I've got just two things to say about Michael's account of Fast Eddie. One: I would have put up with the woodpecker indefinitely and two: I think the little sports car he's talking about was an Austin Healy Sprite. If it wasn't an Austin Healy Sprite, it should have been. Those little cars were ridiculous.
Fast Eddie
I had a cat during the summer of 1970 at which time I and my young wife were living on West Morton street in northwest Phoenix. 2218 West Morton, if I correctly recall, was the address of that little cracker box of a house. To characterize the place as tiny would have been an exercise in aggrandizement in its purest form. I, who have never stood taller than five foot eight inches, could touch both elbows to the walls of the hallway leading to our bedroom with my arms raised and my fingers touching my cheeks. A woodpecker who had taken a liking to the flashing around the base of the evaporative cooler perched upon our roof could be heard tapping out his Morse code from anywhere in that house each morning. I wanted to poison the thing. Perhaps I’d have shot it if I owned even so much as an air rifle or a pellet gun but, alas, I had neither.
We whined at Troy Turner (our next door neighbor who along with his diminutive wife Sue were our landlords) with increasing frequency until he one day got rid of it. By what means I was not apprised but he had told me that killing it was against the law. You go, Troy…..you go.
During that first summer following my initial year as a graduate teaching assistant at Arizona State University I was experiencing the vicissitudes of having employment for only nine months of the year while still needing to buy food and pay rent for the interim three. I had taken a summer job, for reasons not known to me to this very day, selling vacuum cleaners. The specific beast I was peddling was a water filtered thing known as the “Rainbow.” That’s right, Michael Thiele Vacuum Cleaner Salesman.
I sucked at this job (no pun intended). During the approximately two months I worked for these guys I sold exactly two units - one to my mother in law and one to a woman of marginal health who bought it no doubt to spite her adult children who thought the purchase a very bad idea. They may have been right. The damn things were comparatively expensive relative to the average dirt sucker on the market at that time but she was drawn in by the sales pitch delivered to her by the telephone solicitor who was responsible for developing the leads for our presentations.
The woman’s name was Berle. She was overweight, closer to sixty than fifty years of age and a slave to cigarettes and diet soda. My visit was mercifully short due to the fact that she was already sold on the unit when I arrived. It was merely a matter of taking her to her credit union to pick up a cashier’s check to pay for the Rainbow. She didn’t own a car.
The most memorable part of the visit was a comment she made while standing in her living room shortly after we met. Berle was wearing some sort of sling wrapped around her neck and under her right breast. Out of thin air she blurted forth, “ever seen a woman with a titty in a sling?” I responded in the negative not knowing actually what to say. She went on to explain that she had bruised the thing (which, to be fair, was of some girth) and was prescribed the sling by her doctor.
Thank God she immediately dropped the topic. We went off to the credit union.
Each morning I and the other salesmen endured the same sales meeting from the forty-something manager of our little unit. These meetings took place at the small warehouse in a little strip mall near Seventh avenue on the southwest side of McDowell Road in Phoenix. The “warehouse,” such as it was, contained nothing but tall stacks of sealed boxes containing new vacuums, a bathroom and a young cat who’s very existence was inexplicably the bane of our sales manager’s existence.
The cat was short haired, small and butterscotch in flavor. He spent most of his time hiding from humans. Mostly, when we did get a glimpse of him it was because he was peering out at us from behind one of those boxes or running away from our boss who had anything but the cat’s best interests at heart. He was quick and I dubbed him “Fast Eddie.” He had earned the handle honestly.
One morning late in the summer we were treated to the declaration from our manager that if any of us wanted the cat he should catch it and take it home because he’d had enough. He was going to kill it. Thoughtful. That afternoon Eddie found himself in an empty box riding home with me in my little sports car. He took up residence in our little house. In due time he became an indoor/outdoor cat. He was a good hunter but was very committed to enjoying his morning and evening meals, served from a bowl in a corner of the kitchen floor.
Fast Eddie stayed true to his name. Even around that little bungalow he ran everywhere. I would venture to say that we saw more of his tail than any other part of his body. His main raceway was the narrow hallway. When one heard him motoring by the door opening connecting the living room to the hall, by the time he looked up he might at best spot the west end of an east-bound Eddie - the tail section.
Eddie was an educator. He made his preferences quite clear. I learned this early one morning while walking down the hall toward the kitchen for the second time having not fed him on my first trip to that room. It hadn’t set well with the guy. He was quite insistent about being fed as the first order of business each morning and I was obviously not in compliance. I heard him running up the hall behind me on that second trip just before he went airborne, wrapping his legs around the thigh and calf of my right leg and sunk his teeth briefly into the soft back of my knee. He dropped off my leg and ran into the kitchen. I was in that brief moment trained to understand the order of morning business. I never forgot.
One afternoon in the fall of that same year I had arrived back at the house from school and was approached by a neighbor while exiting my car and asked, “did you have a little yellow cat?” The very words, couched in the past tense, were ominous. I slowly answered in the affirmative that I had such an animal. He commented that he was sorry to inform me that a cat fitting that description was lying dead in the grass across the street. He had been struck by a garbage truck. My first thought was that it must be someone else’s cat. I mean Eddie’s fast, right? Garbage truck? Couldn’t be he, could it? Fast Eddie? No way. But, as they say, “Way.”
I carried him back to the house, sat down on a step and had a brief conversation with him. The one-way sort. I told him that fortunately for him it’s only one of his nine lives. Perhaps he should be a bit more careful next time. Live up to his reputation and all that. I’d like to think that I was heard. But I know better. Eddie had moved on and could do without the lecture.
