lucky tires

August 13, 2004


Still August. Still humid. Nomar still a Cubbie and not a Red Sock. And it's Friday the 13th.

With that said: Attend the tale of "lucky tires".

Having discovered the hitherto unknown, at least to me, connection between art and tires once already back in May, I might have been prepared for further lessons in art and tires. But who thinks about these things? Might as well contemplate the connection between art and bait fish or gulls and radios, oh wait, we already know the gulls and radios connection. Art and radios? Art and gulls? No, just art and tires. Well, maybe coffee too. And cannoli. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A couple of weeks ago while in Lowell for the Lowell Folk Festival, I discovered that Caffe Paradiso has set up shop on Palmer Street practically right across the street from the Coffee Mill. There's an insurance company or accounting office or some such next to the Coffee Mill on the corner between Coffee Mill and Paradiso but when the outdoor tables are set up you could easily banter back and forth between the two cafes. Since I am duty bound to inform the Hermit Potter of Worcester of any important art or coffee news, I duly informed him (by the way, a Hermit Potter is nothing like either Harry Potter or a hermit crab :-) just thought you might wonder) and we scheduled a meeting of the highly caffeinated what-is-art -what's-wrong-with-the-Red-Sox-and-are-the-Red-Sox-art society at the Lowell incarnation of Caffe Paradiso for this past Saturday. Fortified with omelets from the Deli King in nearby Tewksbury we braved the crowds pouring into Lowell for the quilt festival. OK, so the quilters didn't take over the city the way the folk festival did and we even found a convenient parking space... I was just trying to make it sound dramatic.

Since I've been thinking about cannoli a lot lately (yes, I think about things besides gulls and radios and whether the Red Sox are art), I knew what I was going to order -- besides an espresso-based beverage -- before we got there. And when Nancy heard me talking obsessively about cannoli she requested that I bring her one. So I ordered: One cannoli for me to eat here and one to take out for Nancy. They put the take out one in a little white cardboard box. Meanwhile, the Hermit Potter was still looking at the desserts and the crusty woman behind the counter got a little impatient. She must drink a lot of espresso-based beverages. Over coffee and our respective desserts, we watched quilters from all over the known universe stream in. Some of them were clearly labeled as quilters, with polo shirts emblazoned with the names of their quilting clubs. Others just had that "quilter from out of town " look about them. I wish we had t-shirts identifying the" highly caffeinated what is art " club or something. Or just the "we really like coffee" club. Or something cryptic that nobody but us would understand... Do quilters have a secret handshake?

Nowadays Lowell is full of art galleries, artists' lofts, museums, and, apparently , banners, at least on Middle, Shattuck, and Palmer Streets. Last weekend, and most of the rest of this month for that matter, the galleries and museums, and probably the artists' lofts too, were/are full of quilt-related or textile-related art. It's a veritable textile theme park. Oh wait, it's supposed to be a textile theme park. Now that the red brick mills don't actually make textiles, the city is saved from oblivion by the history, art, music, and trolleys of textiles. And the Lowell Spinners too. They have their own detour on Market Street. The sign says "Spinners Detour". We tried to figure out if that meant the players had to take the detour to get to the ballpark, whether only actual spinners (of textiles as opposed to of baseball) had to take the detour, where exactly the detour goes... and I never did manage to score tickets for Peter Gammons bobblehead night or any other game in August. I don't know if the Spinners had anything special going for the quilt festival.

In the immediate neighborhood of our coffee-drinking, you would have to make considerable effort to avoid art. And who are we to avoid art? My favorite exhibition was Small Works for Small Spaces at the Ayer Lofts Gallery. There was one watercolor transfer onto fiber depicting a pear in a doorway that just blew me away. I wanted to just keep looking at it. There was another work that was a soft sculpture of a fragment of a statue from Angkor Wat. Nothing like a quilt. Kind of like a stuffie but much more moving. Hard to describe. Nobody noticed I was carrying a cannoli.

We checked out the Boundaries to Bridges exhibition at the Revolving Museum. I especially liked the large color photographs of a family in front of elaborate painted backdrops used by an immigrant photographer whose studio is in his home. A photographer photographing a photographer and his backdrops. How to tell the backdrop from the real rooms? The informal household shrine on the mantel could be a painted backdrop but it's not. What's real and what's not? Where are the boundaries? There was an installation that juxtaposed tradition and basketball to make a point about immigrant communities assimilating and hanging onto tradition. It had basketball hoops at each end: one backboard with traditional Cambodian images and the other backboard with images of sneakers and basketball stuff. The artists even provided Nerf basketballs. I can't do a layup like I used to. Nobody noticed I was carrying a cannoli.

A guy with a megaphone came into the museum and announced that the Stay in School Spool 500 was about to start. We'd noticed the race track -- a steep one like in a pinewood derby -- earlier so had to check out the race. Auto-race themed banners hung along both sides of the street : cars, race tracks, tires ... the megaphone guy announced the banners are for sale. Anyway, the cars are all made of recycled materials and must use official old Lowell textile mill spools as wheels. Apparently the objective was to make cool-looking art cars as opposed to aerodynamic, well-engineered, vehicles that stay on the track. An amazing number of cars left the track or flipped over and slid down the track upside down and sideways. Some of them became airborne and I feared for the safety of the spectators. Winners just had to get to the finish line first -- even if they just sort of fell there instead of rolling on their spools. Megaphone guy made up names for the cars and I got way way too into cheering out loud for the ones I liked. I did keep trying to debug the ones that couldn't stay on the track though. I suggested they should have engineering students from the university formerly known as Lowell Tech advise the artists. The Hermit Potter pointed out that that would take the fun and the art out of it. It was a blast to watch. One of the banners read "Lucky Tires". Nobody noticed I was carrying a cannoli.

Apparently watching art cars fly off the track makes me thirsty. A good old-fashioned raspberry lime rickey at Gary's Ice Cream (the hermit got ice cream or sorbet or something) fixed that right up. We sat outside near the brick archway depicting where the train station use to be (this is Lowell, a New England city, we know where things used to be and still navigate by where they used to be) looking out over B&M steam locomotive #410 , part of a special Boston & Maine Railroad Exhibit (June 28 through Sept. 1 -- still time to catch it) all about the history of the B&M Railroad, successor of the Boston and Lowell, which was New England's first steam railroad. This brought back a memory of going to Boston on a steam train with La Madre and the Ex-Pat (who at age 2 was not yet the Ex-Pat obviously) in 1955. I remember the steam engine vividly. It's possible that this is an accurate memory, as the B&M ran steam engines until 1956. Weird thoughts while carrying a cannoli.

The art quilt exhibit at Brush Art Gallery was much more quilt-like than the Small Works for Small Spaces. Some of them were really wonderful. My favorite, and the "poster quilt" for the exhibit was called Mill and looked like a red brick mill building. The artist's statement declared that it was inspired by a view of mill buildings ... gee, I thought it was inspired by steam engines... The gallery was serving food for the opening so even if I had revealed the cannoli it probably wouldn't have gotten us thrown out.

After our day of art, I zipped home, stashed the cannoli in the fridge, and went to pick up Nancy at South Station. I told her the cannoli was waiting for her at home. Over dinner at Mary Chung in Central Square I regaled her with tales of all the places the cannoli had been and the art we had seen, especially the mill inspired by mills. Oh, and there was a staircase inspired by a staircase too. Maybe the gallery should give lessons in how to write artists' statements.

On the way to I-93 through Sommerville where the road is all dug up for resurfacing and manhole covers are sticking up all over the place, I was dodging pedestrians crossing not in crosswalks, wearing black clothing at night, quite a challenge. Unfortunately dodging pedestrians makes it hard to weave in and out among the huge obstacle course of manhole covers. I hit one hard. Blam. Blown tire. Grrr. I pulled off the road at a well lighted gas station somewhere over the Medford line and called AAA on my cellphone. We listened to the Red Sox on the radio. Fortunately Pedro was having a good night. An hour or so later, just as the game was ending, the AAA guy showed up. He was wearing his #5 Garciaparra Red Sox jersey. He verified that the tiny donut spare was OK even though I had driven on it from Worcester after my last day of art.

I gave Nancy the cannoli for breakfast the next morning. It survived the day of art with remarkably little loss of ricotta. Almost no tire vendor is open on Sunday on this edge of the universe, so I drove to Andover for Julie's book launch, which was great fun, on the spare. My duty had been to remind Ned that he was supposed to be there. He made it. The band was good but Tom was the only one dancing. There was a cake decorated to look like the book cover. I won 2 of the raffle items and I only bought 6 tickets! The donut-sized spare notwithstanding, Nancy and I decided we had not yet had enough official fun so we went to the Southeast Asia Restaurant in Lowell for dinner and then to Caffe Paradiso for dessert. They were out of ricotta cheese!!!!!! So we had chocolate mousse cake, which was delicious. I parked near the Revolving Museum , and immediately noticed the "Lucky Tires" banner, which I'd forgotten about! We had a good laugh over it. I may have to go back and buy the banner, though I have no idea where I would put it!

The local tire dealer had a buy one get one for half price sale going on the same model of Pirelli tires that I have so I bought 2 for the front and had the old ones put on the back. We watched some weird makeover show on TV while we waited. Just as the formerly dorky looking boy was about to go back to the girl who had rejected him to ask why, my car was ready. Nancy exclaimed "But now we won't know why she rejected him!" So, like, is that art?

So now with the new lucky tires we had to take a road trip. Nancy suggested Manchester-by-the-Sea because she likes the views of the water down the alleys between houses. We gazed at the water plenty and watched a dinghy get towed by a larger boat. We have no clue why but we could hear people talking about a cranberry bog. A cranberry bog in Manchester-by-the-Sea? Somehow, though our stated aim was to enjoy the nice day outdoors by the water, we ended up in Manchester by the Book. I found one of the two William Brewster books I've been looking for, Concord River, and one of the volumes of the Old Stone Bank History of Rhode Island. Nancy wouldn't let us leave without Whistler's Mother's Cookbook. Quite a haul. Maybe the new tires are the lucky tires after all.

Today's Reading
Seabirds: their biology and ecology by Bryan Nelson, Birds in the Bush by Bradford Torrey , Andover Massachusetts: Historical Selections from Four Centuries by Juliet Haines Mofford, Whistler's Mother's Cookbook by Margaret MacDonald

This Year's Reading
2004 Booklist

Today's Starting Pitcher
Tim Wakefield


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Copyright © 2004, Janet I. Egan