Bitten by a Bookshelf

            On Sunday morning on my Christian’s Translations blog I got the chords positioned properly for the first verse of “J’suis snob” by Boris Vian. After that I finished posting there “Oh mon amour baiser” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I took everything off the white bookshelf at the southwest corner of my living room and then I lifted it to the middle of the room and washed it. In the process I scraped my pinkie with a rusty nail. I put some hydrogen peroxide on it and kept working. I must have been penetrated by a hundred rusty nails in my life and never got tetanus. Now that I’m older I’m a little more worried about it but not enough to get a shot yet. Now that the bookshelf is white again the area of the floor in front of it that I’d washed two days before didn’t look as bright against it.

            For several years I’ve organized my books according to the Library of Congress system that most university libraries use. But the bookshelf has three shelves for books that are 20 cm, 22cm and 27 cm high; it has forced me to put some books forward on their sides. I decided when I put the books back on the shelf to still follow the system but to zigzag them according to size so they all fit upright. It looks a lot neater that way.

            I had crackers and cheese for lunch.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon and then took a bike ride. My intention had been to ride to Bloor and Spadina but after Ossington my bike started feeling like the back wheel was going to fall off. When I looked down I could see it flopping from side to side as I pedaled. When I stopped to look at it the wheel itself was solid but there was some give in and out with the cranks. I only went as far as Bathurst, rode very slowly down to Queen and headed west, all the time worried that the back was going to break off before I got home. Monday was definitely going to have to be an afternoon at Bike Pirates to fix whatever was wrong.

            I had an egg with toast and a beer for dinner while watching an episode of Wagon Train.

            This story begins with Flint the scout leading the train to a spring, only to find that since he was there the year before a town has suddenly built up around it. Tucker the town mayor is a thief and the male population consists mostly of his enforcers as he charges a lot of money for water that used to be free. He asks for a dollar a wagon and twenty-five cents for each head of cattle he gives access to the water. That would be about $20 a wagon now. The Major heads for a nearby town to find a sheriff and see if the mayor has a right to charge for water. Zeke, one of the members of the train is there with Flint. A saloon girl named Violet approaches Zeke and they turn out to be married, even though Zeke is travelling with his young wife Maggie on the wagon train. Violet married Zeke when he was a barge captain on the Mississippi but she ran off. He looked for her for years but concluded she had died and moved on. When mayor Tucker finds out that his girl Violet and Zeke are married he tries to blackmail him for $200. Zeke gives Tucker half a $200 bill and tells him he’ll get the other half when the divorce between him and Violet is finalized. But Violet decides that she doesn’t want to divorce Zeke. She goes to Maggie and tells her that her marriage is void because she’s still married to him. Maggie is understandably upset but especially so because she’s just learned she’s pregnant. She’s about to lave Zeke. Zeke decides the only thing he can do is kill Violet. He goes into town to shoot her at the same time that the wagon train members decide to invade the town and fight Tucker’s men for the water. Violet runs from Zeke and he goes after her and is about to murder her when Flint shoots the gun out of his hand. As Zeke and Flint are standing off Violet runs to Zeke and says he can have Maggie but she doesn’t want him to die. Just then Tucker shoots and kills her. The wagon train people win the war and get their water. Everything is suddenly hunky dory between Zeke and Maggie at the end as if he hadn’t been willing to kill someone. Even though he didn’t murder Violet his efforts to do so created the circumstances in which she died. It’s somewhat disturbing that this was presented as a happy ending.

            Violet was played by K.T. Stevens, who was the daughter of director Sam Wood and who appeared in his second silent film, “Peck’s Bad Boy” when she was two years old. In adulthood she was more successful on stage and in radio than in films but she is remembered for her television role in The Young and the Restless.

            Maggie was played by Janice Rule, who started off as a ballet dancer, then a chorus line dancer in her teens. She became a versatile actor who worked in a wide range of films and TV shows, including the first season of The Twilight Zone in “Nightmare as a Child”. It was said she was best at playing embittered, neurotic socialites. She co-starred in On The Waterfront with Marlon Brando. She married Ben Gazzara. She earned a doctorate in psychology and became a successful psychotherapist in Manhattan after she gave up acting.