Paul Newman: Role Model

Paul Newman is my role model.  Although he is no longer with us, I frequently find myself asking the eternal question: What would Paul do?

I know that many people admire him for the great work he did to increase the variety and availability of salad dressings in the United States. I'm sort of an oil-and-vinegar kind of guy, though, and so his contributions to lettuce enhancement do not move me as much as they do others.

I took Paul as my role model on a brutally hot day in the summer of 1997. He and I were both trapped among a horde of auto racing fans in a small converted pasture somewhere near Columbus, Ohio. Temperatures were flirting with 100 degrees. The humidity was so high we could have used waders. More than 100,000 people were competing for the three portable toilets on the site and the ChampCar race was about to begin.

The Napkin Diaries

First, a confession.  I never buy pocket-size Kleenex. I know I am contributing to the demise of the Union of American Facial Tissue Workers, which is a subsidiary of the Congress of Home Paper Product Laborers, and throwing a lot of people out of work, but I can’t help it.  It’s hereditary.  I learned at my mother’s knee to be ready for any emergency by filling my pockets with paper napkins from restaurants.

 Generations on my mother’s side have been restaurant napkin hoarders.  Worse!  They used their ill-gotten paper products to filch other restaurant offerings. For instance, my mother couldn’t resist a restaurant bread basket as long as she had a napkin in her purse.

Hijinks in the Paint Factory

Many would say that the backbreaking, repetitive work in a grimy, overheated, dimly lit paint factory isn’t fun. These poor benighted souls were clearly not in my cohort of toilers on the four to midnight shift in the Cleveland, Ohio Glidden Paint factory in the summer of 1962. Since I was one of the lucky few to have been vouchsafed that opportunity, let me tell you of some of the hijinks that filled our days. I was just out of high school and I spent that glorious summer in the factory, dreading the impending drudgery of college.

We arrived just before 4:00 pm, clocked in and paid little attention as our shift boss read carefully and thoroughly, taking as much time as possible, the work orders that we were to fill. We then positioned the paint can filling machines under the proper paint tanks and adjusted them to fill pints, quarts or gallons as required. This took us until 5:00 pm when our supervisors left for the day.

Once alone, we rushed to the windows to ogle the secretaries leaving the administration building across the parking lot. For some of us, these lithe beauties represented our past. For me, a kid not yet eighteen, they represented an enticing future.

The Blue Box

I’ve got a little blue plastic box that holds some of the detritus of my life. It contains a jumble of small objects that, for some reason or other, I decided to keep and shove into the box. It’s about five inches by eight inches and about three inches tall. I have no idea where this box came from or how long I’ve had it, but it must have been around for many decades at least.

 The items in the box are fragments of memory, sometimes sharp edged, sometimes dulled beyond remembrance, of what I used to be and, in some cases, still am. They bring forth flashes of times otherwise lost to my memory. I’m surprised by some of the things I’ve found, amused by others and perplexed by many of them. Among the items are:

Jane's Bike

Many years ago, I spent a Saturday afternoon with my young daughter and pre-teen son in the park across from our apartment in Evanston, Illinois. My son and I played manly games of nonsense and my daughter made a great effort to learn to ride her new bicycle. (Why the bike didn’t have training wheels is a mystery lost in time.)

She was extremely focused and very determined to learn. She’d take a couple of turns of the pedal and then put her foot down to stop the tilt to the side. Over the course of the afternoon she made little progress. It was always: two pedal strokes and a foot put down to stop the bike.

I tried to help by holding the seat and walking/running next to her, but she would have none of it. She wanted desperately to learn by herself. So I became a cheerleader, telling her that if she kept trying that hard, she would surely be able to ride her bike by the next day. She worked at it, without success, until dusk.

My Clan

I wonder if you feel loyalty to a clan. If so, how do you define that clan? I can easily define mine and I am fiercely loyal to it and trust its members. In fact, it is only those in my clan that I can count on and who can count on me without reservation. This is one of the many lessons that my father taught me. Its truth has been demonstrated in a great many ways.

My father was born as a minority member in a truly feudal society. His family, for generations beyond knowing, had lived in a small Greek village in a vast Turkish world, planted there sometime during the four hundred year reign of the Ottoman Empire. The local Pasha ruled his domain and was, in turn, ruled by Pashas of greater rank and dominion. The Greeks, including my father, were, I suppose, serfs, working the land that they really didn't own, paying tribute to the Pasha and cut off from the rest of the world.

So, what has this to do with me, a child born in Cleveland as a member of the white, educated, dominant culture? Let me tell you a few stories about who I am.

My Wife in Sports

My wife and I feel sorry for our friends who lack the sports gene and we wonder if their condition might best be cured surgically or simply through extensive therapy. We, like normal people, will spectate any athletic competition that moves and we can become ardent in support of our team, whoever the hell they are. Let me illustrate my remarks with an anecdote or two.

On our first date, Susan and I shared basic information about each other over coffee.  What music did we like?  What was the name of our elementary school? (In case we wanted to break into each other’s Facebook account.) What sports did we follow? Susan said: football and baseball.  I said: women’s basketball and auto racing.  Susan laughed, sure that I was joking.  I wasn’t.  So we compromised.  I became passionate about Susan, football and baseball.  She became passionate about women’s basketball, auto racing and, I dared to hope, me.

The Divine Miracle

Today we speak of miracles: loaves and fishes; the total remission of cancer; rising into heaven on a great white winged horse of fire; the face of the Virgin on a sticky bun.  I don’t know about any of these miracles, but then miracles are not the kind of thing one knows about.  They are the kind of thing one believes.

I seem to need miracles.  I find comfort in contemplation of the divine, in something that exists outside those things that we can know.  But I think of fishes and winged horses and I get a sense that most folks are looking for God in all the wrong places.

I seem to need miracles but I’m afraid that I am too rational and lack the strength to believe in the traditional miracles.

How I Got My Name

My name is a bit unusual. I'm probably the only 'Tedwilliam Theodore' in the world. I know of a couple of Ted Theodores and there are probably William Theodores running around somewhere, but the first name 'Tedwilliam' refers, most likely, only to me. (If you know of another holder of the name, please don't tell me. I bask in the sensory pleasure of this uniqueness.)

It's vexing, from time to time. Actually, its vexing frequently; more precisely, most days; or, to tell the truth, damn near every day. Folks are always 'correcting' it for me on lists or applications or what not. Giving my name to a clerk in person or on the telephone almost always engenders one of six responses meant to be humorous, but that had become stale by the time I was twelve years old. I bet you can think of every one of them.

So, you ask, how did this appellation become attached to the sweet little baby that I most assuredly was? Well, I'll tell you the story as it was handed down from my imagination to me over the years. Some of it is true, the rest I'd like to think is true.

Drama on the El

Ideals are great in the abstract. For instance, you and I probably agree that we should and would, by God, help when we find someone in need. When you’re just sailing along, minding your own business, you can feel pretty confident that you will be true to this ideal. Like when you’re on your commute, riding Chicago’s El, the elevated train running into and out of the city.

The riders of the El are a varied lot. Business folk, from mailroom staff to middle management, college kids, domestic workers, shoppers and people with unusual personalities all jostle each other as they sit or stand in the crowded, swaying train cars.