More Baba

By J.N. Hyatt

From her home in New Mexico, Baba continues to navigate the unpredictable currents of old age with her usual ironic sense of humor. She is renting an apartment in a Victorian house where the heating and plumbing challenge her and her landlord.. Her three daughters and her grandchildren live in Oregon, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, so she must tackle airline regulations if she visits. Damp and cold weather set off arthritis in her knees and spine, but she seldom babies herself to get where she is going. When she is not playing bridge or doing crossword puzzles, she contemplates decorated sweatshirts, her pleasures and displeasures gambling in Las Vegas, the laws of physics pertaining to clogged drains, plastic and pills to enhance sexual prowess, meerkats, cell phones, the ignorance of American tourists in the beautiful Alaskan wilderness, zombies and aliens, and teenage ego-centricity. She avoids the health police whenever she can but still manages to give up smoking.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481757256

J.N. Hyatt

J.N. Hyatt has taught English for enough years that she does not waste her readers time or energy.

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© 2013 by J.N. Hyatt. All rights reserved.

Cover art by Liza Hyatt

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/28/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5724-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5725-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013909868

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Baba’s Fashion Statement

Baba And The Radio Flyer

Baba Flies East

Baba At The Animal Clinic

Baba Tries To Keep Warm

Baba At The Bellagio

Baba Consults The Specialists

Baba And The Federal Government

Baba Ponders A Healthy Lifestyle

Baba And The Laws Of Physics

Baba And The Learned Astronomer

Baba And The Dmv

Baba’s Christmas Dinner

Baba Visits A Retirement Home

Baba Reaches The End Of The Earth

1

BABA’S FASHION STATEMENT

Baba had never been a slave to fashion. Growing up on a farm, she had worn jeans and chambray work shirts or big wooly sweaters when it got cold. Her mother had sent her off to grade school in cotton dresses with puffed sleeves until she begged hard enough for a plaid skirt and a cardigan she could button down the back like the other girls did. For Christmas she got an authentic plaid kilt from Scotland and a pullover sweater with little felt flowers down the front. They were not at all what she wanted, but she wore them and forgave her mother. Finally, when her mother sent her to the dancing school prom in a lampshade, Baba decided, as soon as she had her own money, she would let no one else decide what she should wear.

Why her mother insisted on dancing school had never been clear to Baba. She supposed her mother wanted her to become more civilized before entering high school, but nobody else in eighth grade had to go except Vincent Reichert, who hardly ever talked. Probably, Mrs. Reichert had cooked up the arrangement to make her son more charming and provide him a partner, so Baba and Vincent got hauled into town once a week to learn ballroom dancing from Miss Mozart. Mrs. Reichert said often that they were lucky to have Miss Mozart in the area who could teach them so much, but Baba wondered why Miss Mozart had chosen to retire to upstate New York. According to Mrs. Reichert, Miss Mozart had been a prima ballerina and danced before the crowned heads of Europe, so she was well qualified to teach dance steps and the proper protocol for partners at a cotillion. Baba had never heard of a cotillion and neither she nor Vincent knew any of the other teenagers in the class, but they dutifully went and learned how to waltz, foxtrot, lindy, rumba, and even tango, as well as what do to with a partner after the music stopped.

Baba looked forward to the end of dance class because nobody except Vincent ever danced with her and he often ate hamburgers and onions before his mother drove them to town. He didn’t step on Baba’s feet very often, but his hands were sweaty and he breathed onions on her even when he didn’t talk. But Baba’s mother got into high gear when she heard there was to be a formal dance for the last class. Baba assumed no one made ball gowns for teenagers and hoped her mother would give up on the project so Baba could stay home. But via her mothers’ network, Baba’s mother had come up with a second-hand dress someone’s daughter had outgrown.

The dress was made out of turquoise taffeta with puffed sleeves, a sweetheart neckline, and a tiered skirt. Lines of cording marked the seams between each tier so that the skirt belled out from the waist. It wasn’t long enough to reach the floor, so Baba’s size eight Mary Janes and white bobby socks stuck out below. Baba thought it looked like a lampshade, but resigned herself to wearing it for only one night when she was sure no one but Vincent was going to dance with her anyway. Then her mother decided to give her a Toni home permanent.

The permanent turned her hair into total frizz. Dressed for the prom and standing in front of the mirror as she waited for Vincent, Baba heard her mother say, You look beautiful, Barbara. Remember to smile a little more often. Believing she looked totally awful, Baba had continued to scowl at her reflection and decided her mother was lying to be kind. She vowed never to lie to her daughters.

After that dreadful dress, Baba couldn’t remember any other fashion disasters. She navigated high school with only one full-circle poodle skirt and several straight skirts made out of wool. In college she relaxed in her jeans or khaki chinos with big heavy sweaters under a ski jacket. After college as a legal secretary she wore classic tailored suits and blouses to the office, conceding to the current fashions only for pointy—toed shoes with tiny spike heels tipped with metal, the only kind she could find in the shoe stores. She thought they must be bad for her feet and happily went back to sneakers and denims to take care of her children. Now retired and living in New Mexico, she was glad people in her little town seldom dressed up. Jeans and a polo shirt were her usual attire, or corduroys and a sweatshirt when the weather turned cold. She bought her clothes from catalogues because she hated shopping.

She always knew exactly what she wanted but not where to find it, so if her search was serious; it propelled her into all appropriate stores in the mall. Her energy seldom lasted long enough to send her into more than one mall. There were only two in Santa Fe anyway, unless she counted streets around the Plaza. A round-trip to Albuquerque took four hours on Interstate 25, an entire day if she had lunch. Nothing she fancied should involve that much time. Fancied was how she put it, not needed. Good Lord! She had too many clothes already, and the perfect-sized casserole dish was necessary only for pitch-in dinners once or maybe twice a year. Baba had no real need to go shopping just for herself. Why drive all that way to navigate aisles clogged with three-generations of zombies who had forgotten why they were at a mall in the first place?

Finding presents for children and grandchildren was another matter. Knowing she was ignorant of current fads, Baba liked to give her grandchildren books instead of clothes, books with little character dolls to match, Curious George, for instance. The bookstore in town carried children’s books or could order them for her. But the toy store wasn’t able to afford a big selection of dolls. Wal-Mart might have a bin full of beat-up versions of the Cat in the Hat but seldom someone without a current movie to generate sales. Eventually, she copped out on the whole thing by sending her grandchildren checks. Her daughters reported the checks were immediately spent on CDs or video games that Baba had never heard of.

So Baba could no longer consider herself an intrepid shopper. When her daughters were pre-schoolers and money was tight, Baba had made a circuit every month of the discounters who preceded Wal-Mart at strip malls. Heidi and Hildy dolls preceded Barbie, but Heidi and Hildy were hardly fashion plates and didn’t come with extra teeny-tiny plastic shoes to replace those eaten up by the sweeper. Neither did they have Malibu guest houses nor boyfriends like Ken. Baba didn’t shop for three-inch tall boyfriends because her daughters used naked troll dolls with wild hair to escort Heidi and Hildy on their adventures. The trolls performed menial tasks like carrying purses or moving the furniture. Baba bought them little rocking chairs intended for the three bears or created little beds out of kitchen matchboxes and clothes pins.

After moving to New Mexico, Baba made the mistake of buying another pair of New Balance walkers from a shoe catalogue addressed to Occupant. Within six months, more catalogues than she could possibly examine began stacking up on her coffee table, her work space, and on the floor by her reading chair, even in the bathroom under extra rolls of toilet paper. So many catalogues in fact, she had a hard time dragging them out to the dumpster. Lands End, LL Bean, Orvis, Eddie Bauer, and sometimes J. Crew arrived every season and in between times for over-stock sales. Even though she didn’t always order from them, Baba especially liked leafing through The Territory Ahead, North Style, Coldwater Creek, and Isabella Bird. Not many of their styles were for her—too many moose and bear motifs from North Style, too many fringed riding skirts from Isabella Bird—but interspersed with the clothing, the landscape photographs were often inspiring and led her to painting versions of her own. Once in a while a new color came into fashion, and Baba sent away for chocolate brown jeans or a dark teal sweatshirt. Then she needed to look for something else to go with them.

The catalogue merchants were a canny lot. Not only did they sell customers’ names and addresses to each other, but also their electronic sorting machines kept track of sizes. Baba usually ordered Extra Large, telling herself factories were skimping on yardage and made sixteens and eighteens to fit only size twelves. Then she began getting catalogues of fat clothes—Lane Bryant, Silhouettes, or Lady Royal—who used large models instead of twelve or fourteen-year-old anorexics. Unfortunately, many of their styles had been dreamed up by Omar the Tent Maker, and Baba didn’t want swirling pleats to cover her bulges. She bought one or two big shirts in a color called cinnamon and wished she could find purple stretch jeans on sale. Her fashion selections were always limited by her budget. But the only times she put very much thought into what to wear were her evening meetings with the duplicate bridge group.

She had become a regular member, playing with another single woman who wore an amazing variety of slinky, shining shirts. Baba’s partner was in her late eighties, very limber and active because of her yoga classes. She became impatient with other players who took too long, sorting their cards or pondering their bidding. Sometimes Baba wished her partner would give more information before jumping to game, but they liked each other and their score usually came in somewhere in the middle of the group. What Baba should wear to play bridge usually came under the category of sweatshirts and jeans since the room where four tables assembled was not always warm. Baba hadn’t seen the need to acquire new outfits, but she began to re-evaluate her closet options when she went to the pitch-in dinner at Christmas.

On a good night when everybody came, there were four tables of partners, not all of them married to each other. When spouses try to communicate in code or finesse the proper opponent, too much comes into play besides the cards. After a hand was played, Baba never indulged in recriminations that began Well, what you should have done… or Why did you wait so long to pull trump? She and her partner apologized to each other when they overbid or misplayed the contracts, but as her partner had put it, It’s only a game, so once we’ve played the hand, let’s forget about it. Among the regulars there were two couples of men and four couples of women who left their spouses at home. But all those spouses turned up at the Christmas pitch-in when Baba met some of them for the first time.

Before sitting down to play cards, first everyone dug in to a prodigious selection of dishes. Someone had cooked a turkey, but someone else insisted on making the dressing. Baba liked dressing that was laden with juices from inside the bird, but the casserole dish that confronted her looked dry and laden with surprises like olives. There were mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, and a potato casserole with green chilis, all of which were probably delicious before they went cold. Baba took a small spoonful of mashed potatoes, hoping the gravy would warm it up. Had the cook for the turkey made the gravy? It wasn’t out of a can because grease floated on the top, so Baba stirred it up and hoped it was still hot. For the other vegetable selections, Baba passed up candied carrots in favor of her own standard green bean casserole with fried onions and mushroom soup. That recipe appeared on the back of the fried onion can and seldom turned out a disaster. She skipped the homemade rolls to save room for dessert. There were so many desserts; they took up their own table, presided over by three women Baba didn’t know. They seemed to know each other and spent most of their time fluffing the tinfoil surrounding their pies or adjusting the serving utensils. Waiting for them to get out of her way, Baba couldn’t help but notice what they were wearing.

It was if they belonged to some singing group, she reported to her youngest daughter Amy, who had called to make sure Baba was being entertained during the holidays. They all were wearing red sweaters, but decorated red sweaters, you know, with glitter and sequins and shiny metal bits, absolutely dazzling when the light hit them. One had a big golden bow squanch-wise over her stomach with little white packages around the hem. Every other package was open with a teddy bear or a doll peeking out. Another one, who is awfully thin, had skinny, green pine trees running up and down her front and her back and her sleeves. All hung about with baubles and beads and bits of flashing mirrors, of course. The stars on the treetops blinked on and off. I was afraid to ask where their batteries resided.

Now, Mom, laughed her daughter. Don’t exaggerate so.

I’m not exaggerating, cried Baba. The last one is a very large lady. Everyone says she’s a marvelous cook, and I guess that’s true because her husband is very large, also. Her red sweater—now I’m not making this up—had Frosty the Snowman on the front, made out of angora wool so he was fuzzy. His black top hat was all glitter, his eyes goggled, and his nose was a red pompom, sticking out on the front of her bosom. On her back there were two reindeer also with red pompom noses. Maybe the skinny Christmas trees wouldn’t have made her look thin, but at least we wouldn’t have been looking at such an expanse of fluffy angora.

What did you wear? asked Baba’s daughter.

A turtle neck and a blazer over my jeans, my usual costume, except most often I wear a sweatshirt. Nobody gets really dressed up in this town. My partner had on one of her silky, shining shirts with a marvelous piece of antique jewelry at the neck. Not at all flashy.

You never liked flashy, said Amy. I remember how exasperated you got when we went shopping at discounters. Exactly the color you wanted and at a bargain, but…

All gobbed up with a screaming parrot or a flaming flamingo right on the front. I suppose cheap manufacturers want to show off something.

And did you have a good time at the party? Amy asked.

Oh, yes, said Baba. They’re all very nice people, except for a couple of sticklers who insist on the rules. My partner and I never get any really good cards, but it’s a night out I can look forward to. Baba listened to reports of her grandsons and what they were hoping to collect from Santa or to buy with Baba’s check, once their mother delivered it. Then she hung up and thought no more about the conversation.

Usually, Baba’s daughters didn’t send her presents because she had asked them to contribute to the SPCA instead. But the week before Christmas, three packages arrived, one from each of them. Baba saved them for Christmas day, which was always a little sad because she remembered all the fun when her children were little. Now she was alone, those children grown and far away, but even if she had braved the airline hassle, the day still would have reminded her of the others who weren’t there. Better not to call up all those memories, have a cup of soup for dinner, and count herself lucky not to have to cook a feast and clean up afterwards.

Inside Ellen’s package Baba found a red sweatshirt, but a sweatshirt decorated with glittery plastic snowflakes falling down the front on a village of yellow and green houses with more glittery plastic snow on their roofs. Oh dear, she thought. Where would I ever wear that? Lily’s package also contained a sweatshirt, this one black with big sliver and gold baubles and sequined red streamers. I should have kept my mouth shut, Baba thought. This is all Amy’s doing. Amy’s package held a purple sweatshirt with an angora Easter bunny on the front, holding a basket of pink and blue glittery eggs. His tail was a gigantic pompom that would hit her right over her navel. The card said, So you won’t feel left out at the next holiday pitch-in. Love, Amy, Baba began to laugh. Then she called her daughters.

You little rat, she said to Amy. Where did you find such awful things? I hope they weren’t expensive.

Awful? cried her daughter to tease her. Mom! You mean you’re not going to wear them? I thought they’d be terribly festive.

I’m too old to be festive, said Baba. Pretty soon I’m going to wrap myself in a black shawl and mumble away in a corner. I hope you didn’t spend hours of shopping.

No, said Amy. They came from a catalogue. Lily and I debated over a brown one with flying ducks and a Canada goose in the cattails, or another one with a giant sequined Thanksgiving turkey. They’ve got Halloween ones with black cats and pumpkins, and summer ones with glittery hummingbirds or butterflies. Not at all expensive. You could afford one for every season.

Only if I want to look like a walking greeting card, said Baba. Well, you pulled off a good one. Next time you meet me at the airport, I’ll be sure to be wearing something to honor the season.

That’s okay, said Amy. Give them to the Salvation Army. But I’m going to make sure you get that catalogue in case you find some you’d like better.

After talking to her other two daughters, Baba hung up still laughing. Her children were prosperous enough to buy presents they knew she wouldn’t like just to tease her. That knowledge was almost as good as seeing them open new paraphernalia for Heidi and Hildy. She began to look forward to the sweatshirt catalogue to see what awful things she could afford to send them. Maybe she could find hats or ties for their husbands, featuring Rudolphs with blinking, red noses.

2

BABA AND

THE RADIO FLYER

Baba had learned that Medicare didn’t cover the $6000 for good hearing aids. Her informant claimed the cheaper ones made everything sound tinny, so he didn’t wear his, especially in a room full of conversations. If you get your ears tested, said her advisor, don’t go to somebody who sells the gizmos. When they test you, of course you’ll need an appliance. So Baba hadn’t taken her ears anywhere to be tested. Watching her cop shows in the evening, she decided her hearing was not entirely at fault. The older, professional actors, who probably had appeared live on the stage, were able to enunciate properly and spoke loud enough she had no trouble understanding them, but the young ones were mostly impossible. Why did casting pick two young men who could have been brothers to play the second bananas? She wished one would grow a mustache so that she could tell them apart. And if they were young, they mumbled. The young skinny blondes were the worst. I suppose, Baba complained to her nurse friend Kitty, if they move their lips, they’ll make wrinkles. There’s a new anchorwoman on Chanel 7 news who gargles half the syllables or swallows whole words. Maybe she thinks she’s making a rapid-fire delivery, but I hope she doesn’t last very long.

I watch C-Span, said Kitty. Network news is just entertainment, and Fox News is mostly propaganda.

Baba moved her chair away from her work space closer to her television and tinkered with the volume control. She discovered that, if she turned it all the way up, it cut out the sound from all channels. When she set it in the middle, she could hear the shopping channels, the Spanish channels, and sometimes, if it wasn’t raining, the network channels on 4 and 7. She especially counted on Channel 4 to watch spin-offs of Law and Order. She knew television transmissions in New Mexico depended on relay towers perched on top of mountains, but she was paying almost $50 a month for cable and she wasn’t getting her money’s worth.

She dropped by the cable office to pay her bill. Now that you’ve got my money, she told the counter person, I guess I have a right to complain. The sound on my set has become very erratic. I can hear some channels sometimes but not others. Is this a plot to make me go digital?

Oh, dear, no, said the counter woman. We’ll send Julian out right away.

Baba didn’t see Julian climb the pole in the alley, but she watched him check all the cable connections in her living room. Your set’s pretty old, he said, but you can get it repaired. It’s your speaker control. Better get an estimate first. You can buy a new set at Wal-Mart for $70, and it’ll be cable ready. Call me if you have any trouble hooking it up. Baba thanked him and went to find the telephone book.

Only one television repairman was left in town, and he was open only from one to five. But he said he could look at her set and give her an estimate if she could haul the thing out to his shop. Baba didn’t know if she could be lift the set and carry it out to her car, but she began planning how to mark the cables and their connections if she had to unhook all those wires. Then she decided it didn’t make sense to put more money into an old set that was bound to need something else before long. Everything falls apart after a while, including you, she told herself, and went out to Wal-Mart.

Some Japanese outfit she didn’t recognize made the $70 model, and the screen was only sixteen inches wide. The others ranged from $110 to $900 because they were bigger and made by companies Baba had heard of. She tuned in on the sales pitch to a couple who were looking at flat-screen, plasma models, and when the Wal-Mart associate went away, she asked the man why those versions cost twice what the others were marked. She heard that plasma was the way to go, the latest thing that she could see better on, and a flat screen would fit on the wall in the couple’s kitchen. Since her vision wasn’t the problem and Baba always refused to be sucked in to the latest thing, she chose a fat, twenty-one inch Emerson for $120. The Wal-Mart associate loaded it into her shopping cart and she headed for the checkout.

The box containing her purchase was big enough to live in, so she asked for someone to help her load it into her car. A thin, bedraggled, young man with a runny nose eventually appeared and slouched along beside her as she pushed her cart through the parking lot. When he saw the size of her car, he shook his head. Baba opened the passenger side door and adjusted the seat to tip the back almost horizontal. Finally the associate wiped his nose on the back of his hand and stowed her box inside the car with a groan. Thank you so much, said Baba. "Now, would you like to come home with me for lunch so you can get it out of there and into my