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| She's a dime, that's top o' the line. |
This one is a magical tale. First let me introduce you to a nice old lady named Mary. Mary happened to sit next to me on the train. And by 'sit next to me on the train' I mean a row back and to the right between two other older folks. Now let me paint you a picture of what Mary looks & sounds like. I'd say looks wise, she's a mesh of the really really old lady in the beginning of titanic (Gloria Stuart) and M from James Bond (Judi Dench). And she sounds pretty much exactly like Betty White.
So whilst Mary was on the train with me I was able to learn quite a bit about her (she can project her voice like there's no tomorrow... literally so loud your ear drums will explode and your brain will shatter instantly leaving you dead.. and without a tomorrow). I was actually in and out of sleep for most of the train ride and I swear to you every time I woke up she was talking.
Before I passed out the first time she was talking about trains and how they make her sick when she is facing the wrong way on them. Then she talked about what stop they needed to go to, Worcester, which she really isn't a fan of... oh and did I mention that she doesn't really like Boston either... but she has a lot of relatives in the area. She does like to look at the city from the water though, she thinks it's pretty fun and beautiful, there aren't as many people on the water which she really enjoys, but she does hate getting sea sick. It's not fun for her so she has to take medicine AT LEAST an hour before she gets on the boat. Speaking of boats her sisters and brothers (3 of each) have boats too, which they use pretty often although they're starting to get too old for them. But she thinks that they'll still be....
.... this is the point at which I passed out for the first time....
I woke up again about 2 or 3 more times hearing things pretty similar to the above. She just sort of went from topic to topic with her friends just adding in OooooooOOs and AaaaAAhhhS. Now for the Infamous Story of the Bordello Clock. Let me first inform you of what a 'bordello' is. Defined by www.webster.com: "a building in which prostitutes are available" but also defined by www.urbandictionary.com as: 'A brothel or whorehouse' - example sentence: After I gave up drug-smuggling, I bought a bordello in Tangiers. Make sure you check out the definition because they have bordello mugs and t-shirts!
Anyway, back to the story. Let me lay a little ground work just like Mary did. Her great grandparents were from Germany and lived there all their lives. Her Grandparents moved from there to Belgium for a time until they moved back to Germany. Her parents moved from Germany to Illinois before she was born. She was born in Utah in the year 1938. She lived there for a while with her family until they moved to Chicago where business was better for her Dad (sadly I never learned what line of business he was in, but I think it was some kind of farming... why Chicago? I have no idea.. closer to the consumer maybe). When Mary was just a young adult (this was 1958) her mom, her, and the rest of her family headed down to Florida for a little vacation. They met her parents parents (her grandparents) there, who boated in from Germany to have a nice big reunion (apparently the family was pretty well off). There he Grandma passed on to her family a GORGEOUS (yes she emphasized this) clock made of some kind of stone, she thinks marble (I was going to insert a picture of what it looks like in my head but sadly the blog is grumpy today). It had gold on its clock face and the numbers were outlined in gold as well. The clock apparently was crafted in the 1880's and her Grandpa somehow acquired it. A few years after her Grandma passed the clock on to them they were in one of the Carolina's (she can't remember) and her Mom took the clock to a clock maker and asked him to remove its "guts" as she called them, and to put in a battery operated system (apparently her Mom was absolutely thrilled with how great of an idea this was). But Mary, being a sprightly 26 was pretty peeved (secretly, she never told her Mom) because she thought it was an amazing heirloom... and now thanks to her Mom, most of its value was destroyed. So years later when her Mother passed it on to her she took the clock to another clock-man who gave her this entire back-story on clocks such as the one she had. Unbeknownst to her Mother, the clock had been the typical kind of clock you would find in BORDELLOS (she said her Mom would have had a heart attack if she had known). The man was confident that the clock had to be from one. This made Mary pretty upset, because she figured her Grandpa had to have known this, and maybe he frequented the bordello that used to own the clock. She was tempted to just sell it and get the idea out of her brain but she finally convinced herself that he loved his wife very much and that he must have bought it at some kind of "bordello garage sale" (her words, not mine). So Mary asked the clock-man if there was any way he could restore the clock or put in some older guts that were similar to the ones originally in the clock. The man had just the ticket! He told her he had just received some very old parts from a different clock with almost identical inner-workings as the clock she had. He was able to restore the clock and she says that now it would be almost impossible for you to tell that the original clock was ever a battery powered bordello clock.
She says she proudly displays it right on her mantle at home, and she would take her two friends to see it as soon as she could. I of course was eager to join the gang and head out to see the clock... but dang it all... I had to get off the train, it was my stop. I heard her just starting to go into the story of how she met her first husband as I walked off into the sunset. I have to admit, I felt really close to her... I kind of miss hearing her sweet loud songbird voice on the train. Today was bratty 16 year old's talking about douchebags??? Idk it was weird. Certainly not anything as cool or badass as a bordello clock. Oh well, Mary will forever be in my heart and mind.
And as I took my final step off that train, I quietly wished Mary health, happiness, another husband, and for that bordello clock to keep ticking for many long, long years to come.
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