Don't let the pigeons fly the plane

HALLIE EPHRON: Earlier this week we devoted time to birds, noting how they seemed to be having their moment, popping up in the news feeds and detective dramas.

This week, it happened again. Pigeons -- this time, a pair of them in the news -- causing chaos trying to stow away on a Delta flight from Minneapolis to Madison, Wisconsin.

The plane was delayed almost an hour while passengers and flight crew and finally a baggage handler managed to corral the pigeons and remove them from the plane. Quite the drama.

I'm guessing they were a pair, looking for a place to nest. It's that time of year. Or maybe they climbed aboard hoping for a bag of pretzels. Sadly those short hop flights no longer have snacks.

I hope they were set free together to continue their quest. 

Had my Jerry been on that plane, or even heard about the drama, he'd have been inspired to immortalize those pigeons in cartoons. 

So I leave you this week with some of Jerry's birdiest handiwork.

First, from a series he called, "Hair Club for Penguins"...

AND more Hair Club for Penguins--

And a startled parakeet...

He also had a series, Hair Club for Chihuahuas and Hair Club for Slugs and Hair Club for Rabid Raccoons.  Also Hair Club for Aardvarks and Hair Club for Philodendrens and Hair Club for 6-week-old Whoppers. (Jerry himself was nearly bald but handsome as ever.)

And, of course, all of that inspired Hare Club for Men. (He was a big punner.)

He had a very bizarre sense of humor. For the birds, you might say.

What IS Hallie Writing...

 

HALLIE EPHRON: It's WHAT WE'RE WRITING week... and my usual question: Am I writing? And if I am, then where is it?? 

The answer: ideas are swirling in my head. Which is a step forward.

I’m still disinterring and collecting the personal writing I’ve done over the decades and sorting. Since Jerry and I were married for more than 50 years, a lot of the writing is about him. I've been printing it all out, three-hole-punching, and putting the pages into a spiffy red 3-ring binder.

So it feels as if something is happening.

On a parallel track I’ve scanned the hundreds of cartoons he drew and saved, much of it from the cards he drew for me and capturing our family history. Every birthday, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving, Ground Hog Day, and once on Bastille Day I’d find a hand-drawn card in the bathroom in the morning when I groped my way to the toilet.

It started out with just us and two cats. Then us and a baby. Then us and another baby. The last cards include my daughter's handsome husband and their two delicious grandchildren. It was a sort of rite of passage when you assumed cartoon-character form in one of his drawings.

He was a lunatic who raised “silly” to a fine art. Who turned cartoon drawings into love letters.

Friends have urged me to use his drawings to tell a story.

I met Jerry in 1968. He was a graduate student in physics, living near Columbia, and I was a junior at Barnard. We were fixed up by one of his roommates. I’d just been dumped by Charlie; then, months later Charlie whistled and I dumped Jerry.

Jerry was persistent. He wooed me with cartoons. Here’s a postcard he sent me.

He’s Don Quixote and I’m one of the evil grimacing faces on the windmill along with Charlie. The text is from a poem by Frederico García Lorca. Jerry loved poetry and spoke pretty good Spanish.

When Charlie dumped me (again), it’s telling that I’d kept Jerry’s card. I must have known in my heart of hearts, that he was the one. And lucky for me, he thought I was, too. We got back together, and stayed that way happily (almost) ever after.

Here’s a picture of Jerry as he was when I first met him and again in 1990. Was he handsome or what?? I must have been out of my mind to dump him.

And here’s how he portrayed the change he’d undergone in those three decades. Cue: laughter.

Is your family history in photographs? Letters?? A recipe box?? A binder?? A book???

BOINK!

 HALLIE EPHRON: Here in New England it's a gorgeous spring. We've had so much rain and no unseasonably warm days, the flowering trees and bushes are spectacular. The forsythia is starting to fade but lilacs are about to burst. Cardinals are loudly claiming their territory, robins are hopping around in search of worms. My garden is full of baby bunnies. And the lawn needs to be mowed.

I've started doing the NY Times crossword puzzles M-T-W (after that they get too hard and I get cranky) and a clue in a recent puzzle was "Sound of spring" - four letters starting with B.

The Times thinks the correct answer is BOING but I know it should be BOINK.

The stone bench that marks my husband's grave says BOINK, and I he'd approve, though I imagine it's a head-scratcher to strangers spotting the engraved word.

Our BOINK goes back to many years ago when we were living in a 9th-floor apartment on Manhattan's upper west side (West End Ave and 98th St., if you know the city). Our wonderful neighbors, Eve and Joe Cimmet lived on the 4th floor. I was teaching 3rd grade in a public school and Jerry was finishing on his doctorate in physics when we both came down with the flu. I remember our double bed was drifting across the room because we were both coughing (and for some reason, hiccupping) so much. We were miserable, and hadn't been able to shop for food in days.

It was Groundhog Day and our doorbell rang. I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door and there, on the floor just outside in the hall, was a pot roast, still warm and in its cooking pot.

But between me and the pot roast, in the doorway suspended in mid air on transparent fishing line, were massive cutout letters B-O-I- N-K.

Of course we both collapsed laughing. We had to cut the fishing line to reach the pot roast, which was delicious and therapeutic, even before we'd taken our first bite.

Ever since then, Jerry drew groundhogs in his cartoon cards. Groundhogs popping up out of the ground on groundhog day, out of birthday cakes, out of Santa's bag. Every holiday and event was an opportunity to reprise groundhogs and BOINK.

Is there a made-up word that your family has as its touchstone.

IN MEMORIAM: Jerry Touger

HALLIE EPHRON: When I was pregnant, my husband Jerry and I both gained 16 pounds. A year ago when he was diagnosed with cancer, my hair fell out -- not as much as his, but a good-sized patch in the back. Shocking to see floating in the bath water.

Since then, it’s been a journey, one I haven’t shared with many people. My daughters, of course. A few close relatives and friends. The Reds. But I’m sure many of you noticed how little I’ve been posting here, and how hard it’s been for me to talk about what I’m writing. Because I’m not.

I remember standing outside his hospital room that first night and thinking that I’d stepped through a portal: from before to after. He’d just been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. The same disease that killed my sister Nora. The disease that my sister Delia survived. Fifty/fifty. So I figured we had a fighting chance.

He died on August 6. His birthday. We’d been married for 52 years.

He was a sweet sweet man who adored being a father. Many of you have seen the cartoon drawings he made of our family that I’ve shared from time to time. Here’s an early one from 1975 when our first-born was six months old and was becoming a repeating character.

ONCE UPON A TIME
THERE WAS A MAN WHO HAD
A WIFE AND DAUGHTER,
AND HE LOVED THEM VERY
MUCH…

SO HE PUT KISSES ON THEM
[MWA… SPLAT… SPLAT]

AND WHEN THEY
FELL OFF…

HE PUT MORE KISSES ON THEM…
[MWA MWA… SPLAT… SPLAT]

AND STILL MORE KISSES…
[MWA MWA MWA MWA MWA... SPLAT SPLAT… SPLAT SPLAT]

…AND THEY LIVED SAPPILY
EVER AFTER
[MWA MWA MWA MWA MWA MWA MWA MWA… SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT… WEIRD]

A few days ago I was sitting alone in my garden and a chickadee was perched a few feet away in the Japanese quince. It gave its 2-note call. Immediately following came a single note. Over and over it repeated that call followed by a single-note that at first I thought it was the chickadee, adding on. Then I realized the trailing single note was coming from a neighboring yard.

A birder, Jerry would have loved hearing that call and response, and then researching it as I did. I so wanted it to be a pair, the one calling out to the other from beyond our fenced-off garden. Turns out it’s more likely that chickadee was marking its turf and warning off other birds. Jerry would have laughed with me, and that bellicose chickadee would have turned up, fierce as can be, in one of his cartoons.

We buried Jerry in our town cemetery, a beautiful burial ground started in 1672. Jerry often walked there, spotting green herons and enormous turtles at its pond, counting flickers and, in spring, orioles flying among the trees.

Ours was a small gathering and my daughters and I shared memories. I wanted to read something, but we’re not religious and somehow most of the usual non-biblical poetry that turns up at funerals felt… off.

Then I thought about what a word person Jerry was. Few people could beat him at Scrabble, and he was a daily “genius” at Spelling Bee. Could do the NY Times crossword puzzle in under 15 minutes. He reveled in silly phrases like splotnik on the frimfram. And he loved reading to our kids and grands from books that celebrated language. One of his favorites was ROOTABAGA STORIES by Carl Sandburg. That’s where I found a passage that felt just right to read at his grave.

It’s from a chapter titled “How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country,” and the three characters in it are named Gimme the Ax, Please Gimme, and Axe Me No Questions. Sharing it with you now:

“Do you wish a ticket to go away and come back or do you wish a ticket to go away and never come back?” the ticket agent asked wiping sleep out of his eyes.

“We wish a ticket to ride where the railroad tracks run off into the sky and never come back—send us far as the railroad rails go and then forty ways farther yet,” was the reply of Gimme the Ax.

“So far? So early? So soon?” asked the ticket agent wiping more sleep out his eyes. “Then I will give you a new ticket. It blew in. It is a long slick yellow leather slab ticket with a blue spanch across it.” Gimme the Ax thanked the ticket agent once, thanked the ticket agent twice, and then instead of thanking the ticket agent three times he opened the ragbag and took out all the spot cash money he got for selling everything, pigs, pastures, pepper pickers, pitchforks, and paid the spot cash money to the ticket agent.

Before he put it in his pocket he looked once, twice, three times at the long yellow leather slab ticket with a blue spanch across it. Then with Please Gimme and Ax Me No Questions he got on the railroad train, showed the conductor his ticket and they started to ride to where the railroad tracks run off into the blue sky and then forty ways farther yet. The train ran on and on. It came to the place where the railroad tracks run off into the blue sky. And it ran on and on chick chick-a-chick chick-a-chick chick-a-chick.

Sometimes the engineer hooted and tooted the whistle. Sometimes the fireman rang the bell. Sometimes the open-and-shut of the steam hog’s nose choked and spit pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost. But no matter what happened to the whistle and the bell and the steam hog, the train ran on and on to where the railroad tracks run off into the blue sky. And then it ran on and on more and more.

After I gave birth to our Molly, both Jerry and I lost the 16 pounds we’d gained during my pregnancy. I’ve grown back the hair I lost when he got sick. But it turned out my ticket was to go away and come back; Jerry’s was to go away and never come back.