Assorted Nuts

My summer vacation of 1978 was going to be miserable.

I had just left Senior High School with a very poor set of results and prepared myself for yet more cramming if only to get to where my Education Counsellor had said I should be for my age and "with obvious aptitude but abysmal attitude" .

My friends were looking forward to a long, hot lazy New Jersey summer. A time to let loose before parental pressure and conscience kicked in to acheive something at University or a reputable college.

Their raucous and crude intentions free from any semblance of moral supervision did not include me. I had no money or get up and go, so they got up and went without me.

I had tried to line up a job for the duration. The usual menial tasks at the diner, pumping gas and packing bags at the Seven-Eleven  had long since been promised to others. That left, frankly, only hanging about around the house dodging criticism and cloaked remarks from Mum and Dad , or succumbing to what I had been trying to avoid but what looked inevitable - voluntary work in the Sunny Oaks Retirement Castle complex or chancing it and offering my services for odd jobs in the neighbourhood. Out of all of the horrible options I chose the latter.

At a cost of a dollar a month I rented a small section of the window space at the nearest General Store to my home. The postcard with details of what I was prepared to do and at what competitive hourly rate sat amongst well crafted, thought out and printed advertisements for dog grooming, mobile chiropody and baby-minding services.

My card in stark contrast was amateurish and childish in style and I did not hold out for a response any time soon.

No sooner had I returned home that my mother answered a phone call and, hand over the speaker, yelled for me to come down and have words. She rolled her eyes when I took the receiver, "It's a woman, a mature woman for you. She says you put a card in Mr Johannson's window". I tried to raise my enthusiasm for what could be my first and only customer. I pronounced the word "Hello" in my best neutral but efficient sounding tone. The voice in response was firm but kind. " I would like to take you on to clear out the garage. My husband has continually failed to do so and now that he has left to teach at summer school in Wichita I am going to get on with it and surprise him".I enquired about her name and the address. I had signed up Mrs Stolz as my first customer.

The next morning I cycled across town past the University Campus and into a quadrangle of smart colonial houses. I had never noticed them before because they were the tied properties for the main Princeton lecturers and luminairies. The attached garage mentioned had no actual room for a car because of a clutter of accumulated boxes, files, cabinets, various pieces of medical looking equipment and dusty volumes of anatomical books.

Mrs Stolz had on stylish dungarees and her hair in a tight scarf but that was the full extent of her participation other than providing lemonade and shop bought cookies. She was obviously not a grafter in the domestic sense or, disappointingly, no Mrs Robinson.

I was instructed to assemble five piles from the garage stored collection.

1) Obvious rubbish for collection by the refuse department
2) Possible garage sale items although I doubt Mrs Stolz knew how to conduct one
3) Charity for the Projects in the city
4) Medical stuff for her husband to sort out on his return.
5) Scrap metal for special disposal. 

Within this broad remit was the necessity to move everything from its obviously longstanding positions and I had soon generated  a wheezing dust bowl atmosphere even with the up and over door in the up and over position.

The boxes were easy to put into category 4). They were sealed up with stencilled legend of Dr T S-H which I thought might mean Deliver to Some Hospital but later and to my embarrasment I realised they identified Mr Stolz under his professional practising name.

Categories 1) and 2) involved a bit of head scratching and the reluctant involvement of Mrs Stolz who gestured to the effect that I should decide on my own. Her perception of what the Project Dwellers could benefit from amongst category 3) was hilarious. The pile included a fondue set, boxed crystal wine glasses, scatter cushions and some very grand chandeliers. I could imagine these going down well as collateral for a drug deal rather than gracing a damp , cramped apartment. The scrap metal in the last category covered the largest area but comprised the fewest items being mainly old battered cabinets, clunky looking electronic monitors and what I recognised from the school science block as a centrifuge.

There was a sub-group amongst the metal stuff for used surgical equipment, scalpels, clamps and saws which I handled reluctantly and with caution. They were not themselves a source of squeamishness in me, just the thought of where they might have been.

After some 6 hours of work I could make out the back wall of the garage which had previously been well concealed.

Shifting of the last cabinet was impeded by a dead weight inside. The metal door was simply pegged through on the catch and I could pop it out with a swift toe-poke kick. Swinging open, the door revealed a large bell shaped glass vessel with a stagnant, cloudy yellowish liquid.

My father had a similar item from a long forgotten home brewing session which had stunk the place out like a skunk. I agitated the container and , startled, stepped back almost falling over the scrap pile. What looked like a cauliflower ebbed and flowed against the glass. Looking closer after recovering my composure I could make out more detail. The actual shape was more like a giant pickled walnut in texture. No sooner had the thing shown itself to me it disappeared back into the murky solution.

A strange feeling came over me then. I had had enough of manual labour and sweating for a few bucks. Mrs Stolz was reasonably grateful for my efforts and in polite smalltalk enquired about my plans going forward. I told her in determined voice that I was going back to school to improve my grades and prospects. She nodded in middle aged approval but I sensed she was not really listening. I accepted a check as she said she had no cash in the house. It was in the name of Stolz-Harvey but I was too tired to even worry if I was being blatantly scammed.

Many years later I read a story of how a disgraced practitioner at some Eastern University had taken, without consent, the brain of Albert Einstein after landing the job of performing the autopsy on perhaps the greatest scientific mind of all time. Apparently the brain had languished in a preserving jar, somewhere in his house, for about 40 years before being driven in the back of a pick-up to be presented to family and beneficiaries for the furthering of mankind.

My curiosity was raised with my recollection of that sole, soul destroying summer chore and I investigated the story. The internet summary of the facts were hazy and clearly open to interpretation of reputations and events. The displayed image, however, of Einsteins brain as repatriated after its absence, did clearly resemble a yellowish stained pickled walnut.

(Reproduced and re-worked from some time last year. It is, I stress a work of fiction based on something I heard on the radio and fabricated from this kernel of a fantastic tale)