Two Short Stories

Pete Philipps

1 — A Fly Story

— In an earlier story titled “Taxi, Taxi,” I wrote what it was like to be a copy boy on the Sunday New York Times in the so-called good old days. This is a sequel to that story.

As head copy boy in the Sunday Department, I had the “honor” of having my own desk in a small office that abutted the office of the authoritarian Sunday editor, Lester Markel. His three secretaries also sat in that office, which in theory made it a desirable place for a young man to work. Alas, they were kept so busy that there was little time for chatter—let alone romance.

 My desk faced the door leading to Mr. Markel’s office suite (no one ever dared to call him anything else), and thus anyone who entered his inner sanctum had to walk past me. In accordance with an unwritten but iron-clad rule, no one entered his office unless he or she was invited or summoned. One of my duties, in addition to fetching cabs for Mr. Markel (see previous story), was to close the heavy steel door behind him when he first arrived in the morning.

One morning I did something that had never been done before: I followed Mr. Markel into his office. Owing to its length, he hadn’t yet reached his desk when he apparently sensed my presence and spun around with a look of utter disbelief. “Excuse me, Sir,” said I tremulously, “but your fly is open.”

Zip went the zipper, with words of appreciation, and I beat a hasty retreat. My first promotion followed shortly thereafter.

But the story doesn’t end there. By the time Mr. Markel died, I was working as a copy editor for a major magazine, to whose staff I had often told the story of the open fly. Few believed me; they deemed it too far-fetched. But one colleague, himself a former Times alum, not only believed me but gave the story an amusing coda. The day Mr. Markel’s obituary appeared in the Times, he cut it out and stuck it in my typewriter. In the upper margin, he wrote “Now his fly is closed forever.”

2 — Hold your Tongue

“What are we going to eat tonight?”  is a question my wife and I ask each other almost daily—at breakfast. This is not to suggest that we are food deprived. Far from it, as my growing belly attests. Indeed, other things being equal, eating is one of the few pleasures that remain in old age. And so the question becomes merely the starting point of a decision-making process that ultimately ends with a delicious and satisfying meal almost every single night. 

But the question somehow reminds me of my mother’s cooking. She neither liked to cook nor enjoyed eating. Both were must-dos to be carried out with utmost expediency.

Half the time while I was growing up I didn’t like what my mother put on the table. In the interest of time, she prepared most meals in a pressure cooker, which may have been one of the earliest models on the market. How I detested that pot, not only because of what came out of it, but because I was worried the damn thing would explode. Which it did one night, splattering the ceiling with our intended dinner, and proving that paranoids have reasons to be anxious.

To be sure, the meals were nutritious and plentiful, but also endlessly repetitive and bland. All too many included liver and tongue, which as a vegetarian I wouldn’t touch today. (My mother mastered several methods of disguising tongue, none of which fooled me.) I ate what was placed before me because I had no choice.

I remember well the exceptions, such as when we had company and on holidays, particularly Thanksgiving, the only holiday my mother deemed meaningful. On such occasions she would prepare lavish meals and decorate the table in ways that would make the cover of Gourmet magazine envious.

But for most of the year my mother just wanted to be done with dinner and get out of the kitchen. She gulped down her food and proceeded to the sink to begin cleaning up while my father and two brothers were still eating. I complained a lot. I mean a lot, but to no avail. Ironically, my mother did make things I liked. Her potato salad, to mention one example, was exceptional. Trouble was, once I expressed a fondness for something she would serve it again and again, until it lost its appeal.

Today, with the benefit of hindsight and maturity, I see it all differently. Now that l help with the grocery shopping and meal preparation, I do exactly what my mother did: I take the easy way out. The difference is that I am retired, whereas my mother held down two and three jobs and did all the cleaning and other household chores herself.

Cooking, I have found, can be fun and rewarding some of the time. But add the time needed to plan menus and do the shopping, it can get time-consuming and even tiresome. A buckling shelf of cookbooks notwithstanding, I rarely consult them to expand my meager repertory. Simply put, I have neither the time nor the patience.

Today I fully appreciate the many ways I am following in my mother’s footsteps. I have finally come to understand—and appreciate—her better than I did as a teenager.

Sorry, Mom, for all the complaining I did.