ALLERGIC VULNERABILITY HAS INDUCED METAPHORS FOR FINALITY THAT PERPETUATE AS HUMAN(E) DEFENSE MECHANISMS

'Lost', 'Passed', 'Not With Us',  'Departed', 'At Peace', 'With The Lord'......are among the many euphemisms that I've seen and heard, today, for what seems to be a difficult word for so many.....DEAD.......When 'the game is up' and the 'expired' are 'pushing up daisies', having 'slipped away' to 'ride into sunset'....People are just 'Dead'.....  I was annoyed, just minutes ago, when someone asked me, in a conversation about a childhood friend, "Is he no longer with us?", as though he were, now, somewhere else......I replied, "He's dead!".....To which my friend replied, "Well, you don't have to be so Negative about it, Reed!"......I couldn't resist retorting, "What do you think?....that he'll be a Zombie, afterward? Aren't there enough Living Dead already?"........'CLICK'......[phone call terminated from my 'friend's side........]

THE DESOTO.....156 7th Street, Atlanta.......

The De Soto Apartments on 7th near Juniper were built in 1911 by architect Frederick Frerichs. The three story, six unit building then rented a three-bedroom for $68. The first residents are a Who’s Who list of Atlanta’s most prominent citizens; William Huntt, one of the founders of Ansley Park golf course, architect Haralson Bleckley, Joseph Hirsch, one of the main founders of Grady Hospital and doctor Edgar Crawford. I first rented an apartment..#6, at The DeSoto, after moving from my apartment, #6 @ 1708 Peachtreet Rd...When The DeSoto was converted to condominiums, in the early 1980's...I purchased the top right hand one, for $40K......gussied it up a bit, and sold it, again, for $135K and bought a house in Druid Hills.....Incidentally, I supplied the art deco sidelights that still flank the entrance doors....When I lived there, the other condos were purchased by the Interior Decorater, Ed Kilby; Antiques Dealer, Jack Hotchkins; Architect, Tom Blount; Steven L. DeArmoun and his then girlfriend...and, later, wife...Maria Gallogly Irving, who moved in after its original owner, Dramatist,Bob Hollister, sold his basement unit to Steven ; Landscape Architect, John Ross West and Ga. State English Professor, Bob (?).......

In 1991, the Atlanta Preservation Center moved its offices from the downtown Flatiron Building into a 2,000 SF unit at the DeSoto. Their rent was $1,000/month....Today, my old condo, now expanded to include a rooftop garden and many architectual improvements, is currently valued at over $700K!

THE MID-SUMMER SOLUTION....WAS, EVENTUALLY, EASIER THAN RIPPING OUT WALLS AND HAVING WORKMEN FROM A HEATING & AIR COMPANY TROMPING OVER MY ROOF....

A/C on the 'blink'.....87 degrees in my bedroom!......so, I called "The Heating & Air Company" about topping off the freon level........was told that the $16/lb (wholesale) R-22 refrigerant would cost $159/lb....but.....the hook, of course.......the EPA was not permitting the older refrigerants to be utilized...and, that I would have to replace the "unit"......$6000 (or more) and that the walls around the air handler would have to be ripped out, replaced and painted!........So, I asked....."can't you just add some freon?"........"Well, yes" the rep replied......"but it would just be a 'matter of time' until you'd have to replace this 'OLD' unit......'Units" don't have long term warranties.....like new houses, you know.....that have 15 year warranties!"......He's saying this to a man that lives in a house that's almost a hundred years old!....Out with the 'old'...in with the 'new'.....that's The American Way...... don't 'fix' it when you can just replace it and send all that 'old' stuff to the city or county dump, adding it to the millions of metric tons of crap that's already been abandoned!......Hmmmm........there's an old 'window unit' in my garage. The eventual compromised solution, nine years later, was obtained this week...at COSTCO, where i purchased a Shark 'FlexBreeze' Fan for less than $89...that I had seen, days earlier ...at BESTBUYS....for $230.70!.... Within a few hours, the room's temperature had dropped ten degrees F......and, by 10PM....I had to nap beneath a light blanket.....as the Shark Fan pulled the cooler air up the stairs from the air-conditioned area to the hot bedroom.....problem solved....and good nights' sleep seems to be, under the cool breeze....controllable via a wireless remote and adjustable airstream directionality.....

THE SUMMER 'WAR GAMES' JOB AT THE REDSTONE ARSENAL .....

Recalling my first 'real' job....a 'summer job' that lasted from June-Sept (what could have been 'summer vacation') .....typing SPAM cards into a gigantic Military Computer at The Army Ballistics Administration, where it 'paid' to be fast on a keyboard, with few mistakes....programming potential Nike, Sargeant and Corporal counter-attacts...on Russia, of course, in the Event that America's then-arch-enemy were to threaten Redstone Arsenal with total annihilation or blow up the growing NASA Command Center, Bldg 4200....less than a mile away.....I remembered this "Job" while re-watching WARGAMES, the 1983 Movie......Fortunately, My 'cell' at ABMA was just five minutes drive from the Parkway Country Club, where I could have a cool swim after my day of typing toil in the un-air-conditioned Headquarters Building with that over-heating computer that kept my work cubicle at 82F, all summer..  I suggested to my parents that they should shed their useless H&E Investments Stock and reinvest in IBM!  Mother DID upgrade from her  ROYAL, Model 10,  mechanical typewriter to a new IBM SELECTRIC, with its set of interchangeable 'golf balls'....

"THE APOCRINAL PITS".....or "HOW TO FRUSTRATE THOSE SCENT DOGS" ....AND.....POTENTIAL SUITORS AND WOOERS, ALAS....

An anxious friend with bushy armpits called me, on his way to a luncheon, inquiring if I had some deodorant that he could 'borrow'.....his A/C was on the blitz.....so, he was 'sweating like a hog'......I didn't 'lecture' him, but handed him an opened Calvin Klein Stick Deodorant that has been on my 'medicine cabinet' for 20 years or so.......He shoved the stick under his short sleeves, swiping it over his pits, that changed their 'smell' to a 'French Pit scent' of bergamot/lemon/civet, masking an acrid, putrid, 'skunkiness'....and left, feeling confidently 'scented'.......I said 'wait!'.....took his wet shirt and 'blew it dry' with the wall-mounted hair/body dryer....and handed him a shaker of talc..... as I stood there, sniffing my own pits......before shaking some Emami sandal talc into them.....leaving me 'smelling' like a Louis XIV French geranium/primrose/thyme/basil salad. We 'civilized' Homo Sapiens spend billions of bucks to deter our instinctual processes, even though our olfactory equipment did evolve for the purpose of detecting unsafe foods, desirable sex objects for compatible breeding stock, and identifying both hostile threats and 'come-n-getitishes'.......Now, usually, cloaked in enigmatic perfumes and bacteria-killing drug scents. Most 'other' animals are less concerned with such matters as they seem either neutral or highly motivated by 'the scents of others'....

Show Business is just Drag. When the footlights are ignited, the Business of Selling begins.....Open the curtains, girls...the "Show" seems neverending........

After viewing so many insipid photographs of unreflectively pedestrian realities, I am driven, again, to abstraction....but not without the semblance of Kinemacolored veneers.....perhaps, well surely, an after-effect of having viewed bits and pieces of a Ginger Rogers/Carol Channing Film, while still in pre-dawn slumberland......with it's mid-50's saturation by naive presentiments of Modernity.....Yet, even now, we are reconfigured to represent the same mores and sentiments of a century ago......Women, still corseted, painted, powdered, hair-do'ed, and lipsticked, now market the drag queenish Idiocies that were once always instigated and formalized into societal constructs, ironically, by Men.....as Men, losing sexist control, don the frocks and eyeliners that a few women have surreptitiously abandoned in revulsion, even disgust......or, does Pop Culture accentuate and perpetuate the Divide, masked in the same old drag? Truth is the unglamorous servant of Glamour, as it has always been....

A DAYS 'OUTING' WITH MAXINE FEIBELMANN

 

Relatively early in his career, Bernie Taupin....poet/songwriter.....and his 'then' girlfriend, Maxine..who was just out of her teens at that time, stopped by my Booth at The Atlanta Flea Market, on Piedmont Road in Atlanta....Bernie had landed a 'big paycheck' share of the royalties from his then lyricist/performer/pianist's highly publicised LP Album that contained a couple of songs..referencing Bernie's infatuation with his and Elton's young costume designer, Maxine Feibelmann; and, Bernie had some cash in his wallet to spend during their first visit to Atlanta that summer of 1971.....and had promised some extravagances to his 'girl', Maxine.....   Bernie wandered down the aisles of second-hand-stuff, while Maxine engaged me, flirtingly, in banter about Fashion and Costuming.   I reveled her with some stories about my brief career at Saks 5th Ave, showing her some costume jewelry from the 1920's, which enthralled the young, ambitious woman....When I mentioned that there was a new-ish Museum in Athens, Ga....She asked if I'd like to go there, with her, to see the Erte' gowns that were, because of their perishability.....old, rotting silk.....kept, wrapped in acid-free paper and folded in boxes..and not 'on display'......So...why not?.....We left  Bernie to hang out with Elton, finishing off some lyrical rewrites, and drove to Athens......The Museum Director was't too keen on accomodating us...of course....until we dropped a few names, leading him to think I was some important so-and-so apprentice Costume Collector and Maxine was the lover of a potentially very, very rich musician/singer/lyricist.....Anyway, the Erte' garb was hauled out and, after Maxine whined "Oh, please....PLEASE!....let me 'try on' this gorgeous Art Deco gown, Sir!".....She got her way..  Within minutes, she had stepped on the long gown's lace train and ripped it from its  bodice!..... Maxine offered to 'pay for it'....to Buy It from the museum.....After that remark, we were asked to leave...So, we drove back to Atlanta....with, at least...for me, anyway....a Memory.     Bernie swept Maxine back under their umbrella of Celebrity and they flew off to 'the next stop on Elton's tour'.....The Tiny Dancer and Bernie moved to Lincolnshire for a half decade of Luxury and  Bernie's almost totally forgotten undertaking, TAUPIN....an LP of his poems to then-popular sitar music......I awaited a collaboration between him and Ravi Shankar....why not?... George Harrison did it, didn't he?   I suppose that Maxine's hiding behind her Art Collections, careful not to regain notoriety.....after filling her coffers with a few million bucks, having auctioned off some of her memorabilia.....