Flip Flops and Faith

My faith in humanity is restored! I’ve been reading about the outrageous prices that fashion victims are paying for what really are just plain old flip flops. I mean they are encrusted with all kinds of fancy schmancy stuff including, can you believe it, semi-precious stones and they can run you into a couple of major bills on Rodeo Drive. They are also a “thing” now with the young who seem to think, along with pomegranate juice, they were invented just for them. (I have no idea why p-juice popped into my head, it just did.) Flip flops are now a “lifestyle” and a symbol of a certain way of life. I even have friends in Florida who own a set of salt and pepper shakers shaped like flip flops. Not too hard to believe, right?

I’ve been wearing flip flops for decades and they have been one of the things that has remained consistent in my “wardrobe,” if you can even think of them in that term. I mean they are rubber, the straps are rubber, they are all one color and they have always been somewhere in the $1 to $2 range. It seems like they were always made in China or, at least, some place Asian. They were called go-aheads and thongs as well as flip flops but, of course, the noise they make when you’re walking gives “flip flops” an onomatopoeic cachet and we all know how important that is.

Anyway, my current pair are almost worn out and, although I paid some extravagant sum for them in San Juan, PR, they haven’t lasted any longer than the cheapos you can buy right out of the bins in those bargain shops scattered hither and yon. In my defense I bought these expensive ones (I think they were about $8) because I stumbled across a Speedo store in Old San Juan and you always have to pay for a “Brand” and, as my friends will attest to, I’m quite the Speedo loyalist for various reasons.

I think the ones before these I also paid a tad more for, maybe $3 or $4, but that was at the Old Navy store and I was totally drawn to the cunning way they were displayed. And, too, the colors were the new “designer” shades we all dig; the ones with which we paint one wall of a room in our modern apartments (ahem). I know, I know, it’s kind of odd I can remember when and where I bought my flip flops but, as I said, they wear out pretty fast so it’s no great feat.

So, yesterday, when I went to the drugstore to fill a prescription I noticed a flip-flop bin-of-iniquity and, right on top, there was a nice gray pair in my size. $1.99, plus tax. What a coup! Humanity! Faith! Restored!

Home, Home On the Lemon...

This actor is Jesse White, remember him? He was the Maytag spokesman for many years and, although not the intention of the commercials, whenever I saw him I had to laugh. Well, maybe not laugh actually; “snort” might be a more appropriate word. The thrust of the commercials was to convince you that Maytag products were so good that they never needed repair and poor Mr. White, the repairman, could only sit around and twiddle his thumbs. He was later replaced by Gordon Jump but the situation was unchanged.

In 1993, or so, I bought a Maytag range, a “Magic Chef” model 6498VRV. It was a good stove, not fancy, served my needs adequately and it had a “self-cleaning” feature that was a boon to my lack of interest in mucking about inside an oven. But there’s the rub. There was an electronic chip in the works of this model that would burn out when you used the self-cleaning feature and would set off an alarm of the *beep*beep*beep* variety (extremely annoying) which meant you had to shut off the stove completely and sometimes, when it was way persistent, at the power source. When this alarm went off the stove would stop working even though there was nothing wrong with the stove; the problem was within the alarm system itself. (It was an “F-1” alarm which meant nothing to me but certainly sent an alarm to Maytag.)

Anyway, four times in 13 years I had to call a repairman and, guess what, they never, ever, had the part on hand to repair it which meant, of course, that Jesse White never moved. The second time it happened it took almost six weeks for it to be fixed and jeopardized a Thanksgiving dinner. The third time was almost equally inconvenient. And the fourth time was just a couple of weeks ago…but by now I had the procedure down pat and was able to skip through the labyrinthine customer service system with confidence. However, this time something was obviously different. I had to backtrack through several levels of “service” people all the way to corporate headquarters in Indiana (I think). My particular stove model must have a major asterisk next to it now, if not claxon horns going off, because suddenly the service got close and personal.

The nutshell: that particular piece of electronic hardware is no longer being manufactured and the stove is irreparable. It was a lemon to start with and now it’s unusable pulp.

I was outraged since I had put up with this stove for a long time and was in okay-now-Corporate-Maytag-what-are-you-gonna-do-for-me, mode. It became immediately apparent; however, that I was by no means their first complainant and the script was already right on the computer screen before their eyes. Before my customer service person adhered to this obvious scenario, she made the mistake of telling me that we should never expect any appliance to last more than ten years, but then she obviously sensed the bile building in my voice and hastily made me the offer she had been directed to do. I would buy a new Maytag model of my choice and they would buy the old one back from me. Two separate transactions. It almost worked. I bought my new stove from Sears and it was delivered in a couple of days (before the old one was removed) so I had a shiny new stove sitting in my living room for a while and an unusable one in the kitchen. The glitch was that Maytag hired a local contractor who proved uncooperative initially, saying it couldn’t be done for three weeks, but somehow Corporate clout got it done and, astoundingly, when they showed up they handed me my bribe, er, my check for quite a nice sum.

Wow, this is maybe the most boring blog I’ve ever written, but what I guess I’m getting at is that those Maytag commercials seem to have disappeared, perhaps a victim to reality. They weren’t exactly wrong I guess, but being prepared and promising to make repairs isn’t the same as being able to actually get it done. If these commercials show up again let's all be prepared to snort in unison.

The Light in the Piazza

Two interesting things happened on the same day, a couple of weeks ago. There was a clue in the Sunday NY Times crossword which was a seven-letter word for “bioluminescence.” That clue brought back a flood of memories about my encounter with that phenomenon and, oddly, that very same evening I was at a gathering of family and friends, one of whom had just returned from Rome and was telling tales of her adventures there. Since quite a few of us had also visited Italy at some time or other this triggered a festival of reminiscence. Although some of my details are hazy, this was my contribution:

I was in my mid-20’s, touring around Italy and staying at a hotel in Sorrento. Sorrento is a gorgeous town built high up on the cliffs across the Bay of Naples from, well, Naples. From the end of the hallway on my floor I could look out the window and see Naples in one direction and a wisp of steam from the peak of Pompeii in the other. At least that’s how I remember it…the details are more than slightly murky. On the hotel grounds there was an entrance to a tunnel that had been carved, corkscrew fashion, down the inside of the cliff and it was all one ramp…that is, there were no stairs. There was no source of light except at the entrance and exit at the bottom so you needed a flashlight or the stupidity of youth to give it a try. I’m sure that by now it’s either closed to the public or you have to fork over a few Euro to take the elevator. I have no explanation for this tunnel except a hazy recollection of stories of smuggling or pirates or whatever…I’m sure it was all speculation and I’m sure I believed every word at the time.

After a healthy afternoon snack gleaned from the streets of Sorrento (usually, all of my meals in Italy consisted of cheese, bread and wine)…I put on my bathing suit and sneakers and groped my way down that 100 feet of darkness emerging finally, and thankfully, onto a little cove. It wasn’t really a beach but consisted of rocks of various sizes and shapes with plenty of sitting room on the larger, flatter ones. There were about 12 to 15 other people there, all around my age…that is, all infatuated with their own youth and sense of adventure. Many countries were represented with me being the only American, but I was welcomed into the klatch of youth like a long lost brother and most of them spoke English (of a sort) and we got along famously. Mainly, I guess, because they had several bottles of wine that were being shared indiscriminately. As it got dark the light on the water started to sparkle and we didn’t think anything of it until another hour went by and we realized that although the sun was long gone the sparkle remained. Then suddenly, for about 20 minutes, the water blazed into bright white light. Like everybody else I was stunned into silence and we all had to get into the water to see if you could feel the light. Sadly, it only felt like water but actually being in it was blinding and fairly disorienting…like staring too long into any source of light. It was truly astounding and you can understand why it’s burned into my memory; never to flicker out.

For the record and so you don’t have to look it up; bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by a living organism as the result of a chemical reaction during which chemical energy is converted to light energy. That’s right, the beach and our bodies were covered with microscopic living organisms. I have often wondered if this experience prolonged our lives any; I sure remember how energizing it was. Heaven knows (maybe literally) where all of those kids are now.

This story has two parts; and that’s one of them. This is the second part:

After our stunning gift from nature, with none of us really knowing what we had witnessed, the serious business of drinking continued, with supplies running low fairly quickly. Some wise guy decided we should draw straws (seaweed?) to see who would go buy some more, and guess-who got the short end. We pooled all the money we had and I wrapped it in somebody’s towel and felt my way back up the incredible never-ending tunnel to the top. Try to imagine what the bartender (and one other customer) thought when the elevator doors opened to the little bar on the penthouse floor. Here came a wet, sweaty, young man in a bathing suit and sneakers holding a wet towel-bag in front of him. He drips across the room, puts the towel on the bar, opens it up and spreads out the dollars, francs, kroner, lira and goodness knows what else…a lot of it in coins…and asks (very politely I might add), “how much wine can I buy for that?”

His first reaction was to recoil in horror but then his sense of humor got the best of him (and the other customer). He said in Italian, I think, that the bar was closed but what the hell…and he loaded me down with about seven bottles of wine; some almost full, some half-full, or less. Obviously the remnants of the day’s servings. He had nothing for me to carry them in so we made sort of a sling out of the towel and I clinked off, our laughter mixing nicely. Somehow, this time with no fingertips free to guide my way down the ramp, I made it back to my companions, now international brothers all, to be greeted like a hero. The rest of the night has disappeared into my memory…

The 7-letter word for bioluminescence was “seafire.”