Four days into a six day stay I found myself alternating between two distinct states: boredom or drunkenness. Plus, there was the knife wielding graces of family I had to contend with; each loving member employing in close quarters one of the classic seven knife twist n' thrust positions described in Sir Walter Raleigh's seminal work, 'The Art of the Stab'.
Even the sputtering and wheezing bonhomie of old friends failed to cheer me up. How many tales pivoting on broken marriages, self -medication excesses, gambling addictions or offspring the result of animal husbandry can one humanly listen to?
My last few nights were spent in a futile attempt at escape driving around the countryside. On my final night I stumbled onto a farm equipment show on old highway 41. Game for novelty I thought why not take a look. Twenty years of New York City living had convinced me that my hick past was well buried and such an experience I could milk for laughs upon my return.
I pulled my car onto an adjoining field that served as parking lot. Each row was tightly packed with a seemingly endless conga line of pickup trucks. After some effort I wedged my smoke belching ride between a new model truck and an aquamarine '62 Ford pickup with a gaggle of squealing piglets lashed to the back of its crib.
Once inside the gaily festooned exhibition hall it wasn't long before I was caught in the cross hairs of the hard stare; one evolved not from our mammalian forebears but rather from our fish precursors. Behind the eyeballs were a harvest season's worth of no-nonsense, barrel chested men dressed in waders, boots, overalls, jeans, flannel shirts and your odd green knock off U.S. Masters jacket.
My attire struck them as transgressive evidently. The all black ensemble I wore - de rigueur for any velvet roped Manhattan boîte - was heretical to this group whose philosophical lineage mapped back to John Birch and the KKK both now in decline due to the death of the former's founder and the fitted percale sheet to the latter. Hanging in the air was a palpable sense that the lot of them wanted to beat me with sack of pig manure. Off in the near distance I could see a few of them air tracing the contours of my nose. Faced with the question of flee or fight I chose to flee disappearing myself Argentine style into the shadowed gaps between the tractors, combines and tillers on display.
A loud metal clanging sound filled the hall suddenly. Near the front under the archway stood a huge, red faced man sweating and screaming at the top of his lungs, "My piggies!"
A pandemonium ensued.
Using the hub-bub as cover I maneuvered myself between the various mechanical contrivances that cut, clawed or chewed the land finally settling on what I thought to be a good hiding place behind an ebony credenza on top of which sat a shining old-fashioned dairy can. Hanging above it was a large green and white semi-gloss poster beckoning people to sign up for the John Deer Agri-Prop Sweepstakes.
Unlike my grandfather who was obsessed with such contests and entered them with manic frequency followed by a success ratio that bordered on the statistical improbability I possessed none of his DNA and remained agnostic on all things chance. I had nearly turned away when the offer of a free gift caught my eye - a John Deer baseball cap for filling out the sweepstakes form.
It asked the standard questions with a few new curves - name of the farm, location, tillable acreage and cash crop.
I filled the last four blanks in with the following: Sheep Meadow Farm, 1West 66th St. NYC, 24 and soybeans.
Fibs all! But I wanted the cap!
The Call
Some Months Later:
I had completely forgotten about that farm implements show until the day the phone rang.
"Hello, I am Jacques Legumes and I'm calling on behalf of the John Deer Company," the voice said in an accent of unknown provenance.
I cut him off instantly. "I'm sorry… not interested," I answered, using that tone crucial to surviving in a world taken over by cold callers.
"Sir, please don't hang up," he pleaded, "just give me a minute of your time"At first my brain didn't make the connection. But then the right synapses fired and Boom! "Where's my hat?" I demanded.
"What?"
"The hat promised at your farm show."
"I'm not sure what you're talking about but this is much bigger than a hat."
"Make it quick," I said testily.
"How does the grand prize in the John Deer Company's Agri-Prop Sweepstakes grab you?"
It took a moment to sink in. "What? A Pa… pa… a prize?" I stuttered.
The card I had filled out automatically entered me in the sweepstakes. And by luck of the draw my name was chosen out of more than a million by a process he referred to as a Monte Carlo simulation vetted by the accounting firm Earnest & Old.
I was dumbfounded. Was it possible that I was actually a winner I wondered. Winner… a noun usually not connected with my name.
"I really am?"
"Yes, you are!"
Overwhelmed with excitement suddenly I blurted out, "So, what did I win… a new car?"
"No," he replied.
"Perhaps a round the world cruise?"
"Not that either."
"How about a vacation home in the Caribbean?"
"No, I'm afraid not. But before I wade into the details I have a few questions." I detected an audible sigh over the line. "Our sweepstakes committee was puzzled over the location of your farm."
My sense of entitlement solid as a glacier minutes before was now melting away quickly torched by my new growing fear. I racked my brain trying to remember what I had written. Luckily, in his next breath he supplied the answer. "Sheep Meadow Farm, wasn't it?"
I suppressed a gulp. "Oh, that farm! You mean my acreage over on West 66th. You know sometimes with so much tillable acreage under my belt it's hard to keep track."
"So, that is the correct location of your farm?"
"You bethca!"
"Funny, one of my Deer colleagues swears he knows of no farming in that area since Peter Stuyvesant blew town."
"You know the Dutch, famous for being the first to cut and run," I answered nervously.
"Just one more question… what's your current cash crop?" Nothing but silence followed.
I said the first thing that popped into my head, "Corn!"
A long pause ensued. "Hmm, seems there's a discrepancy. On the entry form you wrote soybeans."
"Oh, yeah, sure… that was before."
"Before? Hmm, I don't follow."
"I've since rotated out to another crop."
A longer silence. Finally Legumes said, "Smart… a textbook approach to combating nitrogen deficiency."
Under my breath I breathed a sigh of relief. "My daddy always said a man can never have too much nitrogen."
"Well then, on behalf of the John Deer let me be the first to congratulate you as our Grand Prize winner of our award winning model 262 tractor!"
"A tra… trac… tractor," I stammered incredulously.
"Not just any tractor! Your prize is a Jack Deer model 262 - known affectionately as the Juggernaut amongst the farm cognoscenti. It is to farm machines what the Duisenberg was to automobiles. Look under its hood and you will find a twelve cylinder overhead cam, turbocharged diesel engine. They don't make them like that anymore, no sir, not since the Clean Air Act of 1972 under which this engine is grandfathered. In its class with custom manifold systems and exhaust schemes it's truly sui generis. I would be terribly amiss if I did not mention its other mechanical accouterments: a hydraload bearing suspension built atop a X-chassis, a Dyna-Flow drive train with a Quadra-Trac transmission re-engineered for three wheel configuration and finally, its piece de resistance - Corinthian leather seats."
"Corinthian leather seats?"
"The 262 is based on a retro design from the 1970s and would not be complete without that design element. For you, sir, farming from now on won't be a chore anymore but an adventure!"
He lowered his voice, "You don't mind me asking but are you single?"
Chalk it up to my Manhattan paranoia but I was momentarily taken aback by the question.
"Yeah," I replied warily, "but why?"
"Look, I'm not up on the cultural mores of New Yorkers but out here in Minnesota a man in command of such a fine piece of farm machinery is king and is due his…"
I abruptly cut him off. "What?"
"A lovely piece of arm candy." I could almost feel him smirking through the telephone.
For a few moments I tried to imagine myself cruising the streets of Manhattan perched atop such a mechanical behemoth. But that was quickly wiped away by the thought of me looking more like Mike Dukakis behind the wheel of a tank.
"FYI, our selection committee will be accompanying the delivery of the grand prize."
The words tumbled out of my mouth. "What, out… out here in New York?"
"Why do you think we started the sweepstakes in the first place? To create buzz and maximize media exposure! When marketing served it up to our Chairman Jack 3rd he swallowed it whole hook, line and sinker."
"You don't need to go to so some much trouble… next time in the Mid West I could swing by Minnesota and pick it up."
"Your consideration is much appreciated but I'm afraid… no! Do you know how much excitement you created in marketing when your name was chosen, " Jacques replied coolly, "usually it's some excuse my French shithole in Palookaville, still, as long as you meet the requirements…"
"Requirements, what requirements?" I shot back.
His voice darkened. “According to the rules delivery of the grand prize must be made in situ at the site of winning claimant’s farm which in your case is at West 66th Street in New York City. You have a farm there don’t you?”
I swallowed hard. “Oh sure… sure sure.”
“Good,” he replied, adding with a slight menace, “Because if you don’t not only are you going to lose the grand prized but also piss off a lot of people.”
“No tractor, no nothing?”
“Not nothing… You’ll get the consolation prize,” he replied, “a set of Deer steak knives!”
The Scheme
Now, I was in a pickle. I had won a prize easily worth thousands of dollars and if I didn’t come up with some tillable soil in Manhattan it would be gone in a blink. I called Lawrence Richetti, an old friend from my college days at Columbia University. Larry was a brilliant, lonely, slightly rotund polymath, so lettered that he had numerous diplomas stacked around his apartment like stale pizza boxes after pledge week. Aside from these accomplishments he had personal qualities that made him a lightening rod for controversy. He once confided that he considered himself dangerous to the female population and they did likewise but for opposite reasons the details of which remain under court seal today.
Larry was into quick buck schemes. Five years earlier when I had one of those rare moments in life where I had a surplus of cash he convinced me to invest in something called PenCillus. It was a bacilli detection spray to be used on the hands of restaurant workers in determining whether they had used proper hygiene between trips to the bathroom. If they failed to do this their hands would glow a florescent green. On paper it sounded great but in implementation it was a disaster. Unbeknown to us was that its creator Dr. Seymour Gruber a former East German scientist on the run from the International Olympic Committee anti-doping SS had selected strains of bacilli indigenous to Latin immigrants. Not only were we pilloried in the press but soon found ourselves smack in the middle of a racial profiling furor. National columnist Mary McGrory noted that she preferred PenCillus’s previous incarnation because its raison d'etre read better in German. Overnight we became the poster boys for one of the lowest forms of life on Earth - entrepreneurial fascists - a notch above lichen.
I gave Larry a quick review of my situation.
“Bottom line, what you’re asking to do is plant a farm in Sheep Meadow?”
“That’s pretty much it.”
“You’re odds are better at getting into Jane Wrightsman’s co-op at 577 Park Avenue. Getting your net worth up to a hundred million dollars may be easier than plowing up what the entitled classes see as hallowed ground,” he replied, pausing, “but, hey, I’m a sucker for long shots.”
The news ran rampant through the family grapevine. Five days later my brother Chris called from Indiana. He was a born operator. By day he worked a dead end job for the state highway department while his nights were reserved for his more profitable wheeling and dealing with the underbelly of American Mid-western life.
“What the hell are you going to do with a tractor in New York City?”
"Oh, the usual,” I answered, playfully, “you know mow some lawns, plow some snow… maybe help my neighbors with their spring tilling.”
“Neighbors? Out there? You must be kidding… you know you have to pay taxes on it.”
“Taxes?”
“It’s a short term capital gain… puts you into the government for 40% I think.”
“Damn,” I whispered, “that could run into tens of thousands of dollars.”
Sensing my precarious financial situation he stayed true to family form and offered to buy it for dimes on the dollar.
I politely refused. Yet hardly a week hardly passed where he didn’t have me on the phone describing a prospective buyer willing to pay fifty percent of book value in cash.
By the fourth week he had come up with a name and a good price.
“The prospective buyer?” Chris answered, “Oswald Booth.”
“The pot farmer?”
“He prefers the moniker gentleman farmer, if you will.”
“What does he want it for, thought he farmed in the tree canopy? A helicopter seems more useful.”
“That was then but now he’s grounded now. You know my m.o., ‘I don’t ask, they don’t tell’”
That Saturday I called Richetti. A message on his machine directed me to room 54 at the Harvard Club.
Around midnight I received a return call. “Let’s meet,” he demanded.
“Larry, it’s almost midnight.”
“No better time when the game’s afoot.”
We met an hour later on the small lane separating the Tavern on the Green from Sheep Meadow. The park was unusually active that night due to the park police rousting all the homeless and escorting them out to the street. Richetti save for a black leather shoulder bag was decked out in clothes that looked lifted from a film noir set.
“It’s lucky you chose Sheep Meadow,” he said, in a side of mouth style befitting the garb, “if you had written North Meadow you’d be shit out of luck!”
“How do you figure?”
“Sheep Meadow is under an old writ dating back to when the city was founded. It’s designated as a commons which means anybody has a right to use it as long as its production or what economists like to call the commonwealth utility are distributed equally to its citizens.”
“That make’s us golden, no?”
“You’re getting ahead of the story. When New York was transformed from an agrarian backwater to a post-industrial metropolis that writ came under attack. One of the more famous attacks came from Frederick Law Olmstead himself. He tried to quash it when he built Central Park. He thought such an anachronistic notion didn’t belong in a modern city’s park.”
“It’s hard to imagine how he lost? Olmstead’s name in NYC is venerated right up there next toYahweh.”
“The sheep tripped him up. He didn’t take into account the views of his partner Calvin Vaux. A mistake he paid dearly for and the only pardon the pun vaux pas of his storied career. Finally, after some legal wrangling Calvin got his sheep and Frederick Law his equine bridal path,” Larry replied coolly. “A design feature I may add detested by Vaux as nothing more than a sop to the ruling class.”
Before I bid him goodnight near the Imagine circle in Strawberry Fields I asked him a question that was struck in my craw. “Larry, what’s this about ‘equal distribution’?”
”Not our concern right now first things first,” he answered in a tone of indifference, “I’ll file a new motion with Parks who I’m sure will kick it upstairs to the Conservancy for a hearing.”
The Central Park Conservancy. The mere sound of its name sent a shudder down my back. Images of park apparatchiks clad in green goose stepping ominously across that verdant plot filled my mind. Many a lazy unemployed day had been spent watching fellow park go-ers arrested, shackled and carted off by the park police under auspices of the Conservancy for violations ranging from unleashed dogs to public hippie dancing.
“Richetti, I’m no expert on fool’s errands but…”
He cut me to the quick. “Dude get a grip! It’s not like we’re up against the likes of Opus Dei or the Illuminati!”
I continued, “But consider the power of an entity able to ban the toy poodles of those Fifth Avenue ladies of a certain age who lunch at the Four Seasons?”
He reached inside his bag slung over his shoulder and pulled out a ratty looking leather bound volume of Blackstone’s Commentaries and thumbed to a page and read out loud: “For a public field that formerly existed as a public commons to be rechristened a sheep meadow it must be according to strictures of common law as enumerated by the Council of Worms permit sheep grazing for one calendar day a year. Failure to do so reverts the land back to terra nullius.”
“Terra what?”
“For now just focus on sheep!”
Parks threw us a curveball and rejected our petition out of hand.
“All because of that bastard Moses” Larry snorted over the phone, “got rid of the sheep!”
“What’s Moses have to do with the Park? Sheep slaughtering pretty much ended with Abraham.”
“Different Moses,” he replied acidly.
Lawrence was not easily daunted. His borderline schizophrenic state didn’t permit it. Over the next few weeks he burrowed deeply into the stacks at the New York Public Library and the City Court Building refusing to come up for air until he found what he was looking for.
One late night the phone rang. Richetti could hardly contain himself.
“We have an angle!”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Moses’ ban on sheep grazing on the Meadow was a measure taken during the Great Depression out of fear that starving New Yorkers might slaughter them for food,” he trumpeted over the phone, “it was only ‘temporary!’”
He filed a new motion with Parks the next day.
Our gambit failed again. Parks invoked a set of new powers we were blithely unaware of . Due to economic duress in the late 1970s the city had to cede some of its control of the park over to the Conservancy. It was later enhanced in 1989 when the Cuomo government designated the Conservancy as the modern day equivalent of Lord Protector. On the eve of its 150th anniversary the Central Park Enabling Act was enacted which invested in the Conservancy the right to void any action taken by any elected official from governor down to borough supervisor where such action is in violation of the precepts laid down by Frederick Law Olmsted unless overturned by the two-thirds vote of a citywide plebiscite.
“They’re not a Conservancy at all. They have morphed into something hideous,” bellowed Lawrence, “like Monaco! But sadly without the gambling!.”
“Sounds like we’re cooked…”
“Guess we could go the People’s Park Berkeley ’68 protest route. But for that we need bodies and a few rabble-rousers. Where’s Abbie Hoffman when you need ‘em?” he replied flatly.
“Dead, I think. What about that guy who blew up the Paris McDonalds?”
“You mean Bové? No can work - one, last I heard he’s in the pokey for destroying a load of trans-genetically engineered corn, and two, he’s French… anyone else?”
Of all the names that crossed my mind that day it wasn't the man who called me out of the blue twenty days later.
Drop a Dime
When Legumes phoned me the next week he detected a catch in my voice that something was terribly wrong. ”What aren’t you telling me?” he demanded.
Unable to hold back any longer I spilled the beans. My confession in turn made him quite apoplectic. He pelted me with rapid fire questions wrapped in the vestigial verbal ornaments of no holds barred swearing.
“You really thought you could pull off this half-assed plan to turn Central Park into a farm.”
“Not the entire park. I was just looking for a baseball cap initially. But after you called that ole’green eyed monster of greed welled up and a plan was hatched.”
The receiver again filled full of invective. I snapped back defensively, “What’s it to you anyway. All you wanted was a photo ready setup in Central Park, a corporate snapshot on the cheap.”
A minute of silence followed. But then the howling winds of recriminations started anew followed by the oblivion of a disconnect.
A week later I was surprised when I picked up and heard Jacques’ voice on the other end. Within a few phonemes I could tell he had regained his old confident salesman self.
“I’ve got great news,” he said, “a friend who’s let’s say deeply embedded at Monsanto just let me in on a little secret.”
My ears perked up.
“I can’t reveal my source… let’s just call him Deep Root.”
“Keep talking.”
“This might just be the thing that will get you back in the driver’s seat behind the controls of the Jack Deere 262.”
“Marquis de Sod!” he whispered.
Surely, I thought, he can’t be talking about that sadistic aristocrat who had a thing for virgins, paper cuts and hot wax can he?
“Jacques, how does the Bastille, men without pants and a creepy old French sado-masochist figure into our solution?”
“I’m talking about a different aristocrat altogether here… the Marquis de Sod,” he shouted in the rhythm of a tent revivalist, “is the sod of all sods, the mother ship of all grasses, the stuff that dreams of landscapers are made of….”
He continued with this incantation like a man possessed. “The Marquis has properties not only of nature born but also those of the test tube. Chief attribute? It stays green through the harshest of droughts while demanding the littlest of water of all the planet’s grasses.”
“That’s amazing… how’d they do that Legumes?”
“Spliced in some camel’s DNA,” he replied sarcastically, “how the hell should I know. I’m a salesman not a molecular biologist!”
“How’s this going to help us?
“Monsanto was approached by the Conservancy. I can not confirm actual sales or transfers,” he replied, “ just that high level discussions took place.”
When Larry heard the news he was beside himself - not an easy thing for a man of his girth to achieve. “This sounds like our trump card! As Napoleon once famously said if you’re going to take Vienna then take Vienna. In the same vein we’re going to take the Conservancy! For starters we’ll play the Green card. Firstly we mobilize the foot soldiers at Gene-Neered Food Alert and backstop them with some boots from Transgenic Pollution Watch. For rearguard action we’ll activate in Greenpeace. The New York press will go after this like sharks do to blood in the water. When it comes to their health you can depend on the neuroses of New Yorkers to make storming the Bastille look like a walk in the park.”
“Except…” he said, “There’s the Afghanistan lesson to consider.”
I shot him a look of bewilderment.
“You release the green genie out of the bottle today tomorrow our transgenic freedom fighters could be our worst nightmare, that is, our own home grown Taliban.”
“So Larry, what’s the strategy?”
“The brief I submit to Parks shall contain a stratagem once used by Machiavelli himself in defense of one of the warring factions of the Medici clan. In the beat of a regal heart our demands will soon be in the blue blooded hands of the Central Park Conservancy. Given that they are celebrating the park’s sesquicentennial the last thing they want to do is spoil it with a scandal of global proportions.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” I said slightly exasperated, “but essentially what are we demanding?”
“Read my lips… Re-sod that park!”
The Trial
Richetti’s words were prophetic. Eight days later we attended a meeting hastily convened by the Conservancy. It was held in their inner sanctum at the Tavern on the Green in a lavishly appointed, Edwardian style room just a dogleg from the Little Jimmy Scott Jazz Room.
Larry was dressed in a Saville Row tweed suit set off by a purple vest.
“What’s with the outfit? Trying out for Rumpole of the Bailey? That vest, a bit much isn’t it?”
“My dear Midwestern farm boy you are out of your class element. In Elizabethan times the wearing of less than imperial purple was cause for a quick dispatch to the Tower.”
A bell was struck to call the meeting to order. Larry Richetti was asked to approach the tribunal and make his presentation. Fourteen minutes into his argument assisted as it was by multi-layered graphs and charts he was interrupted by Max von Hoffman, the Chairman of the Conservancy. The Chairman, who had the kind of chiseled looks that begged for inclusion in Mount Rushmore, was dressed in a black gown highlighted by purple chevrons on each sleeve. “I hope Mr. Richetti you know one can prove anything with statistics,” he said with a whiff of patrician air, “let’s cut to the chase, what exactly are the merits of your argument?”
“In a moment, but first a little discovery is in order.”
“Proceed.”
Larry drummed his fingers on the railing of the witness box allowing tension to build. Then, with his eyes honing in on his prey he asked point blank, “Mr. Chairman, did you or any of your associates approach the Monsanto Corporation?”
“Hmm… yes… we had exploratory talks,” replied von Hoffman.
On that Larry threw the dice. “Did the nature of these talks center on a certain type of sod?”
The Chairman nodded wearily while glancing at his watch as if he had other pressing engagements. “Do you remember the name of the sod in question?”
“Marquise something or the other… perhaps that of Queensbury,” he answered.
“With all due respect, sir, this isn’t about boxing. It’s about sod!” he said, pounding his meaty fist on the railing. “Did you not contract Monsanto to replace the grass on Sheep Meadow with that of Marquis de Sod?”
The question hung menacingly in the air.
“No, on the contrary counselor,” answered von Hoffman, coolly, “we were looking for a meadow grass that was limited both in thirst and height.”
“But that didn’t prevent you from using it,” Lawrence demanded, pressing his case.
Von Hoffman oozing entitlement like a canker sore from his every pore took a long studied pause before answering. “No, that wasn’t the case. Even though it had one of the two qualities it also had a flaw we at the Conservancy would never deign to entertain!”
The unexpected answer caused a slight twitch above Larry’s right eyebrow.
Von Hoffman continued. “The use of genetically engineered grass would have violated a tenet laid down by Frederick Law Olmstead nearly a century and a half ago.”
The mere mention of his name prompted the Conversancy’s members to nod in Pentecostal-like unison.
I glanced over at Richetti who now looked like a fighter hanging on the ropes. Gone was his confident swagger. He had that sour look of a man punched too many times in the stomach.
“I think we’ve… we’ve had it,” he whispered, the slobbery rattle of defeat evident in his voice.
Just then a messenger knocked on the Tavern’s outer gate. Rules of protocol forbade him entry initially but after some blitzkrieg diplomacy by Larry helped along by a well placed bribe of several bottles of Chateau Margaux the messenger was finally admitted under the privilege of droit de seigneur where he delivered into Richetti’s needy, sweaty palms a bright red envelope, an epiphany of sorts. Richetti tore into it with all the unabashed glee of a boy on Christmas day.
“As Napoleon once remarked,” he said, sotto voce, “History turns on a trifle. This may be, pardon the pun, the coup de grass I’ve been waiting for.”
I stole a peek over his shoulder and managed to read a few lines. Alarmed in what I saw I tried to nudge him to get his attention but he waved me off.
“One more question Mr. Chairman if you please. Have you or any board member ever contacted the Dupont Company?”
The question froze Von Hoffman’s face into a near death mask. The buzzing of the chattering classes stopped and the room filled with an eerie silence.
“What may I ask are you what you’re digging around for Mr. Richetti?”
Larry’s eyes glimmered. “Mr. Chairman, with all do respect I’ll ask you once again have you or anyone else on the board had any contact with the DuPont Company within the last three years?”
“What impertinence!”
“Sir,” demanded Larry, “does Soilent Green mean anything to you!”
“The movie?” asked the one of the tribunal’s Chanel clad women.
“Charleston Heston is a personal friend of mine,” announced another member to no one in particular.
“No, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Central Park Conservancy. I am not talking about the iconic movie Soylent Green. No, this is about something as simple and fundamental to our daily lives as grass,” Larry replied in a cadence that allowed him to luxuriate over the words, “The meadow you see was sod with Soilent Green!”
The charge animated the committee’s animus. Sweat pooled around the Chairman’s eyes threatening a tectonic shift in his stone faced certitude.
“What do you want?”
“Our day on the meadow,” answered Lawrence.
“That’s blackmail!” shouted a member down the line.
Richetti remained unflappable, “Blackmail, hmm… the word sounds so harsh. I prefer to think of it as greenmail.”
Once again the room was awash in the whisperings of the chattering classes. Lawrence now with his hauteur and bearing in ascendancy looked with every passing moment the exemplar of Carlisle’s Great Man of History theory.
Max von Hoffman cried, “Counselor, what do you have in mind?”
Larry milked the moment for all its worth. But then in a dramatic gesture not seen since the day when Rudolf Valentino first laid eyes on Clara Bow he focused his dark stare back on the Conservancy and slammed his fist and said, “Mr. Chairman… tear up that turf!”
The place broke into pandemonium. A ten minute recess was ordered.
During the recess Larry leaned over to me and said, “That bunch will cave to our demands faster than Chamberlain at Munich.”
But the collapse was not as quick as predicted. In the next room a heated discussion was taking place. “If word leaks about our use of Soilent Green in the park New Yorkers will bring back the guillotine or worse Auschwitz,” one unidentified member argued.
Another member argued a different tact, “Transgenic pollution,” he wagered, “has never been successfully adjudicated. May I remind the Chairman of one of the conceptual bedrocks of law - the Roman concept of confusio.”
But von Hoffman was not to be dissuaded. “This would subject us to a myriad of lawsuits. I say this not only as your Chairman but also as head of torts at Splurgeon, MacCracken and Pinchback,” he replied gravely, “if we open that can of worms it exposes us to a new theory on the intermingling of plant DNA into the human food chain that’s currently gaining legal traction. We can’t afford to be its first test case because our liability would make the Dow Corning silicon settlements look like peanuts.”
A quick up and down vote was taken and Von Hoffman found himself in the rare position of the minority. Giving the dissenters a hard eye he said, “I hope in the end we are not hung by our own petard.”
With Von Hoffman in the lead they all re-entered the Little Jimmy Scott room in a flourish of flying robes that would have been right at home in a summer stock staging of The Mikado. Once seated, he got straight to the point. “Counselor, unless you have anything else in your bag of tricks our position shall remain unchanged. The Conservancy deems this matter closed.”
For a minute Lawrence looked stunned even deflated. But in a flash his eyes regained that special twinkle when he reached into his black bag and pulled out a can of PenCillus. Leaning into me he whispered, “When you can’t win with the facts employ some razzle dazzle.”
Rarely had a man of his girth and weight moved so fast to get back on his feet and head them off at the egress. “The can in my left hand will prove DNA recombination,” he announced.
In a stage whisper I pleaded, “Are you mad? PenCillus’s notorious. It was in all the papers!”
“Not in the papers they read!”
The board watched inquisitively as he sprayed his hands with PenCillus and then head out the side door leading to the garden. Nearly in lockstep we all moved over to the picture window facing Sheep Meadow.
When Lawrence reached the edge of the meadow he did something very curious in deed. He bent over quite flexibly, unusual for a man of his girth, and ran his hands through large swaths of the meadow grass. From the nearly incandescent look on Larry’s face it was obvious that his inner ham actor was in clover.
At first nothing happened. Murmurs of self congratulation soon wafted up from the crowd as many of the onlookers turned away and started streaming for the exit. But then all of a sudden something amazing happened. Lawrence’s chubby hands were now cocooned in an eerie green glow like luminescent ET hand puppets.
As soon as this ocular proof became more evident a collective groan rose up from snob to snob.
They had no idea that when Larry exited the Tavern he had passed through the kitchen and grandiosely pressed the flesh of every cook, dishwasher, and busboy in a manner that would have made LBJ proud.
Upon his return glowing as he did like a spent reactor rod he announced, “If the beloved pets of any meadow goers consume any of the meadow’s grass their testicles will end up looking like,” pausing for effect, “like Little Jimmy Scott’s!”
A shaken but not stirred Von Hoffman demanded a five minute recess.
“Their demands must be met,” he said, “I’ll be damned if I put myself in a position when someday somebody might leave a note at the Century Club addressed to Max von Hoffman - transgenic sodomite!”
When the Conservancy re-assembled in the Little Jimmy room Max Von Hoffman spoke in the vein of the Pope ex cathedra: “We have agreed to your demand for use of the meadow for one calendar day.”
We had the green light. With a Ford tractor borrowed from the Parks Department and the help of some of the farmers from the city’s greenmarkets we managed to plow up a decent amount of furrows by the time the Deer entourage arrived.
The John Deere Model 262 tractor was delivered via a flat bed truck to the edge of my urban farm. It wouldn’t fit through the front gate so we had to slice a hole in the chain link fence. This was a symbolic act that the Greens couldn’t stomach; they soon had us engaged on the field in full force. Within minutes I was surrounded by a great unwashed group of placard waving protestors. Luckily, by some miracle I was able to drive with trembling hands the Juggernaut out to the center of the field without crushing a single person beneath it wheels.
The photo-op went off as planned thanks in large part to the extra security muscle Deer brought in. Given the near riotous conditions I had to stay put in my driver’s seat. This prevented me from meeting the man I had known only by voice - Jacques Legumes. As darkness fell one of the security men pointed him out in the distance. All I could make out was a waspish figure sporting a well coifed ponytail darting about.
The Glittering Prize
I awoke the next morning feeling the giddiness of possession. But I soon sobered up to the cold reality of it. What the hell was I going to do with it? Finding a parking place in front of my 71st brownstone studio apartment or any place on the Westside was going to take some real ingenuity.
At first things seemed quite manageable. All I needed was a parking spot for two days of the week. But as with all best laid plans certain random variables popped up that drove my once seemingly stable environment into chaotic free fall. Drives now seemed eternal.
There was one benefit to all this crazy street madness. I had a chance to investigate the surrounding subculture of street parking whose ethos was based on folkways of alternate days and double-parking. The iron-clad rule was you had to be out in your car and double parked by eight a.m. The few remaining spots if any were grabbed up by a group locals referred to as the reavers who came via bridge and tunnel. After double parking the majority usually returned to the comfort of their apartment keeping their ears tuned bat-like for that siren wail of a blocked-in car.
But there was also a minority who preferred to stay in their cars the entire time. They read newspapers and books, drank cups of coffee, or carried on conversations on cell phones or in the car with real or imagined friends. Some even practiced hygiene methods that would be embarrassing even in the privacy of their own home. And then there were those who on rare occasion practiced sexual congress.
All was going well until the city turned the tables on me by changing the rules. From now on I had to double park three days a week from 9:30 to 11:00 am. The late post time gave even the sluggards a chance to get out of the gate.
That was the beginning of a mountain of parking tickets. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t beat the competition off the blocks in the morning. The slowest heap on the street consistently kicked my butt. I needed sixty seconds just to get it up to 15 mph. Even the dump trucks whizzed by me as if they were in a NASCAR race. Alternate side parking days were now consumed driving around the Westside like the mythical Flying Dutchman in search of its port o’call.
Some weeks later I called my brother in Indiana out of desperation.
“Tell Oswald that if he still wants it…”
Chris cut me off. “Where he’s at I don’t think he needs it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The State Correctional Farm.”
“How did he end up there?”
“He was convicted for conspiring to buy a tank of anhydrous ammonia.”
“That’s illegal?”
“Illegal? Not for legit farming but it is for methamphetamine production,” he answered, “my guess is that he wanted your tractor for a front.”
“Guess he’s got no need for it there.”
“Lack of tractors ain’t one of his problems now.”
“What am I going to do now?” I cried.
“Have you tried cones?”
One of the perks of his job was easy access to highway cones. A few days later he shipped me out a half dozen. I convinced a filmmaking friend to write me up a phony movie permit that designated West 71st as my shooting location.
I was back in business.
The next few weeks rolled by without a single citation. I breathed easier now until my landlord got wind of my parking arrangements. “I can’t have it,” he barked, “that machine provides easy access to the upper floors of my building. Tenants have complained and some are even demanding additional iron grills. One robbery incident and my insurance rates skyrocket. No, that tractor will not stand outside my building. I’m starting eviction proceedings.”
The Agri-Prop grand prize was no longer so grand. My only choice was to try and dump it at a fair price. I called farm stores, co-ops, and anything else with an agricultural bent within a fifty-mile radius of New York City. Nobody was interested. Due to the recent spike in fuel prices demand for such machines was practically non-existent. Each passing day I dropped my asking price precipitously.
Though, I did have one bidder.
“How much are you willing to give me for it?” I asked
“Scrap value’s about three thousand, resale book is about ten large.”
“But it’s a brand new machine worth nearly eighty thousand dollars,” I argued.
“In other areas of the country that may be the case but that’s the market, amigo. Things pass through a lot of hands around here,” he said, adding, “Thirty-five hundred’s my final offer.”
The Letter
The very next day Legumes called out of the blue.
“Have you checked soybean prices on the CBOT?”
“What?”
“Prices on the Chicago Board of Trade, they’re at an all time high. Too bad you’re not really farming because you’d be raking it in,” he chided me.
“Jacques, the little bit of farming I know would make the slash and burn approach of the Mayans look like sheer genius. It took them eight hundred years to devastate their land… just give me a season,” I said acidly and then launched into a laundry list of grievances against Deer.
“Write a letter to the Chairman.”
“You think it will do any good?”
“Jack 3rd likes the personal touch.”
But what was unclear was the exact mechanics of doing this. How does one address a public corporation? Is not a corporation a legal person as set down by the Supreme Court in the case of Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Truman? If so would not the privacy restraints set down in Mapp v. Ohio apply as well as Roe v. Wade apply? Intruding upon the inner workings of a firm would be tantamount to intervening in a pregnancy and I was the last person willing to trample upon the privacy of a person even if it belonged to only a legal construct.
Fatigued and pained of heart I took Jacques advice and wrote to the Chairman of Jack Deer directly. The letter was addressed with the salutation: Dear John. In it I described my dire circumstances and how my financial security and mental health were both now in jeopardy.
A week later I was jarred from my sleep by a loud commotion coming from outside. Bleary eyed I watched from my bay window as a couple of tow trucks tried in vain to tow the tractor away. Their attempts ended disastrously when the Juggernaut rolled off their hydraulic lifts and crushed an old beat up AMC Pacer car. A passing free lance photographer snapped a shot of it. The next day the tractor was splashed across the front pages of the city’s tabloids looking as if it was gorging on the Pacer’s carcass in the manner a python might feast on a pig. The sensationalist aspect was further jacked up by a ‘baby on board sign’ that peeked out from the car’s spider veined rear window. Not since the days of Wee Gee did one picture so ignite the passions of the crowd.
The crash of 71st street became a cause-cèlébre and soon politicians of every stripe tried to finagle it to their advantage. One borough president denounced it as a symbol of deeply ingrained special interests while another politician jockeying for the next mayoral race claimed it underscored the plight of the small farmer in the city.
John Deer found itself unwittingly in the hot spotlight of public opinion. It was barraged by faxes, E-mails, phone messages, handbills, the odd scrawled letter and even one badly danced telegram. The Chairman was taken aback that most were addressed to him personally. The company went on the offensive by hiring some of the best spin-meisters, tastemakers and media manipulators that money could buy but they proved of little use in bringing down the overall temperature of this heated issue.
One morning I received a harried call from Legumes. “We can’t have scandal like this! Are you trying to sabotage the company?” he screamed, “You’ve put us in a precarious position with homeowners who don’t stomach scandal easily which now threatens our lawnmower monopoly. Some people are even linking us with Archer Daniels Midlands and their attempt to corner the lysine market! The Chairman’s image once good as gold is becoming base metal by the minute.”
I muttered some sort of apology but Jacques cut me off midstream. “Not only is his reputation at stake here but so is his passion.”
“What passion,” I asked incredulously.
“Proper medical care of injured football players. ”
He continued: “Before our Chairman got involved injured ball players were treated not much differently than medieval plague victims. The fallen were tossed in dogcarts unceremoniously and carted off like refuse. We introduced our green and white wagons that provided ambulatory medical services on sight. And now due to our efforts players get the respect they deserve, usually in the form of a rousing ovation. That’s the Deer way.”
“All I did was try to monetize an asset before it turned into a huge liability, that’s the American way isn’t it?” I countered.
Something in what I said must have clicked because the line went dead for some minutes. When we resumed it was obvious that a change of heart had taken place.
Five days later I was awakened by my apartment’s buzzer. Standing off kilter in the downstairs doorframe was a hunchbacked process server who handed me an envelope embossed with the name of Splurgeon, MacCracken and Pinchback, Attorneys at Law. Inside was a legal document that claimed I had violated my right of fair use under the terms of the sweepstakes. According to paragraph 11-D sub rosa iii not only was any commercial exploitation of the grand prize prohibited but so was any other use outside those narrowly defined uses allowed in the covenant no matter their literary, artistic, political or social nature. Any such non-sanctioned use had to be approved expressly in writing by the company. Stapled to the back was a cease and desist order on behalf of the plaintiff signed by Judge Fainsod of the Southern District Court.
I called Larry who responded caustically to the news, “Fainsod, a pox on that sod… hmm, serves me right for not studying contracts under him. I’ll get back to you.”
Three days later when he woke me from a fitful sleep. “I’ve got it – spores!”
“I don’t follow.”
“The deadly A-word. After all, it was shipped from farm country and I’m sure a few Anthrax spores hitched a ride along the way. Call your Frenchman and get us some face time with the CEO immediately.”
“Don’t you think this is a little demonic?”
“Demonic? I’ll show you demonic,” he huffed, “remember when you tried to sell it? You couldn’t because you had no buyers. Why? Because they pulled a FASB on you.”
“A FASB…what the hell is that?”
“It’s an old accounting trick used to write-off non-marketable inventory, i.e., the Juggernaut. Bundle it in a national sweepstakes with the blessings of the Financial Accounting Standards Board and presto! Problem solved.”
The next day we were on a Mid-West bound plane headed for a sit-down with Jack Deer 3rd. In attendance at Deere HQ were a few of his genuflecting minions. Five minutes into the meeting Larry got straight to the point. “Right now I’ve got a forensic bio-team on standby ready to cotton swab the entire tractor. And I’ll bet even money they will find what they are looking for.”
"That’s Looney tunes,” boomed Jack 3rd, “I refuse to buy into this blackmail.”
“Some years ago I remember the Perrier company taking the same stance when
formaldehyde was detected in their water,” chortled Larry, “if history is any guide I guarantee that
following that course of action will make Deer far less dear to the public in the future.”
A brief time-out was called. When the meeting resumed the atmosphere around the table had changed. Capitulation was in the air. Even Jack 3rd’s voice had lost most of its John Philip Sousa oomph-pah brassiness.
“What do you want?” he asked off key.
“A deal my client can live with.”
High Cotton
Seven days later I received a small box by registered mail. Tucked inside was a letter from Jacques Legumes. It read: ‘Congratulations! Please accept this check for seventy thousand dollars on behalf of the John Deer Company. You went eyeball to eyeball with our Chairman and he was the first to blink. Lucky for you it wasn’t highballs. Spores? Ingenious but also diabolical. Happy planting seasons! Jacques.’ Inside the box was a green Jack Deer baseball cap with holographic authentication tag.
For a brief moment a great weight was taken off me. I felt deliriously light. But forty-eight hours it all came crashing down when my buzzer sounded again. Wedged inside the door frame was the same process server. I could swear the hump was on the shoulder first time around. He handed me an envelope that looked nearly identical to the last except this time the name Pinchback was missing from the letterhead. Folded neatly inside was a court order signed by Judge Fainsod that froze my seventy thousand dollars. Treatment, I thought, that was only reserved for terrorists and RICO recidivists.
The injunctive claim had been filed by a ragtag group on the city’s Westside that had splintered from an old agrarian communist group - a relic of the 1950s - known by the acronym AGRAD. Their belief structure was based on a theoretical synthesis of two former men about Paris Jean Jacques Rousseau and Saloth Sar. The schism responsible for tearing AGRAD apart pivoted off the seminal question as to whether Khrushchev was playing a practical joke with his 20th Party Congress speech
The gist of their lawsuit was a demand for their fair share of common utility, namely, a cut of the action.
When I relayed the news to Larry it drove him into a sputtering fit.
“A pox on Fainsod! That bastard has a vendetta against me. The common law just bit us in the ass again!” he spit out bitterly.
“For starters,” Larry continued, “the first ten percent of the utility is tithed to God.”
“God? What does he have to do with it?”
“Blame Christ and his parables for that… give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”
“What’s our take?”
“According to the principle of jus soli three percent.”
“That’s it?” I replied, “Don’t tell me… another of God’s rules?”
“Actually Cotton Mather,” he said, “You’ll share in the remainder and that is according to Blackstone’s formula based on dividing total dollars by the population within a radius of a day’s journey by donkey, hmm, let’s see…”
I interrupted him, “Donkey! You must be kidding!”
“Obviously his Commentaries could use some updating. Hold on a second while I work out a donkey’s hoof speed.” Over the phone I could hear the sound of Larry’s fat fingers riffing across the ivories of his calculator.
“Comes out to a dollar ninety-eight cents. “
My knees felt like they were going to buckle. Silence filled the line.
“Hey, if you’re feeling vengeful you could always screw the rat bastards by signing the check over to charity; an action that produces the greater utility and therefore impervious to any legal challenge.”
That night I had another restless sleep. I called Richetti the next morning and told him I was giving up all claims to the monies, tithes and anything else connected to Sheep Meadow.
“Don’t go Albert Schweitzer on me,” he responded wearily, as if the fate of the planet rested on his shoulders, “spare me until I’ve had my coffee and donuts. Besides, that was the only good move you had left.”
And then for an instant I thought I heard what sounded like muffled sobs.
“Meet me poolside tonight at the Princeton Club!”
That evening I caught a cab to midtown. The snooty desk man informed me that they had no pool.
“There must be some mistake. I’m here to meet Larry Richetti.”
“Oh Richetti, why didn’t you say so,” he replied. He reached inside a wrought iron box and handed me a key as cautiously as one might handling radioactive materials.
Tacked outside of room number 34 was a note written in his signature scrawl bidding me to enter. Inside in a scene reminiscent of Sunset Boulevard I found Richetti floating face down in a blue plastic tuna shaped pool. It was the first I had ever seen him in a swimming suit. And no William Holden was he. He looked more like that fat guy made famous in Lucien Freud’s portraits.
In my haste my incautious steps created loud creaking noises which caused his head to suddenly break the surface of the water. “Careful, I haven’t had time to stress test this floor. It might be nearing its maximum load bearing capability!” he cautioned, flashing a mischievous twinkle.
“Are you still upset over the case?”
“C’est la vie… there are more fish in the sea,” he chortled, blowing a jet of water from his mouth Flipper style. “Where in the annals of Manhattan has anyone ever opened a can of whup-ass on such a deserving prick as von Hoffman and his sniveling clique?”
“Not since Burr shot Hamilton.”
“Hell, it’s almost as much fun as beating Big Tobacco,” he countered, “save for the egregious fees I’m paid in such cases.” He smiled his Cheshire cat grin suddenly. “There might be life in that old gal PenCillus yet!”
“How do you figure?”
“Contrary to Scott Fitzgerald it seems our product has a second act after all,” he replied, “Might be perfect for detecting SARS - a very resilient virus that can live outside a host for hours. Are you up for it?”
Over the next few days I gave his offer a lot of thought. But since I did not feel fully recovered from our last business venture I politely declined.
Months later a chance assignation put me at the scene of the crime - Sheep’s Meadow. It had returned to its verdant field of green. The groundskeepers like ace morticians had erased the large scar so that not even a hint remained.
I had settled my landlord problems with an arrangement that made Nixon’s Shanghai Communiqué look like a daydreamer’s doodle penciled on the back of a napkin. The avalanche of parking tickets threatening my financial solvency were fixed by a grateful NYPD for the sizeable charitable contribution I made to their widows and orphans fund. And instead of sadness that day I was seized by a sense of triumph because once, albeit briefly, I had a farm in Central Park at the foot of Sheep Meadow.
The End
