Winter of '73

It's cold up and down Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco, where they sell the cars. It's raining. There is never any snow, this is San Francisco, but the people are surprised to be shivering. The showrooms through the great plate windows look cold, despite the circus slogans painted on shimmering glass. It's also cold on Van Ness because they aren't selling many cars this year. The flow of oil has been tampered with, unclear exactly why. The Arabs say the oil users should take a turn as colonies, subject to cold winters. (continued on page 163)Winter of '73(continued from page 101)

My wife has invited a friend to have lunch with us. The other lady wants to discuss her recent separation from her husband. Since my wife has heard the story several times already, she thinks it only fair that I also hear it and give the lady--whom I like, since she is pretty and bright--the benefit of my useless advice.

It is raining. Or perhaps it is only a heavy winter fog. Sloppy shapeless droplets stain the debris along the curb. I drop the lady and my wife at The Haven, seminatural foods, and find a parking place on the street in front of an automobile agency.

As I get out, I am careful to lock all the doors of the car. I didn't always do this. A few years ago I began. Standing nearby in the rain, wearing a blue blazer and neat gray-flannel trousers, a tall, slender, almost-distinguished man--a golfer's looks--was ignoring the heavy fog seeping into his flannels as he shouted at a young man on the street, "Why don't you see a psychiatrist?"

"All right, I will," said the young man, turning.

"Right away!"

"You, too," shouted the young man.

Odd conversation early on a Saturday afternoon in the heavy fog of winter. The young man was wearing jeans and a leather vest over no shirt--probably a clammy feeling, unless you're doing it out of moral principle and a local sense of beauty. The conflict between him and the man from the automobile agency was loud but entirely verbal.

"Stoo-pid!" shouted the automobile man. (He wore a tag above the pocket of the blazer.)

"Idiot!" shouted the young fellow in the leather vest. He was moving backward away, and as I finished locking the doors of my station wagon, I thought to ask the salesman what this post-flower-child trouble might be.

"Goddamn Jew!" shouted the salesman at the hippie.

It took no particular thought or effort on my part quickly to substitute for my question about the source of the difficulty the following statement: "You asshole, shut your fucking mouth before I rip your tongue out."

The automobile salesman whirled toward me with something like real despair. "What'd I do to you?" Here he is, trying to make a living in a sick world, and strangers come to abuse him from everywhere. "What are you yelling at me for?"

"Because you called the man a goddamn Jew--"

"But I don't like him," he wailed.

"Well, I'm a Jew and I don't like to hear you talking like that."

"But I think he's a goddamn Jew and that's what he is." He was regrouping himself after my surprise attack.

"And you're an asshole."

He moved toward me, shouting, "You can't call me names." I waited. He paused nearby. He was genuinely puzzled at the sight of me. "Or I'll call the police."

"Call. I'll wait, asshole."

Van Ness is well patroled, and it happened that a car--black and white, extinguished red Cyclops eye atop--was passing and the auto dealer shouted, "Police, police!" He looked proper and neat in his blue blazer, although his voice was a little anxious and hurried. Bearded, in corduroy jacket and jeans, I wondered how the police might respond to me as two of them came sauntering out of the car, measuring the situation in that wary, professional way. My car dealer started to sell his case to them. "I was just yelling at that Jew up the street when this one came along, I wasn't even talking to him, and he said something dirty to me, he won't apologize, I want him to apologize or put him under arrest--"

The two police divided themselves up. "I don't like that word Jew used in that way," I said to the one who chose me.

The one who spoke with the car dealer said to him, "OK, OK, why don't you go back inside and sell some cars, OK?"

The one who spoke with the said, "Where were you headed?"

"To lunch."

"I don't blame you. I'm kind of hungry myself. Why don't you run along and have a good lunch?"

"I want an apology from that Jew!" the car dealer cried.

"Do you want me to wait around? Would you like my identification?" I asked the policeman.

"Actually, I'd prefer you just cross the street now and go on to your sandwich and soup, it's getting kind of late," he said.

The other policeman had his arm around the car dealer's shoulders and was guiding him toward the door of his agency. He was asking him a question: "What'll you take for that '66 Rambler I saw back there in the lot?" I waited for the light to change and crossed the street.

Although the fog was heavy and chill, I felt hot and winded, as if I had been running; not jogging but running. I walked up the long block to The Haven, where my wife and our friend were waiting at a table.

"What's wrong?" my wife asked me.

"What's wrong," her friend answered, "is that marriage just can't work in this society, when women have to make their own place for themselves, they can't just say You're nice, you're great, you're a big strong hunk of man, if the slob is doing nothing for them but bringing home six-packs of beer and the TV Guide, so I say out is what I say. My husband has bad habits."

"I'd like to hear your story from the beginning," I said.

"What's the matter?" my wife asked me again.

"There's a long winter starting out," our friend said, starting on her minestrone and sandwich on natural bread with sprouts. She looked up at me, knowing that I need to think about the meaning of things in order to keep interested, and wiped a piece of macaroni off her chin. "I sometimes think--don't you?--that war is the natural condition of things for settling disagreements. Too bad Phil and I have only marriage to go to war about. Since we don't get along, we have to go to war."