It’s not everyday that I get to feel how I felt today reading this letter. It’s not everyday that I get to feel and know that an action I took to help someone would inadvertently help another person just a few months later in the same way. I can only hope that this Israeli adventurer soon finds herself in a situation where she can repay the gesture to someone else. Pay it forward. We miss you JoMarie.
These two pages from the book I’m reading speak to me. One’s unexplainable love for New York City, one’s inability to reason why important decisions are made the way they are made, one’s insufferably racing mind that can rarely lock-in to the here and now.
“Hugh,” he said, “there’s something I was going to ask you. You’ve got enough money put away you could live high if you wanted to. Why in God’s name do you live in a little box of a room in a back-street hotel and hang out in the fish market when you could go down to Miami, Florida, and sit in the sun?”
Mr. Flood bit the end off one of his sixty-five-cent cigars and spat it into the scuttle. He held a splinter in the stove until it caught fire, and then he lit the cigar. “Tommy, my boy,” he said, “I don’t know. Nobody knows why they do anything I could give you one dozen reasons why I prefer the Fulton Fish Market to Miami, Florida, and most likely none would be the right one. The right reason is something obscure and way off and I probably don’t even know it myself. It’s like the old farmer who wouldn’t tell the drummer the time of day.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Mr. Maggiani.
“It’s an old, old story,” Mr. Flood said. “I’ve heard it told sixteen different ways. I even heard a muxed-up version one night years ago in a vaudeville show. I’ll tell it the way my daddy used to tell it. There was an old farmer lived beside a little branch-line railroad in south Jersey, and every so often he’d get on the train and go over to Trenton and buy himself a crock of applejack. He’d buy it right at the distillery door, the old Bossert & Stockton Apple Brandy Distillery, and save himself a penny or two. One morning he went to Trenton and bought his crock, and that afternoon he got on the train for the trip home. Just as the train pulled out, he took his watch ofrm his vest pocket, a fine gold watch in a fancy hunting case, and he looked at it, and then he snapped it shut and put it back in his pocket. And there was a drummer sitting across the aisle. This drummer leaned over and said, ‘Friend, what time is it?’ The farmer took a look at him and said, ‘Won’t tell you.’ The drummer thought he was hard of hearing and spoke louder. ‘Friend,’ he shouted out, ‘what time is it?’ ‘Won’t tell you,’ said the farmer. The drummer thought a moment and then he said, ‘Friend, all I asked was the time of day. It don’t cost anything to tell the time of day.’ ‘Won’t tell you,’ said the farmer. ‘Well, look here, for the Lord’s sake,’ said the drummer, ‘why won’t you tell me the time of day?’
‘If I was to tell you the time of day,’ the farmer said, ‘we’d get into a conversation, and I got a crock of spirits down on the floor between my feet, and in a minute I’m going to take a drink, and if we were having a conversation I’d ask you to take a drink with me, and you would, and presently I’d take another, and I’d ask you to do the same, and you would, and we’d get to drinking, and by and by the train’d pull up to the stop where I get off, and I’d ask you why don’t you get off and spend the afternoon with me, and you would, and we’d walk up to my house and sit on the front porch and drink and sing, and along about dark my old lady would come out and ask you to take supper with us, and you would, and after supper I’d ask if you’d care to drink some more, and you would, and it’d get to be real late and I’d ask you to spend the night in the spare room, and you would, and along about two o’clock in the morning I’d get up to go to the pump, and I’d pass my daughter’s room, and there you’d be, in there with my daughter, and I’d have to turn the bureau upside down and get out my pistol, and my old lady would have to get dressed and hitch up the horse and go down the road to get the preacher, and I don’t want no God-damned son-in-law who don’t own a watch.’”
