Gate Of Heaven

I worked from home today, an experience which was not as peaceful as I had anticipated. But I enjoyed the solitude very much, and in spite of my many mistakes and blind alleys, I had a productive day. It was also nice to be able to take the dogs outside and stretch my legs whenever I wanted. While wearing a t-shirt and shorts. And snacking on pork skins. In bare feet. With Jackie Gleason playing the background.

How many of you know who Jackie Gleason was? Many have watched the old “The Honeymooners” sitcom on television. Some of you likely have seen Gleason’s masterful performance as Minnesota Fats in the Paul Newman movie “The Hustler.” Fewer have seen his once wildly popular variety show, during which he would do a monologue while sipping from a coffee cup. The wink-wink-nudge-nudge inside joke was that Gleason’s cup contained bourbon instead of coffee. “Mmmmm, how sweet it is!” he would say after a sip, and the audience, pleased to be in on the joke, would erupt in laughter.

But how many of you knew that Jackie Gleason composed several albums of easy-listening music? It’s the sort of music once played in dentist offices and airport concourses and supper club restaurants. Most today call this sort of music “syrupy” and “treacly” and “saccharine.” For me, I’ll take syrupy treacly saccharine music any day over the intentionally ugly, nihilistic stuff that oozes out of the speakers today. I kept the house dark and cool today as I worked, Jinx at my right foot, Dixee at my left, a glass of water at hand, feet up in my recliner, keyboard on my lap, and Jackie Gleason in the background, strings and horns sweetening the air. No apologies. No quarter. No bourbon.

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When the heat of the day had diminished a bit and the sun was almost below the western ridge, I decided I should cut the grass in the front of the house. I moved the car and my ancient pickup truck down into the driveway to get them out of the way and then mowed away, assigning categories to the clouds above — that wispy one was Chopin; the huge anvil-like thunderhead was Wagner — and trying to give the bees in the clover plenty of time to get away before I cut down their supper.

When I was done, I backed the vehicles back into their original position, car first and then pickup truck. There must be a slow leak in a brake line in the truck, because when I cranked her up and put her in reverse and gave her the gas, I tried to slow down and stop as I reached the area where I usually park her. The brake pedal went all the way to the floor and we just kept on a-truckin’. I rather panicked and forgot where the emergency brake was for just a moment (it’s on the floor, and I’m used to the hand brake in the car), and before I could do much more than mutter an expletive, I had plowed into the wooden gate of the fence behind me.

I was relieved that for once, Jinx was not cavorting behind me; he has a certain masochistic fondness for playing matador with our vehicles. Had he been back there, I would likely have been minus one spotted dog. I was also happy that I only hit the double gate and not one of the fence posts. As it ended up, I only need to replace four pickets and one cross-brace 2X4.  The whole thing could have been much, much worse.

Mrs. Orr arrived home not long after the gate-crashing incident, and she immediately noticed the damage. She did not believe me when I told her that I was weakened from the coronavirus, nor did she believe me when I insinuated that Bigfoot might have had some hand in the mishap. This lack of basic trust is troubling, and I told my wife that very thing. This is exactly how the Soviet Union got started.

After I cooled down and took a shower, I went out for a stroll with Jinx in the evening air. That’s the way to do it. Clean and soap-scented and clad in fresh cotton, I could feel the breeze all over me, and the sky looked friendlier, and the twilight was luminous as I watched Jinx run for the far ridge where a magnificent buck was standing and watching us. When he returned to me, we walked back down the road to our house and I noticed again how pure the air felt as I pulled it into my lungs. As Thoreau once noted, we should bottle the morning air and offer it to those with puny health. It is a heavenly draught indeed.

~ S.K. Orr