Sometimes There Aren't Bananas

            I think this story would start near Baltimore in, like, 1920, because a lot of stories start out that way. A kid’s father was a pretty good business-to-business widget salesman, but, even in the ‘roaring twenties’, those halcyon days, he was in a slump. But, his son would see the world. A sentiment which was also about average in that place and time.

             He was on the road with a colleague, and in the hotel lounge, the colleague said:

            “My. It’s awfully hot in here in Virginia without air conditioning or anything.”

            And the boy’s father said- “Especially with these high, celluloid collars. I mean, really.”

            He worked a finger between his collar and his neck.

            “I’m afraid that, on days like this, the collar will rub my neck raw and a rash will develop. Then I’ll have ring-around-the-neck, septis will set in, and my head will fall off.”

            His friend hesitated,

            then said,

            “You and me both, brother. But, you’ve got a bigger problem.”

            “Hiatal hernia?” the boy’s father asked.

            “Hell, no!” his friend answered as they were served another round of liqueurs in brandy glasses by a waiter who looked suspiciously like Boris Karloff, “It’s those high-falutin’ ten-dollar words you always use! Hell, Bagwell…”

            (Okay, the kid’s father’s name was ‘Bagwell’.)

            “Hell, Bagwell, none of the customers understand a word you say! The only reason you’ve sold anything during this slump is that you came across customers at the moment when they really needed widgets.”

            Although Victor’s strategy went against all that Bagwell believed, he did have a wife, kid and a big, grey cat who hogged the day-bed next to the window on weekends back in Baltimore.

            “Heck,” Bagwell’s friend Victor said friendily, “Times like these, you gotta make a need. You gotta sell to those who weren’t considering buying. You gotta refrain from the big words that confuse potential customers. That’s the way to sell widgets, and widgets build a nation.”

            “You might have your finger on the problem, Victor,” Bagwell said to Victor, but, then, kind of moodily, said, “And, in times like this, a man has to adapt.”

            And, right there, one could tell that Bagwell would start stringing together twenty one-dollar words, no matter the overhead, to get the point across like a five-dollar word would. Because that’s the way to sell widgets, and widgets build a nation.

            And, he told his son! After dinner, he went into his son’s room that had gas lighting and depressing wallpaper, (even back when it was new) handed him a shiny new nickel, and said,

            “Son.” (He took off his straw boater and wiped his brow with a handkerchief that had a print that was also depressing, white, with dusty, dark looking flowers.) “Son,” Bagwell said, “you gotta speak in a way so that people can understand you. So, you gotta use a bunch of simpler words that, even if bought wholesale, tend raise overhead. People don’t want you to be succinct. They only want to go to the club later that night and dance the Charleston. So, just keep talkin’. Talk like an auctioneer. Or, like you’re on the radio news. That’s how you sell widgets. And, widgets build a nation.”

            That morning, Bagwell aligned the handles of his suitcases; a smaller containing clothes and toiletries, each to a corresponding larger one full of penny-ante words, totaling four suitcases in all, and lifted them and began to trudge to the railroad station. The words were essential for filler, but had no meat. They had no ‘word protein’ that could build understanding. As far as it went, there were words like ‘something’, and ‘besides’. Bagwell had been tempted when stocking up on words by the word ‘foist’, which was on sale for $7.50, but only for part of his collection, and times were hard right then. ‘Foist’ is a dangerous word for a widget salesman to be toting around, so he didn’t even buy it. But he had plenty of the utility words. ‘From’. ‘Cost’, ‘pay’, and ‘service’, which was pushing the limit of thickness. What he packed included the conjunction and article kits, which were ten dollars a gross. And, that’s value, Bagwell thought as he groaned and tugged and trudged over a footbridge with his burden and promptly fell into the creek.

            On the heels of that sad event, Bagwell the younger’s mother may have even said: “Well, son, there’s no going back now. I think your duty is to continue your father’s work in widgets. Don’t switch horses in mid-stream and do some crazy thing like try your hand at thing-a-ma-bobs. Meanwhile, I’ll go into interior design.” And, then, she may have looked around at the wallpaper and said,

            “Everything around here looks so depressing!”

            In fact, she did.

            If you think economic times were rough for Bagwell, they were even depressinger now for his son. Even the overall décor hadn’t changed, no matter how much it wanted to.

            “Widgets build a nation,” Bagwell said, as he rolled a big steel-wheeled cart stacked with boxes of widgets down an aisle of very tall shelves holding more boxes of widgets.

            And, he said, “You gotta use simpler words that, even if multiplied, raise overhead.”

            “Therapeutic!” Bagwell shouted as he placed some boxes on shelves and took some others down, placing them on his cart.

            He made a tick on a piece of yellow paper on a clipboard which was attached to the cart handle by a thin chain.

            “Catharsis! Antidisestablishmentarianism!” he cried and he raised his eyes to the greasy skylights.

            “Condescension. Where did that get you, father? Dragged down by some piss ant words into a muddy creek.”

            The cart stood still, the clipboard swung a bit at the end of that light chain, and Bagwell leant over the cart stacked with widgets.

            “…a muddy creek.”

            Nights Bagwell would read thick novels. Very thick novels. Which, in those days, were called ‘novels’.

            (For some understanding of my opinion on overdescriptive works, my piece ‘Lower The Window A Bit, Please, Young Traveler’, (May, 2017) could provide some clues. But, take a Tylenol first- Lou.)

            After dinner, Bagwell would shower, then hole up in his room reading thick novels with very big words and very small type. On one of those dead evenings toward the end of that economic nadir, Bagwell read, and a booklouse arrived. It crawled up his arm amongst bristly hairs. And, where had the booklouse arrived from? A small, soggy, discarded religious tract on which it had been feeding, there at the edge of a creek until conditions had caused it to flee. The creek was very polluted. Few seemed to care, in 1940. Now-a-days, that creek is known as an ‘EPA Superfund Site’. Back then, it was known as a ‘fishing hole’. The booklouse made its way down a particularly tall hair on Bagwell’s arm, and at the follicle, gave Bagwell a lusty bite. And, an incredible change came over Bagwell.

            (Lou, stop scamming my work- Stan.)

            Never mind. Bagwell had become ‘Thesaurus Man’!

            Those at work knew that Bagwell had been through hard times, like themselves. So, they just called him ‘Scruffy’ behind his back. That next day at work, post booklouse-encounter, he was scruffier than usual. In fact, he was downright Raskolnikov that day. Toward lunch, he had developed a snarl-pout predating that of Elvis’s, and was listing side-to-side down the shelf-bordered aisles with his cart and boxes of widgets and clipboard. When the work-day ended, he had just enough energy and focus to make it back home. I’ll just take the opportunity now to pause and credit him with even finishing the shift.

           

            Alright.

            By evening, his mother stood outside his bedroom door with a water bottle as Bagwell cried from within, in his delirium:

            “Humus! Craven!”

            She gave a neighbor kid a shiny nickel, and told him to fetch the doctor. There were thumps (some identifiable) from inside the bedroom.

            “Datura! Papeterie!”

            When the kid returned with the doctor sometime later, she was at Bagwell’s bedside, holding a vinegary cloth to his forehead. Bagwell muttered:

            “Obturator…Dilatory…”

            The doctor stood within the frame of the door.

            “I know what this is.”

            As the doctor tended to Bagwell, Mother retired to a tattered settee in the hallway with the errand boy. After a long, silent while, Mother handed the boy the shiniest of pennies, brushed him on the top of his head with a knuckle or two, and sent him on his way. Soon after, the doctor emerged with a click and a silent ‘swump’, closing the door behind him. He paused and wiped his brow with the shiniest of kerchiefs, just for effect.

             “Your teenage son has an obvious case of ‘pretentious fever’. It’s common in those who consume rich literature, but I’ve never seen it in someone so young. I’ve hidden all of the reference books for now. But, sorry, there’s nothing else I can do.”

            Two days later, Bagwell felt like a spring chicken. He went back to his job as an assistant manager in widget picking, and continued with his social life.