80: “First we have to read . . .”
Little Follies, “The Static of the Spheres,” Chapter 10
10
“FIRST we have to read the directions carefully,” said Guppa. “Before you begin any project like this, you’ve got to read the directions a few times, until you know them pretty well. Then you can start to work, but you don’t just jump right in and start doing the first thing. Understand?”
“Oh, yeah, I understand,” I said, wanting for all the world to jump right in and start doing the first thing, whatever that might be. I pulled my metal stool up to Guppa’s workbench, moving in as close to him as I could. Here we were, working on a project together, and we were going to do everything just right, just the way it should be done. First, we’d read the directions carefully, several times.
Guppa bent over the old issue of Impractical Craftsman. He moved his finger along as he read the directions, and now and then he commented to himself under his breath.
“Ah-ha!” he might say.
Or, “Hmmph!”
Or, “Well, well, well.”
Sometimes he would underline something with a flat red carpenter’s pencil.
I read along too, and now and then, to make certain that everything was done right, I commented to myself under my breath. Sometimes I asked Guppa a question.
“What’s this mean—superheterodyne?” I asked, pointing to the word in the second paragraph, where it had stopped me cold.
“Ah-ha!” said Guppa, and he underlined the word with his pencil. “That’s what kind of radio it will be, when we’re finished,” he said.
“What about triode?” I asked a little later.
“That’s got something to do with it too,” Guppa said, “but it’s not really as important.” A moment passed. “Well, come to think of it, it might be pretty important at that,” he said. He went back and underlined it. He read on. I tried to keep up with him, but I ran into so many words that I didn’t know that I gave up trying to read and put my effort into daydreaming about the real work of building the radio, the work that would begin after we had read the directions a few more times, and into saying “Ah-ha!” and “Gosh!” and “Hmmmm” under my breath.
When Guppa had finished reading the directions, he began reading them again, and I began turning on my stool and looking around the cellar. When he had finished reading the directions a second time, he began reading them again, and I began fooling around with the wringer on Gumma’s washing machine. When he had finished reading the directions for the third time, he straightened up and rubbed his back and then flipped back to the start again.
“You hungry, Guppa?” I asked. He turned to me with a look of some surprise, as if he had forgotten that I was there.
“Hungry?” he asked. “No, not yet, Peter.”
“When do you think you’ll want lunch?” I asked.
He looked at me and smiled. “Oh, in a little while, I guess,” he said.
“Maybe I should go upstairs and help Gumma make some sandwiches,” I suggested.
He looked at me for a minute before he said anything. “Maybe you should,” he said at last.
Gumma and I worked together on lunch. We made Guppa’s favorite, raw onion sandwiches, on toast, with butter. Gumma sliced the onions, as she always did, and she was a marvel to watch. With her old knife, worn by sharpening so that the blade arched upward, she cut uniform slices, with the precision of one of the women in the ruling room at the slide-rule factory. I got to make the toast, and spread butter on it, and lay the slices of raw onion on it, and I carried a tray with two glasses of milk and a plate of the sandwiches to the cellar. They were delicious.
[to be continued on Thursday, September 2, 2021]
You can listen to this episode on the Personal History podcast.
In Topical Guide 80, Mark Dorset considers Carpenter’s Pencil and Food: Onion Sandwiches from this episode.
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