TO ROXANNE WITH LOVE AND CANOODLES

Jerry Gervase: To Roxanne with love & canoodles

Jerry Gervase Central Coasting

Posted: 02/13/2011 01:47:16 AM PST

When I read Edmond Rostand's play "Cyrano de Bergerac" in college I became such an incurable romantic that one Valentines Day I decided to see if I could use my writing skills to earn extra money. I printed some fliers that read: "Your thoughts — my words. Personalized letters, greetings, invitations, thank you notes and billet-doux. Call Cyrano"

I hoped enough people knew who Cyrano de Bergerac was and would call me if they were struggling with their writing, especially regarding their love lives. I took the fliers to my local supermarket parking lot and began slipping them under windshield wipers.

I was going blithely about my business humming the love theme from "Romeo and Juliet," so I didn't notice the lady sitting behind the wheel of the pickup. As I lifted the wiper blade, a gruff voice said: "Git that trash outa here, sucker!" I almost jumped higher than the genuine fake squirrel tail on the truck's radio antenna.

"Uh, sorry," I said when I recovered, half expecting Cujo to jump out of the truck bed and tear me to pieces.

"What's on that paper," she snapped, "gimme one." Her arm reached out and she snatched a flier from my hand. She wasn't unattractive, but she was unkempt in a Raggedy-Ann sort of way. I also had the impression from the Confederate Flag decals on the truck that the sun had turned her neck slightly red.

"What's this here thing, a billet-doux?" She pronounced it, bill-it ducks.

"It's a French term," I explained, "meaning 'sweet note,' or a love letter."

"You c'n write a love letter to someone you don't know?" It did sound strange when put that way.

"Well, kind of," I said, "actually, what I would do is take your thoughts and express them in a manner, uh, perhaps, slightly more poetic than you'd feel capable of doing."

"Think you c'n write one for me?" You could have knocked me over with a white plume at the suggestion.

"And whose heart are you trying to win?" I asked.

"Ha," she sneered, "I'm trying to get some no good fool outa my house. I want a 'un-bill-it ducks.'"

"I'm not sure I can write anything like that."

"I'll bet Cyrano could." Zinger No. 2.

"You mean you actually know who Cyrano de Bergerac is?

"My name is Roxanne," she said more demurely than I could have imagined, "Well?" her black eyebrows lifted halfway into the yellow straw on her head.

"Now?" Yes, she nodded. Her boring eyes told this wasn't the time to back down.

After a few minutes I handed her what I had scribbled on the back of a flier.

Roses are red,

as a red hot canoodle.

Now scram from my bed,

With your whole kit and caboodle.

"What's this 'canoodle'?" she asked.

"It's a slang word meaning amorous cuddling or petting, or, well, you know!"

"Whadda I owe you," she said.

"I usually get five dollars. But, I'll make a deal with you. My address is on the flier. If it works send me five bucks, if it doesn't you don't owe me anything."

"Deal," she yelled as her truck peeled rubber out of the parking lot.

A week later I got a 10-dollar bill in the mail with a note that read: The rat done abandoned the ship. I'd sure like to billet-doux with you, baby. Canoe canoodle? Always, Roxanne.

I took no chances. I changed my address and switched supermarkets. Oh, and I burned my copy of Cyrano.

Jerry Gervase is a columnist for The Herald. He can be reached at jerrygervase@yahoo.com.

REMEMBERING HELEN ON HER BIRTHDAY - A REPRISE

REMEMBERING HELEN ON HER BIRTHDAY – A REPRISE

She set the bar incredibly high.

I often wondered where her mothering skills came from. Her own mother was so busy raising seven children she had little time to mentor her own daughters. She was a skinny teenager when I met her, wearing a long Pendleton skirt, rolled up bobby sox and penny loafers. Her cooking skills fell somewhere between making PB&J sandwiches and unwrapping packages of Twinkies. She thought a check book was about life in a Slavic country. To her, a thimble and a flat iron were game pieces on a Monopoly Board.

She dropped out of college after a couple of semesters in order to go to work. She went to her interview at General Motors wearing a beige suit with matching hat and gloves. A savvy employment manager recognized something special in her, and put her to work on a computer that was big enough to fill the infield at Brigg's Stadium. She learned programming, and soon became an instructor teaching others how to program, while she wrote script in a language called COBAL, as foreign to me as Urdu.

She was Ginger Rogers on the dance floor, but I was Fred Despair, who could trip over the painted white lines on a parking lot surface. One day she dragged me onto the dance floor. She was as light and feathery as an apparition; she knew where I was going before I knew where I was going. We glided through life with her making me believe I was leading. She thought I was the funniest person she had ever met, so when we married in 1958 I set out to make her laugh as often as I could.

We hadn't heard of feng shui, but without the aid of an accurate Chinese compass she turned our upper flat into heaven on earth. Then I proceeded to drag her all over the country for the next four decades. No matter where we ended up, in a matter or weeks she had the place looking like we were the original owners. Twice I bought homes she had never seen until we met the moving van there. She swept the front walk, talking to passers-by until she befriended the entire neighborhood. She made curtains and drapes and made clothes for the kids and for herself. If she put her mind to it, I swear she could weave straw into gold.

Once I plunked her down on 10 rural acres in the middle of nowhere, with a house half the size of the one we left. She bought a huge freezer, planned meals for a month, and then shopped so efficiently that I only had to bring home milk and bread once in a while — and then just milk because she began baking bread.

On Mother's Day in 1975 I bought her a 10 horsepower gas-operated rototiller. You would have thought I had emptied out Tiffany's for her. She tilled the land into a garden overflowing with enough healthful food to make a heart specialist smile.

And she learned to cook, too. She became so good that she created a cookbook she gave to close friends as Christmas gifts. It remains the one book that keeps me from slipping into fast-food purgatory.

She never gave up on her education, and during the same week our youngest daughter graduated from high school, and our son graduated from college, she earned her AA degree from a community college — with honors.

At her memorial service, a cousin confided in me that my wife told him I made her laugh every day. I doubt that's true. The philosopher Plato said: "In everyone's life no matter how good their intent there are people they made suffer." But if I unintentionally made her suffer she suffered silently — remaining at my side, but like the dancing, always a step ahead of me.

She set the bar incredibly high for our two daughters, giving them her best so that they could be their best. It is no surprise they are loving mothers. And I never have to wonder where their mothering skills come from. Ironically we celebrate her birthday on a day when a furry rodent is supposed to see its shadow. In life Helen cast a long shadow of her own. In death, the light that spread that shadow to such great length still shines.

Happy Birthday!