Word count: 903 | Reading time: 4 min read
Pretzel Logic
Never one to fret too much about anything, my old buddy Bill didn’t let the crash of Flight 587, or a frantic call from his wife begging him not to get on his own flight, stop him from coming to Philly for a business trip.
Bill and I go way back, to our wild days of debauchery at Ithaca College, and while we have mellowed over the years, it was certainly good to hear his voice, nine hours after the latest disaster to befall the Rockaways, a neighborhood where my dad used to teach.
“Howie,” he said, via his cell phone. “What are you doing, I’m starving.”
Just like the good old days.
Neither rain nor snow nor a splitting hangover nor falling airplanes could keep Bill from his appointed round with a thick steak and a tumbler of good scotch.
A couple of decades ago, Bill and I stood on the porch of my Ithaca hovel, which would later be destroyed in a drunken rampage by the combined forces of the football and rugby teams, and argued about the merits of Israeli warplanes taking out an Iraqi nuclear plant.
Bill was aghast, wondering how the Israelis could be so arrogant.
Though often at odds with Israeli policies, I argued that, well, Saddam is the last guy I want to see with nukes.
A couple of months ago, when the planes hit the World Trade Center, I remembered our little debate.
As we sat in the hotel bar, watching CNN’s ceaseless coverage of the American Airlines Airbus A300 disaster, which took more than 260 lives, Bill told me about a woman at the airport ticket counter who was completely distraught.
“I asked her what was wrong,” Bill said. “She told me that she knew people on the flight.”
We drank our beers, listened some more to retired airline “experts” postulating on all the permutations of what may have gone wrong, and decided it was time to eat.
Being an out-of-towner, Bill wondered about Bookbinders.
Explaining that it was roughly the equivalent of the Union Oyster House in Boston, where we used to live, I managed to change Bill’s mind and, being that this was on his dime, he opted for Smith & Wollensky. Who was I to argue?
After some good food, good booze and good talk of things that were and things that shall be, we decided that a long walk in the brisk November air was the best way to digest all that dead cow and single malt.
The walk allowed me to play tour guide and show off all the things I have learned since coming to this town from New Haven back in 1991, my first night of work the election night that gave Philadelphia Ed Rendell as mayor.
Here was Rittenhouse Square, just over there was the venerable Pen & Pencil, the nation’s oldest press club, and right there was Thomas Jefferson University and its hospital, where I once deposited an appendix, the biggest the doctor had ever seen.
As we headed down Locust, into Washington Square, I told Bill he had to see the eternal flame, which provides light for “those who died in darkness.”
Of course, before we got there, I joked that, this being Philly, the damn flame was probably out. Even if it was Veterans Day.
“Oh, Philly’s not so bad,” Bill said, leading me to explain that in Philadelphia, the locals suffer from a severe case of self-loathing.
Sure enough, though, as we arrived at the memorial to the unknown Revolutionary War soldiers, the flame was out.
“See?” I told Bill. “Hey, you got any matches?”
At first, he looked at me like I was crazy. But, fortunately, neither Bill nor I smoke anymore, so we never found out what damage we could wreak by lighting the unlit, uneternal flame.
The next day I called the Fairmount Park Commission (FPC), which is overseeing Washington Square, currently being renovated, until it’s turned over to the National Park Service sometime in the next year.
According to FPC spokesman Tom Doyle, the flame should have been lit by now, “but there was a mix-up.”
Doyle said that a gas valve had been installed and should have been working, but there were problems and “it had to be reordered.”
Doyle added that he was not sure when the flame might once again become eternalized and referred me to project engineer Tom Klein. I tried calling Klein, to no avail.
No matter what the reason for it being out, I hope the flame comes on again and soon.
This is a dark world and getting darker every day.
Already, stories are filtering out of Mazar-e Sharif about how our good friends, the Northern Alliance, may have massacred unarmed Taliban troops. And let’s not forget that we might be throwing out the Constitution with the anti-terror bathwater, what with provisions of the new U.S.A. Patriot Act possibly allowing illegal searches conducted by intelligence agencies to be used by police, all in the name of national security. And for “terrorists” to be tried by military tribunals, not civilian courts.
Come on, keepers of the eternal flame, do what it takes to turn it back on. In times like these, we need all the light we can get.
And Bill, the next time you come to town, bring a match.
