The Heinzelmännchen and other mysteries

           It’s a Father’s Day morning in Queens, circa 1948. My mother’s fixing me some French toast and my father’s at the table, eating his — a Father’s Day treat. I come padding out of the bedroom rubbing my eyes and whining. “I can’t find my toy tractor,” I whimper.

           “The Heinzelmännchen took it,” Papa says between bites, and I believe him. After all, Papa said it, so it must be true. Within hours or a day, however, the tractor reappears and I forget about the Heinzelmännchen.

           It goes on like this for years. Every time I complain that I can’t find something and my father’s within earshot, he says “The Heinzelmännchen took it.” And even after I no longer live in my father’s house, long after he’s gone, whenever I misplace something the first thing that pops into my mind is, “The Heinzelmännchen took it.”

           It wasn’t until the advent of Google that I bothered to find out a little about the Heinzelmännchen. I discovered they were actually little gnomes who would do people’s work at night so they could goof off during the day. Today we call them the night shift.

           So clearly my father was telling me, in his own cryptic way, that the Heinzelmännchen were cleaning up after me while I slept — and teaching me a lesson.

           I like to think that the Heinzelmännchen had some other tricks up their sleeves, which they revealed to me over time. It happened one year in my 30s when I misplaced a tape measure. Of course the first thing that popped into my mind was, “The Heinzelmännchen took it!” Ha-ha. But I looked for the tape measure for a few days, and as I was looking I found a screwdriver I’d lost a few months earlier.

           Well that was a stroke of luck, but I didn’t think much more about it until a few days later when I misplaced my hammer, and while I was looking for it I found the tape measure. Whoa. What kind of a game were the Heinzelmännchen playing?

           I continued to look for my hammer over the next few days, but I couldn’t find it — and since there was nothing else on the “missing stuff” list, I found nothing but some lint and a nickel under the swivel rocker. I finally gave up and bought another hammer.

           And then of course the inevitable happened — I found my hammer, and now I had two.

           I’m not prepared to say that the best way to find something that you lost is to buy a replacement, but it’s happened so often that I now own two hammers, three tape measures, and two of every type of screwdriver.

           As I share this tale with you, I can’t help but recall a variation of this mysterious phenomenon — when you do something to make something else happen. It might go like this: you’re waiting for an important call, and the moment you begin stirring the delicate sauce on the stove, the phone rings. Tell me that’s never happened to you.

Customer disservice in the computer age

Until the 1990s, I’d lived all my life without computers, so it escapes me how this contraption became indispensable from the first moment I booted one up. How had I managed to get anything done for the first half century? How did I ever write a story, edit a manuscript, paste up a newspaper, develop and print a photograph, or send a letter without a computer? How on earth did I ever look something up?

Over the last 20-odd years I’ve learned about many of the marvelous things a computer can do, but I’ve also learned some about things it won’t do. Take, for instance, the “Submit” button on a website’s feedback page. Think it actually submits your feedback when you click on it? Nope.

What it actually does is delete your feedback, after which it sends you an email confirming that you sent feedback. I know this because I have almost never gotten real feedback to my feedback. Never has an issue I’ve complained about been rectified. The only thing I ever get is the email that says “Thank you for your feedback. Do not reply to this email.”

There is one button that delivers on its promise without fail — the one that says “Charge my credit card.” You just have to hope it does it only once.

I have it on good authority that web-based customer service departments are no longer staffed by people. Their last actual humans were tasked with writing “Frequently Asked Questions,” after which they were fired by human-resources software. This explains why you are always directed to a “FAQ” page when you click on “Help.” When you do, you have to hope that the former employee who wrote the questions thought of the one you want to ask because if not your only recourse is to find a forum from among the zillions that populate the web — and you don’t want to go there.

In rare cases you can still call a toll-free number for help. You know the ones. “Thank you for calling WikiWidgets. Please press 1 for English, press 2 for Klingon. Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line for the next available representative. Approximate wait time is two days.”

To help pass the time, you’re treated to an endless loop of Mantovani covers of Pearl Jam — or maybe a product-by-product summary of WikiWidgets entire line and why their products are so superior that you never have to call for help.

Sometimes Mantovani is interrupted by “Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line for the blah-blah.” However, when Mantovani is interrupted by, “Thank you for calling WikiWidgets. Please press 1 for English, press 2 for Klingon. Your call is very important to us,” you can be pretty sure they started over and that you’re looking at another two-day wait.

Anyway, thanks for your patience, and if you have any questions, try Google because I’m going to bed.

Contact Robert Rufa at rrufa59@hotmail.com.

The wiener breakthrough that rocked the world

Remember how the world rejoiced when Oscar Mayer introduced the bun-length hot dog in 1987? Sure you do. No more excess bun, which was nothing but bread and mustard. It was an idea whose time was long overdue.

But hopes that wee wieners would disappear were dashed when they didn’t. They remain in supermarket coolers alongside their lengthy cousins. And the frank-length buns that runty-dog aficionados expected never materialized. They were still stuck with the same old buns and still faced the agonizing decision of whether or not to trim the bun beforehand with a knife or afterward with their teeth.

Curious as to why people would still buy the original-size frank, I grabbed my digital recorder, parked by the wiener cooler at the local supermarket, and prepared to grill hot dog consumers.

“I like chili dogs,” said the first man I spoke with, “and I pack the end of the bun with extra chili. Simple as that.” I watched as he picked up four packages of franks and a tub of chili.

When he moved on, a woman stepped in and began browsing the short dogs. “In a word, frugal,” she said when I asked. “I trim off the ends — about an inch and a half — and save the excess. When I have a bunch, I make bread crumbs. You have no idea how much money I save on bread crumbs by doing that.” She was right — I really had no idea.

The next customer, also a woman, said “What’s the big deal? I just center the frank in the bun and let my kids figure out what to do with the excess. It’s called creative problem-solving. It’s all the rage.”

She was replaced by still another woman, who said it was none of my blankety-blank business what she did with the extra bun. And if I didn’t leave her alone she’d get a restraining order.

“Restraining orders are on aisle six,” I told her.

“Huh?” she said.

After a few quiet minutes at the wiener cooler, I was ready to pack it in when a man stepped up — a veteran, judging by his USMC cap. “When you’ve eaten C-rations for two weeks, a tube steak is like filet mignon,” he said, “bun or no bun.” I grimaced. I’d dined in mess halls. I could identify with tube steaks.

Before I left, I glanced at the specialty dog at the end of the display — the foot-long. I could see the appeal. I had a hunch many people would prefer to nibble off excess wiener rather than excess bun. I know I sure would.

When I got home, I decided to consult the experts, so I called the Culinary Institute of America, in Hyde Park, New York. A spokesman there chose not to weigh in. Before I hung up I heard him laugh and mutter something about some jerk calling long distance to talk about wieners. Hey — that jerk you’re talking about is me!

Cheapskate Press? Glad you asked

           Black Mountain, April 28, 2016 (CP) I don’t usually begin a column with a dateline, but I was about to a few weeks ago, and it was pointed out to me that no one in the world besides me knows what (CP) meant. For those of you who’ve read a newspaper or two in your lifetimes, you’ll know that the initials in parenthesis in a dateline identify the newsgathering organization responsible for the story. You know — like (AP)? In the case of this journalistic masterpiece, (CP) identifies Cheapskate Press.

           I wish I could say that Cheapskate Press has the kind of long and glorious history that the Associated Press does, but it doesn’t. I came up with the name when I assembled two dozen old essays I’d found in my file cabinet into a small booklet and took them to the print shop to have a few copies Xeroxed. I wanted to include the name of a publisher in the front matter for that booklet, but the publisher was me and I didn’t really want to put “Published by me.”

           And thus “Cheapskate Press” was born — not as a newsgathering organization, but as a small but noble publisher that no one would ever hear of, an imprint for the struggling literary artists in my neighborhood. I would comb the village (Greenwich) for authentic Ginsberg wannabes, give them a place of their own to howl.

           If you’re wondering about the “cheapskate” part, you have to remember that being on a tight budget for a good portion of a lifetime trains one to be frugal, and that trying to find ways to save money works its way into your DNA. Besides, I believe had Xerox existed in the 1770s, Thomas Paine would have had Common Sense run off on a copy machine, and I wanted to have something in common with Paine.

           As the years went by, Cheapskate Press was getting tired of having nothing to do, so it was expanded to include a news gathering division. Those who knew me thought this didn’t make much sense since (CP)’s proprietor (me) didn’t care much for gathering news (too much like work). For that reason, the new division never actually gathered much news, although there was some good wool-gathering going on.

           By early 2016, Cheapskate Press rose from the ashes as a very real figment of my imagination, and I began to entertain my options for pressing the Press into service. Of course I had to rule out news-gathering because I wasn’t any less averse to work than I’d been years ago. Plus I was old. An incubator of literary masterpieces was also out because I no longer owned an Underwood typewriter, and as everyone knows one cannot write a masterpiece on anything but a manual typewriter.

           Which leaves only this biweekly quasi-masterpiece.

           And then a warning sounded in my head: “How many times can you write a column about writing a column?” it asked.

           Killjoy.

Where did my mind go this time?

When my friend Clarke read my rutabaga column a few weeks ago, she said “It’s interesting to watch where your mind goes.” In case you don’t remember Clarke, she operates the independent test kitchen in western Massachusetts I mentioned in a column last year.

She’s also a fine writer. A semi-retired columnist herself, she sees the world through an artist’s eyes and captures the Berkshires in words the way Frederic Edwin Church did with oils on canvas.

I remember writing my column titled “The writer’s brain comes alive at midnight” that ideas often show up in my head just as I am about to turn off my brain for the night. But not always. Today’s idea took form in the morning, inspiring me to type this: “When my friend Clarke reads one of my columns, she said ‘It’s interesting to watch where your mind goes.’” So I thought I’d see where my mind went.

Well, it went nowhere for almost 32 hours. Mixed in with the usual — you know, meals, shopping, ablutions, sleeping — I spent part of the time wondering why I didn’t write more serious material, something about a major issue mankind is grappling with, maybe get a conversation going. Problem with that idea was, nothing’s going on. It’s as quiet as a graveyard out there. Turn on the news, they’re yawning and talking about 99 ways to fix rutabaga. Rutabaga fries? You gotta be kidding.

Of course I’m kidding. There’s a lot of news noise, but it’s all about the primaries, and I don’t want to write about them. I’m sick to death and tired of the primaries. I’m sick of politics, period. Unfortunately, the entire world is fixated on the U.S. elections, so from Vladivostok to Vienna to Valparaiso and to Valencia (the one in the Philippines) there’s absolutely nothing going on — or so it would seem when you turn on cable news. It’s all about the primaries.

I gave up on that idea and thought maybe I should try my hand at writing beautiful prose, like Clarke does. In a column called “Cathedrals and Grass Angels” she wrote, “We have had a spate of exquisite fall days, the kind that make the heart ache and the spirit soar simultaneously; the kind where the sun turns sun-wilted stalks of corn from gold to burnished copper and filters through the yellow poplar leaves until they glow like miniatures of the star that lights them.”

I don’t know if I see the world that way, but if I do I can’t express it the way she does. The best I can do on the day she describes is, “Think I’ll put shorts on.” No, I don’t have her gift, so ixnay on the beautiful prose.

If digressions can grind to a halt, mine did at about the 32nd hour as I remembered where I’d left off in my work in progress — with the words “I thought I’d see where my mind went.” I decided to scrap the whole idea because some days my mind doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

Oh no — not another damn April Fool's column

This isn’t an April’s Fool column. I wouldn’t dream of writing two April Fool’s columns in one lifetime. Besides, it’s not April until tomorrow, and by the time my next column appears, April Fool’s Day would be old news. In the newspaper biz, old news is used to wrap fish and chips.

No, I’m going to write about spring, which is only a few days old. Since it may not last much longer, I’d better do it while I can.

The Vernal Equinox, as it’s also known, used to be my favorite time of year. It used to be the season of light rains that gently nurtured the tender shoots, saplings, buds, and blossoms, all coming back to life after the cold, unforgiving bleakness of winter. But no more. Today spring is the beginning of the thunderstorm season, which generally lasts until the end of next winter, but began its five-month-long peak season a few weeks ago.

When I was a kid I loved thunderstorms. They were so infrequent that they were a novelty, an adventure and a treat. They never happened in the spring — they were reserved for Aug. 14 — so they never caused the power to go out while school was in session.

You can’t imagine how glad we were about that. We would have hated missing school.

It’s entirely possible that I would still retain my childlike affection for thunderstorms were it not for their tendency to destroy the delicate electronics upon which my livelihood has depended for so many years — about as many years as we’ve been suffering from such chronic thunderstorms, now that I think about it.

I should really stop being a gloomy Gus about spring. After all, I do have surge protection, and if I’d thought to invest in the company that manufactures the ones I buy, I’d be a rich man today.

And believe me, they do help — except when they don’t, which is sometimes. And it’s not like they’re going to warn you with something like “Help — I’m wearing out . . . replace me.”

But what am I saying? The last two memorable weather events that somehow destroyed one perfectly good monitor and ended the life of one uninterruptible power supply happened not in spring, not in summer, but in that formerly quiet season known as fall. And on both occasions it was a gust of wind.

Now you remember the old saying, don’t you? “In like a lion, out like a lamb”? That’s supposed to mean March, not the entire year.

In the world of weather, lambs seem to have become extinct.

I don’t know what’s going on. Well I do, but I’m not going to go into it here. It would sound too much like a high school science class, assuming high schools still teach science. Does anyone know?

Let’s just say that things have changed climactically.

Contact Robert Rufa at rhrufa59@hotmail.com.

Did you hear the one about the rutabaga?

It keeps happening. People stop me in Ingles and tell me they enjoy my column. “Keep it up,” they say. “I’ll try,” I tell them, “but I have an expiration date.”

It happened again on Feb. 18, someone stopping me and saying my column made them laugh.

Inspired, I thought, Maybe I should write a column about Thurber as I motored over to the rutabagas.No, I already did a Thurber column. I mulled over the possibilities as I mulled over the rutabagas. Yeah, I can multi-task. There has to be a column here. I chose a big fat rutabaga and put it in my basket.

As I wove through produce, I pondered other ways to fix rutabaga. I knew exactly one way — simmered in a little no-salt-added chicken broth (oh, don’t get me started on canned chicken broth) until soft and mashed with butter — and maybe Google could offer up some suggestions.

I’ve always been afflicted with a quirky sense of humor, and people don’t always get me. That happened last year, after my column on Columnism appeared and someone said, “I didn’t get it.” But I try not to let a little negativity bother me, and I got over it after a few months of therapy.

I was rolling by the deli counter as I pondered the possibilities of getting a column out of this, wondering simultaneously if I could roast the rutabaga. “Google roast rutabaga” I wrote on the back of my shopping list so I wouldn’t forget. Maybe I should write a column about my failing memory, I thought. No, wait — did that too, pleased that I remembered, and as I browsed the hummus I decided I was lucky to live in a town where not everyone thought humor died with Henny Youngman.

I cruised over to the antipasto rack and grabbed a jar of my favorite marinated artichoke hearts. I’d made up my mind long ago that I’d never tell anyone I ate marinated artichoke hearts, and yet here I am spilling the beans. I suppose I need a “Real men eat artichoke hearts” bumper sticker now.

After picking up some tomato puree and unsalted chicken broth — homemade tomato soup, minus the turmeric, curry powder, sugar, and lemon juice — I headed to register 6 to check out, where I shared my secret tomato soup recipe with Jully, my regular cashier. She and I have an understanding — I won’t check out at another register, and she won’t bean me with a rutabaga.

To my surprise, Jully jotted down the ingredients. But then she has a good sense of humor too, so maybe she thought she was going along with a joke. But it’s no joke — this is my favorite tomato soup, and if I’m feeling really energetic I make it completely from scratch — a few overripe tomatoes, a chicken carcass, wilted aromatics, and garlic. That’s like making something out of almost nothing.

Which, now that I think about it, is a lot like writing a column.