Laid Bare: Essays and Observations, Judson, Tom [best self help books to read .TXT] 📗

We made a stop at the hardware store to try to find light bulbs for some lamps Pat and Sop had brought from Holland.  The hardware store is tiny by American standards but is the only game in town on Saba.  I noticed a lot of the items on the shelves are the Walmart store brand, Home Goods.  But while Sabans may be “living better,” they are definitely not “paying less.”  A tube of silicone caulk?  Ten dollars.  An eight foot pressure-treated 2x4?  Well, that’ll set you back a cool twelve bucks.  In the grocery store eight dollars and fifteen cents buys you a tin of Spam.  Since literally everything on the island has to be brought in, the markups are breathtaking.

It turned out Patrick’s lamps were fitted with a particular European-size socket.  The only option? Travel to St. Maarten—to the French side—and find them there.  So the lamps will remain dark until enough things are needed to warrant a trip over.  (Again, like the old west.)

After the hardware store we had to stop for gas.  The gas station is just outside the port down the hill from The Bottom.  The Bottom is something of a misnomer as the road from there to the port drops precipitously.  Steep, curvy and constantly threatened with huge boulders that careen down the mountain every now and then.

This week Saba is experiencing one of its periodic gas shortages, the reason for which I couldn’t quite glean, but it meant that one had to wait in line at the gas station and each car was allowed about seven dollars worth of fuel.  Until next week.  The needle barely moved on the gas gauge, so driving will be kept to a minimum for a while.

The port was hopping; the cargo ship was still in its berth, almost completely unloaded.  Cars and small trucks were parked here and there along the quay while their owners caught up with the news since last Wednesday.  I witnessed a lot of back-slapping and good-natured ribbing along with some late-morning beer guzzling between unloaded pallets of goods.  The men then took their turns retrieving their orders. The atmosphere here—with its combination of salt water and diesel fumes and workers calling to one another from the pier to the ship—brought to mind less an old western and more one of those steamy melodramas from M-G-M about characters getting into each other’s way and each other’s beds in romantic, remote outposts.  “Red Dust,” specifically.  Griffin, the man in charge, could have been Clark Gable had he been wearing a pith helmet and jodhpurs.

Wielding a clipboard and an authoritative air, he checked the bill of lading and told Patrick the butter he had ordered was in the cooled container on the right-hand side of the ship.  Sure, we could just go ahead and get it ourselves.  (Imagine that in liability-crazed America!) We climbed onto the ship’s deck, dodged a couple of forklifts and walked over to the open door of the mammoth metal box.  There at the end of the empty container sat one lonely little parcel:  a taped-up cardboard box which originally held packages of Oreos with a hand-written sign taped to it:  “El Momo Cottages.”  In a movie, the image would have been accompanied by a clanging metal echo. We retrieved the butter and hopped back onto the pier.

The other delivery we went to get—a new toaster—was buried somewhere on a pallet but we were on the clock and had to get back to make sure Patrick was there to greet the 11 AM arrivals.  So Griffin offered to bring it up to Windwardside with him when his work was done.  (As it happens, I just saw him drive by the café where I’m writing this so I may stop by and see if I can get it myself.)

We headed back up The Road, dodging parked cars, oncoming traffic and even wild goats, and made it back to El Momo ahead of the new guests.

I always loved those “remote outpost,” “tramp steamer,” “isolated rubber plantation” black-and-white potboilers I used to watch on the Million Dollar Movie when I was a kid (all of which seem to have featured Thomas Mitchell.)  Even then I suspected the situations and locales were overly romanticized and the characters too broadly drawn.

After just one week on Saba I’m not so sure.

HOUSES OF WORSHIP

There is a house in Pennsylvania. Discreetly placed in the forested hills at the western edge of the state, this house was conceived to be one with its environment while simultaneously enhancing its surroundings. It was built as a rarefied place where its owner could spend a few days unencumbered by the pressures of his life as a successful businessman. A house of serenity, this house.

There is another house in Missouri. Standing on the sere, open plains at the western edge of the state this house was not intended to blend into its setting. It was meant to be seen from afar as a beacon for those coming to pay homage to the building itself, and to the cultural phenomenon that financed it. A house of worship, this house.

As might be expected, both houses were conceived and built by men of determination and conviction. Their work was not something they chose to do; they were compelled by forces greater than they. One man by the gods of art and nature, the other by God himself.

Even the names of these buildings summon up ethereal, yet vivid, pictures when spoken aloud.

“Fallingwater”. Images of a never-ceasing cascade of bountiful water come rushing into one’s head; changing with the seasons, yet immutable in its purpose. Much as the water rushes over the exposed Pennsylvania schist, giving the house its name.

The other house is more… well, it’s kind of… Alas, my craft fails me when I try to describe this other place. So, I’ll let its name speak for itself: “The Precious Moments Chapel”.