Suspenders

I take rusty metal to the recycling yard. It is a staging ground for age to revert to youth. Padnos, the old Jew, stands outside the junkyard’s office door and smiles at the proceedings, as if he were Ganesh, big-bellied, with floppy ears which grow larger and hairier each year.

He goes to synagogue on the Sabbath. When the rabbi says: Contribute to the building fund, Padnos pulls out his checkbook and, in sloppy cursive, writes out a check. When the rabbi says: Don’t intermarry, Padnos snaps his suspenders smugly because he married a Jewess who bore him six children and they are all Jews, like him, and work in the junkyard, processing the old and unwanted.

This is the funeral home for junk, Padnos says, so let’s say a prayer. Let’s say a prayer over rust, our friend and enemy. Let’s say a prayer for rust that has insomnia even worse than me. I haven’t slept since 1956—don’t look so concerned—it’s a joke… sort of.

On the Fourth of July, I scored off the Frito-Lay truck, bags and bags of chips. I was faster than Padnos, who was handing out samples. He hadn’t slept since 1956. He fancied himself a local celebrity, but few recognized him. He had grocery bags under his eyes, filled with potato chips. His hands were full of potato chips.

My hands flew like three-card monte. Padnos was a potato, I was a potato slicer.

Man cannot live on chips alone. I ran to the House of Flavors truck. Ice cream flowed out, as on an I Love Lucy production line. We were all jolly as we mind-melded with obesity. Live long and prosper, we told each other, though we knew we would do neither.

More of us are wearing suspenders, I notice. More massage therapists are charging by the pound. It’s cynical and callous, but they do it anyway. Like the Gold Rush, any one of them can get rich off one vein.