The house on Krall Street inhabited by my unique friend Martin Klass (see Foom-Bozzle-Wozzle parts 1 and 2) is nestled in diverse overgrowth of bucketed flowers, crawling vines, and trees. Marty is a horticulturist and a hoarder, so much so that the City has issued him at least one citation, and not the good kind, either.

Yesterday I made my public-transport way to Marty’s place, and found to my mild dismay that a ceramic vase, which I had made and either given to Marty or had it dumpster-dived by him when I cleaned out my former workshop after my amicable divorce with the very nice small-town Minnesota gal Joni née Froehling, was in one of Marty’s flower-buckets, toppled over. I grabbed the vase and tried to open the screen door of the house, but it was strangely stuck. “HELLO…”

“Bongo!” replied Martin son of Max & Betty. (He calls me Gary infrequently. “Bongo,” “Ca’Bear,” and “Bernanke” are more frequent forms of address.) “Jussaminit!”

Inside his enslovened abode, I brandished the vase, told him how I’d found it, and accused him of neglect. He nodded in agreement and assured me that many other works of my creation on his property were being neglected, and that some in his back yard had been destroyed in storms. (I knew that already and it didn’t bother me–a lot of what Marty had were “factory seconds” of mine, unsuitable as showpieces. Prolificity’s downside is also its upside.)

I had a proposition for Marty, spawned when I picked up my vase. I was there to pick up the bird sculpture that had been rejected by Bruce Cody, the juror of the Glendale Arts Council’s 57th annual Juried Show. But I would rather have the vase, made by me on the 19th of May 2003 and having a suggestion of hard-to-capture antiquity, of ancient days, about it, than the rejected bird, made recently, which I could easily replicate in a couple of hours spread out over a couple of bisquing/glazing weeks. How about a trade?

Marty instantly agreed, and also agreed to pose for a photo illustrative of the trade:

I left soon after, but before I left I said, “You’re my best friend,” perhaps quoting Jessica Tandy as Miss Daisy, or perhaps telling him a simple truth.