Cracked Window

For a few weeks, we watched the dozen green tulip buds grow taller and fatten. They cloaked themselves in a hint of red. I planted them three years ago in a small corner garden at the intersection where we live in Northeast Portland.

The tulips were on the verge of opening, an event we and the many people who stroll past every day anticipate. Then nine of them were gone, snipped overnight. And it’s not the first time they’ve been abducted. Nor is it the first plant theft from our yard. Two years ago I planted a variegated Jacob’s ladder next to our front steps. A few days later I noticed an empty hole.

I had to do something about the tulips, take some action in a futile, maddening situation, something beyond bitching and moaning. So I typed a letter to the thief, printed it out, and had it laminated. But by the time I got around to erecting it over the clipped stumps, an adjacent batch of orange and gold tulips bloomed. I realized the sign wouldn’t make sense next to a glorious display of spring. So I’ll save it for next year and the inevitable return of greed. But here’s what I wrote:

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From a distance, Balloon Man looks happy. Little children line up next to him beneath an elm beginning to unfurl new leaves. The sights and sounds of the Portland Farmers Market surround them. The children watch in awe as his hands move in a blur, creating made-to-order pirate swords, three-corner hats, bugs, and dinosaurs.

“Three or five dollars or whatever you can afford,” Balloon Man says to the parents, smiling. The line is long, but the children wait patiently, mesmerized as his creations emerge.

Linger and listen closely, and Balloon Man offers more than clever toys; with little prompting he tells a disjointed narrative in rapid bursts. He’s a veteran balloon artist . . . 10 years on the job . . . a much-longer-than-expected break from his true calling as a magician . . . “I was going to work for David Copperfield but something happened — a long story” . . . he’s 41 . . . his thumbnails are yellowed and misshapen, the toll of handling too many balloons — “millions” — and the talcum powder inside . . . 100,000 popped on him until he developed “the touch”  . . . a competitor nearby, only 16, resents his presence . . . he doesn’t mind: the boy’s still learning — “did you hear that pop?”

Balloon Man reminds me of a taut balloon. His words sound like air escaping, a lament easing the pressure.

He gives a little girl a pink balloon dog. “Now hug your daddy and tell him you love him.”

Blue sky and a breath of warm air do wonders for Portland, especially on a Saturday in the midst of a cold spring. Among the throngs at the downtown Farmers Market are people with eyes closed, faces turned reverently toward the sun.

Strolling past baked goods and rows of vegetable starts for the garden, I hear a banjo tentatively strummed. Behind the vendors, in front of the Portland State University library steps, five young people line up and adjust their instruments: the banjo, metal washboard, plastic bucket bass fiddle, guitar, and accordion. No microphones or amps. Then they begin to wail and shake. Joyfully.

I’ve never heard the slightly off-key bluegrass tune, but it could be the fast-tempo soundtrack to my life’s happiest moments.

A crowd gathers. Like other parents did with their children, Suzame and I give Atticus a dollar bill to deposit in an open guitar case at the band’s feet. I should empty my wallet.

I ask the banjo player — a boy, really — the band’s name. “Dapper Cadavers,” he says. “We may be dead, but we died handsome.”

News item: Hillary Clinton says as president she would “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. Clinton made the comment as people in Pennsylvania voted in the Democratic primary.

I’ve become painfully accustomed to Clinton saying and doing anything to defeat Barack Obama. That her supporters seem all the more fervent as she ratchets up her rhetoric says much about them, I suppose. At least she’s making the choice between Democratic candidates all the more stark. According to the Clinton narrative, she’s displaying her toughness. I’ve known tough people who were weak leaders.

Clinton’s “as far as I know” comment in response to a question on 60 Minutes about whether Obama is a Muslim still burns like bile climbing up my throat. “Totally obliterate” is altogether different. It reminds me of how I felt when I was a kid and my next-door neighbor showed me a book with photos of Holocaust victims. They were strewn in jumbled stacks, naked and dead in a pit.

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I’m a hypocrite. I rant about people yapping on their cell phones while they drive, especially on city streets. 

Well, I wasn’t yapping but asking an operator for a phone number while driving through our Northeast Portland neighborhood. Suzame was sitting next to me. At the time my call seemed important enough for me to become one of “them.” 

My complaint about mixing cell phones and driving is simple: it dulls your senses, making it more likely that you won’t see cyclists and pedestrians. Studies, of course, have documented the risk. On this day I saw too much.

As the operator talked, I noticed an open car door on the right and a man leaning into the car. As my car passed, his butt crack loomed into view, a crevice that blotted out the rest of the world.

I exclaimed loudly to Suzame, “Look at that big butt cra–.” I stopped myself but not soon enough to prevent a long silence on the phone. 

A familiar formula: too little sleep plus a frenetic start to the day equals foul mood. 

My black cloud lifted in two stages.

Stage one: spotting one of our little boy’s books in the bathroom, propped against the wall directly across from the toilet. Suzame bought it for Atticus, and this was the first time I’d seen the title: Little Monkey’s BIG Peeing Circus.

Stage two: interviewing David Sill, 68, about his father, Jesse Sill, a legendary Portland newsreel cameraman who was among the first to film the Pendleton Round-Up, starting in 1915. (I’m co-authoring a book about the world-famous rodeo.) Reveling in memories about their life together, David said: “I had a great dad, best as you can get, or close to it. He really spent time with me.” 

As I drove home shortly before noon, the sun found a crack in the low clouds over the hills of Forest Park. Among the brooding evergreens, hardwoods showed off their newborn leaves, glittering in shades of sage as if proclaiming, “We’ve returned!”

Portland being Portland, it’s not unusual to see pairs of shoes dangling from overhead wires. I imagine the fun some jokers had flinging footwear in the air until one of them got lucky. Somewhere in Northeast, where I live, I once saw high-heels similarly perched above the middle of a street, string looped around the heels.

Dangling shoes probably represent a secret code that I’m not hip to. . . an anarchist cabal’s communiques or a notice that on this block the really cool people reside.

Thinking about this prompted me to Google the expression “shoes dangling from wires.” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised a global shoe-dangling fixation appears to be spreading. Theories abound, as do of photos showing the creativity of this “art.” My favorite pictures are here and here. And, naturally, there’s a buzz word – shoefiti – and a web site by that name, featuring everything anyone would possibly want to know about the practice. 

But what’s the meaning of a pair of black Converse All-Stars abandoned on a sidewalk along busy Northeast Broadway? A few days ago the shoes were positioned on either side of a metal pole, as if the wearer had been hugging it.

When I came back with my camera, the shoes were gone.