Tag Archives: The Curious Autobiography of Elaine Jakes

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Bad H.R.

In the old days, H.R. was short for Human Resources, though now extra letters have been added or the title changed completely to things like the Office of Employee Happiness or Office of Employee Satisfaction, or even Office of Employee Engagement (though, to me, that sounds like an overly optimistic employee dating service). Yes, these days all of that is possible, undoubtedly meant to soften the blow of the (to some, I suppose) harsher sounding Human Resources, though not necessarily more clarifying. For I think Human Resources was, for all its vagueness, clear enough, or at least we had grown used to its vagueness and had come to understand that what was once called the much clearer Personnel Administration was then simply called “H.R.” Now it’s Employee Happiness. Definitely cheerier.

But none of this is the H.R. I’m speaking about. Rather, I’m speaking about me at age seven. My mother, who, if you read this page even occasionally, you know was named Elaine and you also know that she was the only Anglo-Chinese-Jew with a cross-dressing monkey in America (or perhaps anywhere in the world) in the 1960s. (Now, if you’re reading this posting for the first time, I realize that may sound alarming, even more alarming than mere political incorrectness, even more alarming than Personnel Administration must sound to someone hoping to hear Office of Employee Happiness, and for that I apologize in advance, alongside which I also say, however, that I can’t change history; it is what it was.)

No, the H.R. I’m speaking of is a rather small and most certainly immature, even spoiled version of H.R. Jakes, a character who comes off rather well in most instances in The Curious Autobiography, but in fact was no different than any other sinful kid. Oui, c’est moi. And today, I would like to give you one example of his/my sinfulness, that you might learn from it. It is the lesson of ungratefulness, and it has to do with the aforementioned monkey, and came at the very end of Elaine’s Chinese period and near the middle of her being Jewish.

For we had visited my sister, Betsy, in her new home. She was then living at the Philadelphia Zoo, an excellent zoo by any standard, and not a bad place, if one must leave one’s sister somewhere, to have deposited her. When we left Betsy in the capable hands of the primatologists at that zoo, I was six years old, she was a girl, clad in a delightful red floral ruffled dress with lace trim, carrying a small monkey-sized (i.e. child-sized) parasol, also red, also trimmed with lace. When we went back to visit her, I was seven, she was a boy (Jo Jo), and she was no longer wearing a dress or any clothing, a circumstance that to me, at first blush, was a bit alarming though slowly I came to realize that monkeys did not normally wear clothing. On our way back from that visit we went through Doylestown, Pennsylvania, en route to New Hope. It wasn’t the most direct route, but Elaine wanted to pick up some groceries at the rather larger-than-the-Acme-in-Lambertville grocery store in Doylestown on the way home. And I liked it because Foster’s was there.

Foster’s was, you see, by far the best toy store in all of Bucks County. In the mid-1960s one could see, lined up in the window, toy soldiers of durable plastic, carefully painted and of very high quality. These were not cheaply made toy soldiers. They were, as I sad, of the highest quality, and equally of the highest cost, so expensive that even on her payday I wouldn’t be able to talk Elaine into buying me one, though I might be able to get her to remember which one or two I really liked so that she would, for my birthday or Hanukkah/Christmas (we inexplicably celebrated both religious holidays), possibly purchase one for me.

That day coincidentally Mr. Foster had placed in the middle of his store in the prime display area a full, wonderfully beautiful toy zoo, all also of high quality plastic, all also very expensive. It featured, I recall, a crocodile and hippopotamus exhibit, giraffe pen, elephant house, aviary rife with tiny exotic birds, and of course a simian exhibit, complete with a small monkey house, every piece carefully molded and painted. It was, for all intents and purposes, almost an exact replica of any real zoo. It even had a Zoo sign. It could, as finely wrought as it was, potentially compliment any dilettantish train table, such as the one my Uncle Ed had set up in his basement. I loved going to Ed and Lee Ann’s house to watch the train go around that track, though his was not so large that one could have placed in it very much of this rather extensive zoo.

Of course, at age seven, I wanted this zoo, really wanted it, as children tend to really want things. Perhaps this was the case simply because the massive “toy” was, in fact, virtually an objet d’art. Or perhaps it is because we had just visited my sister (now brother) for the first time since leaving him behind at the Philadelphia Zoo, and the toy simian enclosure was, in fact, perhaps the finest piece in the collection of tiny animal exhibits.

But Elaine, being a humble schoolteacher sans husband could not afford such an expensive toy for her child now or even at Hanukkah/Christmas time. Yet she loved the no doubt by then bratty-because-he-was-practically-begging-for-the-toy-zoo H.R. Jakes, and she even went back into the store to speak privately with Mr. Foster about a layaway plan, while H.R. gazed in the window at the soldiers. But to no avail. At her salary, she would have to have had an item of that on lay away at least a couple of years.

So my dear mother and her best friend, Sheila, partnered up to make a replica in balsa wood of the zoo they had seen at Foster’s, all from memory. Now if you’ve ever worked with balsa wood you know it’s soft and cuts easily but is also rather fragile. And though she tried very hard to replicate that zoo of finely cast plastic, all she could do was to make another zoo, not really very much like it, poorly glued together of roughly cut pieces of balsa that, in all honesty, did not look much like the original zoo or all that great at all. But it was handmade, and from the heart. And that was much more important to Elaine and Sheila than it being perfect or expensive or even durable. It was the thought and the valiant attempt that counted. To her and Sheila, that is.

But to H.R. that was not the case. He wasn’t expecting the zoo for Hanukkah/Christmas—he knew she could probably not afford it—but he was also not expecting a homemade knockoff model, either. Now he should have done the right thing, he should simply have said, “Wow! Thanks, this is really cool! It must have taken you guys hours…” (for no doubt it did) “…to make this!” But instead he was, I recall, coldly honest, “Gosh, is this a zoo? It doesn’t really look like a zoo to me.” In his defense, seven-year-old children do have a tendency to be honest. On the other hand, he might have taken a moment to think about all the countless hours and love that went into rendering the gift. But he didn’t.

Why am I “confessing” this to you so many years after the fact? Not for cathartic reasons—I don’t tend to do that, as you probably know if you read this blog even semi regularly. Nor is it to evoke pity for a spuriously Sino-Hebraic child with, effectively, two mothers and a cross dressing monkey sister who was left at a zoo—the sister, that is. No, actually, even at the time, it was fine with me to be different than all the other kids at school. Rather, it is that you might learn from that bad H.R. (and I might continually learn, too) not to be ungrateful when someone does something for you, even if it seems to you a rather small or imperfect thing. It may not seem like much to you, but it is the best they can do.

I am thankful to this day for the memory of that homemade zoo, one that I myself could have enjoyed if I had used even a touch of imagination and a dab of appreciation; yet I failed to do so. But I perhaps garnered from that experience something more valuable and durable than poorly glued together balsa wood or perfectly molded plastic: I learned how to give and to receive, how to love past imperfections and how to be a better human being. And I now humbly offer that lesson, at the expense of my seven-year old self, to you.

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: A Piazza in Rome

While I am now travelling in Italy—currently visiting Siena—I decided to share an excerpt from The Curious Autobiography of Elaine Jakes, an excerpt that is oddly connected to a piazza in Rome.

She was a new veterinarian for me, and I liked her, for she reminded me of the vet who had tended my animals when I was a card-carrying member of the New Hope intelligentsia. I and several other people in the New Hope area had changed from our regular veterinarians to this particular new vet, Dr. Bianca Waddabunga, even though most of us feared this was not her real name. She was the only veterinarian to whom I had ever gone who physically looked like a fashion model. In the office, however, she sported a turban fastened with a great emerald stone, which clashed oddly with her large ruby earrings. These earrings were especially visible owing to the distinct size—I should actually say length—of Dr. Waddabunga’s earlobes, which the weight of the rubies seemed to have increased by stretching them downward. She had in her nose a striking gold ring protruding, as nose rings do, from both nostrils at once. Her facial features were not especially noticeable, except for the pronounced line between her cheeks and her mouth and the fact that she had one of those sets of lips that, adorned with lipstick put on somewhat sloppily, bore a permanent, and rather odd, smile. Her body, however, as I mentioned, was that of a fashion model, and it appeared that she wore absolutely nothing—certainly, she did not wear a bra—under her doctor’s coat.

Dr. Waddabunga claimed to have been trained in holistic healing, which was then the latest thing in veterinary medicine. There was some kind of diploma hanging on her wall to that effect from a training center in Switzerland. Though I was unsure what it said (since it was in German), it certainly looked official enough, with its shiny gold seal and all the German words leading up to Dr. Waddabunga’s name. Perhaps this was her real name, after all.

When she examined an animal, she rarely touched it with her hands; she would use her wand, which she always kept in her left hand, to stroke the animal’s back as her right hand circled over the animal’s head, while she closed her eyes and sighed deeply as if connecting spiritually with the animal. I insisted that my son, who was then studying literature at the University of Pennsylvania (where he went for his doctorate after his MA at Vermont), bring his cat, Piazza, who seemed to be psychologically tormented in some way, to Dr. Waddabunga (a name that my son believed to be a pseudonym despite the Swiss “diploma”) for healing, but he said he would do so only if I paid. From the first, he was skeptical about the holistic approach, especially when I told him that she used a wand. Still, as usual, he complied.

On that occasion, Dr. Waddabunga put the wand down and used both hands, waving them over the animal in the same circular motion that she usually did with one hand. She looked at the ceiling—almost as a possessed, it seemed—and shrieked. “What is it?” she exclaimed. “Tell me kitty, baby kitten, sweet baby, what is bothering you? Does it hurt? Tell me, sweet baby, tell me.”

She then paused, incongruously coming out of her trance as rapidly as she had gone into it, to ask the cat’s name.

“Piazza,” my son said with an incredulous look on his face.

“What?” she asked equally incredulously. “That’s an unusual name.”

At this point I knew what he was thinking—namely, “You’re a fine one to talk.” Thankfully, instead he said, “It means ‘square’ in Italian.”

“Square?” she asked. “Why would you name your cat Square?”

Using self-control, he did not respond, “Why would you wave your hands over my cat? What is that magic wand for? Why do you have a nose ring? Why are you wearing a turban, and long flowing robes?” Instead, he simply said, “She is named after a particular square, the Piazza della Minerva.”

Yet Dr. Waddabunga, who spoke no Italian, still did not understand that the type of square about which my son was speaking was not a geometric shape but a gathering place within a city, a gathering place where the culture of the city could thrive. How much greater a country America would be, if we had piazzas.

Sadly, a good thirty-five dollars later, the cat’s discomfort was not alleviated by the magic treatment of Dr. Waddabunga, but it had been quite a show and had brought joy into my life at a time when I needed joy.

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Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Blaunch Reception

If blog is a foreshortened form of “weblog,” shouldn’t a book launch be called a “blaunch” (uniquely apt for The Curious Autobiography of Elaine Jakes, as Elaine’s dear mother was named Blanche)? For the purposes of this mini-blog, I would like to adopt the quasi-honorific terminology, as I offer a brief sequel to the book launch itself. Monday’s blaunch culminated with a dinner at Villa Vito’s, while Tuesday’s reception, held at the Inn at Phillips Mill inn at phillips millculminated, fittingly enough, with a sumptuous dinner at the Inn at Phillips Mill, as a guest of the owners, Brooks and Joyce Kaufmann.

The reception itself was an honor for me to attend, and allowed me a chance to sign a few more books and offer to my august group of attendees a few Curious Autobiography pens and t-shirts.Tshirt Indeed, the guests themselves made the gathering special, where we met up with, among others, Sue, who helped me organize, Robert, Jeannie, Becky, Marcy, Kevin, Henry, Janet, Ursula, John, Brooks, Joyce, Marion, and Fred, and, in spirit, Elaine. Marion prepared a lovely photographic tableau, a visual reminder of days bygone, days of significance to all who happened to know Elaine.

But some of those in attendance did not know her. If they had met her, at best they barely remembered. But they were there in part to share a few moments of fellowship and merriment. But perhaps that is not the only reason they or any of us were there. We were there to aver, whether implicitly or explicitly, silently or articulately, that Elaine’s life had meaning, and that, beyond this perhaps less than obvious fact, our own lives have meaning, too. Thus, that small convergence of souls, by the mere incidence of its convergence, asserted that all life has real meaning, because there is, amidst the apparent disorder and chaos of our frazzled existence some kind of cosmic significance to life, certainly unseen and discernable only through the eyes of the soul. Such significance, or the author of it, gives every memory meaning, every intention potential, and makes every action worthy of bothering to do.

But I wax philosophic. To return to the delightful reception, Inn dining-terraceI should say that I have attended very few gatherings so charming and delightful, made so by the wonderful aforementioned group of attendees. We told and read stories and in passing reflected, without going overboard, on the quasi-philosophical values espoused above. The dinner was equally delightful, and at it we read one additional short excerpt from The Curious Autobiography, to which we added a story, not found in the book. That story will be the subject of my next blog. It is the Ghost of the Inn at Phillips Mill, as true a ghost story as you shall ever read. But that next time. Until then, thanks for following these two blog updates and pondering with me the verbal, ethical, and likely superfluous implications of a world like blaunch!

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Let’s Do Launch

On July 16, 1969, I recall quite clearly Elaine Jakes pitching on the floor in front of her television set with a small group of friends—including Sheila, Sallie Bailey and Emily Ward at least for a few minutes of that early morning event—for the Apollo moon launch. This “breakfast-bun watch party” occurred in Elaine and Sheila’s small flat, as Delores Davis was wont to call it, at 14 W. Bridge Street in New Hope, Pa, just behind Villa Vito‘s wonderful Italian restaurant, famous then and now for its abundante “Mangia Platter.” VillaVitoBut no one was thinking about that delicious dinner special at that moment, not simply because it was early in the morning—8:32 to be precise, when the launch happened—as the launch itself, along with Elaine’s delicious grilled cinnamon buns, was all that anyone was thinking about.

book signing2By 4:00 p.m. on May 25 of 2015, however, all I could think about was the very Mangia Platter that had not been anyone’s mind on that morning of 1969. Why? Because I had been in front of wonderful Farley’s Bookshop on the corner of Ferry and South Main, where Jen Farley had helped me set up my table for what was to be a launch of a less fiery sort, in this case merely a book launch, specifically that of The Curious Autobiography of Elaine Jakes. It was not merely old friends who had known Elaine who bought copies of the book but a new cohort of folks taken by the title or the book cover: to name a few, a charming Swedish expat and now resident of New Hope, an itinerant biker and his wife, a lovely young woman who looked forward to reading it on the long drive back to Arkansas. (Don’t worry, she was not to be the one driving).

book signing conversationOne of the more telling moments came when someone who did not buy a book said curtly, “Who was Elaine Jakes anyway? Why should I care about her?” Such an excellent question! I answered it in just a sentence or two: “She was an ordinary person who discovered along the journey that life really is astonishingly extraordinary. She was who you, with a little luck, might just become.” And that my reader, is simply why I write this blog—that you might share in the extraordinariness of one human being’s life and thus find the same for your own—and want to share with you something of the joy of the book launch, complete with pictures and warm hugs from new friends and old—(thanks picture takers and makers, Keith and Jeanette, Marion and Betsy and salesperson extraordinaire, Kathy!). It was, all in all, a great day, if not quite as spectacular as the Apollo XI mission’s lift off, nonetheless exciting on its own terms and, unlike the moon mission, this launch was followed by a wonderful dinner at Villa Vito’s—thanks Ursula!—involving a mounding Mangia Platter with homemade white tiramisu. A day that I hope that you, my dear reader, may enjoy sharing in, if of necessity only through this blog. Thanks for your readerly support, and if you can get to New Hope any time soon, be sure to buy a book at Farley’s and then go over to Villa Vito’s on W. Bridge St. and treat yourself to a superb Mangia Platter!

book signingbook signing with K&Jbook signing with Betsybook signing with K&J2