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Generations

April 05, 2010 - View Single Entry

Here's another piece from To Be Rather Than to Seem, my memoir in progress. Actually it's several pieces, most of which started off as tangents in other essays and anecdotes. It's not done yet -- when you write about age, do you really expect to be done? -- but I'm letting it out into the wild anyway.

Maybe a year I moved to Martha's Vineyard, I was having supper with my father. He said, "I have no problem with turning sixty-five. What's hard to grasp is that I have a daughter who's thirty-five." That was me. His other kids would have been on the verge of thirty-four, thirty, and twenty-seven. My father and I were the only members of the immediate family born relatively early in the year: my mother and siblings were all born in September or October.

I haven't reached sixty-five yet, and not having kids, I'll never have a daughter, or a son, who's thirty-five. My nephew just started college, though, and friends younger than I have grandchildren in elementary school. My own age isn't hard to accept, and the panorama of the decades I've lived through is a wonder. What's strange, what makes it clear that I'm getting older, is the press of people coming up behind me and how old they are. Someone who's thirty-eight is well into her work life, she has her own decades to draw on -- and she's been on the planet two decades less than I have. My nephew is forty years younger than I am. He's an adult, albeit a young one. By the time he reached high school he had gone further in mathematics than I ever did -- and I was no slouch at math.

When my father and I had that conversation, he knew thirty-five far better than I knew sixty-four. Psychic maps have a temporal aspect: thirty-five was on his psychic map, but sixty-four wasn't on mine, though thanks to the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four," which I'd been singing along with since high school, it had a character that sixty-three didn't. (Sixty-five becomes a topographical landmark as soon as we learn that it's the conventional retirement age in our country.) Even though his thirty-five looked very different from mine, still, he'd been there. For me sixty-four -- and sixty, fifty, even forty -- was beyond the horizon, "Here be dragons" territory. Now forty and fifty are way back in my wake; sixty is coming up fast. My father died at eighty-six, two years ago, and I still remember that conversation we had when he was sixty-four and I thirty-five.

* * *

"Don't trust anyone over thirty" was the slogan of my generation, the baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s. I'm sure I said it a few times, but my general attitude toward it, as toward most things, was "It depends." Not for an instant did I buy what some of my agemates took to be the corollary: "Anyone under thirty is trustworthy." I had irrefutable empirical evidence that this was crap. Well before I turned thirty, I understood why "Don't trust anyone over thirty" pissed people over thirty off, but I was probably well over thirty before I caught the anomaly. People under thirty (in some cases barely so) may have come up with and popularized the phrase, but most of those editing the newspapers and deciding what images and words were seen on the nightly news weren't under thirty, and they're the ones who turned it into the watchphrase of "the sixties generation." For that matter, they also invented "the sixties generation."

* * *

When I was a teenage horsegirl and had to stay late at school for a meeting, rehearsal, or special event, Grandma often did my barn chores and took my horse out for a trail ride. Not till I got back into horses in my very late forties did it register that Grandma turned seventy the year I turned fourteen, so she was in her seventies most of the time she was doing this. She died at eighty, ten days after suffering a stroke; she had been horseback riding not long before. The realization expanded my temporal map, my sense of my own possibilities: I can keep riding into my seventies and even eighties if I want to. During several of my adult horse years, I worked alongside women a generation younger than I, and girls who ranged in age from eight to sixteen or so. I like to think that decades hence some of them will realize that their colleague Susanna, the one who stacked hay, mucked stalls, helped them catch horses, and went out for long trail rides accompanied only by her dog, was in her fifties most of that time.

* * *

While we were studying Europe between the two world wars, Sylvia Sherman, my high school world history teacher, told us about a study she'd recently read about. According to the study, most people's worldview was pretty much set by the time they reached their twenty-third birthday. They kept taking in new information, but the framework into which it was assimilated didn't change much. She related this to the ways in which the Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919 and designed to prevent the war that had just ended, helped to bring about the war that few people negotiating the treaty could even imagine.

I was still in high school. Twenty-three was still a ways off, but I was concerned. "Don't trust anyone over thirty" was already in the air. I didn't have to look very far to see that mental ossification was very real. How could I avoid it? We joked in class about cramming as much information as we could into our heads before we turned twenty-three. Miss Sherman's words took up residence in my head and lived there quietly for many years.

Eventually it dawned on me that what made twenty-three significant might not be anything biological. By twenty-three, most people in our society had settled into their adult lives. If we went to college, we'd graduated; if we learned a trade, we were now practicing it; perhaps we were married and/or raising children and/or buying a house. By twenty-three, most people weren't falling through looking-glasses or searching out new neighborhoods. If the possibility arose, they might well turn away from it, or pretend it wasn't there. Their worlds weren't expanding, so the old maps worked well enough: they got to where they were going, without running into any unexpected walls. If the map works, why expand it, replace it, or even revise it?

* * *

Studying Macbeth as a junior in high school, I had an epiphany: people who lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries weren't stupid or naïve or all that different from the people in my mid-twentieth-century world. Their language took some getting used to, their situations were -- on the surface, at least -- unfamiliar, but I recognized their flaws and their strengths; I even got a lot of their jokes, digs, and innuendos. Sometimes they were downright profound. The information wasn't new -- we'd read Romeo and Juliet the year before and performed As You Like It as eighth-graders (I was type-cast as Touchstone, of course) -- but now it caught my attention, put down roots, and began to affect how I saw the world.

Songs written by people who were dead by the time I heard their words pointed me toward a history that wasn't taught in school. Now I listen to songs that were topical forty years ago: not only are they pointing young people toward events that took place before they were born, but many of those songs are still topical. In a way this is depressing -- has nothing changed? -- but in a way it isn't: it affirms the continuity of history, of generations. The generations are so fluid it's a wonder anyone dares make generalizations about them.

At my father's memorial service in August 2008, we sang Pete Seeger's "Sailing Down My Golden River." The lyrics describe the singer's sons and daughters as "golden sparkles in the foam." So are we all. What's underneath changes far more slowly than what's on the surface.

Fraud

April 02, 2010 - View Single Entry

I ignored the e-mail because it looked like spam. PayPal, eBay, and others are forever telling me my account has been compromised, so I wasn't surprised that Bank of America was doing likewise.

Then I got a phone call. I started to ignore that too, because the Caller ID window said "CARD SERVICES," with a phone number I didn't recognize. The automated message said that there had been suspicious activity on my credit card account -- Ho-hum, yawn, thought I, and went on typing -- then it gave the bona fide last four digits of my credit card number.

That got my attention. I logged on to my credit card account and sure enough my card had been suspended. I followed the instructions and clicked on a link to MyFraudProtection @ BankofAmerica.com. First I had to prove I was who I am by answering a few multiple choice questions. The first one had to do with the amount I'd borrowed recently to buy or lease a motor vehicle. None of the amounts were correct, but still -- they knew I'd recently had a vehicular transaction of some kind. The next asked who was part of my household. Susanna Sturgis was one of the options. So were Heather Sturgis and Jason Sturgis. Never heard of either one of them. Once I'd satisfied them that I'm the I who belongs to the account, I was given a list of five transactions and asked if I'd made them. They all seemed related to online gaming. Two seemed to be tests: they were for $1 each. The next two were for larger amounts -- over $100 -- but were still pending approval. The fifth, $62.50 to Microsoft Xbox, was marked "Posted." No way had I made any of them -- though truth to tell I did for a moment consider the possibility that my hitherto secretive gamer alter ego had possessed my body and charged stuff to my credit card.

I was asked if my credit card was in my possession. I was 99% sure it was, but since this was in the nature of an affidavit I went to my wallet and looked. There it was. I swore that yes, it was in my possession, and no, no one else was authorized to use it.

The upshot is that now I've got an electronically signed statement that I did not charge that $62.50 to my card and I have no knowledge about who did. A new card is being sent to me -- bummer, because I know the old number by heart and now I'll have to look at the new card before I charge something. I still loathe Bank of America, but I'm impressed that their security picked up that a flurry of online gaming transactions were probably not made by the cardholder.

As to how the Unknown Gamer got hold of my credit card number -- damned if I know. I use my card online. I use it at the gas station. I used it at Kappy's weekend before last. That some mischievous individual had access to my credit card number sure isn't hard to believe. This hasn't happened to me before, and I'm not out anything: the $62.50 will be wiped from my transactions. For a few moments I thought capital punishment was too good for the twerp who tried to have his (what do you bet it was a "he"?) fun at my expense, then I decided I was lucky -- if the guy had been smart enough to run up a tab at, say, Borealis Records or Amazon.com or Fahrney's Pens, Bank of America's sage computers might not have noticed anything suspicious at all.

March License Plate Report

March 31, 2010 - View Single Entry

Louisiana and Hawaii!!

Good heavens. Spotting Louisiana on Circuit Ave. (main drag of Oak Bluffs, for y'all who live elsewhere) was enough to make this March noteworthy, but the month got better. Larry, my mechanic, ordered some parts for Uhura Mazda that were no longer needed when it was time for Uhura to R.I.P. He returned the parts for full credit but was out the shipping in both directions, so I said I'd pick it up. Wednesday the 24th I dropped by Courtesy Motors to give Larry a check for $58.50 and show off Malvina. I parked, of course, in the next-door X-tra Mart's little parking lot, right under the sign that says NO COURTESY MOTORS PARKING. Automatically I looked through the scrawny hedge at the license plate of the car on the other side.

It looked like a rainbow. Oh. My. God. I got out to inspect it more closely, and to ascertain that yes indeed it was the rear plate. (Vehicles from states that only require one plate -- of which Massachusetts used to be one -- often have novelty plates on front, and sometimes they're from exotic states of places like the Canal Zone. They don't count in the license plate game.) Hawaii it was. I haven't seen Hawaii in several years, and I don't recall ever scoring one this early in the year.

Moral of story: Pay your debts, park illegally, and you may get a pleasant surprise.

The year-to-date count stands at 27.

Goings

March 25, 2010 - View Single Entry

Uhura Mazda has gone to the salvage yard. I drove her down to the nearby West Tisbury School to save the tow truck the trouble of coming in the dirt road I live on and maneuvering around the driveway. That saved me $25. Once I learned that the towing would only cost me $50, I decided against driving Uhura over to County Road. Not only was the steering funky, but since last Friday she's been unregistered and uninsured. I could probably have made it to the salvage yard without incident. I'd decided on principle that to save $100 or more I'd take the risk. (Seven years ago it cost $200 to tow Tesah Toyota away, and by that point her head gasket was blown and she wasn't going anywhere under her own power.) To save $50? Not worth it.

So Uhura's gone. After I pulled the title out of my files to sign over to the salvage man, I noticed that it had been transferred on me on March 19, 2003 -- exactly seven years to the day before Malvina Forester became mine.

I also went riding this afternoon -- for the first time in at least three months! Allie was spookier than usual and not as responsive, but this isn't surprising. We took it fairly easy, and a ride that usually takes 45 minutes took an hour -- up the Old Holmes Hole Road the back way to the Mai Fane meadow, around the meadow and home. Allie's barrel feels a little wider than it did in the fall, but not enough to strain my muscles. The shock absorber in my back must have been a little stiff though, because my lower back is registering mild displeasure. Not bad, though.

Malvina Forester

March 24, 2010 - View Single Entry

Return, if you will, to my blog entry of March 7, "Travvy Got His RN!" Or let me refresh your memory. En route to our Rally Novice title, I ran Uhura Mazda over a rock. A fairly substantial rock, at least a foot tall at its highest point. This is not the sort of thing I generally do. It was so very not the sort of thing I generally do that now I suspect the Fates and Muses played a role, the way they did when my sourdough starter died.

Driving home from dog class that night, Uhura Mazda's steering was seriously funky. The next morning, in broad daylight, I couldn't help noticing that the left front wheel was out of true. No way was Uhura going off-island to the Rally trial. I made other arrangements, Travvy finished his title, and first thing Monday I took Uhura down to Courtesy Motors.

At first Larry and crew couldn't pinpoint the cause of the problem. They were focused on the left front wheel. Then they noticed the significant dent in the front axle. I saw it too. That's how I know that I ran over the rock, not just the stone-edged curb. It takes a head-on impact to make that kind of a kind in a solid steel axle, especially when you're going less than 10 mph. How did Uhura get over the rock? WTF was I doing that far to the left? Sure it was dark, but I've been in and out of that parking lot a couple dozen times at least and my headlights were most certainly on.

Larry called the next day with not good news: That particular axle was used only on 1996 and 1997 Rangers and Mazda pickups. It wasn't being made any more. He said he'd put out the call to the salvage yards on- and off-island. I said go ahead. But even if an axle was found, we didn't know how much damage had been done to the wheel or the brake. Uhura just hit 99K miles. The upholstery Travvy ravaged a year ago was still a mess, and the passenger-side seatbelt was hanging by a few threads in several places -- and we had to get inspected by the end of the month.

More, I've known for several years that I didn't need a pickup, even though they come in handy for hauling hay, shavings, and other stuff. Once Travvy and I started going to dog trials, the pickup's limitations became more obvious. At the March 7 trial, Trav was happy in his crate (with a couple of peanut-butter-slathered bones) in the back of Katy's Subaru Outback. I got to watch more of the trial than I had last September. You can't leave a crated dog in the bed of a pickup unless the pickup has a cap on it.

In my datebook, at the top of the page for March 8–14, I wrote, Think cars. I started researching small wagons: I read various online reports and started haunting the virtual used-car lots of Cape Cod dealers. Sticker shock was immediate. Almost exactly seven years ago, in March 2003, I bought a 1997 Mazda B2300 pickup with less than 49K miles for $7,200. Allowing for the passage of time, I figured, Hey, I should be able to get something with less than 50K miles for $10K or so, right? No way, José. If I wanted relatively low mileage, i.e., under 50K, I was looking at $15K minimum, and probably a bit more. I resigned myself to car payments, which I haven't had for nearly 20 years. Once I accepted that, my budget slithered upward. Uh-oh . . .

Within a few days my rational self had narrowed the search to Subaru Foresters and Outbacks and Toyota Rav4s. Once rational self had collected the information, gut and intuition could take over -- I don't generally make decisions: the decisions make themselves and I have to figure out what they are. The basic ingredients: I don't especially like the look of the newer Rav4s, the Falmouth Toyota website wasn't all that easy to navigate (I could chat with an online salesperson if I wanted to, but I didn't want to yet), the Atlantic Subaru website was well organized, and several friends and acquaintances raved about their experiences with Atlantic Subaru -- like if your car needs servicing, you can put it on the boat, they'll drive it off in Woods Hole and return it thither when the work is done, and you can drive it off in Vineyard Haven. Plus they have a salesman who lives in Edgartown and gets the hassle factor of living on Martha's Vineyard.

Tuesday I called Atlantic Subaru and asked for Tim, the guy who lives in Edgartown. Tim was on vacation; I was talking to Mike. I told Mike what I was looking for, what had caught my eye on the website, and what I wanted (hah!) to spend. He asked if I was willing to consider a standard. Willing to consider a standard? Be still, my beating heart! I'd almost resigned myself to an automatic, but maybe there was hope? He called my attention to a white 2008 Forester with 24K miles and a five-speed transmission. It was also almost $20K, and that was far enough over the top to make me say no. He pointed out a couple of other cars, including a 2005 Outback with 61K miles for $15,900. I said I'd think about it and call him back the next day.

I thought about cars. I thought about money. When I was supposed to be working, I kept going back to the Atlantic Subaru website -- cars can exert a pornographic pull; don't let anyone tell you different. I spotted another 2008 Forester very like the white one. It was gold, it had 31,500 miles and a standard transmission, and it was more than $1,500 less. Wednesday I called Mike and asked about the gold Forester. Indeed, he said, it was very like the white one, only the white one had fewer miles and leather upholstery. Leather upholstery? With a molting Malamute in residence, I should be interested in leather? I'd like to come have a look, said I. How about tomorrow? Thursday was Mike's day off. I went over on Friday.

The gold Forester and I were on the 2:30 boat coming home -- I'd stopped at the Burger King in Falmouth for a celebratory bacon double cheeseburger, of course.

Sunday morning I loaded Travvy's crate and gear into the back, Travvy into the passenger's seat (swathed in a blue and white throw that's been stowed in my cedar chest waiting for a purpose in life), and headed off to Franklin for the Rally trial. We had a ball and got a 94 for a run that wasn't quite as good as our March 7 one but did make us fourth in the Novice A class. I played a Malvina Reynolds CD all the way up and back, and by the time we got back to the island the gold Subaru was Malvina Forester. I still haven't figured out how everything works, but I'm getting the hang of the power windows and I figured out how to turn off the seat warmers when my butt got too warm.

I'm thrilled. Uhura Mazda was a marriage of convenience; I never had the same feeling for her that I did for her predecessor, Tesah Toyota. Uhura handled more like station wagon than a pickup, she was ungainly in an unattractive way, and the lack of 4WD has been a real pain the last two winters. Malvina is sleek, solid, and fun to drive. She's also flexible in ways that a pickup isn't. Some doors are closing, but new possibilities are opening up.