Wednesday, 10/2/2019 9:17 am -- I'm at the Greene Grape in Fort Greene. Yesterday, I visited my dad in Philly: headed out at 9 in the morning, BQE to the Verrazzano bridge to the Goethels bridge, then down the Jersey turnpike for a straight shot. About two hours in, I missed my turn for some bridge within the last 16 miles because of a phone call from spider. Strangely, on each of the 3 times I've spoken with him on the phone (from the car) within the last month, I've missed an important GPS driving direction which resulted in a considerable lengthening of my trip.
I pulled up to my dad's apartment complex around 11:30 am and saw him standing outside waiting for me on the grass. He was wearing blue shorts, a short sleeve button down shirt, tall white socks, sneakers, and a white golf hat. He's on insulin now, and looks about 5 pounds heavier for it. He took a couple minutes to explain the pen device he uses to inject himself. It has an extremely fine needle. I also had the opportunity to check out his apartment. A strange smell hung in the air that reminded me of every single car he ever owned - a mix of grease, sawdust, evaporated gasoline, styrofoam coffee cups, tiny amounts of dogshit, and the metal smell of assorted screws, nails, and fasteners. If it were possible for an automobile to have a cardboard butthole, I imagine it would have an odor like the one in my dad's apartment.
The Folcroft Diner
Our first stop was lunch at the Folcroft diner. When we arrived, we were greeted by a tall semi-athletic looking college age white kid with chubby thighs. He gave me a big smile, picked up a couple menus, and held up two fingers."You look like a soccer player. You play soccer?"I smiled, and explained that I do not play soccer. He led us to a nice booth by the window. We each had a hamburger deluxe. He ate everything on his plate - even the shitty little ramekin of coleslaw. When he does this, he uses his butter knife to scrape out all of the cabbage and carrots, then picks up the container, taps it a few times, then tilts it up to his mouth to drink whatever runny mayonnaise slurry is left in there. I'm not quite as enthusiastic as he is about finishing all of my food, but I certainly recognize why I am the way I am. My daughters are occasionally grossed out by how I will throw together any old random assortment of half-eaten food morsels, and shovel them into my mouth without much thought to how they were intended to be combined in the first place. It all winds up in the same place.
Swarthmore
After lunch, we headed 5 miles away toward Swarthmore Avenue to have a quick look around the neighborhood. I was casually browsing through real estate listings in that area, and was curious to see if the neighborhood of Swarthmore mirrored the kind of hoity-toity'ism of its prestigious and highly selective liberal arts college. It was very leafy and waspy and pastoral. Lots of running ivy along brick walls, tall trees, and the sorts of cars you'd expect to see: old model Jaguars, Volvos, Saabs, an occasional Alfa Romeo (vintage of course), and several newer model Subarus. I have a friend who believes that right around 1996, some evil genius figured out how to embed subliminal messages into the design of the Subaru that only affects lesbians."Hey dad, could you stop at a convenience store so I could pick up a bottle of water?"We wound up going to a prepared foot market where I got a 24 oz bottle of some kind of spring water for $3.29. My dad signaled his disapproval in his usual way.
"Three dollars and fifty cents? For that kind of money, I'd rather drink from a puddle of mud."
John Heinz Wildlife Refuge
After our little tour of Swarthmore, we headed to the Heinz wildlife refuge, and walked the 3.2 mile loop. Before we started, my dad handed me some tick and mosquito repellant, which I gladly applied to my ankles, arms, and neck. During the course of walking, we saw a turtle, several egrets, and 2 bald eagles. We stopped several times to sit on the benches, and when we did, I asked him about the tank farm in Korea and the Yong-Nam chemical company. He explained to me that that company was owned and operated by KOCO.
"Cocoa?" I asked. "Like chocolate powder? What is with that name?"
"No, no. Korean Oil Corporation."Later, I learned that this company is now referred to by name as the Korean National Oil Corporation. Back in the 70's though, the soldiers all called it KOCO. He also threw in some random details about how good the Germans were about implementing a completely automated system of storage tank measurements. I was stunned that in this day and age, full automation is not standardized across the board; that in many facilities, if you want to take a sample, or even know how much crude oil is in the tank, you have to climb up a fucking ladder, and drop something down into the liquid!
Wendy's and Dunkin Donuts
Many of my dad's friends are right on the edge of being mistaken for indigent or just plain bums. Take Steve for instance. He doesn't have a colon. He's about 60 years old, survives off of food stamps and social security. He makes extra money by bartering his food stamps in exchange for cash. So, if you wanted 4 loaves of bread for $1.99 each, he'd use his food stamps to buy them, then you'd give him $5 cash for the bread. That's how it worked. He asked my dad if he wanted in. My dad ran it by me a year ago - for a risk assessment. I told him the chances of being busted for such a low level scam was next to zero, but to nevertheless steer clear of Steve and any other of his hair-brained schemes. Steve was at Dunkin Donuts with 2 friends when we walked in. There was a 50'ish completely average looking slightly heavy black dude. Next to Steve, this guy looked like he could emcee the Academy Awards. Objectively, he was thoroughly unremarkable: a carbon copy of your run-of-the-mill ethnic IT guy with a pretty nice head of hair and good teeth.
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