The Hammer & The Feather

From: Seymour Grass (daddio45_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 01/18/05 

Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 03:23:29 -0600

From: "Seymour Grass" <daddio45@yahoo.com>
Subject: The Hammer & The Feather
Date: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 3:22 AM

I was watching the floor numbers flash in descending order when to my dismay
I felt a jab to the ribs. I turned to see Graszman there at my right beaming
an aggressive looking grin that caused me to take a step beyond range of any
more of that! "Tell me, McCoy," he said, again closing the distance between
us, "what do you think would happen if in a few seconds from now, the cable
on this thing were to snap?"

I braced against my body's downward momentum as the car had abruptly begun
slowing to a stop at the 12th floor. We stepped back to admit an elderly
woman; the spot on my ribs was yet throbbing from that unwelcome familiarity
of his and he was still at me, still talking:

"I'm talking about your feet?" He was pointing toward my shoes. "Would they
remain in contact with the floor as we went down, or not?"

I thought it rather an inopportune moment for such a discussion, considering
especially that we now had company, and I said so, but soon felt reason to
regret it as there appeared something in the stance he was taking, even so
slight as he was by comparison to my height of 6'1", and weight of 195; a
bearing he had that was oddly intimidating for someone who from the look of
it would hardly turn the scale past 150, nor stand any higher than 5'10" in
those high-heeled cowboy boots of his.

"I don't know," I said, lowering my voice for his ears alone. "My guess is
that we'd soon drift upward toward the ceiling and stay there until the car
came down on that spring at the bottom of the shaft." I shrugged at the
sardonical look he was now giving me: "Well, that's my guess--for what it's
worth."

At the 9th floor, two twenty-somethings of the female flavor had boarded;
their laughter not being entirely left echoing behind in the corridor as the
doors slid to a close. "Well, you ought to know better than that, McCoy," he
was saying. "I thought you were the science editor for this . . ." he raised
a hand to indicate the surroundings, ". . . glorified producer of bird cage
liner and fish wrap."

To the somewhat distraught expressions of insulted esteem on the other faces
about us, I managed a smile of apology for the character of my company. "Of
course I'm the science editor, Graszamn. What of it?"

"Then you ought to know that since our bodies inside this car would not be
falling, like the car itself, against any resistance of air, our rate of
acceleration would be the same as for the car."

Now that he was mentioning it, I did have a glimmer of recollection, having
to do with Galileo, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, some feathers and a
cannonball.

The elevator had gone past the Mezzanine and was slowing to a stop at "L"
for "Lobby". Just as the doors were opening, Graszman was still going on: "I
suppose you must recall that they proved it on the Moon."

We were going across toward the expanse of doors leading out of the
building. "I'm sorry," I said. "Proved what?"

"Holy Christly Night!" He stared in disgust, as he went out ahead of me
into the cold of what was in the proximity of five below zero. For a time,
after descending the stair, we strode along huffing our vapors in silence.
He bore on his head a tweed stingy-brim cap, and about the neck, a bright
red woolen bulky-knit muffler tucked into a Navy surplus "P-coat". As we
were nearing the Purple Angus, perhaps the nearest place with a cocktail
lounge where smoking was permitted, I suggested we cross at the coming
corner and get on over there.

At a table near the window looking out on Randolf Street, we sat in the
Mahogany Lounge of the Purple Angus over two steaming mugs of coffee,
waiting for the Reuben sandwich for him, a pastrami with Swiss cheese on rye
for me. As we talked for those first few minutes, I brought up the fact that
according to what I'd heard from Dr. Nielsen, he, Graszman was in no
position to talk when it came to scientific credentials, and so who was he
to sit there in judgment of me? I further suggested he keep in mind that
nobody in the Physics department over there had as yet set the dogs on me.
Well, that humbled him well enough and as he began to show some sign of
contrition, I reminded him that I was about his only chance to be heard. Of
course, he knew this to be true, and apologized for treating another guy
just as he hated to be treated himself. I was finally starting to like him a
little, so I took a chance: I swore him to secrecy and told him of the
extent of my own "science education".

Surprisingly, that seemed greatly to please him, he had a good laugh on the
thought of it and then surprised me to confess that he'd pulled a like scam
once when he got his first job teaching for an accredited music school in
Oak Park, explaining that when he'd first applied, he could barely read
music, which was a problem since five or six of his students were advanced
far beyond him; even so, he'd managed to keep them dazzled by showing them
lots of fancy *** Dale and Chuck Berry riffs, while he took the time to
cram like crazy to catch up to their places in the books.

By the time our sandwiches had arrived, we were happy to raise a toast, my
pastrami and cheese to his Reuben, upon my pronouncement that there was no
hurdle a man could not surmount in this world if he had the acting skills to
pull it off, and a will to do the catch-up work to make it look good, as
ever it could.

A little later, after our cups had been refilled, the conversation had
turned once again to that scary business on the elevator and I was saying
that now as we were on the subject, I did recall how Apollo 15 had proved
Galileo's theory true, what with the whole thing on film, the feather and
the hammer falling together only to hit the dust at the same time.

Then he said an odd thing: "But, you see McCoy, scientists who can play only
by the book and not at all by ear, they just don't hear in the fall of that
feather and the hammer, what silent awesome melody is being played to the
mind."

I had to shake my head. "Could you try to be just a little more obscure,
arcane and full of metaphorically dangling conversation, there Seymour?"

He took a big bite from the Reuben, and some of the sauerkraut got out.

I was waiting: "Help me out a little, here."

After a slug of coffee, he said, "You could go to the Moon, you could build
yourself a Leaning Tower of Pisa up there, you could drop from the top of
it, at the same time, a grand piano and a hair from the head of--okay,
Veronica Lake, you should be so lucky as to find one of her hair-brushes on
Ebay?"

I don't know what I'm hearing but I say, "Alright."

"You drop that platinum blonde hair of the Hollywood starlet and the grand
piano, and they both hit bottom--at the same time? That needs to be telling
you something. There's a song in it, that science has a head too full of
jangling facts to hear."

I didn't know about that, and said so: "Well, as I recall, it's all pretty
well explained by Newton's laws, something about how the amount of weight in
the grand piano as opposed to what's in the hair of Veronica Lake, is like,
cancelled out . . . or, how's it go?"

"Yeah, they would explain that it's harder for the piano to get moving, to
get over its own inertia than it is for the hair with far less inertia."

I set down my cup: "There's more inertia in the grand piano."

"Yes and no. There's a problem in that thinking, which is part of the reason
we're here talking about all this."

I had to consider that over a bite of my sandwich, and when my mouth was
almost empty enough, I said, "I would ask what you mean." 

-- 
John  http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/520b8/
"Once when Sir Isaac Newton--a mere lad--got over into the man's apple
orchard--I don't know what he was doing there--I didn't come all the way
from Hartford to q-u-e-s-t-i-o-n Mr. Newton's honesty--but when he was
there--in the main orchard--he saw an apple fall and he was a-t-t-racted
toward it, and that led to the discovery--not of Mr. Newton (who got back
over the fence quick enough) but of the great law of attraction and
gravitation." --Mark Twain (if any bowdlerizing parenthesis may be pardoned
or ignored)
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