When I was with the Harold Cabot ad agency in 1972, our client Boston Gas asked us to come up with “feel good” image commercials — federal regulators had forbidden hard-sell product sell.
The theme I came up with: “We’d like to share with you one of the many wonderful kinds of warm in the world.”
The setting for one of the commercials was a ballet class for young girls. The opening scene showed four girls practicing steps as an instructress keeps time tapping a staff on the floor. Suddenly, the woman stops tapping — calls out “Susie!”to the littlest girl who’s obviously been struggling. Susie approaches the woman, a worried expression on her face. The woman leans over, puts her hand on Susie’s shoulder and with a smile, in a faintly Russian accent, softly says, “One day, my Susie, you are going to be a beeyootyaful dancer.” Susie beams.
As I found out much later, finding beauty in things imperfect and transient, humble, spontaneous … human … is the mark of the Japanese worldview called “wabi sabi.” Independent of that discovery, I’ve always taken delight in things about our less-than-perfect human condition that have a certain spirit about them, almost a nobility about them.
***
Back in my 1990s early bird days, I was in Vinnin Square one Sunday morning at 5:30 a.m. picking up some medications at the (then) 24-hour CVS pharmacy. In line right after me comes Marblehead Veterans Agent Dave Rodgers. I ask Dave what brings him out at that ridiculous hour.
“Oh, one of my veterans gave me a call,” he said. “He needs his heart medicine bad.”
Needless to say, going out of his way like that was hardly in the veterans agent job description. But that was Dave Rodgers then, and — in every regard — that’s Dave Rodgers to this day.
***
Ney Tejada is a robust 51-year-old fellow spilling over with life, now a U.S. citizen, who came here from the Dominican Republic in 2001. He’s maintenance chief for a number of buildings in the area, including the one I live in.
It’s been my good fortune over the years to have frequent conversations with Ney, and I’ve gotten to know him well. He’s not only a man of many know-how and can-do talents, he’s one of the brightest happiest campers imaginable.
If I ever hit the lottery, I’ll provide backing for him to support his family and get the education necessary to teach history — he’ll light the light for hundreds of young people for decades to come. As with Achilles, Ney does have one flaw, though: He’s a fan of David Ortiz.
***
Every year, there’s a new crew of high school and college-age kids that work as wait staff at one of my favorite summer hangouts. The word that best describes them is “refreshing.“ Refreshing, because management screens the team so well they defy my expectation of today’s screen-jaded, too-hip-to-be-true young breed. These kids are as bright, upbeat, friendly and interested as they themselves are interesting.
In the course of the summer, I’m able to engage a number of them in the long lost art of conversation. And sometimes I’m even able to pass along some ideas from my various experiences in career consideration and job hunting that strike a spark — and may be of help. There’s a possibility of tangible long term benefit that makes me feel I’m maybe doing more than just taking up space hereabouts.
***
I had the fun of getting to know the painter of mystical elegance Carol Anthony whose works are in the Smithsonian and private collections of such as Jack Connors (an early discoverer), Michael J. Fox and Oprah Winfrey back in the early ’70s when I was creative director at K&E in Boston and she was a freelance illustrator fresh out of RISD.
She had a magic about her that shone in her work. Which made me happily surprised when we were done discussing a project one day and she said, “I like the way you write. Why don’t you write a kids book, and I’ll illustrate it?”
So I did. I wrote “Let Me Be Me,” a “message” story of a little kid who resisted the world’s pressures to forsake childhood and hurry up and become an adult. Carol created a 48-page concept dummy enlivened with her whimsical full-color illustrations. Though I returned the dummy to Carol a couple of years ago, I still have her marvelous pencil-sketch pages with my accompanying text.
The reason I cite the book is something the boy says, which I believe is the inherent birthright descriptor and starter kit of every one of us whoever walks the earth: “I’m no better than no one, and no one’s better than me.”
Bob Baker is an award-winning marketing/advertising practitioner of Mark Twain’s dictum that “thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.”
