The Rural Voice, 1977-11, Page 26Genions
)daxirnus
Max thought he could fix anything with a plug from a
toaster to a computer.
A short story by William Keith
You meet some strange characters in college. but Max was the
strangest I. ever met.
Of course to Max and the rest of the freshmen who shared the
third floor of the men's residence, I must have seemed a little
strange at first too. I still wonder how I ended up being the only
country boy among a herd of citybred slickers. And when they
found out I was a writer, one or two even expressed disbelief that
1 could even print, let alone write.
But in time we adjusted to each other and an uneasy state of
truce held for the rest of the year. Despite what the others may
have thought I did use the right toothpaste, mouthwash and
deodorant and I dried .behind my ears every morning.
It was Max who caused the real trouble. Max was German and
far back in his ancestry he must have had one of those famous
German physicists because science was so thickly embedded in
his blood that the corpuscles could hardly find room to move in
his veins. When it came to writing a physics or chemistry paper
he was a master, and if it hadn't been for his atrocious grades in
his art subjects he could have had the highest marks in the
history of that college.
But brilliant as Max was he had a problem. You see, when it
came to applying his knowledge to practical things he was
hopeless. Although he was top of his class as an electrical
engineer he couldn't change a light bulb without getting a shock.
But somewhere else in his family Max must have had a little Irish
for he was one of the stubbornest, most self-confident men I have
ever had the occasion to meet. He THOUGHT he could fix
anything with a plug, from a toaster to an IBM computer.
Max had another problem. He liked to keep informed with
everything that was going on with every one of the 52 people who
shared the third floor. In plain, uncomplimentary terms, Max
was a busybody.
He became so bad that nobody wanted to share a room with
him. Poor Max didn't know why he was being shunned. He
thought he was just being friendly. - -
After my freshman year I didn't see Max much. I heard about
him now and then and as usual he was breezing along in his
studies, except for a little trouble he had in electronics lab when
he nearly electrocuted one of his instructors. When I did run into
him it usually took me nearly an hour to escape his
cross-examination.
But Max graduated at the top of his class and after that pulled
PG. 26. THE RURAL VOICE/NOVEMBER 1977.
down a nice fat desk job planning circuits for some big
electronics firm.
1 graduated too, though not at the top of my class by a long
shot. Somehow I wrangled a job with a women's magazine
writing articles on how to stain furniture without getting dirt
under your fingernails. But the job had one advantage and her
name was Marion, a secretary in the fashions department. Six
months later, fashions and furniture united in a little ceremony
down at city hall.
Another year and I had had enough of the strain of stain so we
moved into the country. back to the rolling hills of Western
Ontario where I originated. We bought a little 25 -acre estate of
mostly rock and swamp and managed to piece the old farmhouse
back together after 20 years of deteriorating abandonment. The
land was so poor it couldn't grow enough grass to feed a
self-respecting grasshopper. We managed to reclaim some of the
swamp from the mosquitoes so we could have a back yard garden
and to transplant enough topsoil over the rock out front so that
we could have a little green besides moss.
We were happy there. I settled down to write the great
Canadian novel and Marion tried to cope with the problems of a
city girl in a home without all the conveniences. I even managed
to sell a few short stories so that we ate at least once a day. In
fact everything was beginning to look rosy. 1 was on the verge of
closing a deal with a major publisher to print my first novel which
was in the critical stages of the sixteenth rewrite. 1 almost had it
made.
Then came that horrendous decision to go to the alumnae
reunion at the college. 1 had always had a premonition that 1
should never have joined that organization but everyone else in
my graduating class was joining so I didn't want to be a killjoy. I
hadn't even been to any of the reunions for years. But this time I
had to go down to the city to see the publisher anyway and I .
thought there might be a reason to celebrate. And 1 thought it
might be nice to rub it in to those slobs who had voted me "Man
most likely to end up writing toothpaste commercials" so I took
Marion along to make a weekend of it.
The meeting with the publisher Friday afternoon went even
better than I had dreamed. He wanted me to have the first ten
chapters finished within a month, and he gave me a advance. I
was so elated that I took a room in the same ritzy hotel where the
reunion was being held that night.
a* �