Dammit, Jack, when in the hell are you gonna get it through your
Norwegian granite skull—you died in 1993!
But no, there he was, ordering me from my sick bed on one of
the hottest days of the year up the steepest hill in Old San Juan—oh, and we’re
also having Sahara Dust, which is sand blown all the way over the ocean to land
on cars and make little grey blotches and to paint the sky an eerie fuzzy
blue—now, where was I?
Oh, yes, my dead father, a mighty laborer in newspaperly
fields, had decreed: I had to go up to Lincoln School—quite lovely, and
overlooking the ocean, though no one inside can see it, since they have those
stupid slate-things called Miami windows, and my, aren’t I digressive today?
Anyway, when Elizabeth told me that the entire school was
closed for the day, and that the first lady of Puerto Rico, in a stunningly
lame imitation of Michelle Obama—and by the way, she sent me an email saying “I
need you, Marc!” Hmmm, everything OK up there at the White House?—at any rate,
when Elizabeth told me that Wilma Pastrana,
the first lady of Puerto Rico, is going to plant a garden with the teacherless
schoolchildren of Lincoln School next Monday, what did I do? I put one and one
together and got…
…three.
True, I’m an ardent conspiracy theorist, but really, what do
YOU do when people come to your house? Especially when it’s the governor’s
wife? Especially when it looks like this?
Did I find the photo I wanted? Of course not, so here’s a
word picture: the average public school in Puerto Rico has either over-grown
weeds embedded in trash, or dirt / mud festooned with garbage.
So, I trudged up the hill and finally got to the school and
then, feeling totally guilty—what I do for you, Dear yet Demanding Readers!—I
began standing on tip-toe and peering over the cement walls surrounding the
school. First—checked out the parking lot, and there were cars. But no sign of
anyone doing maintenance—as I suspected—so I presumed they were the teachers’
car. So I walked three-quarters of the way around the school, and began to feel
REALLY criminal when a car slowed and followed me on my tour? Had I been found
out? Even now, was someone calling 911 to report that a tall, middle-aged gringo….
Nope—he was looking for parking!
Halfway around the block, it began to worry me: first I had
seen the parking lot, which—unlike the school—enjoys a superb view of the
ocean—no wonder those teacher’s cars looked so relaxed—but here’s the point: it
was concrete. Next came two basketball courts—more concrete. Then the entrance
to the school, with the sidewalk leading up to it—still more
you-know-what.
Next came a wonderful little homage to our greatest
president: and this one I found!
Why is this photo so big? Well, the statue has a charming
story. When I first moved to San Juan, twenty-some years ago, Abe was sitting
quite correctly—as well as honestly—in his chair. Unfortunately, he had lost
his head, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. Or had he been beheaded? Was
his head in the clouds, or was it in the sand? What I am trying to say was
there was no head.
Enter—if an aging memory serves—a charming, gringa sculptress, and was she going to
suffer that to happen to Abe? Absolutely not! So she strode into her studio and
produced a very nice reproduction of that famous head. What happened?
Whoever put the head of Abe Lincoln back on the body of Abe
Lincoln stuck it ever so slightly to the left. So for the last ten years or so,
poor Abe has had to sit under the hot tropical sun, or alternatively suffer
raging hurricanes, all with an acute torticollis, which no Educated Reader of
this illustrious blog need be told is a pain in the neck. So, now you know
where Abe went off to! Excellent fodder for that cocktail party you’re going to
tonight!
So the serious question arose: where in the world was doña
Wilma going to plant that garden? Did she have a pick ax, or maybe a
jackhammer? Would she be using it, or would she dare to entrust the task to
those little boys and girls! Because it sounded great on paper—all right—screen:
Siembra Vida. El programa busca replicar en escuelas y comunidades la
iniciativa del huerto casero que la Primera Dama instaló en La Fortaleza. El
propósito es promover una mejor seguridad alimentaria para el país y el amor a
nuestra tierra, al tiempo que se fomenta la actividad familiar para beneficio
de una mejor alimentación.
Do I need to translate? No, because either you know Spanish
or you’ve seen Michelle planting gardens and stressing nutrition. Oh, and guess
what? Wilma also has a program called Activa
tu Vida, and just imagine what that’s about! Dammit, Michelle, think
up your own goddamned programs! Really!
Oh wait, Michelle got
there first….
OK—so now I was becoming increasingly alarmed—was it my
civic duty to report the lack of a common element of gardens—dirt—to the office
of the first lady? Well I squinted into the sun and saw—distantly—something
green. So either it was a very large teacher’s green car, or space for a
garden. Know what? I was too tired—and it was too hot—to check.
Right, so I went back to the café, passing the fast food
restaurant where—so says Lady—the owner will not allow her children to eat.
Then I got to the café, where Elizabeth retroactively saved me the entire,
arduous journey by informing me that no child in the public school system in
Puerto Rico—think it’s about 50,000 kids—has attended school today.
Yeah?
It seems that today is devoted to celebrating the much
underlooked school lunch workers!
Yes, those ladies who toil in hot kitchens with offensive
smells and kick away the rats as they edge toward the stove, and lug out that
rice and those beans and stand over it while food is flung—we hope—all around
but past them, accompanied by a din the which there could be no dinnier? What miserable, miserly
scoundrel could begrudge them a day off?
Three pages, 1094 words—all for a trip up the corner!
Hey, not bad for a writer!
