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We speculated as to what a windowless building with nothing on it
but the unexplained word “Fantasy” might be—a
porn studio seemed like the most likely explanation.
But then the very next day, at the top of my list of Youtube
recommendations was an interview Rick Beato did with John Fogerty of
Creedence Clearwater Revival, and even though I’m no CCR fan,
the interviews on this channel have tended to be pretty good, so I
thought I’d give it a listen.
I had read that, despite the fact that Fogerty sang about life on the
bayou in a fake Cajun accent, he was from here—like,
literally here in the town where I live.
He and the rest of the band all went to El Cerrito High School.
What I did not know until I listened to this interview is that CCR had
been signed to… Fantasy Records.
That building on the corner of Tenth and Parker?
“Fortunate Son” was recorded
there!
Earlier I had been walking around near my old house in Albany
when I passed a house that had a display out front offering raw organic
honey, straight from the hives in the back yard.
The honey was ten dollars a jar, and you could pay either in cash or
with Venmo.
If you went with the cash option, there was a thin slot next to the
honey jars where you could insert your money—and the slot
was built into the structure of the house, so no one was going to be
grabbing the cash box and running off with it.
But there was nothing stopping anyone from grabbing a hundred
dollars’ worth of honey and running off
with it, as the jars were just sitting out on the front steps.
I found it very cheering to be walking through a town where people
relied on the honor system.
I’d only heard about things like that happening in, like, New
Zealand.
In other community news, Ellie and I went to a swap meet here
in El Cerrito—like, a place to meet up and actually swap
things rather than sell them.
No money could be charged.
You took stuff you didn’t want and put it out on a blanket, and
anyone could take your stuff for free.
Meanwhile, you were welcome to look at other people’s blankets
and take whatever you liked.
You didn’t even have to bring anything, though Ellie brought
some books and stuffed animals and whatnot that she’d been
looking to get rid of.
The swap meet turned out to be well attended, and many of the visitors
brought their kids.
Nearly all these kids were girls between the ages of four and ten, and
so Ellie’s blanket turned out to be very popular—it
was heartwarming to see their faces light up as they snatched up a
tie-dyed unicorn or lushly illustrated book about dragons.
I only saw two boys the entire afternoon, about ages nine and
eight.
Their mother had told them and their younger sister that they could
each select one item.
The little girl chose a picture of cartoon bunnies.
The boys both chose fedoras.
They say that girls mature faster than boys, and here are a
couple of data points that might speak to that claim.
Near the end of my stint in elementary school, one of my teachers
announced to the class that a make-a-wish foundation had asked for
us to write up a page about what we wished for.
As an adult, that sounds dubious to me; my understanding is that
these make-a-wish foundations tend to try to help kids who are,
if not dying of cancer, at least underprivileged.
The kids at my school hailed from the upper middle class, and so far as
I’m aware we were all in good health.
So maybe it was just a writing exercise.
In any case, here’s the thing.
I had skipped a few grades, so while academically I was ahead of
my classmates—e.g., I had actually already graduated from
elementary school, but the school district had held me back because the
admins didn’t want to send me to junior high at age
seven—I was well behind them in terms of emotional
development and my understanding of how the real world worked.
So the other kids wrote about the sorts of things make-a-wish
foundations actually did, like, “I want to meet Duran
Duran!” or “I want courtside seats to a Lakers
game!”
I, on the other hand, seemed to be under the impression that I was
making the sort of wish that might be granted by a genie from a
lamp.
I really liked penguins, so I wrote about how I wanted a penguin,
but I explained that it would be frustrating not to be able to
communicate with it, so I asked specifically for a
talking penguin.
When I told Ellie about this, she said that when she was the same age
I had been, she had also had a wish, which she put on her Christmas
list.
She wished for a DVD of The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre.
And received it.
I ruined a dish brush of Ellie’s by applying it to a pan
that was still too hot, which melted some of the bristles—and
I couldn’t just go to Target to replace it, because it was a
decorative brush with a plastic flower on the back.
She sent me an Amazon link where I could buy her a new one.
I tried to think of things I could add to get up to $35 and thereby
qualify for free shipping, and remembered that I needed new windshield
wipers.
I entered the appropriate search term, and this popped up:
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