We had begun giving away money to charity in 1984. Serious money, anyway, at least by my old standards. Five grand a year each to the Hampstead and Hereford Volunteer Fire Departments was a significant sum to them. While we were actually in the Town of Hereford in Baltimore County, we were physically closer to the Town of Hampstead across the county line in Carroll County. Be safe and give to both! We also donated to the Jacksonville and Reisterstown Departments, just in case. Most of these towns offered mutual aid support to each other. It was a good idea to cover all the bases. Besides, those crazy bastards run into burning buildings! Everybody else, those of us in our right minds, runs out! They needed the money for psychiatric treatment! Let’s add in some money for the local ambulance and EMT companies, too.
The Red Cross got a healthy chunk. If there was one outfit that could be counted on to show up during a catastrophe, it was the Red Cross. God save you if you have to wait on the government for assistance. (Unless, of course, you were in a hot air balloon that was losing lift, and you could get Congress to start talking about the problem. They could fill it with plenty of hot air, and nothing else!)
Rensselaer got a nice piece of the pie. I had always given them some bucks, now I gave them more. Marilyn never quite understood why I gave them money every year, but she never quite understood all that the school gave me — like her! I would have never have met Marilyn if I hadn’t gone to RPI. I offered to donate money to MVCC and Plattsburgh State, but Marilyn wasn’t interested.
A few other outfits got some money, too. I gave to the USO, and the 82nd Airborne has a charitable scholarship fund that would get some money. In general, the Army had been good to me. Okay, Hawkins was an asshole, but the vast majority of the outfit had been good people.
The interesting thing is how much nicer they treat you the more money you give somebody. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a college or the Red Cross or the United Bumfuck Charitable Trust, the result is always the same. You’re a fish on the line, and they want to reel you in.
$0 to $250 — You are classified as a Guppy. Thanks a lot, we’ll put you on the mailing list, we’ll send you a receipt.
$250 to $500 — You are now upgraded to a Minnow. You get a much nicer thank you letter and get upgraded to our premiere mailing list, so we can ask you again in six months.
$500 to $1,000 — Anybody who gives this much has to be a Big Minnow! The thank you letter is computer printed, but signed by hand, and in the future you get a phone call asking for money from a Junior Fisherman.
$1,000 to $5,000 — You have moved up to Flounder. Everything is done by humans now, generally a Senior Fisherman, and you will probably get a call and an invitation to lunch from a Super Senior Fisherman.
$5,000 to $25,000 — If you’re this rich, you get an immediate upgrade to Mega Flounder! Congratulations! You now will be offered oral sex from the Super Senior Fisherman, be placed permanently on the Monthly Fishing Mailing List, and be given a brass plaque on the classroom/storage-locker/large-piece-of-expensive-equipment of your choice. Keep paying though, or that item will be ‘re-donated’ in the future by another Mega Flounder.
$25,000 to $250,000 — Wow! You are a Tuna! Your item will never be re-donated, at least not until it breaks and has to be replaced. The Super Senior Fisherman has now been replaced by a Senior Executive Fisherman, and the oral sex has been replaced by anal sex, giving or receiving, your choice.
Anything above $250,000 — Now you are a Whale! They hand you the keys to the place and offer you free coeds/interns/assistants. The number is determined by just how much you fork over. With enough zeroes on the end of the check, they name the place after you. You have reached the peak of the food chain!
As far as RPI was concerned, I was a Mega Flounder, a fish they had managed to sink a big hook into and they were planning on reeling me in for years to come. Much effort would come in the future to convert me to a Tuna and beyond. Dollar signs were flashing in the eyes of Dan Berg, President of RPI. Berg was a non-entity as far as I was concerned, but I was hoping to get him to offer the coeds both to me and Marilyn.
When I was at Rensselaer, the President was a zero named Richard Grosh. To be fair, I’m sure he was a nice guy, and beloved by his dog, but as far as the students were concerned, he was a nobody. Our senior year, 1977, however, he was replaced by a real superstar, a guy named George Low. Low was an RPI grad who had grown up to become a senior administrator at NASA during the Apollo years, which gave him some really serious street cred at RPI. Even better, he was very personable and frequently met with the students and gave standing room only lectures on space related stuff. Hell of a guy! Unfortunately, he died in 1984 of cancer, and was succeeded by a number of nobodies for the next fifteen years, when another science heavyweight, Shirley Jackson, a world class physicist, took over. For the next few years it would be Berg chasing after me and my dollars.
My worries about geometric progression came true by the start of 1985. No, Marilyn wasn’t pregnant again, but the twins started crawling around. They weren’t twice as troublesome as Charlie had been — they were four times the trouble! It was an exponential relationship. Unlike Charlie, they didn’t go through obstacles, but they got into everything, even the stuff we had childproofed. We set up a large playpen in the living room and dubbed it ‘The Jail.’ Several times a day they would get into something they shouldn’t be into, and get corralled and put in jail.
In the summer of 1985 Dum-Dum lived up to her name. One night in August she was barking up a storm by the patio door, so we put her out on the tie-out, and she went racing out, barking madly. Big fucking mistake! She was barking because a skunk managed to slip inside the fence around the pool. Moments later Dum-Dum came roaring back and tried to come inside. Marilyn opened the door, and then yelled and we dragged the dog back outside. Tomato juice was supposed to kill the smell, and we found a can and I went out and we gave her a bath, but oh God did she stink! I looked around and didn’t find a dead skunk, so I didn’t even have the satisfaction of knowing the little bastard had paid for his sins. Dum-Dum and the deck stunk for days!
In the fall of 1985 I revived an old pastime of ours, old to me at least, from my first life, new to Marilyn. I taught her how to make jams and jellies. On our property in Cooperstown we had about five acres of mostly scrub, but it had an abundance of blackberries and elderberries and a few apple trees on it. After we started picking berries, we decided to try making jam. It isn’t very high tech at all, it’s fairly easy, if time consuming, is relatively cheap, and it works. Every year we would do several batches of blackberry and elderberry, and Marilyn would go out and buy blueberries and strawberries. The apples we made pies from and she learned how to cook them into apple sauce. Then we cooked up some pumpkins and made pie filling.
We called it all ‘Buckman’s Berries’ and put it in Mason jars and saved it and gave it to friends and family. Since the only way to do it required the both of us working on it, it was an excellent way to do something together on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. We would do a few batches and chat and talk about the kids or the business or the school or anything, and just work together for a few hours. It was good for us then, and it was good for us now. I knew all the little tricks, because we had done it for almost forty years. The end result was jam better than anything that Smucker’s ever made, because ours was made with love! For Maggie’s wedding, she had us make 140 jars of strawberry jam as the combination wedding centerpieces/place-tags, and we made jam for weeks before the wedding!