Sputterpub's Blog

And so it came to pass. The friends decided they should limit their action to just one of Melissa’s corners. Rose put in the work order and although the city crew of three didn’t see any obvious problem with the hurdle they removed, they also didn’t wonder that the order specified use of the taller model for replacement. They performed their tasks and left.

Melissa wasn’t there to witness the first scraping incident, but she later understood it didn’t happen to too many cars before word got around. Nineteen citizens signed the complaint, and nine of them had had to pay for chassis work.

How could she or Rose have known about the ordinance? Berkeley has as many laws as Macy’s has items; no one has the energy to view them all (Melissa knows a lot about Macy’s and other department stores; she’s the daughter of a shopaholic mother still active and driving at 83; all her life Melissa has been coerced to stride those halls). It turns out that it was okay to install the taller hurdle, but not to omit the sign warning the drivers about the change in height in the equipment the driver wasn’t supposed to drive over anyway.

The work order was examined. Rose was interrogated. Melissa advised her to come clean; their little escapade wasn’t worth sacrifices. But once the complainers knew two city employees were involved, conspiracy was added to the accusations.

The situation tipped almost to viral. Both Melissa and Rose were suspended with pay. Each was summoned to the hearing.

Melissa awoke that morning tense. She hadn’t slept well, and her mood didn’t improve when she discovered that her favorite blouse, the one she intended to wear for luck during this dread morning, had lost a sleeve button. An unusual irreplaceable button. It was a loss that could only be accommodated if she changed the button arrangement on both sleeves, which she didn’t have time for then, so she’d have to wear another.

But the capper came when Melissa made the third worst mess in her life. She always shook the coffee grounds from the filter cone into the tall garbage can in her kitchen, before she left her place. This time her lower back tweaked just as she was dumping the grounds. The pain caused her to jerk slightly, removing her foot from the pedal and allowing the garbage can lid to begin its noiseless descent. At least a third of the wet coffee grounds made it into the garbage can. The rest hit the can top, the walls, and the screened windows like wet beach sand.

It was dreadful. Impossible. Laughable. And laughing is what Melissa did.

After it was all over, both lost their jobs. The barriers stayed up and the hurdles stayed low. But nobody died. Kim returned from Germany a wiser and nicer daughter. Rose volunteered in a community dance program, and that led in a surprisingly short time to a low-paying but permanent position. Melissa is still looking. She lives inexpensively, and she will inherit a fair amount from her mother. She and Kim may open a shop.

Melissa was irritated even before she left her place. She hadn’t slept well. She discovered when she pulled on her new tights that she’d accidentally purchased control-top. And then she chipped her favorite coffee mug. She was eating peach yogurt and drinking French roast while moving around getting ready for work, and her 58-year old brain confused the consumables; she lifted her mug with her muscles expecting the light-weight yogurt container, and her grasp failed.

So when she witnessed a law-breaker in her neighborhood, she wanted a consequence to fit the crime.

The city of Berkeley maintains traffic-calming devices. Residential streets between the hills and the bay feature roundabouts or barriers at many corners, forcing drivers to slow in the intersections or to make turns athwart their intended direction. Melissa’s street had barriers at each end. There was a gap in the blockade large enough to admit a fire engine or other emergency vehicle, and planted in the center of the gap was a raised little hurdle of steel, intended to prohibit regular vehicles from using the gap.

Since the installation of the barriers, cars had gotten taller. More folks were buying van-type vehicles with higher clearance. Most vehicles bigger than roadsters could make it over the steel hurdle. That’s what Melissa witnessed: a woman driving a white Subaru, ignoring the warning sign and the threat of a fine, surmounting the hurdle and defeating the barriers.

With impunity. Melissa felt outrage. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen such a maneuver. She was pretty sure that if she hung out at her corner with a clipboard she could log dozens of such events each day.

“Or a camera instead of a clipboard,” she thought as she proceeded down the hill toward her office. If she could get pictures of these drive-throughs, with the license plate included, she wondered if the city would issue tickets.

One of the benefits of working for the city of Berkeley is the free Y membership. Melissa used hers. That’s how she met and befriended Rose, who had a position with DPT. They got together for lunch.

“Oh, I don’t think your picture plan will work,” Rose said after Melissa described her morning. The two women were eating matching salads while they waited for their mushroom pizza. “Citizens’ arrests are rare, and citizens’ citations more so.”

“Well something should be done,” Melissa countered. “I mean, I’m not a huge fan of the barriers and I doubt that my little street would be much worse without them, but if they’re there they should be enforced.” She poured half a packet of sugar into her iced tea and stirred it. “It’s like the Ashby Avenue thing – posted at 25 mph but all the traffic goes faster if it can, so everyone is forced to “speed” and that’s taught us all to ignore the signs – we need to mean our rules or dump them.”

“Whoa, girlfriend. Are you okay? This campaign seems a little extreme…” Rose paused as the waiter approached, and helped him rearrange their table to receive the pizza. “Is Kim hassling you again?”

That made Melissa smile. “Actually no. For the first time in awhile we seem okay. She’s even been asking my advice. Dieter’s been pressuring her to come to Germany and she’s not sure what to do.”

“Now? What’s Kim: 40?”

“Thirty-eight. And he is her father. I know he’s a flake, but I can understand Kim’s ambivalence. And she’s between jobs now. She has some time.”

“Do you want to go?”

“God no. I saw enough of Dieter back then. Everyone admired those year-abroad programs when I was in college, but I wonder how many dual-citizenship babies came of it. Almost like war kids.” Melissa took a messy bite of her pizza slice and kept talking around it. “I’m okay. I’ve just really had it with some drivers in my neighborhood.” She put her food down and gulped iced tea. “Wait: what if we could get the city to raise it?”

“The fine?”

“No. The steel hurdle that’s supposed to stop the cars. What if they just replaced what’s there with something a bit taller? Oh, I’m loving it: not only would that stop the maneuver, but the first time the asshole driver tries it, she or he will damage their car. What a way to learn!”

Rose considered. Drank some of her own iced tea. “You know, that could be arranged.”

Melissa smiled wider than she had all day. “You think?”

“I know. Don’t forget where I work.”

(9)

Jenny was still on the phone when Jeff went into his study. He’d already talked to his parents and Linda, just because they were together and his mother insisted, and he wasn’t particularly interested in watching Jenny fend off his mother’s words or sink into a long one with her old friend. He was glad that the tension between Linda and Jenny seemed to be dying down, but he had work to do and games to play, so he wasn’t around when the subject switched to him. Linda still had clients in the Atlanta area, and one small engineering firm had an opening that Jeff would be perfect for. But Jenny remembered the owners from when she worked with Linda. She’d despised the woman partner (Linda always suspected Jenny was jealous of Kit’s success) and she actually said to Linda that she wouldn’t let Jeff even interview there. Linda wondered as their call ended if the family protocol permitted her to go directly to Jeff.

Meanwhile, Jeff was reading Linda’s response to his response to her comment of a few days ago.

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 19:37:24 – 0600
From: linda960@mindspring.com
Subject: RE: Ma & Pa Cooper
To: oboy@earthlink.net
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook CWS, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0)
Importance: Normal

Thanks for the story, bro! I never heard it all that way before. I guess that’s what I get for moving away, cause I don’t think I’ve been tuning things out.
Still and all, I wonder. I mean, impractical as it would have been, I wonder if our not-one-penny-in-tribute father should have fought the thing. Money isn’t everything. I guess I was lucky to be caught without insurance when I got sued. I mean, it was really scary, but it was interesting how I got used to the scariness. And when it was all over, I got a lot of satisfaction spending that money to make it go away. I fear our mother’s practical advice was at work here. I wonder how it woulda been if she’d encouraged him to go for it…
xxoo-L

—-Original Message—-
From: oboy@earthlink.net
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 10:29 PM
To: linda960@mindspring.com
Subject: Ma & Pa Cooper

Sis:
I completely disagree. Dad retired at exactly the right time. Maybe he’s made wrong decisions since, but I would have done what he did when he did it about the biz. I agree he should volunteer teach or something. Good luck with that!
I don’t think you ever heard the whole story about the lawsuit. There was nothing wrong with the design of the AR plant. One weekend, a middle manager was giving a tour to some visiting honchos, and one of the guests pressed a button he shouldn’t have. That wasn’t the real problem – the system was designed to take that sort of error – but it made a noise like when you try to start a car that’s already going, and that totally freaked out the manager, who then started frantically pushing buttons, pulling levers and (soon) overriding safety mechanisms, so the asshole finally got the place to explode. No one was hurt, not even the asshole manager. But a hole was blown through the roof by a piece of flying equipment, and that piece was integral to the operation of the plant. We were called, they confessed their errors, and Dad & I dropped everything to go there and fix things. He got the call the next week. From one of his buddies among the AR attorneys. Sorry to tell you this, Owen, but we gotta sue you. Nothing you did, mind you – we’re all aware you saved the day – but damage was done and things have to be paid for, so we cast the net as wide as possible.
Dad was going to fight it, of course. But then his insurance company explained that it would cost at least $250,000 to take the thing to court, and for a quarter of a million dollars, they could settle the case. So he really had no choice. It soured the shit out of him. He couldn’t have continued after that. And along came a timely buyer.
Jeff

At 11:41 AM 6/24/2003 -0600 you wrote:
>I think our parents are nuts. The more I watch this aimless travel, these doctor-
>filled days at home, her sniping and his growing frailty, the more I wonder why he >retired. It’s enough to make me rethink my own plans.
>How’s Jenny doing? Hope her rash is gone. I’ll drop her a note. We should talk >sometime.
>Linda

Jeff was certain that if he were faced with the same choices at the same time in his life, he’d do exactly as Owen had.

(10)

“I have no regrets but if I had it to do over again, I’d make some different choices.” Grace’s fingers were in constant motion as she picked her cuticles.

“Really? I think I can say exactly the opposite! I have some definite regrets but I’m pretty sure I’d make the same choices again.”

Grace and Linda were having Sunday afternoon coffee. They never did that. But Owen and Mark were in Denver at a baseball game, and without planning anything the women settled into Grace’s kitchen with big steaming mugs.

“No, I’m pretty sure I’d have sex before marriage. I would have for sure if we’d had the pill. It was only fear of pregnancy. Not fear of sex.”

“You think?” Linda grinned to soften the question, but the mother she knew was too inhibited to even get naked; it was impossible for Linda to see her as a free-loving libertine. Kooky party girl: sure, but she had to draw the imaginative line there…

“Oh yes. And I’m also sure it was a mistake, me not working. I loved working.”

Linda sipped her coffee. She wondered. She’d tried to get her mother to re-enter the workforce when Jeff went to college, but Grace said the job had to be local, and part-time, and interesting, and permit her to travel with Owen, and so on to an impossible list of requirements for an idealized position.

But Linda wasn’t sure of much any more. Except she was certain she liked the opera the night before. Certain she found Vern nice and interesting but not at all sexy. Pretty sure there wasn’t any spark for him, either. Growing confident that Mark really had turned a corner and now, to add to all other good things, was discovering math. And Linda sure was surprised, even tickled and amazed, to learn that her new friend was also her son’s mentor. They would have put it together when Vern arrived, except that Mark had gone to his friend Tom’s house overnight (unfortunately, matches were involved in their adolescent evening). It wasn’t until they were discussing Vern’s interests over dinner that she learned he volunteered as a summer math teacher, and asked his last name forgoodnessakes, and they clinked their wine glasses together to the coincidence that his full appellation was Louis Vernon Chapelle.

She liked the opera so much that she purchased Vern’s second ticket for the entire summer season. Until the geese flew away she’d be watching those works. She’d need the money; she’d better not lose a client. Linda sat back in her chair and at that moment “It’s summertime, dammit” played like a banner in her mind. “It’s time for fun,” she thought-declared. She asked her mother if she wanted to go for a walk, but Grace said no. So Linda went out alone, and happily rode her bike around the lake.