Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2016-49

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Carol Dilworth writes about meeting Penelope Fitzgerald
• Don Henderson corrects a mistake in last week´s issue
• Tom Telfer forwards a story about the kindness of truckers
• Burke Dykes sends a short story with a moral
• Tom Telfer is enjoying his new hearing aids
• Catherine Nesbitt and Gerrit deLeeuw send these groaners
• Sites are suggested by Barbara Wear and Tom Telfer

Carol Dilworth recalls meeting a famous author:

PENELOPE FITZGERALD

In August 1993 I went on a William Morris Society of Canada tour of the U.K. On one of our final nights, U.K. Society members hosted the Canadians in their homes in small groups. Booker Prize winner Penelope Fitzgerald, an active member of the U.K. Society, offered to host two of the travellers. She did this because she had been so impressed with her treatment in Canada when she read at the Harbourfront Reading Series.

When the tour leader asked a few days before the event if anyone had a preference for whose home to visit, I immediately said that my friend and I would like to go to Penelope Fitzgerald´s. I recognized her name but couldn´t remember why. Of course when I remembered I realized that I hadn´t read a single word that she´d written. So we scoured second-hand bookshops and found a copy of The Bookshop, which we both memorized. My friend is a sculptor and a former history teacher and I don´t think she´d heard of Penelope Fitzgerald, although she is extremely well read. I certainly got an earful about volunteering us and this increased my nervousness. Neither of us had met someone this famous before.

On the appointed evening, one of the U.K. members picked us up at the university residence. She was also invited to dinner and was a good pre- and post-dinner travelling companion. She also helped keep the conversation going during the evening.

Penelope Fitzgerald lived in Highgate in a house with one of her daughters, the son-in-law, a small child and a new baby. Ms. Fitzgerald had her own quarters; we spent the evening in the daughter´s part of the house. The family continued its normal routine. The children were just going to bed and they spent a few minutes interacting with all of us. We were offered sherry and Ms. Fitzgerald was interested in where we´d been on our trip. I´m sure everyone realized how nervous we were and they were charming and very down to earth.

Neither of us wanted to seem like fawning idiots so we stayed away from personal questions and let the family lead the discussion. The daughter was a professor at the University of London (chemistry, I think). She was extremely youthful, like her mother. The son-in-law was an investment banker (prematurely grey is my recollection, although also extremely youthful) and he and I chatted during dinner about German financial statements. I think he may have been glad to have someone to talk to who spoke his language.

In eavesdropping on the other end of the table, I heard Ms. Fitzgerald use a line that she used in The Bookshop about not marrying men who come home for lunch. I smiled and hoped that she realized that I recognized it.

After dinner we all went into one of the other rooms to admire the William Morris wallpaper, and then we left.

There was at least one point where Ms. Fitzgerald and I made a personal contact. I have written a few textbooks and business publications, and someone (probably the lady who drove us to the event) asked me if I was working on something at the moment. Ms. Fitzgerald immediately jumped in and said that it was bad luck to talk about it before it was finished, and said that´s why she hadn´t asked me about my work. We had at least one other point in common and it probably came up in the conversation. Earlier that year, I had spent six weeks teaching in the former Soviet republic. On two weekends I went into Russia. I later read that Ms. Fitzgerald had a keen interest in Russia. I do too, and even more so at that time. It seems like fate that I had the privilege to meet her.

CORRESPONDENCE

Don Henderson sends this correction about a lost expression included in last week´s Spinner:

"See ya later, alligator!" was followed by "Not if I see you first, crocodile!" It should have been, "After a while, crocodile."

ED. NOTE: Don´s memory is obviously better than mine, which has a nasty habit of deserting me, though it sometimes returns when the occasion for using it has passed. If you see something in the Spinner that you have seen not too long ago, blame it on my faulty memory. Sometimes I forget to delete items for the newsletter when I publish them, and the next time I see them in the folder, I forget that I have already used them. Feel free to skip them. ;)

Tom Telfer forwards this story by Dan Anderson:

SOMETHING FOR STEVIE

I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally-handicapped employee and wasn´t sure I wanted one. I wasn´t sure how my customers would react to Stevie.

He was short, a little dumpy, with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of Down Syndrome. I wasn´t worried about most of my trucker customers because truckers don´t generally care who buses tables as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are homemade.

The four-wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned me: the mouthy college kids travelling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded "truck stop germ," the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him for the first few weeks. I shouldn´t have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my truck regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot.

After that, I really didn´t care what the rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old kid in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished. He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced flourish of his rag. If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right, and you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he met.

Over time , we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their Social Security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home. That´s why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work.

He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart problems at an early age, so this wasn´t unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.

A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine. Frannie, the head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news.

Marvin Ringers, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at the sight of this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table. Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron, and shot Marvin a withering look. He grinned. "OK, Frannie, what was that all about?" he asked. "We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay."

"I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?"

Frannie quickly told Marvin and the other two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie´s surgery, then sighed: "Yeah, I´m glad he is going to be OK," she said. "But I don´t know how he and his mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they´re barely getting by as it is."

Marvin nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn´t had time to round up a busboy to replace Stevie and really didn´t want to replace him, the girls were busing their own tables that day until we decided what to do.

After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand and a funny look on her face. "What´s up?" I asked.

"I didn´t get that table where Marvin and his friends were sitting cleared off after they left, and Pete and Tony were sitting there when I got back to clean it off," she said. "This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup." She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed "Something For Stevie."

"Pete asked me what that was all about," she said, "so I told him about Stevie and his mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this." She handed me another paper napkin that had "Something For Stevie" scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were tucked within its folds. Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply: "Truckers!"

That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work. His placement worker said he´s been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn´t matter at all that it was a holiday. He called 10 times in the past week, making sure we knew he was coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was in jeopardy. I arranged to have his mother bring him to work. I then met them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back.

Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn´t stop grinning as he pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and busing cart were waiting. "Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast," I said. I took him and his mother by their arms. "Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate your coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me!" I led them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room.

I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper napkins. "First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess," I said. I tried to sound stern.

Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had "Something for Stevie" printed on the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table. Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed or scrawled on it. I turned to his mother. "There´s more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems. Happy Thanksgiving."

Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and shouting, and there were a few tears, as well. But you know what´s funny? While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table.

Best worker I ever hired.

Plant a seed and watch it grow. At this point, you can bury this inspirational message or forward it fulfilling the need! If you shed a tear, hug yourself, because you are a compassionate person.

Burke Dykes sends this story about

FLYING WITH CHICKENS

Once, long ago, an Indian warrior found an eagle´s egg on a mountaintop, and he put it in the nest of a barnyard hen. When the time came, the chicks hatched, and so did the little eagle, who had been kept warm in the same brood.

The tiny eagle grew along with the hatchlings. After some time it learned to cluck and cackle like the chickens, to scratch the ground, to look for worms. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air onto the lower branches of the bushes, just like all the other chickens.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. Up there in the bright blue, this bird glided with graceful majesty among the wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle was awestruck. It turned to the nearest chicken and asked, "Who´s that?"

The chicken looked up and answered, "Oh, that´s the golden eagle, the king of the birds. He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth ... we´re chickens."

So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that´s what he thought he was.

Tom Telfer is enjoying his new

HEARING AIDS

After suffering for years in restaurants, now we can eat in blissful silence. Usually we had to listen to 15 or 20 conversations blasting in our ears.

The new hearing aids are controlled by settings on your smartphone. Slide the guide to block out all the background chatter. Also the smartphone will tell you which battery needs to be changed. If you happen to lose your aids, the location will be pinpointed on a map.

For watching television, a small box is attached which will carry the sound directly to you. A ConnectClip is paired with your mobile phone to give you perfect sound. Listen Up is my service provider.

Just in case you missed them, Catherine Nesbitt and Gerrit deLeeuw send these groaners:

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

I changed my iPod name to Titanic. It´s syncing now.

I tried to catch some fog. I mist.

When chemists die, they barium.

Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.

A soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

I know a guy who´s addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I´d never met herbivore.

I´m reading a book about anti-gravity. I can´t put it down.

I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

They told me I had type A blood, but it was a type-O.

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

PMS jokes aren´t funny, period.

Why were the Indians here first? They had reservations.

Class trip to the Coca-Cola factory. I hope there´s no pop quiz.

Energizer bunny arrested. Charged with battery.

I didn´t like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.

How do you make holy water? Boil the hell out of it!

Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn´t control her pupils?

When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble.

What does a clock do when it´s hungry? It goes back four seconds.

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me!

Broken pencils are pointless.

What do you call a dinosaur with a extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.

England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.

I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.

I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.

All the toilets in New York´s police stations have been stolen. Police have nothing to go on.

I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.

Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.

Velcro - what a rip off!

Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.

Venison for dinner? Oh deer!

Earthquake in Washington obviously government´s fault.

I used to think I was indecisive, but now I´m not so sure.

Be kind to your dentist. He has fillings, too.

SUGGESTER WEBSITES

Barbara Wear sends the URL for a video of jet-propelled airmen flying in a formation of jets:

Barbara also sends this link to a video of a cat burglar that steals from neighbours´ homes:

Ted Telfer sends the URL for a story and video of a backpack that could guarantee your safety in case of any emergency:

Tom also forwards this link to a video of a 747 blowing people off the Maho Beach on the Caribbean island of St. Martin:

Martin Harkens is a 60-year-old Dutch baker, whose daughter secretly enlisted him to appear on Holland´s Got Talent, which he eventually won in 2010:

In this TED talk, Courtney Martin talks about the new American dream, and the fact that the majority of parents don´t think their kids will be better off than they were:

To sign an open letter from the world to President-elect Donald Trump which will run as a full-page ad in major papers and project onto Trump Tower in New York, click on

Puppies as young as four weeks old are opening doors, turning on lights, delivering packages and more as they train to become service dogs for people with disabilities through Puppy Prodigies Neo-natal & Early Learning Program:

I haven´t thought of New Zealand as having mountains and heavy snows, but this video shows spectacular footage of a Kiwirail train plowing a route through Arthur´s Pass:

Here are ways to freeze and use lemons in your cooking:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary," which changes daily, go to