The Road Taken Again

By Dennis Ford

In the mischievous style of his previous books, Thinking About Everything and Miles of Thoughts, humorist and man of letters Dennis Ford takes to the road and—

~ reveals why heaven is the saddest place

~ invents the practice of kid swapping

~ explains how reasonable people will cause the end of democracy

~ narrates a public radio interview with Jesus

~ describes how to pretend to be mute to avoid confrontations

~ divulges Mayberry Sheriff Andy Taylor’s fatal habit

~ provides a sure-fire method to get God to answer prayers

~ advises against conversing with demon-possessed drain pipes

~ discovers to his delight that there’s beer in the afterlife

Amid a generous helping of excellent groaners, Ford demonstrates how to practice mindfulness while cooking Ramen noodles, bestows the Insult to Humanity prize on deserving movies, discloses why the people life dumps on dump on themselves, asks whether we need to chlorinate the gene pool and tells why, if you don’t like fun, you’ll like New Jersey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663230997

Dennis Ford

Dennis Ford is the author of nineteen books, including the recent novels Tracks That Lead To Joy and World Without End. He lives on the Jersey Shore, where he walks the beaches and thinks about ghosts.

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Copyright © 2021 Dennis Ford.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3098-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3100-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3099-7 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 10/26/2021

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The cover photograph is of the famous

painted rock on County Road 539.

It is the only painted rock on County Road 539. For all I know,

it may be the only painted rock on any road in New Jersey.

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For my father and mother and the roads they took in life

For Bluesman Michael Lindner and roads best left untaken

And for County Road 539 and memories of long

commutes that had imagination for a companion

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PROLOGUE

The woe is me. It finally happened. I knew all along it would happen. It had to happen, eventually. My company—the company I love—let me go. They released me after twenty-five years of selfless service. The specialist in inhuman resources who informed me didn’t use the word fired. She didn’t use the word dismissed. She didn’t use the word retired. She used the word downsized, like that helped. To preserve the bottom line, the company eliminated my position. They may as well have eliminated me.

Just like that, they let me go. Without a ceremony. Without a lifetime service award. Without a handshake. Without a pat on the back as they pushed me out the lobby door and into the parking lot. Without a Thank you for your service. Without so much as a Have a happy rest of your life. I was discarded like a used book too ratty to keep on the shelf.

I didn’t know what to do. The job was my livelihood. The job was my life. I drove through the Pine Barrens every working day, morning and night, for years. People said the woods were dangerous and that they held weird perils, but the trees were always good to me. The trees were always generous. The trees allowed me to wander the world without leaving my car. The trees gave me miles of thoughts. And now I was grounded. There was no longer a reason to drive through the forest of inspiration. My car would never again leave its assigned parking space in the development. Downsized, I became a homebody against my will.

I stayed in bed with the lights off for the next two-and-a-half weeks. I didn’t change my clothes. I didn’t bathe. I didn’t shave. All I ate was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on stale bread. I didn’t care that the bread was crumbly—I broke bread with myself. I didn’t listen to music. I didn’t binge watch television. The one time I opened a book, I cried nonstop for two hours. The whole time I was in bed I didn’t think about anything. I should say I thought about a single topic—what’s a fellow to do after he’s been downsized?

Get on with it, I told myself. These things happen. You’re not the first person in history to get downsized. A lot of people get downsized, good people, hard-working people. You don’t hear them complaining. Besides, you were never a company man. Except for the annual employee sale, you never had much interest in the company. Admit it—it was for the good of the company that your position got eliminated. Now that you’re gone, maybe they can turn a profit. I sat on the edge of the bed. The plants on the windowsill had withered. Only cactuses were left alive. The others had died for want of water. They deserved better.

After an additional week, I managed to rouse myself. I showered. I shaved. I changed clothes. I went food shopping. I stopped in the florist and bought new plants. I summoned my motivation and considered options for employment. I could apply for a position in town, a position I wouldn’t have to drive through a vast forest to hold. I could be a deli-man at the supermarket. I could be the greeter in the supermarket. I could be an overnight stock clerk. I could answer phones in one of the professional offices in town. I could work as a landscaper—that’s not an option. I never liked outdoors work and I have too many allergies to be in the field. I could hand out prescriptions at the drive-through pharmacy. I could deliver pizza. I could shop for shut-ins. I could read to blind people and lead deaf people across railroad tracks. I could taxi inebriates home when the taverns close. I could wait on tables. I could bus tables.

If I didn’t find a job that pays, I could become a waver. This is a time-honored profession in New Jersey. There are professional wavers who get written up in newspapers and magazines and become famous in their neighborhoods. The profession is simplicity itself. All I’ll need is an umbrella in the event of rain. I’ll sit on the stump of the tree outside my condo and wave to cars as they pass. It wouldn’t be a lazy wave like people make when swatting insects. The wave would be assertive and cross from one shoulder to the other. It would be noticeable from inside cars. It would be noticeable on both sides of the street. If drivers responded by honking, I’ll wave in the opposite direction and give two thumbs up by way of a sociable reply.

Since I live in a private development, traffic is light. For maximum effect, I may have to bring the umbrella and a folding chair to a street corner in the center of town. There’s lots more traffic on Route Nine. I’ll wave so frequently I may need to take up weights to exert myself in the manner drivers deserve.

If waving doesn’t work as a second career, I’ll leave New Jersey for California. I’ll take the bus to Hollywood. It’s never too late to get in talking pictures. Or maybe I’ll join a circus. Since I was a kid, I always wanted to turn somersaults on the flying trapeze.

The only way to find a second career was to climb back inside the car, gas up, and take to the road. I’ll find the solution to my woes on the leached shoulders of County Road 539. I’ll read my future in the arboreal script that crosses the double yellow between lanes. The long drives through the green wilderness will put thoughts back inside my head, which is where they belong. The drives will give me a new opportunity to think about everything.

The road beckons. I have my life back. I was upsized.

~ The prologue is now past ~

A NOTE TO READERS

In Miles of Thoughts, my second book of belles lettres, I included a section entitled Excellent Groaners. The section was a collection of what I fancied were puns and witty observations. In retrospect, I fear the number of groaners may have been daunting to readers and a tad overwhelming. In The Road Taken Again I opted to scatter the still excellent groaners throughout the book. Readers will be able to appreciate flavorful tidbits sprinkled amid a medley of meaty thoughts at a leisurely pace.

Everything in this book is true except for the things that are not.

Mercurio Arcana Jr.

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#1.

They don’t make Mafioso like they used to.

In the heyday of La Famiglia the code of omerta—silence, strict silence, deafening silence—was unfailingly enforced. Soldati, capos, consiglieres, underbosses and bosses understood that to talk business to anyone outside the circle of made men was to engage in suicidal behavior. To rat was to get tossed off roofs into the gutters. I’m not sure if the rat ate a canary before or after clinical death.

Omerta went the way of eight-track cassettes in September 1991 when Alphonse Little Al D’Arco, front boss of the Lucchese crime family, offered his services to the G-men in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (Victor Amuso, boss of the family, was on the lam and unavailable.) Of course, omerta had disappeared as a guiding Mob tenet long before Little Al turned informant. Innumerable soldati and capos from Joe Valachi forward had served as informants. Little Al was the first boss to volunteer his services as, with respect, a rat. This was the difference between flipping a burger and flipping filet mignon.

The chatty floodgates soon opened. Fourteen other high-level defections followed. Sammy The Bull Gravano, John Gotti’s underboss, became a government witness. So did Ralph Natale, boss of the Philadelphia crime family. So did Joseph The Ear Massino, boss of the Bonnano crime family.

Little Al’s defection was a major blow to Italian organized crime. His testimony was instrumental in toppling Victor Amuso, Colombo boss Victor Orena, and Genovese boss Vincent Chin Gigante, capo dei capi. Little Al’s volte-face was not a moral conversion. Like everything in the world of organized crime, it derived from self-interest. He became convinced that Amuso intended to have him whacked. This conviction was not an idle delusion. Amuso, a savagely bloodthirsty don, had already ordered the deaths of seventeen card-carrying Lucchese soldati. Rumor was that Amuso had a hit list fifty names long. Another rumor was that the list included the name of the front boss. Little Al was, among other things, a murderer, drug trafficker and extortionist, but his defection led to a breakthrough in battling the Mob and it enabled him to die in bed at a ripe old age.

Both Little Al and The Ear had connections with movie portrayals of the Mob. Little Al’s mentor was Paul Vario, a Queens capo whose crew included Jimmy The Gent Burke, organizer of the Kennedy International Lufthansa robbery immortalized in Goodfellas. The Ear was a figure in the book and movie version of Donnie Brasco. His January 2003 indictment included the charge that he ordered the murder of Sonny Black Napolitano, who had been Donnie Brasco’s crew chief. Donnie Brasco was, as everyone now knows, FBI Agent Joe Pistone. For the transgression of inviting a FBI agent into La Famiglia, Sonny Black had to go from one underworld into another. I’m not sure if he took a canary with him.

Joe Massino was called The Ear because he copied Vincent Gigante’s use of a facial feature as a way to communicate in Mafia sign language that the boss was being referred to. Mention of the boss’s name could result in wearing cement galoshes off the pier and into the Gowanus Canal. Massino had his soldati point to their ears when he was referenced. (No one was seen making circular motions with their index fingers when they pointed.) It wasn’t a bad concept to copy. The trick kept Vincent Gigante out of jail for decades. The sobriquet Ear sounds like an odd choice, but it’s more distinguished than Nose or Sideburns or Jowl and Chin was already claimed. The Brain was unclaimed, but that’s a little too conceited, even for a Mafia don.

~ The Mafia has this in common with professional baseball—both employ designated hitters.

~ A bag lady is a woman, usually elderly, who lives on the streets and keeps her worldly possessions in bags in shopping carts. In this use of the word, bag does not cross genders. A bag man is something entirely different.

~ The living speak of the here and now. The dead speak of the hereafter and now.

#2. Embiggen is a useful word. It is also an odd word, both to the eye and the ear. It looks like a typo or like something a child makes up by accident.

First used in the 1990s, embiggen means to make big. When helium is blown into a balloon, it embiggens the latex. When money is rolled into a 401K, it embiggens one’s retirement account. When too much food is consumed in conjunction with too little activity, this embiggens the notches on one’s belt.

There is an equally useful and odd word I have never seen in print. Nor have I heard it spoken in the powerless corridors I inhabit. The word is ensmallen. Obviously, the word means to make small, as when the helium is released from a balloon and the latex contracts or when the 401K nest egg cracks in a recession or when the notches on one’s belt shrink because the amphetamines work.

~ A handsome leading man in a blockbuster movie is a matinee idol. A handsome leading man who’s out of work is a matinee idle.

~ When I first heard the term opioid addiction, I thought it referred to fans of Sheriff Taylor’s son on the television program The Andy Griffith Show.

#3. The Lions Club has a table outside the supermarket. They collect donations that they use to assist blind people. If a shopper contributes to the jar on the table, the Lion on duty says, Thank you. Have a pleasant day. If a shopper walks past the table without contributing, the Lion doesn’t say anything. I don’t doubt that the Lion thinks, Thanks for nothing. Have a lousy day, you cheap bum. While you’re at it, have a lousy week.

#4. Driverless cars of the future will come equipped with something like Velcro fenders. Pedestrians struck by these vehicles will not catapult headlong over the hoods and onto the pavement, shattering bones as they bounce from sewer plate to sewer plate. Rather, pedestrians struck by these vehicles will adhere to the fenders. Presumably, they will be in better states than the insects that splatter on our windshields as we cruise the county roads.

The use of Velcro fenders may present a problem when two driverless cars collide.

~ There are people with the surname Daley. There are no people with the surnames Weekly or Monthly or Yearly.

~ Some people have their faces lifted. I’m different. I’m going to have my body lowered.

#5. Mother Angelica was a hugely popular nun on the Roman Catholic television station, Eternal Word. Mother Angelica was the leading personality on Eternal Word and she was one of the reasons cable television became popular.

Mother Angelica was a member of the order of the Sisters of Poor Clare. She was born Rita Rizzo in Canton in 1923. She died at an advanced age in 2016. In addition to her spiritual gifts, Mother Angelica possessed the charisma of entrepreneurship. She was a founder of the Eternal Word station in the 1980s and a radio network offshoot. Currently, more than 200 million Catholics worldwide watch or listen to Eternal Word.

Mother Angelica was famous for delivering homilies during her weekly program. The homilies were homely in tone and filled with cornpone humor. She took a few calls at the end of every program. She always asked where the caller was. On one occasion a caller identified his location as New Jersey. Mother Angelica immediately chirped in her high-pitched singsong voice, Wonderful!

I had two thoughts when I heard her say Wonderful. The first thought was that New Jersey and wonderful are words that never belong in the same sentence (except for this one). And if Mother Angelica believes New Jersey is wonderful, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

On the other hand, if Mother Angelica knows what she’s talking about and still believes New Jersey is wonderful, that’s grounds for beatification.

#6. Despite what Mother Angelica says, New Jersey has a terrible reputation.

On Point, a news analysis program on National Public Radio, aired a segment about President Trump’s comment that the United States may not come to the aid of the Baltic States in the event of a Russian invasion. Trump insisted that the members of NATO needed to pay their share of the defense tab if they expected the United States to come to the rescue. Apparently, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia were welshing on their share of the bill. A guest on the program said Trump’s statements made NATO sound like a protection racket like in New Jersey. Ouch, that stings.

~ In Transcendental Meditation every person receives a mantra. It’s a case of to each, their om.

~ There’s a sign on the billboard of a local church on Route Nine—Be the Person God Intended You to Be. This sounds like good advice, but it assumes that God intended everyone to self-actualize in benevolent ways. This may not be the case. God may have intended a person to be evil. Or mediocre. There are a lot of mediocre people in the world. I ought to know.

~ A sign on the billboard outside another church on Route Nine advises that Christians Face Judgment and Persecution. A second and smaller sign states All Welcome.

#7. Back in the naughty 1960s and ‘70s there was a practice called wife swapping, which was exactly what it said. Husbands exchanged wives for a temporary period in order to find new thrills and escape the boredom of love lives grown stale. Such husbands were in a rut for being in a rut. The only way out, short of prostitution, was to borrow someone else’s wife—with the husband’s approval.

There was wife swapping. Why not kid swapping? I’ll trade my Tommy for your Timmy and throw in Barbie as well.

Of course, kid swapping is more complicated than wife swapping. The gender of the swapped children would have to be worked out. Can boys be swapped for girls and vice versa? Or can boys only be swapped for boys and girls for girls? And the ages of the children would have to be negotiated. Do two preschoolers equal one adolescent? Or is it the other was around, with two adolescents equaling one preschooler? Is there an upper age limit in kid swapping? Ten maybe? Or twelve? Or fourteen? The lower age limit depends on toilet training. No one would want to swap a child who isn’t toilet trained.

And there’s another, by no means minor, issue that needs resolution before the practice can be put into effect—what if the swapped kid likes the new parents better than the old parents and refuses to return home?

~ While taking my daily medicine at the local pub I overheard the following—

Lothario (the intender): Can I take you for a drink?

Lois (the intendee): I hope you take me as something better than a drink.

~ A lame elf is a hobblegoblin.

#8. There is no solace in science, which is why many people reject science in favor of religion.

The Gospel of John (3:16) promises that "those who believe in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting. In the context of the new heaven and new earth, Chapter 21 of the Book of Revelation guarantees that God will wipe away every tear … and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain." The faithful don’t just survive bodily death in some drab ghostly realm, they live forever in a glorified state. This is heady stuff. Or should I say heady soul stuff?

Science can offer nothing that compares with this. Scientists who are agnostics can only shrug and say, We don’t know if there is life after death, never mind everlasting life. Scientists who are atheists can only offer everlasting extinction. We just don’t die. We are dead forever and ever. This is pretty bleak stuff, whether of the head or of the soul. But atheist scientists don’t believe in the soul.

Even if the promise of everlasting life is completely empty, it’s comforting to think that we weren’t born just to blink out of existence for the rest of time unending. And it’s comforting to think that our loved ones take up residence in the place Shakespeare called the undiscovered country.

~ A death certificate is the passport to the undiscovered country. A visa is not required to get there. Travel insurance is not needed—the trip never cancels.

`#9. If there is life after death, heaven must be the saddest place.

We say we miss our loved ones and we surely do. We worried about them when they were alive and we still worry about them. We often think about them and we pray for them. When they were alive, they worried about us. They thought about us and they prayed for us. If there is any consciousness when life is over, they must miss us. They must still worry about us and think about us and pray for us. In the same way that we’re incurably sad about being separated from them, they must be sad about being separated from us. We trust that our loved ones are in a better place, as the priests tell us. On their side of the cosmic curtain, they must wonder what happened to us. They must hope that things turned out okay for us after they went to their eternal stations.

We say that we look forward to the day when we’ll be reunited with our families, but our loved ones must be terrified of what that day will bring.

#10. My neighbor has a beautiful golden retriever named Dolly. When we chat on the common ground of the development, Dolly lies down with her jaw flat on the grass. She’s the picture of perfect contentment. Probably, she’s thinking that, despite the rumors, a dog’s life isn’t so bad.

Usually, I sleep on my left side, with my temple sunk in the pillow. Dolly’s pose on the grass looked so relaxing, I gave it a try last night. I laid on the bed with my jaw flat on the mattress. It didn’t work. I wasn’t able to sleep a wink and I almost disconnected my Adam’s apple.

~ We say a person took his or her sweet time in accomplishing a task or in arriving at a particular place. What is it about time that makes it sweet? And is sweet really the right word? Sweet sounds like an euphemism for how vexed we feel when a person dawdles. The more accurate phrases for these circumstances are bitter time or sour time.

~ When it comes to drugs, there are uppers and there are downers. There are no in-betweeners.

#11. My computer is so sharp, it instantly corrects typos. So I typed dleted. Before I could correct the error, even before I noticed the error, the computer changed the word to deleted.

It would save us a lot of bother if something like this happened in our moral lives. If I say an inappropriate word, I would spontaneously self-correct and edit myself. If I neglected to say the appropriate word, I would immediately blurt out what I failed to say.

Similarly, if I failed to make an appropriate gesture—failing to give alms to a financially-challenged person, for example—I would instantly go in