Albert Salmi

            On Tuesday morning I went to bed at around 1:08. For at least the next hour my upstairs neighbour was blasting music, jumping on the floor, and shouting out the window. 

            After yoga I finally memorized the eleventh verse of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. There are six verses left but some have repeated lines I already know and so it’s more like four more verses to learn. 

            I ran through singing and playing “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg in French. I started working on revising my translation, which might take at least a couple of days. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune for almost every song. 

            Around midday I touched up the blue paint on the frame and the front of my bathroom exhaust fan. There had been a pink smudge on the front from when I painted the vent. It’s been two steps forward and one step back with that exhaust fan. I fixed the pink smudge but ended up getting some blue paint where the pink is supposed to be. I’ll try to fix that on Friday. 

            I weighed 90.2 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride up to Bloor. The bike lane is still full of snow but I wanted to go to Freshco so I rode west on Bloor without the benefit of the bike lane and went south on Gladstone. When Gladstone stops at the park I rode on the pathway through to where Gladstone picks up again and the pathway was clearer than Gladstone. South of Dundas it was treacherously slippery. 

            At Freshco I bought a pack of raspberries and five bags of cherries. I price matched the cherries with No Frills’ much cheaper price of $6.59 a kilo. 

            I weighed 90.05 kilos at 18:20. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:10. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive side 1, tape 2 of my second Slamnation poetry slam. 

            I created some more sub-folders for photos in my SSD and deleted several images from my hard drive. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast pork with skyr while watching season 1, episode 9 of Combat. 

            Saunders is sent to work with another unit on a reconnaissance mission to find out what the Germans are up to. He ends up with the reckless Sergeant Jenkins who resents Saunders coming along. As they make their way through the woods one of Jenkins’s men is killed by a sniper. Jenkins sends the men forward one by one to be shot at until they can figure out where the sniper is hiding. Saunders says they should just bypass the sniper rather than sacrificing men to flush him out. Finally Jenkins spots the sniper and takes him out. As they continue Saunders falls behind. Jenkins finds him dismantling a mine. Then one of Jenkins’s men is killed by another mine and Jenkins admits they should go more slowly now. 

           They find a mill and Jenkins decides the upper floor would make a good lookout point. He asks for a volunteer to go in with him and Saunders says he’ll go. While they are inside, a German patrol arrives and kills all of Jenkins’s men. They hide and keep quiet with their boots off as the Germans search the building and then they realize the Germans aren’t just passing through but moving in. There is a colonel in charge as they set up the mill as a German command post. Saunders tries to radio their own nearest command post but they are out of range. 

            They wait until dark and then plan to escape near the water wheel. But then Jenkins deliberately gets himself captured. He pretends to cooperate under threat but gives the colonel false information. He asks for a map to point out the Allied positions. From hiding Saunders can see the German positions clearly marked on the map. Saunders’ boots are discovered and then Jenkins knocks out the lamp and shouts for him to escape. Jenkins is killed and Saunders is able to take out several Germans from his hiding place. He escapes and makes it back to command only to be told the information he has is unnecessary because they already cracked the German code. Saunders is upset that so many men died pointlessly to get useless information. He’s told it wasn’t pointless because they had to use every necessary means. 

            Jenkins was played by Albert Salmi, who served in the army during WWII then studied under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Workshop on the GI Bill. He made his Broadway debut in End as a Man in 1953. In 1955 he starred as Bo Decker in Bus Stop on Broadway and was offered to reprise his role in the film version but turned it down because he didn’t want to do movies. His film debut was in The Brothers Karamazov for which he turned down an Oscar nomination. He co-starred with Julie Newmar in the Twilight Zone episode Of Late I Think of Cliffordville. He played Alonzo P. Tucker on Lost in Space. He co-starred in the TV series Petrocelli. He co-starred in the films Burned at the Stake, Near the end of his career he taught drama classes. In 1990 he and his wife were found dead from gunshot wounds. The best guess by the police was that he committed a murder suicide.