Sky Hooks

I once asked my Grandfather how skyscrapers were constructed, assuming he would know. ?“Why, didn’t you know, Padnah??‘Sky hooks’ indeed!

It makes you think, though.?We ‘hitch our dreams to a star,’ don’t we??That is the expression.?We used to say of someone we admired beyond words, ‘She just ‘hung the moon.’?At least in the somewhat retro world where I come from we did.??But hung it on what??Oh, on our love, honor and admiration for the other that is beyond words, so that all that is left is an absurd expression, hanging moons and buildings suspended by hooks in the sky, hooks in the heavens, beyond our grasp in another realm entirely.

I spent some time today in that other realm, and I thought I was just taking the bus to Walmart.?It was my first visit to China’s massive effort to raise our standard of living here since I had shopped at the Walmart Supercenter in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, nearly a year ago.?The WRTA No. 1 took me down Providence Street to Highway 146 and Tobias Boland Way, and there I was in the twinkling of an eye.?The first order of business was to find a thank-you plant in the Garden Center, an exotic flowering plant from South America with blooms the exact color favored by my friend and her mother. Then it was on to the main store for a very few but hard-to-find sundries and a few groceries as well.?A gentlemen with the store staff stopped his sweeping to direct me to the little bits of hardware I needed, and another gentleman in the grocery section to the ultra-heated milk that was shelved so high that anyone shorter than I would not see the little boxes let alone be able to reach them.?He apologized, as though it were his fault.?Ready for check-out, I was served by a sweet lady wearing a lovely hijab and no mask.?With all the sense they still make and with all they did t curb the contagion of the pandemic, it is so good to see people's full faces, and even shale their hands. When my checker saw my potted plant--or rather my plant with its intended pot and saucer--she exclaimed and took great care to bag it in such a way that it had a fighting chance of making it home with me in one piece.?It did.?She told the next customer in line that he would be her last for the day.?I told him he was a lucky man, and she smiled.

Then I enjoyed waiting for not the No. 1, which was apparently taking a break somewhere, but the No.11 (the second No. 11, not the first one as I was warned by a fellow shopper-passenger).?I soon began speaking Spanglish with the lady who rescued me from ending up somewhere other than home and with a gentleman, both of them from the Dominican Republic.?The conversation was wide-ranging, and included a game, ‘Within your lifetime, who was your favorite President?’?‘Johnson’ (yes, Johnson) was my answer.?We three agreed that they are all looking pretty good alongside No. 45 (not the bus).?

Then came the right Bus No. 11 that would take us partway up Providence and the stark realization struck me that I had perhaps done more shopping that Arnold Schwarzenegger could have handled on the bus, even in his younger days. ?But, I made it onto the bus and sat on one of the benches up front, as far away from the driver’s entrance as I could, keeping a worried eye on my carefully packed plant, as its first guardian was perhaps doing as well, she riding the same bus but further back.??We came to my stop, Providence and Astrid Streets, and several of us got off.?I was still struggling to get up, and the bags were not cooperating.?A woman older than me offered me the object you see pictured above.?“Here, dear, you just clip this on to those loose ones, so that you’ll just have them in one hand and the big one in the other.” ?‘But I can’t give it back to you.’?“Oh don’t worry, I got plenty,” and she pointed to her collection in various colors hanging from her walker.?I quickly did as she said, the driver still waiting as the other passengers had told him to.?‘God bless you!’ I said to her.?“Oh, I can use that!”?‘And thank you all, and you, too,’ I said loud enough to be heard, not omitting to thank the driver as we always do here.?“Hey, no problem!” the congregation responded.?That’s Worcester, and I had just been given a Sky Hook.?

In the kitchen back at my secular cloister, I told this story to one of the younger men who also lives in ‘congregant housing’ as it is called.?Explaining that he had grown up in nearby Quinsigamond Village, he smiled as he said, “I’ve seen that kind of thing all my life.?You know, here in the heart of New England, we’re so close to so many towns and cities.?Why, Portland, Maine is only a drive of a couple of hours from here.?But, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”?

And neither would I.

See you on the bus. See you on the WRTA!

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--gcc

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?Guy Christopher Carter