Tuesday, 15 May 2018

The Monkey's Paw



            On Monday I got caught up on my journal and in the late afternoon I took a bike ride. I wore my long sleeved shirt open over tank top and that wasn’t too hot at first, but once I got riding it was slightly uncomfortable.
            A young hipster with a fast bike went past me but slowed down later and I passed him. I guess he was resting though because he finally passed me again.
            After Main Street the neighbourhood kind of smelled like toenails.
            I rode as far as Victoria Park. On my next long ride I will probably go north on Victoria Park and continue from where I left off back in September to explore the streets between Victoria Park and Pharmacy, south of Eglinton.
            Before starting back I took off my long sleeved shirt.
            I went down Spadina to College and decided to take that all the way to Lansdowne so I could go to No Frills. I like to check out the deals at both Freshco and No Frills once a week. I had already gone to Freshco on Friday and usually go to No Frills on Saturdays but this last weekend I’d played the anti-shock rally and coming home I didn’t want to shop while carrying my guitar, so I skipped it.
            The grapes at the big supermarket were on sale but not as firm as the ones I got from Freshco. It took me a while to find some good ones. I bought three mangoes, a loaf of multigrain sandwich bread, cheese and yogourt.
            While I was waiting in line for one of the cashiers, another cashier, a very nervous but extremely fast and efficient middle-aged woman of probably Korean descent, suddenly moved in to my cashier’s station and quickly did a transaction for a customer before just as rapidly walking away. Her manner could be described as agitated but good-natured. I got the impression that her personality is somewhat of a joke among the other cashiers because my cashier and her colleague in the next lane were laughing together behind the woman’s back.
            I have a big pork shoulder bone from a picnic roast that I cooked a few days ago that still has meat on it. The previous night I put it in a pan with some broth, onions and carrots and made it into soup, but the flavour wasn’t that great. This night I doctored it up a bit more with leftover meat sauce, a carton of Campbell’s garden vegetable soup and more spices. This time it tasted much better.
            The Alfred Hitchcock Hour teleplay I watched was a modernization of the classic 1902 tale “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs. In this version, Paul White is a businessman facing financial ruin and he needs $150,000 to keep everything from falling apart for him and his family. Paul and his wife Anne are on holiday in the home of their son Howard’s wealthy girlfriend, Selina. Selina throws a party to which for kicks she has paid an old Gypsy woman to be mysterious but Selina and her young guests begin to mock her and so she presents them with a monkey’s paw, which she tells them will grant the owner three wishes but she assures them that the third wish will be for death. No one wants it but Paul steps in and accepts it. He makes the wish for $150,000 dollars. Two days later Howard dies in a car racing accident and Paul is presented with an insurance cheque for $150,000. Anne is devastated that her son is dead and begs Paul to wish Howard back to life. He does so but then realizes his mistake. Anne did not see Howard after he died but Paul saw that his body had been mutilated beyond recognition and he had no face. There is the sound of a racecar pulling up in the driveway and a knock on the door. Anne runs to let Howard in but Paul quickly goes to the paw to make one last wish. He wishes Howard dead. When Anne opens the door all that she finds is the scarf that she’d wrapped around Howard’s neck before his fatal race.
            Anne was played by Jane Wyatt, who was the mother in Father Knows Best.
            One of Selina’s nasty friends was played by Stuart Margolin, who was the despicable but loveable Angel on the Rockford Files.
            Howard was portrayed by a blonde Lee Majors, who much later became a big star as the Six Million Dollar Man.  

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