At 5:05 am, my dad put on a soft white cotton shirt, his suit, and a good silk tie.  Over his big balding head he pulled his second best Stetson fedora.  Then he went out into the frigid pre-dawn darkness to walk a block for coffee and toast.  It was useless to try to sleep.  He was scheduled to deliver a paper this morning, 11:15 in the Wabash Room at the Palmer House, and his paper was not ready.  In fact, all he had was seven versions of page one – typed, but with penciled notations scribbled over them.

He folded the seven pages, onion skin erasable typing paper, slipped them into his inside jacket pocket.  Over coffee, he planned to figure out which was the latest version and make some notes on where his talk must go on from there.

In the elevator mirror he straightened his tie, pulled the brim of his hat down at an angle. In his mind’s eye, the elevator doors slid open and three uniformed zoo keepers carried him to a railing where they one! two! three! heaved him into the crocodile swamp.  Natural environment created by the Chicago Zoo. Regrettable to ruin his good suit and tie, but at least he wasn’t wearing his best, new hat.

In those days, a man didn’t need a special occasion to dress in a suit, tie and hat.  On the contrary, it took a vacation, boating, or a tennis match to get a man into any other kind of clothes.  What is proper attire for being sacrificed to crocodiles?  He had not packed swim trunks, after all, it was  December 27^th, 1965, lakeside Chicago, spray from Lake Michigan frozen into a lumpy coating over the esplanade.

It was a short walk to the diner, but he was thoroughly chilled when he pushed through the glass doors into the clean, bright room.  The only other souls inside were the counterman in his starched white hat, and a couple who looked like they had been up all night.  My dad hitched his leg over a stool on the opposite corner of the counter island.  The counterman came over:

“What’ll it be?”
“Coffee and toast.”
“White wheat or rye?”
“English muffin?”
“Muffin it is.”

Did it show on his outsides that he would prefer to be thrown to crocodiles?  He pulled out his typescripts and spread them flat on the polished stone countertop, so like a tombstone.

The couple across from him bent their heads together and murmured.  She was wearing a red dress under a fur coat that looked genuine.  The guy was dressed almost exactly like my dad, only his suit was pinstripe instead of tweed.

Have they pegged me as a doomed man?  Can they see that this muffin and coffee are my last meal?  He imagined asking them to take just a few minutes to listen to the outline of his talk.  It would mean so much to me.  A crucial help.  If they graciously agreed, he would explain the key elements.  Identity and Libido.  The transference of the sensual.  Subliminal drive under spherically bounded semiotics.  They might ask insightful questions.  The woman, especially, appears curious and amused.  The counterman listens, arms crossed, mentions Jungian Substrata.  Laughing, the woman takes a bit of muffin from dad’s plate.  She says:

“I wouldn’t throw you to the crocodiles, just yet.  Your notion of prototypical patterning?  People need to hear that.”