Productive weekend! I always associate that word with bronchial infection. A productive cough. How was your weekend? Artistically speaking, I brought up a lot of green stuff. But I did, and here’s a rundown of the exciting things to come:

I normalized sound levels on the Small Things series. I haven’t forgotten about it. Just needed to tweak and fix. When I have 15 in the can, it’ll start to roll out. I have 13 now.

Made substantial progress on the upcoming Bookstore, which will be up the third week of September. There will be some surprises.

Finished the first fragment of the El Soretoe cartoon. Alas, it will only be available on the Substack this month.

Took many photos of my environs. This may be my favorite of the weekend:

In domestic news, I gave the floors a proper WetJet Swiffering. As you may recall, and I cannot imagine why you wouldn’t, I’d bought a Swiffer stick to which one affixed wet pads. It was cheap, and part of the start-from-scratch ethos I had when I was outfitting the Hip New Place. I did not want to take my old WetJet, because I knew I would recall the floors of my beloved old house while I scrubbed the dee-luxe wood-grain vinyl. But the stick is useless. You have to press down hard to get the pads to do anything, and the stick is so thin it's liable to bend or snap. I bought a WetJet, put it together, and got rid of the small spots, all of which are dog-drool marks. They’re by the kitchen, and by the dining table. It's as if he drools glue.

I used to Wet-Jet Swiffer the kitchen and the stairs and the upstairs hall every week, one of the Sunday chores. Ex preferred to get on hands-and-knees to scrub, which was proper work, requiring elbow grease, whereas I just pushed around something, right? Easy. Didn’t count. Well, counted a little, but I think most of my husband-points were like Green Stamps. Cash value 1/10th mill.

It’s interesting how taking care of myself here at Fred Base One - making my meals, grocery shopping - doesn’t feel different, because it’s what I always did. I’m not some cast-off man in his latter years staring with confusion at the items in a grocery store, wondering what alchemy is required to turn them into sustenance. On Friday at Lundsnbyerlys I was buying the items for my Monday pasta sauce, and stopped by a demonstration table. The nice lady was offering pieces of chicken in a new pre-made sauce. It was organic! As usual I wanted to say great I’m so tired of inorganic tomatoes but I held my tongue, and tried it. Oy: it was the best bottled sauce I’d ever tasted. And on sale! What are the odds! I told her it was so good I was putting back everything I’d collected other make my own sauce, and I made a great show of getting a bottle off the end-cap. See? I’m not just BSing and saying nice things like “I’ll get it next time - you turned my head around, you did.” I know they don’t care, probably; no epidermis shaved from their nostrils if no one buys it, but I can’t imagine it isn't nice when people swoon and buy it on the spot.

They’re all retired, too. At least I hope they are. It reminds me of my retirement dream of being an airport information guy. Perhaps some day. That was predicated on a life when I could just leave the house whenever I wanted. The leashed life is different. The howls and the scratching the wall and chewing shoes, that narrows the parameters.

“Retirement” is odd: there’s no reason Saturday should feel different, but it does. The rest of the M-F world isn’t working, and you sense that. You also apply your own mental habits, the things you associate with the weekend. I still have work imperatives M-F. In the old days back in college I would leave to go do the evening work and I’d say “Gotta Write” like Gene Kelly in the "Broadway Melody" sequence - Gotta dance! and my friend Victoria would sing it back: “GOTTA . . . WRITE,” and off I’d go. I’ve never lost that. There is absolutely no reason I have to write anymore. Can’t imagine I wouldn’t.

No, Birch said. This way. I mean it.

I relented. He has these moods. He has places he needs to revisit. We were walking along the Edina Spine, and he decided to enter the narrow corridor between the chain-link fence that marks the boundary of the Dayton’s Home Store demolition area and the bright new world of the flagship Lundsnbyerly’s store and the big apartment complex they erected. It was once wide. It is wide no more. We threaded our way through the corridor, and I noted that they’d set out some picnic tables for the workers - pathetic damaged tables that would have no life beyond this job, I thought. I noted that the groundin the narrow passage had been torn up - and seeded, because the people who had units in the nice luxury complex would not want to look down on turned-up dirt. He had pooped here once before and hence it was possible he would poop here again. He paused; revolved; walked on; paused; revolved. Glory be, the special afternoon excretion, which takes the pressure off the evening walk.

On the way back he insisted on interrogating a fenced-off dumpster area and found a hole that indicated some sort of burrow. There was much consternation about this. So we went. I let him do his detective work, and it struck me out of the blue:

He is the latest unifying link.

He is the last thing that ties me, Daughter, the house, and Ex together.

Well, except for me, and Daughter, and Ex, but you know what I mean. When he is gone there is no living commonality, in one sense. And he knows none of this, which makes it all the more poignant . . . and better. He doesn’t know what he carries.

There’s a woman in the Fred who has two angry dogs who scream at him when they see him. He is not moved in the least. I’ve seen him react to emotionally messy dogs, and he is capable of giving them what for, but he regards them with indifference. Whatever. The owner speaks to the dogs in an exaggerated manner; I hear her say “thank you I appreciate that” when they stop yelling. She has no control over them. They glare like mad demons. I just got back from the last trip to let Birch irrigate the fire hydrant, and she was doing down in the elevator without her dogs. She was picking up a DoorDash order. It consisted entirely of a Sonic Milkshake. At 11 PM.

Well, who am I to judge.

I mean. . . by the time it gets to you from the Sonic - and I know just where it is - it will lose its cohesion. It won't be frosty. You're better off having ice cream from the freezer in your own home. The number of people here who just don't cook astonishes me. Don't get me started on the people who let the meal kits sit in the mail room for three days. I cannot imagine what mush they behold when they finally open the box.

Me? Oh, I had one of the Savory Campfire pork loin slices ($2.50), four of my Signature Roasted Cayenne and Garlic Potatoes ($1.00), an ear of corn (.75) and a salad with peppers and parmesan cheese ($1.00) It was a delight to prepare and I took a picture and sent it to Daughter to assure her, once again, that Divorced Dad is not eating gas station burritos in the parking lot, staring ahead with a blank flat look. That was last night.

Kidding. I made bacon burgers, including a small one for Birch, who promptly regooped the floor I'd just cleaned. Afterwards we went for another walk in the field.

He went everywhere, following all the stories and characters I will never know. When we turned around to head back, the moon was there to point the way home.

In keeping with our Monday tradition, which became a "tradition" for reasons I can't recall and probably don't matter, we continue with our Monday trademark. For this year we'll do 1936.

		Google says "Olive Karmean Witzman Kansas City" does not match any documents. It does now.

I'm reasonably certain you haven't heard of this.

Not the best copy. It's from a kinescope, with all the usual limitations.

Remember him?

Perhaps not. He had a long run; his son, who was also on the show, was Jimmy Stewart's younger brother Harry in It's a Wonderful Life.The King show was a popular entry on the DuMont network, and I was immediately struck by an innovative idea: King, who's an old police detective, not a hard-boiled private eye, is introduced after the set-up talking to someone off screen, and it's his wife. The fact that we don't see her at all seems deliberate. Well:

As an economy measure Carney was heard, but never seen, as the wife of Detective King. DuMont always suffered from limited funds, and in an early episode Carney was asked to play both the detective's wife and a woman connected to the crime being investigated. Since the thirty-minute series was broadcast live there wasn't time for Carney to change her clothing and make-up, so she spoke her Mabel lines offscreen. The audience enjoyed the novelty of a character that was never seen, and so Carney continued to speak her lines out of camera range.

It is clever. Anyway, that's not the reason I highlight this. Our visits to old TV are intended to show you a glimpse of someone you'd later know, and realize how indelible a face or a voice can be, if you grow up with them.

You know him, don't you? Of course you do. Even in this blurry vision.

That will do. Matchbooks up, and free column at the Substack around 11. See you there!