A Second Look at Miss Ethel
I was sitting at a lunch counter in Santa Monica the other day, waiting for my wife, when I overhead a conversation by two old ladies.
One of them said, “I had a vision this morning. I think it was God.”
“Is that so,” said the second old lady. “What did he look like?”
The first old lady thought for a moment and then said, “Who was that on ‘Fantasy Island?’ ”
“Tattoo?”
“The other one.”
“Ricardo Montalban.”
“Him.”
“That’s amazing,” the second old lady said. “I would think God would look more like Anthony Quinn.”
I had been slumped in a waiting mode, which is a state of suspended animation adopted by husbands who do a lot of hanging around. But with that snippet of conversation I came alert.
“Did he say anything?” the second old lady asked.
“He said, ‘Don’t eat pork.’ ”
The second old lady nodded somberly. “That’s good advice,” she said .
I wanted to ask if the voice also sounded like Ricardo Montalban, but it occurred to me that I was playing with fire here, so I left the counter immediately.
I am out of the business of teasing old ladies. Miss Ethel is very much on my mind.
For those who missed it, I poked a little fun recently at a hospital gift shop volunteer, the aforementioned Miss Ethel, by re-creating my frustrating effort to buy magazines and flowers from her.
She wouldn’t take my credit card (“This isn’t the Miami Hilton”), doubted my driver’s license and only grudgingly accepted a check.
Miss Ethel was crotchety and funny so I wrote a crotchety and funny column. Well, it seemed funny at the time.
At one point I said that hospital gift shops had become the province of old ladies with time on their hands, and you’d think I had suggested a form of genocide limited to elderly female volunteers.
The phone began ringing off the hook and after taking the first outraged call or two I decided to let it ring. The messages left on my answering machine proved it was a wise decision. They ranged from mild reprimands to a word with an obscene reference I am not allowed to use.
Then the mail came.
“I write to strongly object . . . “ Mary Oberle began.
“You owe us an apology . . . “ Madeline Koenig said.
“You have hit a new low . . . “ Mollie Davis and Sylvia Klenesty wrote together.
Perhaps Mollie composed the content and Sylvia did the typing. The last line of their letter was, “Believe me--YOU ARE NO JACK SMITH!”
Well, believe me, Mollie and Sylvia, YOU ARE NO ERMA BOMBECK!
“You have a lot to learn about gift shops, Sonny Boy,” wrote Jewell Rosier.
Talk about deja vu. My mother used to call me Sonny Boy while shaking her finger at me.
“You’re no big butter and egg man, Sonny Boy,” she’d say. I didn’t even know what a big butter and egg man was. I still don’t.
Fourteen letter-writers hated the column and four loved it. Well, 15 hated it if you count Mollie and Sylvia separately. Among those who loved it was Eddie Mc.
Eddie Mc wrote, “Your column . . . was a jewel. Would you believe that you and the Metro section are what The Times is about with most of the inmates here at Hall of Justice jail?”
It was a brilliant letter, full of wit and wisdom, and I’m sure that Eddie was unfairly convicted of whatever he is in the slammer for. HANG IN THERE, EDDIE Mc!
Eddie’s note, written in longhand on yellow legal paper, counteracted a formal letter of complaint filed by Eleanor Roche, who is president of the Southern California Assn. of the Directors of Volunteer Services.
Eleanor wrote that I had single-handedly insulted 100,000 volunteers in 200 hospitals. That gave me a momentary flash of pride until I realized she hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
I had abased not only the old ladies who volunteer, she suggested, but the very concept of Volunteerism itself. Didn’t I know that volunteers also cuddled newborn babies and helped maintain quality patient care?
Everybody stay calm. I have no quarrel with volunteers. The idea of Miss Ethel holding a newborn might give me pause, but I’m sure someone will be standing by in case the slippery little dear should, you know, wiggle out its delivery blanket and go plunk on the floor.
In fact, I salute all the Miss Ethels of the world who give time and energy toward helping humanity, AND THAT GOES FOR MOLLIE AND SYLVIA!
Funny, but just as I wrote that, a voice said, “Nice going, Martinez.” It sounded amazingly like Ricardo Montalban.