Tar-zen's Day Off - Part II

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

Last time on Philosophy for a Hungry Planet:  “Of course, the festival itself and all that the trip entailed would’ve made my imaginary stalker proud, and I would definitely have been someone worth following on that day and maybe even for several days before that.  But that, Dear Readers, is a whole other story…”

And now, Part II of “Tar-Zen’s Day Off”…

You really have to wonder sometimes what makes people want to go on an adventure.  It’s the same sort of thing, I guess, that makes little kids want to stuff crayons up their noses or that makes usually rational adults decide to remodel their kitchens even though they know absolutely nothing about home improvement.  There’s something sort of silly and maybe even downright stupid about it, and one part of your brain knows it.  So, while you’re sizing up the difference between how big a crayon is and how big your nostrils are or peeling up perfectly good vinyl flooring just because you’ve got the power tools to do it, one part of your brain is going, “What the hell?” 

But another part of your brain is thinking about how you’ll be the envy of every kid in the second grade when you show up with crayons hanging out of your face or how jealous your new kitchen floor is going to make the people next door.  And that part of your brain is going, “What the hell!”  It’s a challenge.  It’s an adventure.  And most people just can’t walk away from either.  That’s what makes humanity great.  It’s also what keeps pediatricians and general contractors all over the world in business.

My whole adventure in Toledo started one day on Twitter when Jennifer Batten said that she wanted a tornado machine.  She put out a tweet that gave a link to a piece of art a guy had created that was basically a tornado chamber and wrote, “If you loved me, you’d buy this for me.  K?”  And I thought that was funny.  But more than that, I thought it was cheeky.  And I like a little cheek in a person. So, I replied to it and said “I can’t afford to love you.  How much art is involved for just a general sense of fondness?”  And then, much to my surprise, she tweeted back, “Hmmm…maybe just a vintage pez dispenser : ).”  So right then and there, I decided that when I went to Toledo to see Jennifer Batten play, I would give her a vintage Pez dispenser.  It would be an adventure. And it would be less trouble than remodeling a kitchen…and far less painful than the crayon thing.

Now, I was never that into Pez heads as a kid because they just weren’t that big in my neighborhood.  And besides, I was a SweeTart devotee.  My favorite was the giant SweeTart.  It was about the size of a hockey puck and took just about as long to gnaw through.  I mean, eating one of those things was a project.  By the time you were finished, your tongue was so swollen that you could hardly speak and several of your teeth were usually loose.  But, God, they were good.  I’d eat little SweeTarts if I couldn’t get a giant one, and failing that, I went for Smarties.  So, I never knew too much about Pez.  They just didn’t register on my candy radar.

But if there’s one thing I love to do, it’s find things.  In fact, sometimes I even lose things on purpose just so I can find them later.  And I’m particularly good at finding old things because there are only two rules to doing it:  know what you’re looking for, and know where to look.  But even beyond that, I was raised on shopping.  It’s in my blood.  The first book I learned to read was called Ann Likes Red, and it was about a little girl who goes shopping for a complete outfit—dress, shoes, hat, gloves, and purse.  I myself felt no connection whatsoever to the character, but I was totally into the story.  The only part I didn’t like was that Ann’s mother was apparently OK with paying retail, and in my family, that was like being OK with committing a felony.

Anyway, step one was to learn everything I could about vintage Pez stuff.  I figured that would take about an hour.  I figured wrong.  The sheer amount of information available on collecting Pez dispensers is mind-boggling.  I mean, it’s like a shadow industry.  It’s like people are dealing them out of the backs of unmarked vans in alleys all over the country, and I wouldn’t be surprised if trading in vintage Pez dispensers is propping up puppet governments all over the world.  And everything I read pretty much boiled down to one thing:  there are a few things you can look at, but dating Pez heads is really hard (and anyone who has ever dated a Pez head will back me up on this…but I digress).  Anyway, I finally got a decent idea of what I was looking for, so I turned to my local network of vintage stores and dove in.

Now, one of the other, lesser-known secrets of effective shopping is knowing who to be when you walk into a store.  People always say that you should just be yourself in life, and as a general rule, I agree with that.  You should be yourself.  You just shouldn’t do it all the time.  As I’ve learned from watching my parents work over pawn shop dealers and outsmart used car salesmen through the years, when you’re awash in the world of the previously-owned, being your honest, genuine, trusting little milquetoast self isn’t going to get you anything but screwed.  You have to be whoever you need to be if you want to get the best deal.

My father, of course, excels at implying that he’s somehow connected to the Mafia or is part of some secret government agency, but when I go into an antique and collectibles store, I turn into Omar Shariff in Lawrence of Arabia.  I’m not exactly sure why.  It probably has something to do with the lighting.  But I become dark and swarthy and mysteriously handsome.  I may even grow a mustache.  I’ve never actually checked.  But above all else, I become remarkably and almost magically shrewd.  I slice through rows of collectible merchandise, my black robes fluttering behind me.  I cut through stacks of vintage clutter, my eyes keen to the best deals.  I am, without a doubt, the courageous leader of the Bedouins, capable of magnificent and heroic feats of commerce.   I am a shopping force to be reckoned with, a master at the art of haggling, a whirlwind of consumer savvy, a woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman…no, wait a sec, that’s Victor/Victoria. 

Anyway, there were no vintage Pez heads to be found in any of my usual stores.  In fact, there were no vintage Pez heads to be found in my whole freakin’ town.  So, I may have been beloved as the brave leader of the Bedouin nation, but I was completely and utterly denied as a Pez collector.  And yet, I refused to give up because if there is one thing I know for sure about finding vintage stuff, it’s that in the end, it’s a lot like setting up the perfect one-night stand:  you have to know what you’re after and have a good idea of where you might be able to get it, but ultimately, it all just comes down to luck and dogged persistence.  

So, at 5:15 pm on the day before I was supposed to go to Toledo, I found myself 42 miles from home, standing in front of the pearly gates of collectors’ heaven:  The Heart of Ohio Antique Mall.  I didn’t actually fall to my knees and call out to God, but it would’ve been appropriate.  The Heart of Ohio is one of the biggest antique malls in the United States, and it’s the mother ship to collectors across the Midwest.  And it’s also a lot like a bordello—you’ll find what you’re looking for, but you’ll pay retail for it.

Anyway, I quickly realized that being Omar Shariff would be of no use whatsoever in that situation.  I mean, becoming dark and swarthy and mysteriously handsome just isn’t all that helpful when you’re a woman in a hurry. What I needed was Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator, a ruthless shopping machine perfectly willing and able to push small children and old people out of the way if necessary.  I also mixed in a little Jim and Tammy Bakker and managed to convert three store employees to my search using nothing but a detailed description of the beauty of my vision and the promise of the glory that would await us all when we found a vintage Pez head.  If I had tried a little harder, I probably could’ve gotten them to give me all their money, too.

By the time they closed the store at 6:00 pm, my flock and I had managed to look in all of the 350 showcases in the place.  We had covered most all of the booths, and in the end, there were seven Pez dispensers.  Seven.  Out of 116,000 square feet of stuff. Five of them weren’t really vintage, so that left me with an easy choice between just two.  I picked the one that I thought was Porky Pig since it was in the best shape, but I have to admit that he was kind of a strange looking Porky Pig.  He had some seriously pronounced cheekbones, and his ears were slanted back and kind of pointed.  He actually looked sort of Vulcan and really just ever so slightly evil.  But he was a vintage Pez.  Mission complete.  Zero casualties.  It was everything a cyborg shopper could hope for.

And yet, one thing about it all didn’t seem quite right.  That Pez dispenser was just too clean.  Now, there are very few times in life when you actually want things to be dirty.  I mean, when you’re doing laundry, you don’t want the clothes to be crusty and mildew-ridden.  Just that kind of “worn once” feeling will do.  And when you take a shower, you don’t want to rinse yourself off and see water that looks like it came out of a drainage ditch pouring off your body.  Most people don’t ever want to be that dirty.  In fact, I think most of the cleaning we do is really about feeling like we’re restoring order to chaos, and you don’t need to have to remove a layer of visible filth do that.

But when it comes to old stuff, a little dirt isn’t such a bad thing.  You expect a little old dust pile-up in the crevices.  You aren’t surprised by a slightly sticky feeling.  That stuff is like your guarantee of aged-ness.  You don’t want to find it on old people, but you do want to see it on old stuff.  So, having a clean Pez dispenser made me more than a little paranoid.

Anyway, I ended up finding out a couple of things about that Pez head.  First, it was made sometime in the late 1960s, so it was vintage, despite how clean it was.  And it wasn’t Porky Pig.  It was Practical Pig from The Three Little Piggies.  He was the responsible pig in the bunch who always ended up having to make some sort of device to trick the Big Bad Wolf and rescue Fiddler Pig and Fifer Pig, both of whom were just kind of like your basic stoner pigs—not real smart but really into having a good time.  So, it always fell to Practical Pig to save the day, which he inevitably did through wit, ingenuity, and quite often, sheer guile.  For a barnyard animal, he was pretty impressive.

Unfortunately, Practical Pig should’ve had a hat.  And he didn’t.  And that was a problem.  I was sure that I would stumble on one eventually, but unfortunately, I didn’t have “eventually” to work with.  I was leaving for Toledo early the next morning.  And as I sat in front of my computer searching for every antique store between my house and Toledo that would open early enough for me to go there before the guitar festival, I realized that this had become more than just an adventure.  This had become a quest.

Of course, when you really stop to think about it, pretty much all good adventures involve a quest.  And it’s usually a quest for an object that isn’t all that important in and of itself.  I mean, to get back to Kansas, Dorothy has to bring the Wizard of Oz the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West.  That’s her quest.  She has to go get a broom.  If I was the Wizard of Oz, I would’ve asked for something better, like maybe that huge crystal ball the witch has.  You could probably get some serious cash for that on Ebay.   And if I was Dorothy, I would’ve just gone to the Emerald City Costco and bought a broom.  I mean, seriously, how would the Wizard ever know?  He doesn’t do his own shopping.  He never leaves his…wizard room.

Anyway, I found myself at 10:15 am on the morning of the guitar festival standing outside Jeffrey’s Antique Gallery in Findlay, Ohio, 45 minutes away from Toledo.  Jeffrey’s is the sister store to the Heart of Ohio, and even though it’s not quite as big as the mother ship, it was the biggest place between my house and Toledo.  It seemed like my best shot at either finding Practical Pig’s hat or a completely different vintage Pez head. 

I was meeting a friend there, and that was a good thing.  A trusty companion is an essential element in a good quest because if you go out questing on your own for too long, you tend to get a little weird.  After all, a quest is really about getting completely obsessed with finding a somewhat trivial object, and at a certain point, you need someone who hasn’t been sucked into your quest to pull you out of it.  You need to have a voice of reason so that you can be as unreasonable as you have to be to go on a quest in the first place.  Without a trusty companion, you’re pretty much working without a net.

Of course, it doesn’t always work even if you do have a good, rational companion.  I mean, look at Moby Dick.  Starbuck spends the whole novel saying, “Look, Ahab, let’s just catch some whales and go home.  We don’t need to be chasing that white one all over hell and back.”  And you’d really think that Ahab would’ve listened to him considering that Moby Dick had already bitten off his leg.  You’d just think Ahab would’ve learned not to mess with that whale.  But of course, Ahab won’t listen, and he ends up getting pretty much everybody killed.

But think about how different the story would’ve been if Starbuck had said, “Look, enough with this white whale thing already.  Do you not get that this fish is crazy?” and Ahab had said, “You’re right.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  That bastard whale already ate my leg.  Let’s just go home.”  It would’ve been a very different novel if Ahab had only listened to his companion.  True, it wouldn’t be great literature, and no one would’ve had occasion to name an entire chain of coffee stores after the first mate, but at least the story would’ve had a happy ending.

Of course, in contemporary times, it seems like the trusty companion has fared a little better.  Then again, maybe not.  I mean, Goose is the voice of reason in Top Gun on Maverick’s insane quest to reclaim his family’s honor (which is kind of worthless since both his parents are dead and he himself has no children), and Maverick gets him killed.  And then, of course, in Road House, Sam Elliot shows up as the trusty companion/mentor to Patrick Swayze, who is hell-bent on using his clout as a bouncer to bring true justice to some dipstick town of about 30 people…and Patrick Swayze gets him killed.  So, maybe the moral of the story here is that the next time someone offers you a job as a trusty companion, you might want to think twice before you take it.

Anyway, I don’t think my friend had thought much about any of these issues because she agreed to meet me at Jeffrey’s Antiques and to go along on the final leg of the quest.  And besides, I had no intention of ejecting her out of a fighter jet even if the quest did go bad.  I mean, the woman has a family, for God’s sake.  The only thing I wish is that we would’ve at least had some questing knight gear.  But these days with all the heightened security around, no one is likely to let two women in metal helmets with swords pass without at least some suspicion.  And beyond that, shopping in a suit of armor is harder than you might think.

At any rate, I had already gone into the store and converted at least one employee to my quest before my friend arrived.  And as I was standing outside making a mental note to myself to start a ministry when I got home, she pulled up, and our quest began.  And I have to say that as trusty quest companions go, she was really quite excellent, especially given the relative amount of danger she’d put herself in just by taking the job.

Jeffrey’s itself isn’t exactly the easiest store to navigate around in, and most antique malls are like that.  In a way, they’re disorienting like casinos are, but they’re not that way on purpose.  It’s just the enormous amount of stuff in every booth that makes it hard to take it all in.  But I have to admit that my friend was even more diligent than I was when it came to looking through things.  I was on hyper-quest by then.  I had gotten to the point where I actually believed that if there was a vintage Pez dispenser in that place, it would call to me.  I would be able to smell it from 50 feet away.  I would hear tiny squeals coming from its tiny Pez head.  So, you know, I had kind of lost my perspective.  I was just using The Force at that point.  But my trusty companion just kept moving along at a steady pace through the store while I attempted to commune with the great Pez god in the sky.

After we’d looked through every booth there, we had found only one Pez dispenser in the entire store.  It was a Santa Claus, and it wasn’t as old as the one I already had.  So, I started to get a little dejected.  And it was then that my trusty companion did what the best trusty companions do:  she reminded me that the object of the quest didn’t need to be perfect.  I already had a vintage Pez head, and as she saw it, “That’s gotta get you something.”  Translation:  enough with the white whale already.  And she was right.  After all, it wasn’t like Jennifer Batten was holding my mother hostage and was going cut off her fingers unless I delivered an absolutely perfect vintage Pez dispenser.  I mean, the whole adventure started with a tweet, not a ransom note.  And I have to hand it to my friend—she was the voice of reason when I needed one.

As my trusty companion and I got into my car and continued our trek to Toledo, I realized that in an odd sort of way, the hatless Practical Pig kind of was the perfect Pez head to give to Jennifer Batten.  After all, besides just playing the guitar and writing music, she also does glass art and steampunk sculpture.  And she made most of the films that go with her songs.  All in all, she’s a rather handy person, and if there was someone who really could make a cool hat for Practical Pig, it would be her.  So, I guess that in the end, my quest had worked out in just the way that it should have.  And maybe that’s why people go on adventures in the first place—just to see how things are going to turn out.  In my case, things had really had turned out well, and at that point, all I had left to do was to walk up to Jennifer Batten, look her straight in the eye, and say, “Here’s your vintage Pez dispenser.”  And if I could’ve just done that, it would’ve been great.  But that, of course, Dear Readers, is a whole other story…

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy. 

© R. Rissler, 2011.  All rights reserved.