Reporters would telephone in stories to writers wearing headphones, and the writers would stencil the stories on mimeograph sheets. The stories were mimeographed and stuffed into the brass and velvet cartridges which the pneumatic tubes ate. The very toughest reporters and writers were women who had taken over the jobs of men who'd gone to war.
And the first story I covered I had to dictate over the telephone to one of those beastly girls. It was about a young veteran who had taken a job running an old-fashioned elevator in an office building. The elevator door on the first floor was ornamental iron lace. Iron ivy snaked in and out of the holes. There was an iron twig and two iron lovebird perched upon it.
The veteran decided to take his car into the basement, and he closed the door and started down, but his wedding ring was caught in all the ornaments. So he was hoisted into the air and the floor of the car went down, dropped out from under him, and the top of the car squashed him. So it goes.
So I phoned this in, and the woman who was going to cut the stencil asked me, "What did his wife say?"
"She doesn't know yet," I said. "It just happened."
"Call her up and get a statement."
"What?"
"Tell her you're Captain Finn of the Police Department. Say you have some sad news. Give her the news, and see what she says."
So I did. She said about what you would expect her to say. There was a baby. And so on.
When I got back to the office, the woman writer asked me, just for her own information, what the squashed guy had looked like when he was squashed.
I told her.
"Did it bother you?" she said. She was eating a Three Musketeers Candy Bar.
"Heck no, Nancy," I said. "I've seen lots worse than that in the war."
Vonnegut is young, just returned from the war for a few years, studying anthropology and working as a journalist. Since he's working the crime beat, he's exposed to a lot of gruesome scenes, as this passage verifies. Yet, because of his war experiences, he seems anesthetized to the blood and violence. Unfazed. Like he has a war hangover.
Welcome to the day after Christmas. I woke up this morning, after a good eight hours of sleep, still feeling heavy and exhausted. I shuffled to the bathroom at around 7 a.m., did my business, and flushed the toilet. The water in the bowl went down and didn't come back up. I went to the bathroom sink, turned the cold water handle. Nothing came out. Ditto in the bathtub and kitchen.
My water line was frozen. So, at around 7:45 a.m., I was on the phone with the Public Works Department, listening to a voice on the other end tell me I needed to get a hairdryer, find where the water came into my house, and try to thaw the pipe. I sat at my kitchen table for a second and then said, "Yeah, that's not going to happen. Could you please send somebody out?"
Two-and-a-half hours later, two men in yellow reflective coats were in the crawlspace under my house, breaths fogging the air, using a heat gun to get the water flowing. After twenty minutes, there were drips. Then a trickle. Then a steady, thick stream.
So, water was restored in my house about 10 a.m. And I was still feeling heavy and exhausted. Vonnegut has a war hangover. I have a Christmas hangover. It feels like I'm not going to recover until after New Year's. This cold snap (40-below-zero wind chills last night) is supposed to last a couple more days. Hopefully, my water lines will remain ice-free until it passes.
My daughter is at home with her boyfriend. I am at my parents' house with my son, who is currently having a mini-breakdown because his Nintendo Switch, which he received yesterday from Santa, isn't behaving properly. My wife is almost asleep on the couch, and I am contemplating my return to work tomorrow morning with more than a little dread.
Basically, it's a typical day-after-Christmas day.
Saint Marty is thankful for running water this afternoon.
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