Throwing adding machines down the shaft
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Just tucked Charles in for the night. I have at least one last glass of wine to sip before I eat and turn in myself.
Despite Charles' strong prejudice against drinking wine from anything other than a wine glass my wine is in an economy size cocktail glass (then again my first cocktail, a screwdriver, was mixed in a quart mayo jar).
Wednesday evening is the legal time to water plants during Durham's drought. I had the hose in one hand and the water of salvation in the other. Brought back a couple of images from childhood.
When I was very young, no older than nine I used to have an image of my adult self looking out my penthouse cocktail in hand. Can't imagine what that meant to me. I don't know whether I saw a Jack Lemmon movie but I did see the trailers. He seemed equally foreign and enviable. I did watch the Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedies of the early 60s. They'd have been a likely source as anything of my childish images of upscape urban life.
I'm not sure when I first felt discontented with my parents lower middle class life. By the time it would've been even a quarter coherent I'd visualize it within the frameworks of literacy and culture. Images of a 'sophisticated' apartment overlooking Central Park weren't part of the picture. Why I imagined myself sipping booze in Manhattan at midnight is something I don't expect to ever figure out.
An accompanying image is of owning office buildings. Not the ones as big as the skyscrapers in the cities. I hadn't a clue to the difference between Savannah's biggest building (16 stories) and the Chrysler building. You know what I wanted to do? Throw adding machines down the elevator shaft. They were much heftier back then. My mother's was a big metal thing with ten rows and ten columns of number keys.
I didn't hate the adding machines. I just thought the resouding crash would be pretty satisfying.
