Hob Broun - Cardinal Numbers - Stories

HERE is Snuffy Howe, of the Bar Harbor Howes, the all-Ivy wressler with pins in both knees, a Stage Door Johnny with a heavy portfolio.

WHILE studying at Brown, Snuffy took employment with the Mastic Gum Co. of Providence. For them he composed a series of Trading Cards titled “Cameos Of American Conversation.” He still carries a specimen in his wallet, #18 in a series of 50.

The Blizzard Of ’88 … Only two men had ventured thru the driving snow and wind to partake of their customerry noon repast at The Murray Hill Chop House. These stanch men, Scanlon, a hotelier, and Shapiro, a tunesmith, sat in complete silence until the fowl was served, Capon With Currant Sauce.

Shapiro: Nothing goes straight to the heart like good food.

Scanlon: I never met a man to say no.

Shapiro: Not for all the rice in China.

HERE is Dodie at the hatcheck stand, singing to herself about honeysuckle vines and tall sugar pines. She walks to work 37 blocks from her flat on Terpsichore Street. There her drapes are festive with donkeys and watermelons embroydered on. She has a closetful of shoes. Dodie collects footwear of all kinds. And who doesn’t tell she looks like Betty Hutton — everybody’s Jitterbugging Daughter, ooo yess, and the girl who made the Miracle At Morgan’s Creek.

HERE is the band at a long table in the Onyx kitchen. They are eating elk wieners and kraut, drinking ale. Guido (C-Melody Sax) says he is the only person to ever go broke on Florida Real Estate. A kid making roux for the Gumbo burns himself bad.

ONLY one customer at the bar, Chick Lazslo, the City Hall Reporter. He’s been snooping for scandle all day, and no luck. He’s drinking rock-and-rye doubles, and pretending to be in Afrika. Over the backbar there’s a desert landscape, lozenge shapes and minarets under a red sun, basic-ly. Like the artist got swacked on a carton of Camels.

HERE’S this gnarly Cop poking his nitestick into the big man sleeping on a bench at the RR station. The big man rubs his black face and sits up. His clawhammer coat is torn and his shoes are somewhere else. He rubs his great low-thumbed meathooks together and smiles. This is Snuffy Howe, the Bar Harbor scion and range pistol champ. Snuffy Howe is a Gorilla.

JANUARY, ’26, and the Turley Howes are returned from their Afrikan rubber plantation to the castle overlooking the textile mills on the river. It has been snowing furtively for days, and it looks like Connecticut or Michigan or Pennsylvania from the window of a bus. Dr. Livesy, a GP of the very first water, sexologist, fly fisherman, and Ambassador-To-Be, wears his pince-nez on a ribbon. He calls for boiling vinegar and arranges instruments on a tray, chaynsmoking as he works. After the long delivery, they read the papers and don’t say a thing. Mrs. Howe stops crying and hangs herself.

HERE is the hexagonal brass check Snuffy receives in exchange for his Borsalino. Dodie looks into his sunken black eyes. He tells her they could be First in History to be married underwater. How’s about Chesapeake Bay? Dodie says, well, anyway, you look durable enough. And the way she says it is so offhand, like she’s home frying up some cutlets and a little cigarette ash falls in the pan.

BETWEEN sets Doghouse Riley (Bass Fiddle) creeps into the pantry to glom some reefer. The only thing he can smell is sacked onions. Doghouse is thinking with his voice he ought to throw over this nowhere gig and move into radio. He experiments with some intros: From the Fabulous Assagai Room … Vulcan Tire Radio Breaks in With the News!

RIGHT behind him, between the onions and the wall, Dodie’s satin heels are hooked over the furred Howe shoulders on which the future of a Dynasty rests. She says in his ear: I’ve never had anybody like you. And no Sweet Talk here, but a matter of fact. Like she’s telling her butcher to trim off the fat.

HERE is the enormous Solaryum of Marmalade Hospital, an aroma of moss, a canopy of fronds. Dr. Livesy, still sharp in his 90’s (he is allowed to treat himself), arrives for an interview with Mr. Lazslo of The Bugle. Absolutely, son, always a head for figures. Could have been Mr. Memory in the Vaudeville. Reciting imagined names and addresses, false bank account numbers, he rolls the gift cigar between acid-scarred fingers.

ON NBC’s “Metropolitan Matinee,” a new Decca release is having its Debut. Dodie sings the little eight-bar piano break, and all the reed parts. Crouching on the bathroom tile, she oyls her new riding boots from Snuffy, and the feel of it makes her heart pound.

PLANE trees are dropping their leaves in the park. The nannys in the playground are erect and unsmiling. Snuffy Howe, the Milk Fund Man of the Year, climbs down from his sleeping nest and cannot remember where he is. He inspects fresh manure on the bridle path, drinks water from a stump, using wadded grass as a sponge. Crouching, alert, he watches men hoping for the price of breakfast pitch pennys at a wall.

THE DARKROOM IS A good place to work on my theory that electrons move faster as you travel south towards the Equator. Four rolls of Tri-X are turning slowly in developer, part of the project out of which my tangent theory came like a bee from the hive. Am I going too fast?

I meant to track on film and in words, improvisationally, the New York-Key West highway experience. Note the verb tense. Germ idea and what it becomes through process should be discrete.

Already you will be wanting context. Fair enough. I am a man in early middle age, precise to a fault in my habits, but given no less to loose talk. My marriage is nine years old. I am lugubrious; Daphne is the one with the fizz. She likes me to threaten her over the phone. I am happy to do this.

The serial windshield narrative makes lists.

Wigwam Village

molded fiberglass colossi

Caves of Mystery

auto bazaar

Big Boy

Tile Town

dinosaur park

Tower of Pizza

chalet motel

Toto’s

Zeppelin Diner

drive-thru bank

I know that tempo is important and I constantly watch the clock. Looking a magazine over, I calculate how many minutes it will take to read this or that article. Normally, I will have the TV on as well and possibly be talking on the phone. Daphne says, unfairly, that I’m afraid to sit still and concentrate. But I am well known for hand-tinted still-life arrangements.

Modus operandi: montage, collage, bricolage.

Scratch ’n’ sniff stickers

fruit-shaped gumballs

rubber animals

copper jewelry

pocket guides

budget tapes

cedar boxes

pennants

ashtrays

keyrings

posters

decals

Art is a business, but not so the reverse. I talk on the phone, have lunch, that’s it. I don’t sleep with curators.

On the phone to Daphne, I speak in a natural voice.

“Believe it. Frankie knows how to put edge on a knife. Thin oil and a smooth stone.”

I often call from the booth in the Ramayana while my koftas, dal, and chapatis are being prepared. This booth is right next to the kitchen; its aromas inspire me. Later, when I’m having coffee, Preva or Subash, one of the brothers, will sit down with me to talk. They share my Salem Lights and ask me to clarify words. Recently, the brothers have invested in a record label. “Picture wallah,” one of them will say. “We are confused by ‘rock the house.’” I try to caution them, but they will not be cautioned. The label, dealing in rap music only, has offices in Jersey City.

Painting has destroyed “landscape,” and left us with “map.”

Trenton

onion rings

Havre de Grace

crabcakes

Virginia Beach

sausage po’ boy

Greenville

chess pie