1.
In November a close friend who's a builder broke his neck working on a roof, and a couple weeks later a few friends of his went to finish the job for him. I worked with two other guys in the sun on a big house, an estate in a forested ravine. I know the homeowner too. He’s odd-- thin and crooked and goggly-eyed, always on the lookout. I walk a lot through the woods around here and I end up trespassing now and then. Once when I came down that ravine, he drove up to me when I was out on the road and sort of confronted me.
We were on the roof when one of the carpenters brought up the Palestinians. He knows about this website. He said, it’s wrong the way those people are treated. It’s disgraceful. Then he asked me to tell him about the occupation.
I told him about kids not getting out of Gaza to get their scholarships, and he said, And it’s all because of the United States.
The taller carpenter was further up the roof putting on sheathing and he objected. You can’t judge the Israelis. We’d do exactly the same if we had gone through what they went through. The smaller carpenter got into it with him. What would we do if someone came over here and took our land, he said. I was tucked under the eaves holding soffit strips for the taller guy to screw down, and grinning devilishly.
He said, You want to get rid of Israel? There’s a good reason it’s there, that would be like the Holocaust all over again. I’m not saying that, the smaller one said.
The smaller guy went off to get another sheet of plywood and I could see him talking with the homeowner. The homeowner had been raking the yard as we talked. The smaller carpenter came back and said something under his breath to the other carpenter. The taller one passed it on to me: He wants us to stop talking about Israel. It upsets him. He is Jewish.
The conversation shut down. Later I felt a wave of sympathy for the homeowner. He is strange, he has a European name. I think he must be the child of Holocaust survivors. It is not hard to assign him a tortuous back story, barely escaping Poland via North Africa, wealth from German reparations. I can’t help identify with his helpless, rootless feeling. Still it didn’t excuse him shutting down the conversation.
2.
A friend of my wife came to visit around the holiday and on a whim he decided to drop in on a finance mogul who lives near us and had been sending him emails to try and get him to consult on a job. We drove up to the man’s town in my wife’s friend’s car and took a while to find the address.
It was a forbidding estate. Towering stone pillars and a steel gate. But by chance as we stopped outside the gate, it slid open. Shazaam. We passed huge sculptures on the driveway going down to a lake.
Of course, we weren’t expected. But my wife and her friend are both streetsmart drop-in artists. I find it excruciating. I hunched in the back of the car as they sauntered brashly up to the huge oaken front door. I could hear them jabbering with the man and his wife over the intercom.
How did you get in? How did you get through the gate? Who did you say you are? Translation: you have some nerve.
But my wife and her friend are charming, and soon she came back out and summoned me to come in too. Everyone had a drink. The man showed us around the vast house…. pornographic art and polished stone shower slabs from Uzbekistan and Timbuktu, walls that move on electric hidden cables, televisions that glide out of walls, an amphiteater above the water seating hundreds of close friends, a theater with gas fires along the wall. We were lucky to catch him home, in one of his four houses. You get the picture.
My wife and her friend were marveling, but I was embarrassed, because I'm Jewish and so was the mogul. This was shameless. And I saw it all coming when we drove down past the hulking sculptures. Is this what my great people have come to? It was like Gatsby throwing down shirts on the bed to impress Nick Carraway, but in this case it was exotic building materials, and none of the wit. But I guess WASPs lived like this once, when they were driving the economy.
My wife and her friend wore delighted smiles but I felt a need to excuse him inwardly. I said to him, You must have grown up poor. “My father was an immigrant laborer in South Africa,” he said with bite, as though he had said it many times before. “I grew up in [an American city] with bare plywood floors. I decided I was never going to live that way again.”
An American story. Though I wish it weren’t my people.
3.
My property touches another guy’s land at the back, a businessman and devout Christian. His wife sends out cards that warn people against being B.U.S.Y. Bustling under Satan’s Yoke.
He's a big hunter, and the only times I’ve seen him were in the woods. Twice I’ve disturbed his hunt, trespassing on his land to walk to a friend’s house over the ridge. One year I passed his camouflaged treestand with my dog and looked up and there he stood twenty feet above me with a black mask on. He nodded once like a fell superhero, gazing angrily. It froze my blood.
A year later I came over the rise with the dog and he was walking the ridge with a gun. This time he yelled at me for scaring off the deer he had been tracking for the last two hours. My dog had ruined the hunt. He said he had excused me the year before because he understood people trespassed. Still. I was silent, nodding shamefully.
I sent him a note later apologizing, and promised not to do it again.
But I did it again. Last month. I didn’t realize it was still bow season. There was a camouflage box tent on the ridge, and he must have been inside it. He called my neighbor to chew her out. What did he say to you? I asked her. She said, he’s waiting for Jew season to open. We laughed. It was her joke, not the hunter’s. She is married to a Jew, a mixed couple, like me.
Though later I reflected, I never felt scared of him, never, not even when he was stalking the ridge with his gun. Don’t go old-school on me now. No one is thinking that way.
4.
My neighbor Terry called me because he was going to cut down some telephone poles in the state park. I rushed off to help him. Terry is an official trail maintainer for New York-New Jersey trail conference and he keeps up a loop through a state park not far from my house. Sometimes I help him when he’s out there with his chain saw.
I was wild to do the telephone poles because, come on, who wouldn't want to chop down telephone poles? Also, they clutter this trail, and I like the woods. But the other reason is because Terry is Jewish. Not Jewish in any of the conventional ways. He is a teacher, he’s outdoorsy as hell, he’s built like a brick shithouse, he worked for 25 years as a telephone lineman. He is Hannah Arendt’s kind of Jew—Hannah Arendt who said that the kibbutz was the greatest Jewish achievement of the 20th century and who disdained wealth and “moneygrubbing.”
I like being with another Jew who understands my love of physical labor. As Terry cut the poles, I pulled on the wires to make them come down the right way. It was cold, and I came up with a joke. Terry used to work at Goldman, Sachs, and that’s how he learned to use a chain saw. "They taught you that on the trading floor at Goldman, Sachs, you don’t fool me," I said. Terry grinned and felled another telephone pole.
We carried four and five foot lengths of pole to fill a culvert on a creek that was washed out by Irene.
The next day Terry emailed me to say the Parks people have been all over him. We were out of line. There’s creosote in the poles. He’s got to move them all out.
I wrote back, No good deed goes unpunished, didn’t they teach you that lesson at Goldman?
Terry wrote back to say, he's named after his grandfather, Edwin Posner, who was Chairman of the American Stock Exchange twice, because the government asked him the second time to clean up corruption.
Well Terry, you've moved up in my book.
5.
I needed to borrow my friend’s hammer drill, the guy who broke his neck. He lives two-and-a-half miles from me, and I’ve tried to look in on him every day or so. For a while my wife arranged a schedule for friends to bring him meals. But he's healed well, and now he’s able enough not to need anyone to cook for him.
I called him on new year's day and said, I’ll take away your garbage if I can borrow that hammer drill. Sure, he said.
I stayed to watch some of the football game then went in the back for two big bags of garbage. Can I take them through the house? I asked. Sure, he said.
I hit the Christmas tree going past it and an ornament shattered. A big one.
He said, Oh hell, my favorite, my great-grandmother gave it to us.
I got on my knees to clean it up and my fingers trembled as I tore open the garbage bag to stick the shards in. I felt like hell. I felt so bad I didn’t ask for the hammer drill after all. When I got home I told my wife and she consoled me. It was the first day of the new year and I’d already crapped it up. I’d resolved to be orderly, I'd crapped it up. She said, You’ve been a good friend to him, don’t worry.
In the morning she was on-line looking for antique Christmas ornaments. I went to my desk and set up the paypal to buy one from Estonia for $40. Me, buying Christmas ornaments on January 2.
Then my wife called out to me in a sharp voice. A something-wrong voice. I went into her office. She had called my friend to tell him how shitty I felt, and he told her, Didn’t he get that I was joking? That was a nothing ornament.
Later I heard my wife telling the story on me. This is how dramatic Phil is, she said. Or, this is how gullible. I’ve never been streetsmart either-- another of my resolutions.
I still needed that hammer drill. I called my friend and offered to move his logpile into the house for him. I drove down. I was going to grab that drill.
i love this. you’re the best phil.
Ditto.
That is hysterical…..love to have Phil as a neighbor!
Ditto.
I really liked this part:
I walk a lot through the woods around here and I end up trespassing now and then, in the spirit of Robert Frost. Once when I came down that ravine, he drove up to me when I was out on the road and sort of confronted me in an unstraightforward manner.
The spirit of Robert Frost and also the part about being “confronted” in an “unstraightforward” manner–that says so much with so few words. Niiicccee!!! It takes me places.
wow i just edited that part because i thought it was wordy
you should put it back. i loved that part too.
he drove up to me when I was out on the road and sort of confronted me in an unstraightforward manner.
i really tried to imagine…well, i am glad it is captured in the comments anyway.
Up here in the Great White Afterthought, Kenyans and Somalis are settling in. In terms of miles flown or bridges burned I’d call that pretty darn rootless. In fact, if rootlessness was rewarded by more than a shrug(meh, who ain’t rootless, and who gives a damn anyways), these dusky strangers would win 1st place.
What the heck was that? Surfeit of bile. One must vent. By all means, stop by the snowy woods.
New Hampshire? :)
As strange as it sounds on a site so focused on the Middle East, this is probably one of my favourite themes on this website. You’re a gifted writer; better yet a storyteller.
I wouldn’t mind having these small recollections gathered by tags so you could revisit old stories you liked but forgotten when you’re feeling bored or just wanting some inspiration for writing a piece yourself.
Great story-telling, Phil! :-)
>> Twice I’ve disturbed his hunt, trespassing on his land to walk to a friend’s house over the ridge. … I sent him a note later apologizing, and promised not to do it again. … But I did it again.
Would you say it was a “necessary” wrong? ;-)
“I wouldn’t mind having these small recollections gathered by tags so you could revisit old stories you liked.”
I agree, but who could ever do justice to the tags? :)
BTW, this brought a smile: “I was tucked under the eaves holding soffit strips for the taller guy to screw down, and grinning devilishly.”
Goldarn it, you stole my favorite bit!
Can just imagine me doing the same, grinning devilishly
as a fly on the walltucked under the eaves, as The smaller carpenter got into it with himGreat stuff.
Sorry to be nit picky:
‘It was a forbidding estate.’
Shouldn’t this be ‘foreboding’?
‘forbidding’ is correct – as in daunting, fear-inspiring, unwelcoming…
No, forbidding is correct here.
“Forbidding” means “uninviting”, “repellent”, or “stern”.
(A lady of uncertain years, and with a forbidding mien.”)
Foreboding could be used, I suppose, but it is not usually collocated with the appearance of an inanimate object.
“Foreboding”: (noun) fearful apprehension; a feeling that something bad will happen:
(adjective) implying or seeming to imply that something bad is going to happen.
(O.E.D., and who would use any other?)
These are wonderful stories, and I loved them. But now I’m worried about you. Please stay off the property of your nut-job Christian neighbor who is always trying to kill things, to protect yourself from his poor judgment and itchy trigger (or bow!) finger.
I would check the local ordinances. Is discharging firearms really allowed there?
People who fire guns in populated areas have a subliminal need to murder someone, and should receive attention form the police.
I would check the local ordinances.
in my relatively liberal home state, hunters are given pretty wide latitude. not that they aren’t a menance. an off-duty state trooper just shot some poor woman in the stomach after apparently mistaking one of her dogs for a deer. you got that. he didn’t shoot the dog in the stomach, but the woman walking the deer . . . er, i mean dog.
[the off-duty trooper] had seen a deer earlier in the day in the general area of the incident. [he] later fired one round when he thought he saw a deer tail, striking [the woman], according to Jackson.
yeesh. men (typically) firing off hire powered rifles at the fleeting sight of a deer tail. have you seen a deer tail? not much to go on.
You can borrow any of my tools anytime Phil.
Great stories. I never would have pictured you as a roofer.
I’m glad I can wander in the local woods without worrying about more than tripping over tree roots! (Or avoiding the, er, leavings of others pet pooches)
Meanwhile
10,000 trespassing Jews:
link to middleeastmonitor.org.uk
Apparently there are no known Jewish links in the village, only Muslim shrines linked to Quranic personalities. But still they come.
very colorful, very personal
… hunters scare me – why do you want to kill a living animal? … the store is just down the road for most of us (including those Makaw Native Americans in Washington state who want, after 80 years without, to whale hunt again??!!?!!?) … food is plentiful, packaged, sliced and ready … unless there is necessary cull of overpopulated deer or diseased animals no need to kill any … don’t care if your daddy took you hunting – no one should want to do it (you listening Mark Zuckerberg?) … if there ever is a great calamity and we have to hunt for food again we’ll figure it out … Phil, your hunter neighbor worries me (wear ORANGE when you walk on his property)
“wealth from German reparations”
What the hell are you referring to? If you are saying what I think you’re saying, you’re in far far out left field. You know what reparations to Hungarian survivors were, a few thousand dollars in the 1990′s and 2000′s. What percentage of those that survived got even that much money? 15% maybe.
“Still it didn’t excuse him shutting down the conversation.”
You can talk about Palestine all you want at a bar after working. “shutting down the conversation”.
You tell em, Witty! I mean where’s the respect for law? Where’s the tear gas? Where’s the water cannon?
Just be careful with that hammer drill, Phil. Especially if you’re doing any rock/masonry or other hard substance drilling with same. Even going through tough or real thick wood in fact. They really need special, much tougher bits than used with regular drills.
The hammering those drills deliver to their bits is not so noticeable to us, but it is to their bits and they have been known to shatter rather flamboyantly.
And wear eye protection.
Then my wife called out to me in a sharp voice. A something-wrong voice. I went into her office. She had called my friend to tell him how shitty I felt, and he told her, Didn’t he get that I was joking? That was a nothing ornament.
Later I heard my wife telling the story on me. This is how dramatic Phil is, she said. Or, this is how gullible. I’ve never been streetsmart either– another of my resolutions.
You can’t feel too bad. You broke an ornament of someone who had broken his neck and you tried to buy it back for him. Buying the ornament back can make you feel good inside.
@Witty, you are absolutely on the money. When there is nothing specifically happening to slam Israel for, the bashers resort to concocting stories like this.
Not least among the reasons I love MW is this species of post from Phil. Thanks man & happy 2012!
thanks ches! same to you
“In November a close friend who’s a builder broke his neck working on a roof, and a couple weeks later a few friends of his went to finish the job for him.”
Talk about kicking a guy when he’s down! The broken neck wasn’t bad enough?
ouch yer right
“ouch yer right”
I am? The broken neck wasn’t bad enough, and you guys delivered the coup de gras?
Wow, you live in a rough neighborhood.
“My father was an immigrant laborer in South Africa,” he said with bite”
Google him, Phil. Something doesn’t add up. Or did he leave out the word “contracter” after laborer?
Hooray, another Phil story! Like a prize in the cracker jack box. (Though lord knows how many pearls we are missing due to fear of wordiness.)
Your neighborhood sounds like quite the collection of characters, and always something lovely to do in the woods. Meanwhile you’re also running the best blog on Israel/Palestine and the US relationship to it in the world (to my knowledge). May all our lives be so rich.
Here’s to a 2012 full of joy, good work, and pleasant surprises.
Ditto
“unstraightforward” confrontations – I understand exactly what you mean. Thanks, Phil. I hope you don’t mind if I need to borrow the phrase: “You’re confronting me in an unstraightforward manner!” Love it. Good storytelling.
Beautiful!
Bonne année.