SIXTY ALBUMS

 

 

SIXTY ALBUMS

By Charles Kraus

 

1980 -- We were living in LA at the time and meeting our expenses felt more like a theoretical exercise than a probability.  It often involved borrowing funds. Upon occasion, it meant selling possessions.  Even, if absolutely necessary, portions of my record collection.

Our existence was middle-class bohemia interwoven with the prospect, or at least desire of ‘making it’ in the entertainment industry. Being young, and therefore equating our circumstances with the dues-paying portion of life that one goes through at the beginning of a journey, we had the energy, optimism and fortitude to experience all this as an adventure. Still, parting with 60 albums was a big deal.

            I owned several thousand, but thought of them as components forming a single thing, a collection. A collection is what you get after you’ve sifted through the prospects, rejected undesirable candidates, sought out and filled in key elements so you owned Oscar Peterson’s first album as well as his latest album. Plus, the original cast recordings of every Broadway show you’d been taken to as a New York child, but not the scratched copies, those had been replaced by pristine pressings as they were discovered in various swap meets and second hand shops.  A collection included Ella’s Decca, Verve and Pablo sides.

Did you know that Del-Fi records and its sibling, Keene Records, originated in a basement in Van Nuys, California, pretty much around the block from where we lived when I sold my early Sam Cooke (Keene) and Richie Valens (Del-Fi), part of the 60, to raise the $800 we needed to pay our rent?

The dealer perused the stacks I’d designated as expendable, selecting just the albums I would have chosen, the cream, the best of the best, had I been at the purchasing end of this transaction.  Mostly he pulled from the $25 piles. A few from the $15.  Each time he claimed a record, my exasperation grew.  How could I allow this fellow to dismantle my collection?

Then came the trick.  To the fifty or so sides he’d selected, he made a show of adding a number of less desirable titles from my $2 offering -- Mel Carter, Cher, Mantovani -

albums I couldn’t actually explain or justify owning.   Finally, he reached into the  “PRICELESS – MAKE ME AN OFFER’ display, plucked a gem, in this case, the VJ No. 1001, sealed, never played, album, the El Dorados “Crazy Little Mama,” thrust it into the center of his stack trying to make the selection look like an afterthought.  It was, of course, the one album he truly desired, and to some theoretical upscale collector, worth more than the combined value of the other 59 records.

“I’ll give you $800, 60 albums, take it or leave it.”

Contrary to the prices in the Record Album Price Guide, the true value of a record is what someone is willing to pay for it.  This was easily the best offer I would be getting prior to our potential eviction notice.  It honored the music and the artists, if not the collector.  Me, the dealer dismissed as naïve.  Didn’t I didn’t know that VJ 1001 was worth a fortune?  Yep, but only to buyers offering a fortune, and they didn’t happen to be in the room

Then again, I’d paid a dollar fifty for the VJ.   I was not exactly getting a poor return on my investment.  Yea, ok, all right, you win, give me the cash and leave as quickly as possible.

We finished our transaction.   My buyer took a moment to browse through the remainder of my collect, the albums laying neatly against a neutral wall, the ones with the sign affixed reading, NOT FOR SALE. 

And then came what amounted to my real payoff.  More than the $800.  More than the comfort taken in having raised the rent by selling 60 albums that cost me about $50 to a guy who would probably pass them along to wealthy collectors for prices I didn’t want to know about.  The record dealer looked up from my NOT FOR SALE albums and said, ‘wow.’  

Wow is not a multisyllabic word.  It is not complex.

This particular ‘wow’ meant that finally, someone -- not my wife, not my neighbors, not my friends, none of whom took a particular interest in record collecting, could ever offer.  It meant finally, someone understood that the vinyl disks resting against the neutral wall were not just refugees from Goodwill stores; they formed a genuine representation of the jazz and pop essentials, a virtual history of recorded music, so far.  Wow meant I knew what I was doing.

His smile contained a certain respect.  

You could not pay the rent with a smile, but you could live on this one for a long long time.  I’m still getting residuals.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why I Decided To Turn 65

[2011]

Why I Decided To Turn 65

By Charles Kraus

 

They are about to express birthday wishes to me again. Early on in my earthly

rounds, such salutations could not come often enough, especially if accompanied by gift-
wrapping. Back then it seemed to take forever to get from one birthday to the next, and I
was quite anxious to do so. I wished to accumulate a series of hallmarks, thereby
qualifying me as an established member of the adult class.
            A reassessment of my fondness for birthdays came shortly after turning 30. Our
two daughters had captured my complete attention. One day I realized they would grow
up and move away. Perhaps we could slow down the clock, savor the family process.
Why all the rush?
            At this point in what is left of my life, I do my best to deflect birthday greetings,
trying not to cringe when these are offered. There is a certain responsibility that comes
with turning the big Six - Five. A certain plateauing.  People want to know if my aspirations have been achieved, and I don’t necessarily care to discuss the topic.

Am I not supposed to have attained something? Wealth? Stature? Wisdom? Or, how about solvency, shouldn't I have that by now? I have or should have achieved a reasonable level of maturity. I must have learned important things, things worth knowing and passing along before I become senile and misplace my findings.

            The paperwork says “year of birth 1946,” but I am actually a person of many ages. Upon waking, I am 18. By noon, I have reached 50. After dinner, I hover over the line of scrimmage, feeling 65 to perfection. On nights requiring me to remain coherent past 10 p.m., I glimpse 75, and have by then lost track of my comprehension and my glasses.
            I would like to sum up all that I've concluded during 65 years of trial and error. This will be short. I have two items.
            Researching this project, I reviewed many of the things I once thought I knew for sure:
That tattoos were for sailors. For a while, I was sure the planet was heading to a peaceful resolution of its differences. And anyway, wars of any sort didn't much matter because we lived in the USA – an ocean beyond the consequences of harms way. I supposed that, what with science, and literature, and advances in education, people would grow more logical, more reasonable. I even knew that because my father had his hair when he was 65, I would have mine. Myth, myth, myth, all theories and suppositions that I have subsequently discarded.
            Here is what I now know for sure:
Randomness rules. This is not necessarily a pessimistic assessment. Random
comes in good as well as awful. One reason I wish to continue having birthdays is
because, from around many a blind corner has come a pleasant surprise. Who would have
guessed that being a husband and a parent could be so wonderful? That the advent of spellcheck would change my life?
            Rumor has it I'll be receiving an I-Pad for my birthday. Once I learn to use it,
I am told, I can input my schedule, my plan for tomorrow and beyond. Fun thought. However,
the other thing I learned is:
            You can schedule anything you please, but tomorrow doesn’t necessarily work
from your notes.
            
                                                                    ////
Seattle resident Charles Kraus is a writer and performer.

Shelf life: confessions of an unrepentant book collector

Shelf life: confessions of an unrepentant book collector

By Charles Kraus. Baltimore Sun, 5/13/08

Books collect dust. People collect books. At least, some people do.

I've been one of them for about 45 years. Of course, if my wife has anything to do with it, I've squeezed my last volume onto a shelf. "One more book, and I'll call the folks in the white coats and tell 'em we have a case of bibliomania on our hands," she is fond of saying.

We are just about out of shelf space. It has become necessary for me to cram new acquisitions horizontally into those little spaces between the vertically arranged books and the shelves above. Last year, I lobbied for an additional bookcase. My wife took a slow, theatrical glance around the room, a gesture designed to say, "Where the hell would you put it?"

She'd made her point, yet we both knew I would continue buying books.

They say that parents who enjoy books end up with kids who enjoy books, so it is possible to fix much of the blame on good old father for my attempt to re-create New York City's 42nd Street library right here in my house. His was an impressive - albeit more manageable - collection, an assortment of science, pseudoscience, history and literature. It was primarily acquired from the Lower East Side secondhand bookshops that flourished from the 1940s through the 1960s.

About the only form of gambling in which my father would participate was the clearance table crapshoot. A table full of discards would be offered for $3 apiece. Next week, the remaining volumes went for $2, and on week three, a dollar. Should you purchase a book immediately, before someone realized what an incredible treasure the bookseller had mistakenly placed on the table? Or should you wait, hoping to pick it up at next week's reduced price?

From time to time, as I accompanied Dad on his book-buying rounds, I'd spot like-minded devotees rummaging through the stacks, calmly at first, but with increased measures of desperation and resignation, while trying to locate the book they now knew they should have purchased the previous week.

I own more books than my dad did at the height of his collecting days - more than I will ever read. Some, though relatively few, are investments: perfect first editions, signed, rare, ancient volumes that may eventually be transformed into part of my retirement fund. The rest, given enough time and decent lighting, I would love to read.

If you enjoy an author and happen to come across more of his work, at prices too good to ignore, or books about the author, given away on Sunday afternoons by flea market proprietors who don't care to lug them home - aren't you obligated to acquire them? If you happen to be perusing stacks of books heaped in the corner of a cluttered, marginal thrift shop, stacks not alphabetically arranged but perhaps organized there by the level of mildew implanted in the binding, should you not rescue the worthiest of the lot? Are you not required to keep one of the last copies of the 1927 first edition of Daniel W. Streeter's Camels! from reaching oblivion? And what about Treadmill to Oblivion by Fred Allen? You going to let them find their way to the trash bin?

A Fowl Deed

The LA Times published this story way back in 1980.  Might be the only rooster obituary they ever ran. 

 

 

 

A Fowl Deed

By Charles Kraus

 

     It was one of life’s tragic moments – Brewster being lowered into the ground, my young daughter clinging to my pants leg, sobbing goodbye to her dear, dear friend.  And in the distance, the phantom cheers of local residents, delighted by the prospect of peaceful dawns, uninterrupted by the bugling of the departed rooster.

     Brewster was gone, and except for my wife and 4-year-old Rebecca, who worried that Farmer-God might not feed him well enough in rooster heaven, people seemed downright pleased by his departure.

     I am, by nature, not a rooster booster.  Back in New York City, mama tried to raise me proper, and the only barnyard creatures we got to see were of the plucked variety, hanging grotesquely by their naked kosher necks.

     Even in Oregon, where my wife and daughter and I had recently spent 18 months waiting for the sun to come out, roosters stayed clear of my path.  There were cow-Oregonians, sheep-Oregonians, pig-Oregonians. In  Eugene, one of our country’s old-age homes for surviving hippies, we actually met a guy with a pet gefilte fish.  Yet, I encountered not a rooster.

     The world is an odd oval, and evidently it was written somewhere that my footsteps would cross rooster droppings.  This came to pass upon our return to Los Angeles.

     If the census taker had a question on his page that read, “What do you think of when you hear the name Los Angeles?” you could bet your two-bedroom, $400,000 shanty that not a single individual would respond: “Roosters.”  But it was not in the wilds of the Northwest that Brewster entered my life.  It was a few blocks south of Los Feliz Boulevard.

     We had just moved into our house, the truck had gone off taking the cord to our television, and we’d settled in for a good night’s rest.  Brewster let us sleep until about 6 a.m.  That was the hour he had selected for a few pre-dawn vocal warm-ups.

     Having not been schooled in the art of adapting rooster calls to the written page, I will merely say that the rooster’s pitch was somewhere below that of a tone-deaf bull elephant, and that his repertoire resembled a whirling garbage disposal filled with tin cans.

     “When I took this place,” I explained to my wife, “they didn’t tell me it came with a warm-blooded alarm cock.”

     “That’s OK, dear,” she replied.  “Where did you say we packed the ax?”

     I wasn’t about to resort to butchery, and so turned to sticks and stones.  Not that they helped much.  This was no stewing hen, but what I later learned to identify as a bantam.  A bantam is a rooster that can fly!  Fly into the trees, fly into the hills and fly into your early morning sleep.

     Rebecca took an immediate fancy to the barnyard character.  She’s the one who named him.  And rumor has it that when I wasn’t looking, she even brought him his dinner.

     As the days passed, I formed a kind of adversary’s admiration for our feathered siren.  He was clever and quite handsome.  He marched about our back yard and the slopping hill beyond it with a demeanor so assured and commanding that our three cats and Gabby, our dog, refused to question his credentials.

     Thought Rebecca enjoyed telling her new chums that Brewster was our personal property, the truth was that we were his personal property.  He strutted up and down in front, as well as in back, of our house, coming and going as he pleased.  The area kids staged several rooster hunts, but the bantam, with a  verbal assist from our daughter, always managed to secure himself in a nearby tree, a smirk on his beak and a “cock-a-doodle-doo” on the tip of his tongue.

     About a week into this activity, there was an early-morning knock on our door.   Was it Brewster, with a request for pancakes?  No, it was a greeting from a gentleman who turned out to be our neighbor.

     “Hello,” he said, shaking my hand.

     “I’m your neighbor.  Welcome to Los Angeles.  I can see from your license plate that you’re down from Oregon.  Didn’t happen too bring a rooster with you?”

     Oh no, could it be true?  Had the rooster arrived the same day we’d reached town?  If that were the case, then every resident within a rooster’s striek was of the opinion that the damn fowl was ours.

     I assured the fellow that Brewster and I had never met, that he wasn’t connected to our family, that I’d assumed he come with the house, and that, in fact, I’d done everything short of calling the authorities to get him the hell out of our yard.

     “Don’t worry about the authorities,” he said, “I’ve already called the Department of Animal Regulation.”

     He shook my hand again, and then as an afterthought, told me it was against the law to bring a rooster across a state line.

     I couldn’t’ blame the guy for being upset, but at the same time, I was beginning to see Brewster’s side.  They were ganging up on him, and I’ave always rooted for the underdog – or in this case, the underrooster.

     My wife, who seemed to be growing resigned to bantam eccentricities, suggested we catch Brewster and donates him to a nursery school.  That sounded a whole lot more reasonable than donating him to a pot of soup, and so I set out to capture our friend as quickly as possible.

     Rooster hunting, never one of my strong points – I don’t even have a license – required tree climbing ability, also one of my inadequacies.  And just as I’d figured out how to get from limb A to limb C, Brewster flew past me.

     “Pretty good view,” a voice said, and for a moment I was willing to believe that the bird could articulate when well-motivated.

     “You see any roosters around here?” the speaker continued.

     Looking down, I spotted a uniformed individual, field glasses in hand and dandruff on her shoulders.

     “We’ve had a complaint about your rooster,” she told me as I made my way to the ground floor.

     “It’s not mine,” I explained.

     “That’s not the way we heard it.”

     “Circumstantal evidence.”

     Just then, Brewster came walking up the drive.

     “Tell her you don’t belong to us,” I shouted, but he refused to confirm this fact.

     “I was just trying to catch him and cart him off to a nursery school.”

     She nodded, jotting a few notes down on her pad, and explaining she had only come to investigate. Someone else, an authorized deputy, would be by to assure Brewster’s incarceration.  The rooster didn’t’ seem nearly as frightened by this information as I did.  Maybe he knew a good lawyer.  Anyhow, he marched to within a foot of our dog, teased Gabby just enough to create an interest, and then flew back to the tree.

     The city bird catcher never showed.   Unfortunately, his presence became moot.  For that evening, Brewster attempted to repeat his little game with our dog.  It was a plain case of ‘once too often.”  I will say only that even a handsome, cunning, and intelligent rooster can miscalculate.  This time, the results were feather-raising.

     Rebecca cried.  My wife did her best to hold back her tears.  I felt a little sick to my stomach. Even the dog looked remorseful. 

     And so we came to bury the bird.

     I won’t say I miss him, but every time I open a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle, I get a lump in my throat that’s not a stuck piece of celery. 

////

 

The Next Faze

This was written in September of 2011; an oldie by an oldie.

The Next Faze

By Charles Kraus

Having recently retired, I find myself being exposed to a day-world, with a pace, character, and citizenry that is going to take a little getting used to.  So this is what the rest of you have been up to while I slaved away downtown?    

The particular mid-morning universe into which I now journey seems to be populated by a meandering species of gray-haired pensioners, plus moms with young children.  Physical characteristics notwithstanding, I have no sense of belonging to either group.

The high point of my day, something I’m particularly proud to reveal, is that I have honored a promise I made to myself, way back when.  Yes, despite the gasps of disbelieve, it is true, I now exercise daily at the local gymnasium.

The stationary bicycle is hard on the knees.  The various machines, one evidently designed to perfect each and every component in the human physique, are more serviceable than energizing.   It is the treadmill upon which I find true invigoration.  By pressing buttons, I can walk uphill, downhill, faster and faster, even simulate running, as if being chased by a hoard of paparazzi, and – this part is the most fascinating aspect of the 2.5 miles that I traverse within the confines of my motorized promenade – I get to stare at 9 television screens mounted conspicuously just where the eyes of a speed walker come to rest if and when he coaxes them from the various reports available on the treadmill dashboard.

It is difficult to avoid inspecting those 9 screens.  Some folks place a book on the console and read as they walk.  That gives me a headache.   I intend to purchase an MP3 player and use my stroll-time to enjoy educational lectures.  This is a self-promise not yet executed.   For now, it is to the screens that the mind is attracted.

These TV monitors provide samples, show after show, moment after moment, commercial after commercial, of …  Though tempted, I’m not going into a Sunday school lecture about the corruption of  values and the dilution of reason.  I suspect that would just reveal my naiveté.   I don’t even own a tattoo, and am therefore probably not qualified to comment about contemporary social issues.  I’ll say only that my media sampling does far more to raise my blood pressure and stimulate aerobic brain dysfunction than any treadmill I’ve ever mounted. 

I removed my headset today and just let my eyes taken in the visual aspects, roving from screen to screen.  I saw endless talk shows featuring women who were crying.  Various programs extolling the benefits of public shame, of playing with guns, of jumping up and down like excited children when the participants in question were merely grownups extravagantly emotional about their appearance on an inconsequential game show.

           Rapidly shifting my gaze from set to set, I noticed the same commercials running on 2, 3 or even 4 stations at approximately but not quite the same times.  This was great, because if, while watching monitor #3, you missed part of a pharmaceutical manufacturer’s 45 second disclaimer cataloguing a medical dictionary-length confessional of potential side-effects such as death, near-death, cancer, liver disease, heart failure, unconsciousness, suicidal inclinations and/or the onset of severe flatulation, possibly caused by the extolled product, you could catch the missing revelations on monitor #7.

This retirement business is going to take some getting used to.  Right now, I’m going to try to calm down, take my Finasteride and my Losartan Potassium, and hope I don’t develop a rare side-effect such as obsessive reminiscence syndrome. 

The Life Process

The Life Process
By Charles Kraus

c 2013
Life is a process, life is a gestalt, life is a problem, life is a path, life is a contradiction, life is an obligation, life is a fabrication, life is a myth, life is a rumor, life is a disease, life is a wedding, life is a garden, life is a conflict, life is an opportunity, life is a chance, life is a contest; life is a gift, life is a burden, life is a series of alternatives, life is a beginning, life is an illusion, life is an answer, life is a dance, life is a way of life, life is a what you make it, life is way too short, too long, too hard, too confusing, too unsettling, too sad, too wonderful, to leave when it is time to go and there are those to whom you must say goodbye.

There were things I had intended to do

There were things I had intended to do

By Charles Kraus   cc2013

I waited for my turn, which was an ineffective method.

I believed in someday and checked the mail finding only postage due and pamphlets.

There were things I had intended to do, here, there, elsewhere. 

Encounters I had intended to make.  Pursuits.  Conversations I assumed would occur.

Adventures to be experienced. 

A cumulative effect, a body of evidence.

Tangled in concepts, stretched and distorted by obligations, by desires, by possibilities, by tomorrows, I one day noticed inertia,

recalled vaguely, that there were things, intentions, achievements, results, withheld.

At sea.

Ultimately, I wish to float.