Rejection: In Love with Yellowstone and The Totem Café Caper
Feb 22, 2019 18:51:45 GMT -5
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Post by Apple on Feb 22, 2019 18:51:45 GMT -5
This is my take on these two chapters from TTOTC (read as a book, regardless of its relationship to a puzzle). On my first reading of TTOTC, The Totem Café Caper struck me as one of the oddest chapters. That said, I continue to be impressed with the degree of craft that went into these writings. There are some absolute gems (my current favorite being Tea with Olga). Disclaimer: I'm relatively new to this book, I'm no Literature major, and I'm not providing any money-back guarantees--even if it's free.
Fenn tells of his family’s beloved, recurring summer vacation to Yellowstone National Park--and mostly how they got there--in the very brief and straightforwardly named chapter In Love with Yellowstone.
The Totem Café Caper, in its short three pages, tells two similar stories back to back. A young Fenn is a paperboy in the first story and a dishwasher in the second story. In both, he is caught by his boss or manager doing something he isn’t supposed to be doing, is fired but doesn’t immediately grasp the full meaning of what happened, cries, and is helped by his mother or a symbolic mother.
The major theme of In Love with Yellowstone and The Totem Café Caper is rejection. This theme is raised at the end of the first of these chapter: "if he’d get rid of that car maybe maybe he could get rid of me too." The young Fenn experiences two actual rejections in the subsequent chapter. That chapter concludes on a happy note, with a teaming up and acceptance by his coworkers. In addition to the theme of rejection, the latter chapter also metaphorically touches on the idea of a growing child beginning to navigate a sometimes dangerous world.
The first story in The Totem Café Caper describes a potholed Canyon Street in West Yellowstone and cars splashing dirty water. The second describes the Totem Café on the main drag, washing dishes in scalding hot water, Fenn’s hands turning white and having deep canyons, and cleaning brown gravy kettles. In both stories we have a reference to water, which is associated with deep canyons, one as "deep potholes" in the street and one as "deep canyons" in his hands. The water in both stories carries descriptors of splashing (by the cars), dirty (in the unpaved, potholed road--muddy, for sure), hot (washing water), and smelly (brown gravy water); they also turn hands white. The descriptors of the water, in combination with the West Yellowstone location, are evocative of the bubbling, sulfurous, sinterous, mud pits, hot springs, and geysers found in the Yellowstone--a place that Fenn tells us that he "absolutely loved" in In Love with Yellowstone (not any ambiguity there!).
In the first story, an eighty pound Fenn tires from carrying the heavy newspaper sack. In the second story, he describes "giant kettles," which sound heavy. He exclaims "Whew!," and we can intuit that he must be tired at end of the sixteen hour work day.
In the first story, a tired Fenn is found resting on a curb by his boss and, in the second story, the manager finds a hungry Fenn eating a stolen pie. In both stories, he is fired but humorously doesn’t completely understand the meaning of "canned" in the first story and having his pay "dock[ed]" in the second story. In both episodes he ends up crying.
His actual mother and a symbolic mother talk to and help Fenn in both stories and they do so in places reflective of Fenn’s boss or manager--a car in the first instance and a freezer in the second. The boss in the first story is objectified as a "big, beautiful yellow Cadillac," and Fenn’s view of him changes from "suave" and "nice" to a "fat, baldheaded, hulk of a dirty name" after he is fired. His feeling of "the sun went behind a cloud" could also refer back to his impression of the boss; the "big, beautiful, yellow Cadillac" being a sun image that gets clouded over. In the first story, after he is fired, his actual mother talks to him in the "lean-to" where his family’s Plymouth is kept. We learn in In Love with Yellowstone that this Plymouth replaced a beloved Chevy; this aroused a fear of rejection in Fenn because if his father would "get rid of that car maybe he could get rid of me too." His mother consoled him in that car’s "lean-to" as he confronted his actual rejection by his boss--as objectified in the story by the Cadillac and symbolized in Fenn’s mind by his father’s new Plymouth. His mother then helps Fenn get job washing dishes at the Totem Café.
The manager in the second story has the odd and evocative name of "Frosty." After we are told of Fenn’s indiscretion, his coworker called "Grandma" explains Frosty’s disposition to Fenn in the "frozen meat locker"--that he demanded excess respect than he commanded from the diner staff. This is conveyed through an imaginative and more far-reaching twist of the idiom "give someone an inch and they will take a mile;" in the story it becomes: "when the owner gave Frosty an inch he thought he’d become a ruler." Similar to the first story, the location--a freezer--mirrors who is being discussed--Frosty. Upon his firing--this second rejection--the diner staff protest and Fenn is reinstated. The story ends with a statement that resolves the two chapters’ rejection theme: "we got to be a pretty good team, especially on Frosty’s day off."
The automobiles are the motif for rejection in the first story; while the idea is slightly muddled, perhaps temperature is the principal motif in the second story. The "Chevy"/"Cadillac" and "Frosty" as the embodiment or personification of rejection are the "totems" of the chapter’s title. Cars create the image evocative of Yellowstone’s water features in the first story whereas temperature is a major driver of that image in the second story. The second story begins with warm things: "scalding water" and "hot pies"--warm is often used in the context of some sort of acceptance, as in "giving someone a warm welcome." Contrasted with this are cold elements associated with the rejection: "Frosty" and the "frozen meat locker"--cold is often used in the context of some sort of rejection, as in "giving someone the cold shoulder."
In addition to the theme of rejection, these stories continue the meditation, started in First Grade, on a growing child’s ventures into an often dangerous world. The danger is symbolized by the splashing and scalding water and effected by the boss and manager. In this often dangerous world, Fenn begins to shoulder burdens but not quite effectively; this burden is literally not shouldered effectively in the case of the newspaper sack. He isn’t quite ready to accomplish things on his own, as he requires motherly help--his literal mother and "Grandma." This "mothering" is reminiscent of that which he received in No Place for the Biddies and in the form of hot "pineapple pies" that he got from the "grandmotherly" lady in My Spanish Toy Factory.
A version of the story in The Totem Café Caper was previously published in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Much of the symbolic artfulness in the story was added with the changes found in the book’s version of the story. Notable differences between the chapter in TTOTC and the portion of Boyhood Memories of West Yellowstone Long Ago include no mention of the Cadillac or Plymouth, no mention of brown gravy, Grandma is "Miss Mary," no mention of the "frozen meat locker," and Frosty/the Ruler is "Old Fred." Additionally, the article begins with another short story before transitioning to the story told in TTOTC.
Thanks for listening.
