From the City that Always Sweeps

From the City That From the City That Always SweEps Always SweEps

BY ART KUMBALEK

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? And cripes, can’t hardly believe it’s June already, which means, what with the global warming and climate change and the first day of summer coming up like a bad burrito, we’re now into that time of year where my five most favorite words are “cold front on the way,” I kid you not.

And just so you’s know, the month of June is named after the Roman goddess Juno, and from my toe-tip into the waters of research, she was “the god of marriage and childbirth, and the wife of Jupiter, king of the gods.” No mention of Jesus and his clan involved in the naming of calendar dates and such, what the fock. But this Juno must’ve been some kind of hotsy-totsy to be the sixth-month-of-the-year calendar girl for, lo, these thousands of years, you think?

Yes sir, love and marriage with the June, that popular time of year for young ladies to become new brides; and their boyfriends to become new grooms, whether they like it or not. And so June, as the years pass, does become the month for anniversaries, the remembrance pleasant, or bittersweet (divorce court), as in this little story:

So this guy goes to the Wizard of all Knowledge to ask him if he can remove a curse he’s been living with for the past 40 years. The Wizard says, “Perhaps. But you will have to tell me the exact words that you believe were used to put the curse on you.” Without hesitation, the man says, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” Ba-ding!

But that’s not the kind of thing you newlyweds of this month need to hear. You want to hear something uplifting and hunky-dory. Something along the lines of what the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson said when he heard of a friend getting married for the second time after his first wife croaked, and remarked how he found that admirable ’cause it celebrated the spirit of hope over experience. Kind of a nice thought, isn’t it?

Since none of you’s happy couples have invited me to your matrimonial shindigs, even for the open bar portion, where I could’ve wished you all the blah-blah best in person, I did a little research to find some bright words of wisdom about the wedded state I could pass on to you through this essay. I checked the Bible and you can just imagine the kind of gas they were passing on the topic. Of course, they’d be all gung-ho on marriage back when a wedding cost next to nothing. For christ sakes, think what you’d save on the reception alone. You wouldn’t have to pay a photographer since the snapshot had yet to be discovered; and a band? Hey, how much you think a couple guys tooting on potato pipes would’ve run you? You tell me.

What the Bible had to say sounded trite and contrived to me and I figured you already heard it all before, anyways. Then I came across a couple things from the ancient Greeks. One, a proverb, “Marriage is the only evil that men pray for,” and the other from some guy named Hipponax out of the 6th century B.C.: “Two days are the best of a man’s wedded life: The days when he marries and buries his wife.” Kind of sexist for this day and age, so I kept researching.

I leapt ahead a couple thousand years to Helen Rowland in 1922’s Guide to Men, “A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve been extracted”; Ambrose Bierce wrote in The Devil’s Dictionary, “Bride, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.” What the fock?

Sheesh. I thought of Shakespeare. He’s known for having a way with words and I found this of his from Twelfth Night: “Many a good hanging vents a bad marriage.” Can’t argue that, ain’a?

None of the quotes I found had anything good say about marriage, which turns out to be the same thing I could’ve said myself on the subject in the first focking place—nothing good. So you’re on your own. Looks like you’ll have to come up with something good to say about marriage yourselves. Don’t worry, you got a whole lifetime to find it but since you’re married, it’ll only seem like two lifetimes. Ba-ding!

And with June comes the Father’s Day, ’natch. And if you’re too focking cheap to spring for a gift for the old fart, how ’bout make a nice homemade card with a quote from no finer writer there ever be again than dear Mr. Yeats from near Dublin, celebrating his 157th birthday on June 13 as best he can:

I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

You betcha, and as for me, yes, then, of fathers, of sons, this time of year, I’ll be seeing you, as the song goes, in all the old familiar places, in every lovely summer’s day; I remember you, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek, and I told you so.