Newspapers, Father, Flirting and Baker Brush

As human beings, we all have hobbies and predispositions. My father was no exception. One of his was flirting. You see, he felt that as a man, it was his God- given right. As he would often repeat when reminded that he was married: "Casau, pero no capau." ["Married but not castrated." Well, my mom disagreed, and that was a focus of constant contention.

Besides flirting with women at every opportunity, my father was also a fanatical newspaper-reader. He would go over every single printed word as if it were some recently-discovered treasure. It gradually began to grate on my mom's nerves in the following way. After arriving home from work, he would immediately disappear behind the wide newspaper pages while sitting on the living-room sofa, and would only emerge several hours later with bloodshot eyes and bags under his eyes.

Then, instead of discarding the newspapers, he would stash them under the sofa cushion in order to review the parts that he might have missed later. But more often than not, later never came, and some cushions began to get pretty elevated via piles of unread newspapers.

“Why don’t you throw those newspapers away Hipolito?” my mother began to ask.

“Haven’t finished them yet!” he'd calmly respond.

After silently giving him the up-and-down critical-look, she would invariably ask:

“Tell me something, what is it exactly that you are doing? Are you actually reading the entire paper? I mean, most people are selective readers, you know? They read only the sections that interest them. What are you doing, reading all the obituary announcements and the classifieds as well?”

“How are those newspapers bothering you? Eh? Are they bothering you?” he’d finally respond after silently letting her go on for several minutes.

“The sofa doesn’t look right-that’s how it bothers me! All those newspapers stuffed under the cushions take away the whole appearance from la sala. [the living room].

On it went but to no avail! Sometimes, when she could tolerate the elevated height of the sofa-cushions no longer, she'd throw all of old newspapers into the building's hallway-incinerator. Coming home and finding them missing, he would look as if she had just ripped his heart out as he sadly sat watching TV. Why he couldn’t simply store them in the closet or in some cardboard box, is beyond me.

Well, as destiny would have it, both his fanatical newspaper-reading and strong flirting propensities finally converged in a very dramatic way. You see, it just so happened that both my parents wound up working at this brush-manufacturing company where many women from their island were employed. Of course, my father felt as if he had been blessed by being placed in a flirting paradise. So soon after being hired, he was thoroughly engrossed and going full throttle.

Of course, my mother had repeatedly pleaded with him to stop, but to no avail. Finally she tearfully went to the Boss, this elderly Anglo American man, and explained how this was causing her distress, and would eventually affect her work-efficiency.

“Is that so Alba?” the boss asked in a compassionate tone of voice.

“ Yes! That is what he is doing constantly. Go look for yourself. Just watch him!” she responded as she wiped a few tears from her eyes..

That wasn’t hard to do since my dad's leering and his picaresque comments in Spanish, as the Puerto Rican ladies promenaded coquettishly by, were very obvious.

“You are right! He is flirting." the boss said. "But don’t you worry Alba. I’ll fix it so that he can’t bother you with his flirting anymore!” the boss said after having confirmed that my dad was indeed ostentatiously flirting with the female employees as they passed by, or else ogling them from a distance as they worked in a nearby section of the factory.

So in order to prevent this, my father was unceremoniously relocated to a corner, facing a wall, while operating a brush-handle-stamping-machine, far from all possible female distraction. It was a simple job. His only responsibility was to place the brush-handle beneath the stamper, have it stamped, remove it. and after a brief pause, place another one to be stamped with the Baker-Brush logo. A very uncomplicated task, right? Well, not exactly. You see, being unable to flirt, my father started bringing his precious Spanish-language newspaper called: El Diario La Prensa, to work, placing it on the chair beside him in order to read it as he worked.

At first, of course, the procedure was a bit clumsy. But after a while, the hand-and-eye coordination involved became automatic: It went something like this:

Him: Place Brush beneath stamper,

Stamping Machine: Bam! Baker Brush!

Him: Remove it and briefly read a few words in the newspaper.

Him: Place another brush.

Stamping Machine: Bam! Baker Brush!

Him: Remove it and read a few more words from the newspaper.

Maybe turn a page.

Him: Place another brush.

Stamping Machine: Bam! Baker Brush!

Noticing this acrobatic-like, delicate balance between efficiency and bloody disaster, my mom eventually asked:

"Don’t you think that you should concentrate all your attention on what you are doing, Hipolito?"

Since he remained morosely unresponsive, she continued.

"You might injure yourself, you know? Doesn't it occur to you that you might injure yourself?”

“It’s your fault for having me placed in this damned corner facing this damned wall all day. So stay out of it! OK?”

“I am just telling you for your own good. I mean, you might get hurt doing that.”

“So what do you want me to do? Eh? I have nowhere to look! Just a blank white wall in front of me far from everyone else. I am buried alive in this corner. Don’t you see that I am buried alive here? Huh?”

“Buried alive? Why? Because you can’t flirt with the muchachas anymore? Eh? You know, gosando de lo lindo![enjoying yourself] while making as if you are working?"

"Who was flirting? I was not flirting!"

"Yes you were flirting, and the boss confirmed that you were flirting! Keep your eyes on your work. Isn’t that what you are supposed to be doing? Looking at your work? You’re not supposed to be flirting with other women or reading the newspaper anyway! That’s not what they are paying you for. Is that what they are paying you for?”

He turned away morosely back to the machine while mumbling imprecations under his breath. Of course, his new antic didn’t go unnoticed by management. The boss noticed the danger and also brought it to his attention. But my father promised that everything was perfectly under control, and that he was easily keeping up with the Baker-Brush handle-stamping quota anyway.

Well, all was going without a hitch with his new system. But then, baseball-season came around, and my dad was fanatical fan of the Dodgers. So the Diario La Prensa's sports section began to draw his fervent attention. Engrossed in the news about how the Dodgers had lost once again to the Yankees. It was during the reading of one of those disheaertening Dodger defeats and what their manager planned to do about it that it suddenly happened. Instead of placing the brush under the stamper, he placed his bare hand and Bam! Baker Brush! His fingers were pierced. I remember his howling in pain at night, and how he swore that he was going to sue the company. Of course the attempt came to nothing, since it had been totally his fault.

Then upon returning to work, he accidentally stepped on a nail that pierced his foot while carrying some heavy boxes and again tried to sue the company. That time he collected some money as compensation. But by then, the owners were looking at him in a strange way. You know, as if he was just there trying to get hurt in order to sue. Finally, he was lighting a cigarette and accidentally set his chest-hair on fire.

“Get the hell our of here!” the boss bellowed. We don’t want you here anymore!”

“OK! OK! Take it easy! Take it easy! OK?” he said while frantically slapping out the fire on his chest with the palms of both hands. Then hurried out the door. In short, it all seemed to go downhill after he had been deprived of what he considered his God-given flirting rights. My parents never again agreed to work together at the same place after that.

==============================================