Working with Daddy

Long before Take Your Daughter to Work Day (Now Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day) became a thing, one of the biggest events of my summer was the day my father took me to “the office.” I am not sure how the yearly event came about. Maybe my mother needed a day alone with me out of the house or maybe my father thought experiencing office life would be good for me. I don't actually know at what age he began taking me or how long the tradition lasted, but I know I was in elementary school when it started. I remember being in a body that was very small for the furniture. When I grew large enough to fit at a desk, I actually worked for pay for four or five summers. 

As an unpaid employee, my principle job was running numbers on an old-fashioned adding machine - probably unnecessarily. Nonetheless, I did learn something that helped me throughout my life. If your total is a penny off, you inverted two numbers somewhere. I never learned that trick anywhere else. 

I also learned that coffee breaks were important. Many of the executive staff - friends and golfing buddies - walked a block or two to meet at the greasy spoon every morning. I thought that was the restaurant name, not the category. I don’t remember what I ordered but I enjoyed the tradition a lot. The men (only men in those days) tolerated me with kindness.

After our break, I returned to the big table in my father’s office probably to put papers in alphabetical order for filing. And, then it was time for lunch.

Lunch was usually a more formal affair, a traditional business lunch minus the martinis that were often on the menu in that era.

After lunch, I spent some time “helping” a very kind woman at the switchboard - another archaic skill. But learning skills wasn’t the objective. Spending time was. 

I suspect we “worked” a short day. My father always wanted to beat the rush hour traffic. Besides, he needed to get home for cocktail hour with my mother. It was a different time.

© 2023 Jane Kelly

Mingling with spies in London

Back in the 1990s, my friend Susan and I stayed a few extra days in London after a business trip. One night, we ventured out to dinner at what we considered our regular neighborhood place near Kensington Palace. (We were not guests at Kensington Palace. I was staying around the corner on the top floor of a lovely but cheap hotel in a converted townhouse where I shared a bathroom with strangers I never saw. Susan must have still been on expenses. She was staying a tube ride away.)

I guess we were chatting about our trip to Russia a few years before when my friend heard the guy at the next table say, "I can't believe who they're letting into Black Ops these days." He meant us.

Susan was facing the table where two middle-aged Americans were finishing dinner and possibly their second, or third, bottle of wine. Somehow, we ended up in conversation with them during which we discovered:

   They worked for some American intelligence agency, a fact that should not have been disclosed but was because of something else we learned.

    They were very drunk. Although they should not have been because we learned one more thing.

    Only one person in the party should drink while the other abstains.

We were a bit skeptical about their claims to be spies of some sort, so the one guy who did all the talking offered what he considered proof.

He knew a lot about the NSA headquarters building which was still relatively new. We figured anyone could get ahold of that information although later I learned it wasn’t that easy. But, we figured his knowledge didn’t prove his status. How could we even know his information was accurate?

So, he directed our attention to the table in the back corner of the restaurant where a male customer (middle-aged and a little tough looking) was having dinner alone. The alleged agent told us why the solo diner had chosen that seat with his back against the wall: he could observe the entire restaurant but specifically his colleague and him. He told us to watch. When that fellow finished, he would be replaced almost immediately by a similar diner. Okay, he got that right.

Still, we were not convinced. So, he pulled out his passport. (Did I mention that he was very drunk and the other guy appeared too drunk to care?) Anyway, the passport. The biggest, fattest passport I had ever seen. I no longer recall what the hotspots around the world were at that time but I do remember that there was a stamp for each of them. This was not a passport used for an Eurail tour. Most of the stamps were for countries savvy tourists never visited. Including Rwanda in 1994.

The Rwanda genocide was only a few months behind us. Watching this alleged agent talk about it convinced me he was there. He might not have been there for the NSA, but he was there. He felt the pain. He got specific. He may not have been sober in the usual sense but his thoughts were. I feel bad that I challenged him once. Intelligence agent or not, his memories were real—and painful.

I don’t remember what other proof he offered, but when I pulled out my credit card, he had a violent reaction. He threw a fifty-pound note on our bill and paid. “Never pay with a credit card.” Apparently, he still thought Susan and I were inept Black Ops operatives. 

I didn’t quite believe the guy but I was still feeling a little creeped out by the experience. I insisted on walking Susan to the tube stop. We had just stepped inside when a young couple with Eastern European accents rushed up and thrust a map at us. A big map. I held one side. Susan held the other. I don’t recall what they asked about but I was convinced what they really wanted was a better look at us. And, our fingerprints. 

I tried to convince Susan that within the hour our fingerprints would be zooming across whatever technology spies used in that era. Susan thought I had gone around the bend.

I thought maybe I had when I got back to my room on the top floor of my small hotel. I heard footsteps.  Upstairs - but there was no upstairs. Perhaps an attic? Possibly, but by now it was pretty late. I could think of no reason anyone would be digging around in the attic at that hour. I stayed in that room several times - before and after that night - and never heard a sound from above. My fearful reaction seems ridiculous now - but not after a night out with alleged spies. 

Susan thought my reaction was silly. Until . . . she got on her flight to Washington DC (I lived in New York by then) and ran into the chatty drunk, now sober, by the restrooms. (The other guy was asleep or passed out.) She wasn’t totally comfortable having them on her flight, so when she ran into the two alleged agents in the parking lot, she kept her distance.

I think it was a good decision. Just in case.

© 2023 Jane Kelly

Times I wrote my own obituary

The other day a friend sent me an article about a mother who expressed her concerns about her daughter’s safety by drafting possible obituaries for her. This reminded me that I used to create headlines about unlikely death scenarios for myself. Not full obituaries. I am not morbid. Usually.

So on 2/6/2023 I checked to see if I had recorded any of my proposed headlines for a possible blog entry. I discovered that I had. On 2/6/2018. Do I see any significance that I opened the file exactly five years to the day since I created it? Only an indication that I really should start working on these entries a little more regularly. I have close to 200 to work my way through. 

Anyway. . .

I started doing this many years - actually many decades - ago when I saw a headline in my hometown newspaper:

Local Girl Killed in Car Crash in Remote Chinese Province.

 

This was before travel to even the easily accessible Chinese locations was at all common. I was fascinated. I wanted to know why was she there and how did she end up dying in such an unlikely manner. Then, I realized I was in that position on occasion. Not that often. Nonetheless there could be obit headlines for me that might raise some questions. One of them was even on a Chinese road.

Local Woman Killed in Crash on Chinese Highway 

Three Chinese Nationals Also Perish

I don’t know how the Chinese drive these days but in 1986 when I was lucky enough to go to China on business they drove like maniacs - at least on the two-lane roads my party used from Shenzhen to Guangzhou. If there was a speed limit, I was not aware of it. Every time we passed a car, we appeared to be in a game of chicken. Spoiler Alert: we always won.

Local Woman Trampled by Mob in Spanish Political Demonstration

I couldn’t have seen it coming. I was strolling down a street in Barcelona when an angry mob turned the corner no more than thirty yards ahead of me. They were carrying signs and, as the years go by I would swear, pitchforks but that was probably a memory from a Frankenstein movie. I had been chatting with a tourist from Florida who grabbed my arm and pulled me into a doorway. The mob went by chanting something. I have no idea what. I would never have known why I died. 

Local Woman Dies in Overturned Irish Army Van

Three Members of West German Equestrian Team Also Killed

How long ago did this happen, you ask. It was the WEST German Equestrian Team. After the Dublin Horse Show, I got to ride back to the stables with my brother’s sister-in-law whose horse, if I recall correctly, had just won. The memory of the actual show was eclipsed by the memory of the ride. At least the part of the ride when the van in which we were riding ran onto a curb, a very high curb. Three very large, very loud German riders were tossed around in the back seat. Any one of them could have crushed me to death. The driver quickly regained control, but I couldn’t help thinking the headline announcing my death would have been thought-provoking.

Local Woman Killed in Crash of Mexican Laundry Truck

I didn’t actually know why I was traveling in the back of a laundry truck in Mexico City. I later found out I was being smuggled across a picket line at the University of Mexico. All I knew is that a coworker and I were being transported in an empty panel truck while holding onto poles in an effort to stay upright. It took a lot of effort. It was probably best we couldn’t see the driver or the route he was taking. My memory says it was a bumpy one. 
 

Yoko Ono Killed in Runway Crash at Heathrow

380 Others Also Perish

This headline would have just been annoying. Who wants to be reduced to a number. I didn’t see Yoko. She was in First Class. But I knew how the headline would read. I was happy when they delayed the fog-plagued flight until morning. 

All of these unused obits are old. I don’t know if that should make me happy or sad. My life is much simpler now.

Local Woman Killed Rolling Off Couch While Reaching for Dropped Remote

Victim Unable to Find Phone to Call for Help

Woman Unable to Open Food Packaging Starves to Death

No one would stop to read that article.

© 2023 Jane Kelly

Mark Wahlberg vs. Matt Damon

Apparently, I am not the only person who has trouble telling Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg apart. I’ve read articles about the phenomenon. The difference seems obvious to me now. Now - after watching several Mark Wahlberg movies believing they starred Matt Damon.

Which is why it was not surprising that when, around the turn of the last century, I passed a friend a note (pre-texting) at a trendy LA restaurant “Matt Damon is at the next table.” She responded, “No. He’s not.” 

She was right. He wasn’t. Mark Wahlberg was. Not that I could convince her of that. 

Mark and what appeared to be three of his buddies were seated beside us. Mark picked up the tab. For their table. Not ours.

Me: See. He paid.

Friend: They were just some guys who wandered in off the street.

Me: Number 1, we are in LA. Guys don’t wander in off the street. They probably valet-parked. Number 2, we just paid $60 each for a snack. We didn’t even have a meal. I don’t think they are just some guys.

She still didn’t believe me. She never would. Not that the topic came up very often. Until Entourage came on HBO when I brought it up again. 

Me: See. We were there at the beginning.

Friend: Blank stare.

She never believed me. 

NOTE to self: when you ran into Matt Damon in Cambridge MA, you did not think he was Mark Wahlberg.

@ 2023 Jane Kelly

Stuckey’s

During a year of illness following two years of pandemic, I really missed taking road trips. Even before I got sick, I accepted that I would never be the road warrior I had been when young. Sixteen hour days with only an AM radio for company in a 1971 VW convertible - not the most comfortable car ever manufactured - were out of the question. My dream was to drive across the country again but this time in two hour hour spurts. Two, two-hour shifts a day.

Ideally, I would rise at a reasonable hour (i e. leisurely pace), drive two hours to a roadside attraction where I could sightsee, find refreshment and gather the strength to move on. If no attraction was available, I might be able to find a spot for a leisurely lunch before starting an afternoon drive that had to end at an overnight accommodation with proximity to a nice meal. 

Previous driving trips were challenges. Get there fast. Keep moving. Tell yourself you’ll come back to visit the scenic sights. Don’t waste time on meals. If there was ever a time to take advantage of convenience stores, those trips provided the right opportunity.

Many years ago, when I started my first drive cross-country from Pennsylvania, I found a band of Wawa, another area of Sheetz and then, when I hit the Midwest, Stuckey’s. Miles and miles of interstate punctuated by little else than Stuckey’s. A traveler in those days could pick one on a whim. A traveler in those days had to pick one on a whim. There was not much else around. And, if you missed the exit? No worries. There would be another.

All Stuckey’s looked the same. I found that comforting. They sold the same tchotchkes, offered the same facilities and served the same food.  I forget what I would order but I am sure it was the same thing every day. Same was a keyword. 

So, I was really surprised when I stopped for lunch one day at about 1PM and just did not want the same-old-same-old. I don’t know what I found to substitute but the desire for change mystified me. I got back in my car and started driving. I just wasn’t hungry. It took me a while to realize that was not surprising. 

I’d already eaten lunch at 11AM.

© 2023 Jane Kelly

My Life as a Trucker

More than 2,000 legionnaires came to the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia in July 1976, for the American Legion's annual three-day convention. Over 200 people who visited the hotel became sick. Twenty-nine died. The mystery disease that killed them would come to be known as Legionnaire's disease. The hotel closed that November. 

Eventually, all the furnishings were sold off - including the dishes. The illness was related to the duct work. None of the hotel furnishings were in any way at fault. But, the stigma persisted over the years. So when my brother bought the dishes for a large hotel he was running, he got a good price. What he did not get was anyone willing to transport them on a five-hundred-mile trip to Northern New England. Enter little sister, Janie, graduate student, fortuitously on break.

I was happy to serve. Being an over-the-road trucker had always been a dream of mine - before I learned the reality of long hours, tight deadlines and loading your own truck. I envisioned hours of leisurely drives through lovely settings to exciting locations while my brain enjoyed the free time to do whatever it chose. Any trucker can tell you why I was wrong. 

My own experience had been and, with this one exception still has been, limited to a few UHaul trucks. Most for moving. I loved the opportunity to transport hundreds of place-settings of china. A true trucking job. I was very proud, but given the public's suspicion of all things Bellevue for many decades, I could not brag about my new career for forty years i.e. now.

I did not have to pack or load the dishes. I took a UHaul to a location that I have long since forgotten. In my memory, I went after dark but I think that scenario might be a product of my imagination. It all felt very cloak-and-dagger as I set off up I95 - the next morning I am sure. I wasn’t so into intrigue that I wanted to travel in the dead of night. Besides, in those days, without social media, there wasn’t as much intrigue. Nonetheless, I would not have shared info about my load with the guy in the next truck at the rest stop, let alone the world at large on the Internet.

The ride was a quintessential East Coast trucker experience. Uneventful except for a snide toll-collector on the Jersey Turnpike ridiculing me for not knowing how many axles my truck had - as if I were the first Uhaul driver who didn’t have the correct change ready. I am still annoyed.

Anyway, all remained quiet until Rhode Island. In the late seventies, the drive from Philadelphia to Boston had a couple of hairy spots not least of which was the merge of I95 and I195 in Providence with a little Route 6 thrown in for good measure. (It has since been moved and adjusted.)

That intersection used to be a huge merge. I can’t find out how many lanes at its largest. Not two. Not three. Not even, I doubt, four. It felt like eight. I was in the far left lane when it happened. A blow-out. In heavy traffic. Heavy merging traffic. 

I can’t describe the details of what happened next. I should dramatize wild careening through unforgiving traffic while the truck veered out of control. I am sure there was some swerving involved but my recollection is that sensible drivers figured out what was going on and let me pass. In fact, I have no idea how I pulled it off but I would say less than a minute passed before I found myself parked neatly on the side of the road in my unscratched truck.

How did I get help?  I have no idea. Certainly not by cellphone. I assume I waited until someone (cop, Good Samaritan or tow truck operator) stopped and somehow got in touch with the local UHaul guy who came and got me. He lived in the office and was thrilled for the company. He even offered to share the roast he was preparing in a toaster oven.

That turned out to be unnecessary. High-school friend, Ginny Walsh, and her mother came to retrieve me and took me home for a great meal, a good sleep and, I am sure, a nutritious breakfast. They returned me to the UHaul office the next morning and I resumed my trip on a new tire. I arrived without further disaster. 

No one was ever harmed by the unjustly maligned dinnerware which arrived almost completely intact. Almost. Tragically, one dinner plate was lost.

Thus ended my career as a trucker.

NOTE TO SELF: Mike Perlis

I had a passenger in the empty truck on the way home. A recent college grad who worked for my brother had gotten sick and needed to go home to Connecticut to recuperate. His mother was a music librarian/professor at Yale so I dropped him off in New Haven. Then I moved on.

Years later when I worked from my apartment in New York City, I kept the TV on for background noise. It was the height of the trashy-talk-show era. I am pretty sure Sally Jesse Raphael was on. I looked up and spotted the kid. Mike Perlis had become the publisher at Playboy. I checked on him to write this. He went on to other jobs including serving as President and CEO of Forbes. He is currently on the Board as Vice Chairman.

I take some credit for his success. I saved his life. Okay, he wasn’t that sick. And, okay he probably could have gotten to a train. But I like to think I played a small role in his career. Whatever. We had a fun ride.

© 2023 Jane Kelly

Surviving 2022

I hated school. (At least, until graduate school. I went twice and would have stayed forever if they let me. But that is irrelevant to this discussion.)

I hated the first day of first grade and every day thereafter. I don’t know why. I was good at school. I didn’t work particularly hard but I got good grades, made good friends and generally had a good time. So, I am not quite sure why I couldn’t wait to get out. It wasn’t that I was anxious to be an adult. I don’t think I ever considered what that meant. Maybe I simply wanted to be a kid who didn’t have to waste her time thinking about the topics the school dictated. I was interested in a less intense lifestyle. So, I recall the thoughts I had in the third grade as I faced five more years of elementary school, four years of high school and four years of college. (We did not have a middle school or junior high.)

I’m in third grade now and next year will the last year of the first half of grade school. After that I’ll be in fifth grade and that means I’ve made it to the second half of grade school. After that, sixth is the last year of the first half of the second half . . . . 

Got the picture? I figured out my high school and college graduation dates and then, finally, the only other inevitable date: death.

My eight-year-old self calculated the oldest I could ever expect to be and came up with the year I would die: 2022. I never forgot it. So, I found it somewhat ironic when on 3/16/2022 I found a lump in my breast that was quickly diagnosed as malignant. Ironic but not particularly worrisome since it was unlikely my cancer, if fatal, could kill me before the end of the year. Of course, that was before I realized that the treatment was likely to get me a long time before the disease could.

It is now December 26, 2022 and I have to survive for less than one week to prove my eight-year-old self wrong. She was wrong about a lot. I never am not currently nor have I ever been the US ambassador to France nor am I an internationally renowned home designer and architect. I think people who like school do those things. 

Although I’ve remained blasé all year, now I am getting worried. I am not an alarmist. I don’t worry about car collisions, lightning strikes or monsters under the bed. Usually. But this next week will be different. 

It isn’t that I believe in the psychic abilities of eight-year-old me. I believe in irony. And just in case, I want to get it on the record that she knew. That little eight-year-old girl, who turned out to be me, knew. Of course . . . .

Even though math was her best subject, anyone can make a mistake. She probably meant 2032. Yeah, that’s it. 2032. 

Nonetheless, I think I’ll just stick around the house until 2023. Happy New Year. Hope to see you all next year.

© 2022 Jane Kelly