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This past Friday morning, the day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seemingly issued an “Ahh, screw it! Do as you damn please!” advisory or “guidance” as they called it, Celeste had fasting labs and a doctor’s appointment in Cappella. At the clinic we had to wear our masks, buzz a doorbell, wait for someone to unlock the front door and take our temperatures. Our foreheads evidently were cool enough, and after we said the secret password (mothermayipleasecomein), we were permitted entry.
After seeing the doc, Celeste was hungry for breakfast and eager for coffee, so we, still masked, walked to the restaurant next door. Over there, people had gotten the word from the CDC. “Sit anywhere,” said the waitress who greeted us. Loud voice, no mask, no social distancing. We spent a somewhat pleasant hour consuming most of a pleasant breakfast. It’s one of those places with booths and tables, as well as a counter where customers can choose to sit, and beyond the counter a high, glassless window through which you can see the unmasked pleasant faces of the cooks as they inhale and exhale over your eggs and hashbrowns.
Next, we drove a mile, to the back door of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul thrift shop, not a real big place, to drop off a huge clear bag of clothing—fifty pounds’ worth, Celeste claimed, all of it hers but one item, a plaid shirt of mine, that I had worn twice in twenty years. Too tight in the arm pits, too snug across the belly. I have good intentions of finding more to give away.
Long as we were there, we decided to go to the front door of the place and step inside to see how prudent people seemed to be. They looked pretty good. Not 100% good, but all of the staff and customers were wearing masks, though a couple of volunteers wheeling carts of new merchandise out from the back had their noses exposed.
I had only a couple of items on my shopping list and quickly didn’t find them, but we stopped to take a look at the books-and-video department (the size of a closet), and Celeste dropped into a not-for-sale 1960-ish vinyl-upholstered chair to rest her arthritic bones. I found a free-for-the-taking King James Scofield Reference Bible with an interesting name on the well-worn leather cover, Don Ploeckelmann, and an interesting inscription inside, from June of 1956. I didn’t take it, but I took a picture. And then, on the next shelf over, a big hardback book, a memoir, caught my eye, and I said to my wife, “Heyyy! Look at this! Do you know who this guy is?” Big smiling face, color photo of a bald-headed rich guy, and a one-word title, jack, just like that, with a little j, and the little j was (and still is) three-and-a-quarter inches high. The entire word “jack” is five-and-a-half inches across, imagine that! As I say, a rich guy. There’s a four-word subtitle below the ack of jack, much smaller type, of course, and there’s the author’s first and last name, Jack Such-and-Such, though he is actually a John with a capital J, in print larger than the subtitle, and, below that, in smallest print of all, the name of his co-author, a senior writer for Business Week.
“No, I don’t,” said Celeste. She did not recognize jack.
I didn’t tell her who he was. I just said, “I bet this book has an index!” and I took the volume off the shelf and opened the back. Four hundred seventy-nine pages in all, and yes, it does have an index! Jack With a Little J had a lot to say, with the help of the fellow from Business Week.
On page 478 I found the name I thought might be there, another famously rich guy, who, according to his entry in the index, is mentioned on pages 235, 237, 239 to 249, and 311. I showed that line of text to Celeste, and she confirmed she knows who he is and why I once called him on the phone.
I have not yet turned to those pages in the book; I wanted to tell you first about my great pleasure in finding and purchasing this weighty volume. Dollar-seventy-five was the price, plus tax. I gave two dollar bills to the gray-haired lady cashier, slipped them to her through the small slot below a big plexiglass shield at the counter, and told her, “That’s good. I don’t need the change.” She thanked me as if I had done something wonderful. Celeste and I headed home.
That was Friday. Today is Sunday. I did some research yesterday, in preparation for telling you this story, and I will sometime, perhaps, tell you a little more. Or maybe you already know. And, on second thought, maybe I should just leave these two wealthy men in peace, especially Jack With a Little J, who, Wikipedia reports, died last year on the first day of March, at age eighty-four. Covid didn’t do him in, it was something else. But, I hope you will forgive me for thinking, if he had just made it another year, if he had lived to this week, that is, he, like you and I, would have encountered a whole lot of bare-faced folks willing to breathe all over him without asking first whether he’d had his shots. They seem to think they know what they’re doing. But I worry that, in only a couple of weeks or so, we will find out, all of us, we didn’t know jack.
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