Canoga Park, California, Summer 1962: Ron, the Megatar shop foreman, was a junior in High School, and his pal Johnny Blevins worked for Lim’s Chinese Food restaurant at Sherman Way and Topanga Canyon Boulevard. One day Johnny told Ron he needed some help.

“I’ve got to go on a vacation with my parents,” Johnny said, “and if I don’t get somebody to fill in for me at Lim’s, I’ll lose my job!” Ron stared.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“All you do is answer the phone,” Johnny said. “Mr. Lim doesn’t speak English very good, so you just take the orders. It’s just for a week.”

“OK,” Ron said.

“And ask him to feed you,” Johnny said, “That’s part of the deal. He’s supposed to give you dinner.”

“OK,” Ron said.

Vacation time arrived, and Johnny left with his parents, and Ron showed up at Lim’s Chinese Food restaurant. Mr. Lim looked him up and down.

“Huh!” said Mr. Lim, pointing to the phone. “OK. You take order!”

Ron took the orders. It was quite busy, one order after another. It turned out that Mr. Lim spoke very, very little English. Ron had to write down the orders by number. For example two orders of pot-stickers was “two number four,” and one order of beef and broccoli was “one number seventeen.”

In this way, they worked their way through the evening.

It grew late and Ron was hungry. He felt a bit timid, but finally he stuck his head into the kitchen.

“Can I have something to eat?” he asked.

“What?” screamed Mr. Lim. “You got no mother? You got no father? They don’t feed you?!!“

Ron’s head shrunk down to his shoulders. Hungry, and crushed by the harsh words, he slunk back to his ringing telephone and took another order.

Then, another order. Then, another. While Ron was writing down these orders, there suddenly appeared before him a heaping plateful of rice and vegetables, steaming, with a heavenly smell!

Mr. Lim took the written order. Ron fell on the food.

“Huh!” said Mr. Lim.

Norwich, Vermont, Thanksgiving Day, 1960: While they built their dream home in Hannover, New Hampshire, Adrienne and her parents lived across the Connecticut River, in Vermont. Their temporary home backed onto government lands, where her father took them hiking, but not during deer season.

In the paper, the farmer offered some hound dogs, because the hunters kept shooting at them. Whether hunters mistook the brown-colored dogs for deer, or whether they chose to shoot the dogs to prevent their chasing the deer, was uncertain.

Adrienne wanted both of the two dogs, but she could only have one so she chose the one and named her “Taffy”. All the way home in the Renault, Taffy bayed out the window. Surely Taffy missed her sister.

But once settled, Taffy took to her new home, her new family, and the vast woodlands to roam, behind the house.

Years before, in an older and larger Colonial home, Adrienne’s grandparents used to visit during the summers. Her grandmother helped her grow strawberries, and then they’d trudge to the road, to sell them at their neighbor’s fruit stand.

But the grandfather had passed away, and the grandmother found a cottage on a lake in Florida, and wintered there, away from the cold. And so it was that the grandmother always missed the birthday of her daughter, Adrienne’s mother Hazel, for Hazel had been born on Thanksgiving day.

That year the family was preparing for the double holiday, but they couldn’t find Taffy. They called for her in the late morning, but she didn’t show up. They called for her in the early afternoon.

Finally, late on Thanksgiving day, with afternoon shadows stretching across the lawn, Taffy drug herself into the yard. Miles away, in the woods, she’d been shot, but she had crawled the miles, so she could die at home. Adrienne was devastated.

The next day, word arrived that the grandmother had been found in her cottage. She, too, had died on Thanksgiving day. Adrienne was devastated again, and Hazel took to her bed as well, crying for their loss.

“Of course she died on Thanksgiving,” wept Hazel. “She knows my bad memory. This way, on my birthday, she knows I’ll remember.”

The next day, a package arrived in the mail, which had been sent by the grandmother. Inside they found Hazel’s wrapped birthday present, which was a bottle of perfume.

Its name was “Heaven Scent.”

St. Loup de Varennes, France, 1826: Mr. Joseph Nicephore Niepce (Nee’-sah-for Nee’-yeps) has made a photograph: the view from an upstairs window.

Discovered in a trunk in 1952, the photo now resides in an airtight case at the University of Texas. The six inch by eight inch image is believed to be the first photograph ever made.

You are, right now, looking out a window into the year 1826.

There are no autos on the roads, no telephone lines, no electric lights in cities, no World Wars, no airplanes. Kings rule countries. The United States is a minor power only 50 years old; A year ago, John Quincy Adams was elected as our sixth President.

To make the image, Mr. Niepce used a polished plate of pewter metal, coated with a thin layer of a black, tarry substance called bitumen. Bitumen was once called “pitch”, as in “pitch black”, and is used these days in making asphalt.

Bitumen is light-sensitive. Ever noticed a new asphalt road is dark black and soft, but after 2-3 days it turns a pale gray and hardens? In large part, light causes this change.

Similarly, during the exposure, which may have taken up to three days, the bitumen hardened as it turned pale. Then, washing the plate with a solvent (made from oil of lavender and white petroleum) dissolved the still-soft bitumen where the shadows fell.

And presto! The view from the window.

Fernwood Street, Hollywood, 1970: Bell-bottom pants were big, see-through shirts were the ticket. I went to buy some.

In the little shop, a saleswoman slightly older than myself correctly identified me as a rube, and coerced me into black and white. (I look lousy in black, and I look lousy in white, but I didn’t know it then.) I tried on these odd garments, wasn’t sure.

She spied a loose thread on the pants, dangling from the area of the zipper.

“Let me get that off,” she said. In the middle of the store, kneeling on the carpet, she bit it off.

Both flattered, and embarassed to the core, I hurredly gave her my last dollars, and left quickly.

Back home, I unpacked my purchase and showed them to my roommate, John Hill, the Rock and Roll bass player. He said, “Cool.”

The children from next door were looking in our window. When they were standing outside, their eyes just came above the sill. John held up my new garments to the children. “Whadda ya think?” he asked them.

The children giggled. John got a funny look in his eyes, as he turned back to me.

“Say,” he said, “I’m kind of hungry.”

“So am I,” I said.

“But wait a minute!” he said, “We don’t have any food!”

“What will we do?” I asked.

“I know!” he said, snapping his fingers, “Let’s cook Christmas!“

Christmas was our small black cat. John had found him at Christmastime, hence the name. We also called Christmas the $400 cat, because he’d had a stupdndous vet bill last month. Christmas was at this moment winding himself around John’s legs.

When John suggesting cooking Christmas, the children gasped.

That was perfect. I grabbed up the cat.

“Go turn on the oven!” I exclaimed.

John ran to the kitchen, with me following holding Christmas the cat, who swayed in my hands, feet dangling. As we ran into the kitchen, the children moved up the little alleyway, so now they were peering into the kitchen window.

John reached down and pretended to turn the oven knob.

“OK, the oven’s on!” he yelled.

“Open the oven door!” I cried.

He flung down the oven door. I took an exaggerated heave, and swung Christmas the cat *under* the oven door, whereupon he immediately ran from the room. But the children couldn’t see the floor because the window sill was too high. Their mouths fell open and their eyes grew round.

John slammed the door, and turned to me.

We both rubbed our tummies, licked our lips, and cried out, “Yum! Yum!”

The children were now jumping up and down in worry.

“Don’t cook Christmas! Don’t cook Christmas!” they cried.

We turned to them in surprise, as if noticing them for the first time. John held his hand behind his ear.

“What? What?” he said. “What did you say?” The children jittered with worry.

“Don’t cook Christmas! Don’t cook Christmas!” they called.

“Oh,” he said. “No?”

“No! No!” they cried, “Don’t cook Christmas.”

“Oh, he said, “OK.” He opened the door, and pretended to take Christmas out. “You go run and play,” he said to the invisible Christmas. He turned back to the children.

“How’s that?” he said.

“Thank you! Thank you!” they cried out. “Thank you!”

Not long after, I packed up and moved back to Texas and Midwestern University. John went on to become “Magic John’s Blues Band.” I don’t know what happened to Christmas; I hope he was happy.