The Village Idiot: Does safety outweigh a good bagel?
Our city friends Bob and Bev have spent many weekends at the farm with us over the years. They bring their kids, they go to the county fair, they watch the farmers plow the fields and cut the hay, they let their dogs run wild. Their kids love it. They can play without having to have seven security guards watch them every minute. The neighbor’s horses and chickens and goats amuse them endlessly. Their dogs love it; they come home covered in mud, beaming with the satisfaction of knowing that if it was rotting and disgusting, they had rolled in it. Bob and Bev love it — she shops for antiques, he loves to help Sue in the greenhouses. The entire time they’re here they complain about how hard life is in the city, and how expensive. To hear them talk you would think they lived in a Third World country that was temporarily in-between dictators, not in the heart of Manhattan.
First the French chef quit Cartier’s school cafeteria, then Bev’s supermarket ran out of white truffle oil. Their life is just one crisis after another.
“I was going to make seared tuna over squid ink pasta, but without white truffle oil that plan went right out the window. You know what picky eaters Cartier and Bresson are. So I said I guess we’ll just have to heat up the leftover Boeuf Bourguignon if Bob hasn’t given it to the dogs already. I had to explain to the children what leftovers meant. But it was good lesson. Now they know how poor people live.” We listen to how much they have to tip the doorman, to how tiny their apartment is, to how bad the traffic is, to how loud the sound is from the disco next door at 3 a.m.
“So why don’t you leave and move to the country and start living like humans?” I asked.
“Oh, no, we could never move here,” Bob said. “You can’t get a good bagel up here.”
“I never knew bagels had such power.”
“Well, it’s not only that. There are no museums in the country.”
“When was the last time you went to a museum?”
“Not for, oh, well, since the kids were born, but we could go if we wanted to, and that’s the point. Besides, we know people that still go to museums, and they say there’s not much new stuff in them.” Bob and Bev’s children, Cartier and Bresson are 12 and 15.
“So if we called our farm a ‘Farmer’s Museum’ it would be worth visiting, but if it’s just a plain old farm, it’s not.”
“Exactly. Besides, this farm couldn’t be a museum. It doesn’t have a gift shop. Or cafeteria. Or public toilets. So don’t try to pass this off as some kind of ‘learning experience’ for the kids. They’re not a bunch of hicks, you know.”
Hardly. This is a family of sophisticated New Yorkers.
So let’s do the math. Not having to lock your doors at night or a good bagel? Not having to worry if your kids are out joining the Crips and the Bloods or a good bagel?
Not having to pay $300 a month to park your car or a good bagel? Peace and quiet or a good bagel? Seeing the stars at night or a good bagel? A 14-room farmhouse or a good bagel?
“But you don’t even eat that many bagels,” I told Bob.
“I eat them all the time,” he said.
“OK, when was the last time you ate a bagel?
“I remember it well. I was at some museum cafeteria.”
(Jim Mullen is the author of “It Takes A Village Idiot: A Memoir of Life After the City” (Simon and Schuster, 2001). He also contributes regularly to Entertainment Weekly, where he can be reached at [email protected].)