A Day in the Life - Part Eight

When writing I most always start off with my old friend The. Even if I don’t intend to keep it. (Some friend, huh?) Writing that one word gives me hope that others will follow it down a merry path. Or not. 

And if  ‘The felon from the next cell barged in for his daily shakedown of my goodies.’ is what I come up with, I question why I put myself in prison. A bar stool would have been nicer, or a cozy booth at the Algonquin hotel with Dorothy Parker and me throwing barbs and martinis in each others faces. 

 Yet here I am. Face to face with Norman, the prison librarian. 

‘You know the drill,’ Norman will say. 

Boy, do I know the drill. Just ask my goodies. In such a case I would remove that troublemaking The, and break out of prison. 

Once over the wall I will suddenly come to the realization that I’m more of an I guy. So I decide to break into prison to confront Norman. ‘I never gave you permission to mess with my goodies!’ I would have proclaimed.’ But when I returned to my cell he greeted me with such a Sal Mineoesque charm, that I had my wife send some posies to the prison library with a note attached:

Dear Norman,

Let’s start from the beginning. Hmmm? You feed me books and I’ll feed you goodies. 

Love,

As if you didn’t know. 

***

I don’t usually write during my break, but I started  jotting down the above nonsense a couple of days ago, seated at the plaza in front of the Seagram’s building on Park Avenue and fifty-second street. It’s a favorite spot for the outdoor lunch crowd.

The Seagram’s building is where they filmed scenes from the movie Scrooged. It’s where the ghost of Bill Murray’s former boss gets his clutches on Murray and dangles him out his office window, many stories above the plaza.

Also, it’s where a  run down 1970’s New York City eats up a disheveled Jack Lemmon in the Out of Towners and eventually spits him out at the foot of the Seagram’s building so the poor slob can finally get to his job interview. 

The Seagram’s building was once home to the Seagrams Company, a Canadian distillery. The only thing I knew about Seagrams is that it made a whiskey called Seagram’s 7 that seemed to be a favorite at every adult function I attended when I was a boy.  

In 1968 at the age of fourteen I was an usher at my brother’s wedding and Seagram’s 7 and Seven Up was my very first drink. I was in the know and ordered like a pro. 

‘7 and 7, please,’ I said. I stopped short of saying, ‘And make it snappy!’

I was 14 and a prime candidate for a good smack-down by any bartender worth his weight in whiskey barrels. 

I was on my way to adulthood. Why did no one stop me!

To be continued. . .