The Story of the Stool

This is the story of the stool. It is also a story about walking around in an unfamiliar place and trying to figure it out. It's a story that starts with a green plastic pot and ends with a famous song. It's a story about doing things you'll never find in the "best of L.A." guide book. It's a story that has flowers and ducks and pastrami on rye. It has a Korean barbershop and our child asking,"Why?"  There are helpers in a park and a violin guy, and at the end of the day there are beers in a bar. This is the story of the stool. And everything else too.

One day we took the green plastic pot that used to have the dead palm in it and we walked for a mile and gave it to the Goodwill. Jason our son wanted to get rid of the pot. He wanted to get rid of lots of other things too. His purging gene had been awakened somehow by his recent trip to South America. Or maybe it was the book written by the crazy Japanese woman called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing that had inspired him. Either way, he had recently decided that he wanted to get rid of everything. Everything turned into a lot of things. He made a big pile. The pile was taking up precious floor space in his 450 square foot apartment that was our temporary home. We wanted to help him get some of that stuff out the door. We are almost certain we were inspired solely by the desire to be of service.

So one day, while Jason was at work, we took the empty plastic pot, and a no longer loved photo collage, and a brown paper grocery bag filled with other unwanted items, and we set out walking. We found the Goodwill with only minimal help from the satellites in the sky and dropped everything off. And then Gary saw The Stool. The biggest thing in Jason's discard pile back in the apartment was his giant black swivelly computer chair. He said it was too big and took up too much space. He said that from now on he was just going to stand up to work. He said he didn't need a chair at all anymore. We secretly disagreed with him. We thought he needed a place to sit down. We thought he needed The Stool. It was $5.99. It was small enough to slide under his work table and disappear. It was padded and sturdy. It was clearly perfect. We had to have it. We bought The Stool.

So now we had the stool, but our day had just begun. The apartment was a mile away. There was no other choice really. The stool became our companion. We took it to the bank with us. I sat outside and waited.

We carried the stool through the streets of Westlake. And when I say we, I mean Gary. Gary carried the stool through the streets of Westlake. It was the day before Valentine's Day and the sidewalks were blooming with flowers. The middle-aged Latina women had all set up shop. We walked through hundreds of flowers. Thousands of flowers. Pink and red and white everywhere you looked. There were roses and carnations and baby's breath. There were flowers in bouquets and flowers in arrangements in ceramic vases. There were single roses wrapped in cellophane in five gallon buckets. None of this had been here the day before. And now there were blocks and blocks of blooms. It all seemed to have sprung from nowhere. There were so many flowers I kept thinking to myself - who is going to buy all these? It seemed impossible that they would all be sold by the end of the next day. I worried about the entrepreneurs. How had they paid for all this stuff? How much money were they going to lose if they didn't sell everything? I wanted to take pictures, but I didn't. I was trying to pretend that all of this was something I saw every day. I tried not to stare. The vendors barely seemed to notice us. Maybe they knew we were not buyers. Maybe they see white women with Asian men carrying stools through their neighborhood all the time. I was fascinated by all the flowers, and the people selling them, but we did not seem to interest them at all.

We kept walking. As we walked we passed more people selling things on the sidewalks. There were colorful glass bongs and tables filled with gold jewelry. There was a blanket on the ground with a clarinet and a violin on it. I saw the violin and went over. Jason's birthday was a few days away and we had recently learned of his wish for a violin. A quiet brown man in a worn wool blazer materialized beside me and picked up the violin. He started to play. His fingers made a small vibrato. He smiled at us. We smiled at him. He told us $60. We smiled some more and walked away. Jason is in the making a big pile to get rid of  mood, not the let's buy more stuff mood. Gentle violin man said he would be there until seven if we changed our minds.

What was really on our minds was pastrami. There is a really famous deli in Westlake called Langer's. There are those that say that Langer's has the best pastrami sandwich in the entire country. The entire country. But Langer's was not listed in the L.A. guideboooks that Jason had in his apartment. It is not listed in the 2009 issue of Lonely Planet's Los Angeles Encounter book. It also does not appear in the 2010 edition of the DK Eyewitness Travel Los Angeles book. I assume the publishers of these books decided the location was not one they wanted to send unsuspecting tourists to. On their website Langer's proudly proclaims that they "pioneered" curb service. In other words, if you are too uncomfortable to get out of your car in this neighborhood, they will bring your food to you as you sit at the curb. They will also deliver your food to you by air if you are far away and have a craving. We needed to try this pastrami. The stool sat next to us in the booth.

It was great pastrami.

I have no way of knowing if it is the best pastrami in the country. But it was really good. The sandwiches were $15 and the clientele was almost exclusively Caucasian. Businessmen in suits. A young white woman and her two young children at the booth next to us. It felt strange to suddenly be in a sea of white people in the middle of Westlake. Langer's closes at 4pm every day. I am pretty sure the sea is gone by then. And the middle-aged Caucasian couple we passed on the way there will be long gone too. The wife clutching her purse just a little too tightly. Both of them hurrying past us all grim-faced and gray.

And after our sandwich, we were gone, out the door and across the street. Across the street from Langer's is MacArthur Park.

The famous park where someone left the cake out in the rain. This park is also not listed in any guidebooks in Jason's apartment. Because here it sits in the middle of Westlake. There is a lake in the middle of MacArthur Park. It's called West Lake. There is a fountain in the middle of the lake, and lots and lots of ducks. Jason often goes jogging here in the morning. They installed cameras in the park a few years ago, and from what I have been reading it is safer today than it was five years ago. I don't think I would go here at night, but it seemed perfectly fine during the day. I did hear a rumor that every time they clean the lake they find a body or two.

There were lots of people in the park when we walked through. Some of them lived there. Some of them were just hanging out conducting business. But there were lots of families too, and couples lying in the grass. Across the park we saw a group congregating. We went to investigate and found helpers. People helping people in MacArthur Park. The helpers were from The Dream Center. There was a van distributing food. There were piles of produce in white plastic bags and a line of people waiting patiently. Gary talked to the helper in charge to find out what it was all about. Young helper man told us we could volunteer if we wanted. There was always something to do. Some way to help. We filed the information away and walked on. We found a spot under a palm tree and sat on our Goodwill stool in MacArthur Park and just watched for a little while.

From the park we dragged the stool a few more blocks to Koreatown, where Gary got an eight dollar haircut. Gary does not speak Korean. Korean haircutter girl spoke little English. After a few false starts they figured it out. I was sitting on the stool inside the shop watching. Then we dropped the stool off at the apartment, walked downtown to meet Jason, and on the way home stopped in at Monty's for a beer. We told our son about our day. He shook his head and said, "But why?"  We tried to answer. We walked home through the streets of Westlake. It was Friday night and there were people everywhere, families and babies and happy kids running. A young man walked by holding a Valentine's Day flower arrangement. And after dinner that night we sat in Jason's apartment and sang along with Richard Harris. We sang MacArthur Park. We sang loud and long. And Jason liked the stool. And sat on it that very night.

There are just some days that make you feel more alive than others. There are just some days that fill you up and change you in ways you don't understand. Days you will never read about in your in-flight magazine. Days that are filled with life and color and everything human. And that is the story of the stool. It's just the story of a stool. And everything else too.