling water, floated, removed, drained and lovingly placed in said soup and, presto chango, miracles do happen, voila...the Chinese answer to Bubbe's kreplach!          

Keep your minestrone! Keep your consomme! Keep your chowder, bouillabaisse, gumbo and gazpacho!  There is but WON!!!       

A decade later I was hooked. Four, five, maybe six bowls a week. I don't know, I lost count. All I can say is, it cost me a fortune, cookie...and now it was the mid-Seventies and I was married and we were living not in the city where I could jump on a subway any hour of the day or night and within a reasonable amount of time satisfy my burning desire, noooo...we were in the Catskills, and although won ton soup (granted not the primo stuff of Sam Wo but at least an acceptable facsimile thereof) was attainable at the Triangle Diner in Liberty, NY. 

Now, this attainment was not obtained without a considerable effort, which usually entailed driving through a blizzard on winding, treacherous, mountain roads, and on one such night about 1:00 a.m., as the won ton fever consumed my entire being along with the realization that it was just too damn cold and miserable to even contemplate stepping outside, I turned to my wife and said, “you've got to learn how to make won ton soup, that's all there is to it,” and she said, “I cook everything else, if you want it so bad, you make it!”  And I said, “O.K., I will...” 

So, after researching the recipe in a Chinese cookbook, I reconnoitered the few supermarkets in our remote area and was surprised to find out they actually carried this stuff with the lone exception of pre-packaged won ton wrappers but I figured, what the hell, I've got everything else and anyway there was also a recipe for making the wrappers from scratch in the book and how hard could that be and so finally I was ready for my grand experiment.           

It was perfect soup weather. The ground was covered with snow and the huge digital clock that blinked alternately time and temp in front of the bank in Monticello had not registered over fourteen degrees in the past month and a half.

I was damn near euphoric at the anticipation of honest-to-God, homemade-by-me won ton soup. So with cookbook and wok in hand, I kissed my wife goodbye who then paused as she headed for the door and her appointed rounds, and said, “I know you can make breakfast for yourself but this is real cooking.  Follow the directions EXACTLY!!”  To which I replied, “Hey!  No problemo!  It's in English.  I read English.  Just come back with a big appetite...”          

The dogs’ attention was riveted as I whirled through the kitchen in a culinary ballet and even the fish in the aquarium  seemed to be keeping their little fishy eyes on me and I felt good and had a sense of, at long last, being the master of my element and I was in control of the situation and I started to sing a really bad parody: You make sixteen TONS and whaddayaget...           

O.K., let's see now, I've chopped, diced, shredded, ground, pummeled and reduced to microscopic fibers every substance that goes into this concoction and the broth made from turkey, chicken, and the pork bone from the roast is simmering nicely and the filling for the won tons made of pork, ginger, shrimp, white pepper, garlic, salt, sugar, and soy sauce is marinating and the bok choy, scallions, whole shrimp, slivers of chicken, and barbequed pork are all ready to go and now the only thing I have to do is make the dough for the wrappers and...           

I placed the ball of dough upon the cutting board, picked up my trusty rolling pin and attacked with a vengeance, and the dough responded by ever so slightly flattening, spreading, and swallowing the little cutting board with no more effort than quicksand would devour a fallen antelope, and the flour was feeling its power and like Hitler with an eye on Poland advanced on the borders of the counter top and began to encroach on the citizens of the local population like the can opener and set of steak knives that disappeared into the black hole vortex that was ever growing and beginning to rumble as if it were expecting a sacrifice, and the dogs fled the room to leave their master to do battle with this Pillsbury Doughboy/demon from hell which, like the Blob, was growing bigger and more life-threatening by the moment and, Oh, NO! It was inching past the bottom drawers and about to launch into a slow motion cascade to the floor, and what could I do but dive headlong into its innermost depths and, with outstretched arms like one doomed to turn into a hot cross bun, I whirled in the air like a dervish clutching enough stretched dough that, if it were cloth, could be turned into a sail capable of powering a schooner in a regatta, and flopped with a plop upon the dining room table and the destruction was complete and total with every dog, fish, guitar case, knick knack, fireplace, crook, cranny, crevice, surface, and parakeet covered with varying density and viscosity of won ton wrapper flour and, yes, it was worth it because the soup was fantastic, but nevertheless Janet, upon observing this wake of destruction, exclaimed, “Why didn't you cut up the dough into smaller workable portions?”  And I replied, “Because you said, and I quote, ‘Follow the directions EXACTLY!’...and the directions said, ’Take THE ball of dough...’”

If there is a heaven, Bubbe is laughing her ass off.

In comedy...timimg is everything.

With that in mind, twould seem that a short story/essay/routine I wrote some time ago is apropos.

Happy Holidays and I hope this gives you a chuckle. Ari

NO CHRISTMAS IN THIS HOUSE!

It was hot as hell and our little trailer located on the grounds of the Green Acres Hotel in Loch Sheldrake, N.Y. in the Catskill Mountains was sizzling in the August heat.

I had a long relationship with the owners of Green Acres, Cissie and Larry Blumberg, ever since I was a child and spent several summer vacations with my family at the resort, which was originally in Lake Huntington, N.Y. A fire leveled it and, hence, the new address. It was the early Seventies; Janet was employed as the head bookkeeper and I performed one show a week in exchange for our room and board, which was an equitable situation.

Equitable or not, it was hot as hell and my temper was not far below the surface when the TV started blaring, "Ronco! The perfect Christmas gift!!!" Are they fucking crazy or what? It’s three hundred million fucking degrees in here and some fucking asshole is trying to sell me some kind of fucking Christmas gift; get the fuck out of my face, I’m fucking melting here, no fucking way!!

I smashed my clenched fist down hard on the dining room table and hurled the nearest object at hand, which I think was the dog, at the TV and ranted and raved that under and I mean under no circumstance would I be sucked into this commercialization of a holiday that was so far away and that I really didn’t care too much about in the first place and, damn, it was hot and how dare anyone try to sell me anything when I’m about to melt and there would be no, and I mean no Christmas in this house!

Janet took this well, considering that I was depriving her of her last, most cherished childhood ritual.

It began one August. It was now Christmas Eve. We were seated at the "family table" in the spacious dining room of the resort. What with the candles, table wreath decorations, cutouts of Santa with elves and reindeer, and a beautiful tree, plus the snow falling gently on the tall pines outside the huge picture windows, the ambience was complete. The lights dimmed and, with a faint drum roll and a blast of trumpets, the dining room’s double doors parted and a candlelit procession of three hundred, elfin-cute, costumed senior citizen folk dancers filed by our table joyously singing a carol.

As I gazed over at my wife I observed that she was stoic, dispassionate, immovable...save for one small luminescent tear slowly coursing down her face.

So much for resolve. So much for logic. I took a deep breath, leaned over and whispered in Cissie’s ear to keep Janet busy for a while with a game of Scrabble and also to lend me the keys to her red Mustang as my car was in the shop.

It was a snowblown, icy, snaky seven mile stretch of mountain road to the crossroads in Liberty, N.Y. where the Triangle Diner (famous for its Chinese roast pork sandwiches), an Exxon station, Grossingers’ Hotel, and Sullivan’s department store converged. The snow was way past the gentle stage and was whipping up into a major storm...pretty, but dangerous. I remembered seeing Christmas trees at the Exxon. I hoped they hadn’t sold them all.

They still had some trees alright, but the smallest was about 18 feet tall and the largest looked more like a redwood. I hastily picked out and paid for one of the smaller ones and had the station manager, a real Don Knotts character, set it aside for me as I darted across the slippery highway and the holiday traffic to Sullivan’s.

I grabbed rope to secure the tree to the car, tinsel, lights, every decoration left on the shelves, a couple of presents...setting some sort of shopping record... paid the bill, returned to the storm and the highway and the traffic and retrieved my tree from the Don Knotts look-alike. I tied my tree to the top of the Mustang with all the skill I learned in the Boy Scouts, which I was soon to find out wasn’t much, and headed on back to Green Acres.

Those big, fat flakes were now coming down by the millions and, with the reflection of the headlights glancing off the white stuff, my visibility was about as good as Ray Charles’ in a closet. It would be some time before the plows got out and, especially because it wasn’t my car, I was taking those slick curves pretty slow.

I guess pretty slow wasn’t slow enough, for rounding the curve by the Brown’s Hotel, as the car turned left the tree made a break for it and took off to the right. With whatever joy I had been feeling rapidly evaporating, I edged the Mustang onto the shoulder of the highway as far as I dared without getting stuck.

The headlamps of a slow-moving approaching vehicle illuminated the immediate blackness. Peering through the swirling snowflakes revealed nothing but a few scattered green needles and twigs. Where the hell was my tree? It slowly dawned on me that the slow-moving approaching Cadillac was now stopped and the doors were being opened. Out stepped an old man bundled up in a scarf and overcoat and from the passenger side emerged a woman, obviously his wife, wearing enough exotic fur to qualify as a polar Eskimo.

The man was opening the hood of the Cadi. As I drew nearer I heard the sound of tortured metal cutting through the rush of the wind...a spluttering, gnashing, crunching, ripping sort of cacophony like a million dental bits gone crazy in an infected tooth. The poor guy was staring blankly into the remains of his more than expensive motor and yet all I could think was "hmm...so that’s where my tree is!" Anyway, most of it. Who would have believed that such a large tree could be crammed and jammed into such a small space, but there it was...bummer.

The old man was just standing there sort of trance-like with his mouth gone slack, and I imagine he might still be there today if his wife hadn’t whined, "Gee, Harry, you ruined the guy’s tree!"

Not knowing exactly how to react, I mumbled something about being sorry, produced my business card and ad-libbed something about not knowing specifically if my insurance covered just such an eventuality and retreated to the Mustang.

Shit! Now I needed another tree. The Don Knotts guy stared at me really weird as I bought another tree. The smaller ones having gone to a hopefully better fate than my last one, I was now in possession of a tree that would have satisfied the needs of Rockefeller Plaza. I stopped short of welding my new purchase to the roof of the Mustang, retraced my steps and made it back without further incident to Green Acres and our little trailer.

One small problem. The interior of the trailer from floor to ceiling measured 7½ feet. The tree was good for Jack & the Beanstalk. Undaunted, I grabbed my trusty saw and, though in the middle of a blizzard, worked up a sweat that Richard Simmons would have been proud of, then worked the tree through the door and placed it in its holder. "Boy, is she gonna be surprised," I chuckled.

Damn, that tree was big! It literally filled the living room with the effect being if you entered the trailer you entered the tree. I ditched the unused portion, scattered the telltale needles and made it down the snow-covered hill to the hotel.

Janet was finishing up her Scrabble game. With a wink and a grin, I slipped the Mustang keys back to Cissie. We said our goodbyes and trudged through the now knee-deep snow to our place.

I hung back just long enough for her to get to the door first. She opened it, stood for a moment in silence and then began to laugh...and laugh...and laugh!

O.K., so what do I know? I’m Jewish, we never had one. How was I supposed to know you don’t use the bottom half of the tree?!