Columns: Puzzles, mysteries, miracles in 2017

As I continue my maturation process, not only do I encounter a steady stream of inexplicable happenings, they seem to be increasing in number.

Fortunately, I am sort of tantalized by the inexplicable, with the obvious exceptions of causes of disease and other grave matters that are no laughing matter. Here are three frivolous examples that come to mind.

Puzzlement: Our Manhattan apartment is on Third Avenue at 78th Street, and I spend a measurable portion of my time on Third, rustling up provisions and running errands when in town. Morning until late evening it is a river of pedestrians: Old couples, arm in arm, trudging along with sad faces; the lame, the halt, those confined to wheelchairs; those disabled folks motoring with NASCAR flair in their electrified carts; the moms and Nigerian nannies pushing their double-wide strollers, oblivious to their sidewalk-hogging.

There are UPS deliverymen and postmen pushing their bags of mail; there are food carts, mounds of garbage on pickup day, hawkers of knockoff bags and scarves, the very unusual panhandler and the dog-walkers with as many as six or seven dogs in their packs. There are plain, ordinary walkers, holding to the right side, people stopped watching lovingly as their dogs poop and others stopped in the middle of the road talking on their phones.

Into this complex sidewalk scene come the young women joggers. It is comical to see these earnest runners picking their way through these countless obstacles, constantly having to stop and run in place. And of course there are the stoplights.

What is the thought process that leads these normal-seeming women to choose Third Avenue as their exercise route? It’s like running in downtown Cairo. It can only be, I surmise, a misbegotten safety issue. Yes, Third Avenue from the blocks in the 60s into the 90s is probably one of the safest sidewalks on earth. But so is the entire Upper East Side. You never see men running north and south on Third because they (and lots of women) are running west on the lateral streets to get to Central Park, haven to a panoply of unfettered running venues.

I am tempted to ask one of these women joggers — What in tarnation are you thinking? Central Park is four blocks away. The East River running/biking lanes are four blocks the other way, with no Nigerian nannies in sight. I’d rather not know because there is no explanation for this behavior and that’s how I prefer it.

Mystery: We bought a Panasonic boom box in 1992 after we had been transferred from L.A. to work in the Los Angeles Times’ Washington Bureau. Awaiting the arrival of our furniture, we set up housekeeping in a temporary residence hotel in Georgetown and I needed to satisfy my jazz craving. In those days a good boom box had CD, cassette and AM/FM radio capabilities, and I had brought along a healthy portion of discs and tapes to scratch that itch.

The boom box went into the bedroom when we moved to Alexandria, Virginia, while the stereo system took charge in the living room. It went with me to Philadelphia in a temporary studio apartment I had there. It wound up on Shelter Island in the so-called Cottage, the second floor of the garden shed where visitors could sleep and bathe and, after a fashion, cook.

It lastly wound up in Manhattan on a lower bookshelf and promptly decided to show its age. The right speaker went on the fritz and the guy at an electronics repair shop said with these products there was nothing to be done. All the wiring and electronics were embedded in the plastic housing and unreachable.

So the boom box sat there unused, except for an occasional whimsical poking of buttons to see if it had miraculously revived. I would sometimes forlornly listen to a CD, left speaker only, just for old times’ sake. One day last year the right speaker sprang to life. It was always a particularly good-sounding boom box so I bathed in music I hadn’t heard for years.

Then one day the clicker wouldn’t work. New batteries meant nothing to this clicker. I did the usual rubbing of the contact points and rotating the batteries in their little chambers. Nothing. Much like the dead speaker, I would occasionally hit the clicker, just to see. About a month ago, the clicker, sitting there with the same batteries, sprang to life. There is no good reason for this, but I cling to the notion that the boom box had appreciated that I had never given up on her. This is not rational but, raise your hands, are these rational times?
Miracle: Some years ago, an Island friend needed off-premises housing for one of her daughters and her family. Our house would be available and we gladly offered. In gratitude, she left a gift of some bathroom lotions and potions, which have long been used up. One remains, a sizable bottle of light blue liquid called linen water, lavender-enhanced.

The label says, in four languages, it is to be used in steam irons, to give pressed goods a subtle fragrance.

We have no steam iron and to our knowledge none of our many guests have toted steam irons, let alone asked if we, by any chance, had some linen water. Yet over the years, the level of linen water has steadily declined. Over the past year, it went down about a half inch (I measured). It’s now about half full.

With no alcohol content, I can rule out that someone has been taking nips from the bottle to scratch an entirely different kind of itch. Has someone found it an ersatz cologne? Could a visiting workman have an unusual application? That’s about all I can come up with. My wife is unmoved by this phenomenon. To me it smacks of Poe or Stephen King.

I’m telling you, if the linen water bottle runs dry, I’m outta here.