Alex Levy

After so many weeks away, it was good to be home in Teaneck, and to get back to the serious business of raising a family in the suburbs.  Besides our two children (Melissa wasn’t born yet), we had also acquired a German shepherd dog, a bushy-haired cat, and a garter-snake partial to live goldfish from Woolworth’s.   When we acquired a cat, it was named Yoyo, and so between the dog and the cat we now had at least one Abiyoyo.

It was a busy part of life for me.  I was attending Pace University Saturday mornings, teaching during the week, and I was also active in union politics.  Then there was the Paramus Cooperative Nursery School, which required parents to take an active part in the school and their children’s education.  It was also the place where we made many lifelong friends.  In addition to which, Linda was also involved in a women’s consciousness raising group, a group that felt itself insufficiently assertive.

Because we had found camping such a great experience, like any new converts, we wanted to proselytize and tried to convert our friends to our newfound camping faith.  Our friends, Howard and Lore, decided to give it a shot on an experimental basis, a weekend camping trip at a private campground at the New Jersey shore, not far from Long Beach Island.  So we packed our cars, they borrowed some of our equipment, and down to the shore we went, four adults, four children, and Abi, our dog.  Yoyo was left home to frighten the bluejays.

Each family had its own tent, which we were experienced enough to erect atop a plastic ground cover, and it was fun having all the kids involved in putting up the tents.  In the evening, we built a fire, and brought out the marshmallows for which the kids had  previously gathered sticks.  The weather was calm, the sky starry.  Eventually came a late bed time, and off we went to our respective tents, Abi sleeping unattached in front of our tent.  I had complete faith in Abi and knew she wouldn’t leave me.  And so we slept.

We were awakened in the middle of the night by Abi’s loud barking, although we couldn’t see her.  Our friends, Lore and Howard and their kids were all up, out of their tent and gesticulating.  Their tent had been knocked down and seemed to have acquired a life of its own, as two shapes chased one another under the tent, and I could hear Abi barking.  Something went skittering from under their collapsed tent, and Abi soon followed.  From the stink of the campsite I guessed at what had happened.  Abi had chased a skunk under Howard and Lore’s tent and somehow the skunk had gotten wedged between to the ground cloth and the bottom of the tent, but fortunately managed to escape the tent and Abi in the confusion.

At dawn, Howard and Lore’s family packed their car and left.  They’d had enough of  of the great outdoors and camping, and I believe they never repeated the experience.  Afterwards, we missed our friends, but we showered and gave Abi a tomato juice bath, the magic antidote for a skunking, and went camping every summer of our lives.

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Tucumcari was an unexpected stop on our way to Gallup, New Mexico, where there was to be a rodeo which Linda and I thought would be fun for the children and our teenage babysitter.  However, before we got to Gallup, our car developed another mechanical problem, and so we found ourselves in Tucumcari.  The chances are that you’ve never heard of Tucumcari, and until that time neither had I.  Since then, whenever I’ve seen it mentioned in the press (at least two times and once in a movie!) it is only referred to as the most out-of-the-way and anonymous city in the United States,  where nothing ever happens because it is simply too hot for people to be very active.  The outstanding architectural feature of this city was a group of grain silos at one end of town, all of them painted different shades of pink.  The tallest building in town was probably two stories high, although I can’t remember any that tall.  The rest of Tucumcari was hot, flat and treeless, but it did have a motel, a diner, and a movie theater.  It is likely that it also had a church, but I don’t remember it.  It also had a garage, the owner of which told me that it would take several days to effect the needed repairs.  I got him down to two days, and so for two days we had to find something to do in Tucumcari.

The only entertainment available was going to the movies, and we just happened to be in time for a Don Knotts film festival, days of nothing but Don Knotts movies!  I think that Linda and the kids may have watched a couple of them.  I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I was still in recovery from a Jerry Lewis film festival at an unscheduled stop at Gander Air Force Base some nine years earlier, while on our honeymoon to Europe on an economy Icelandic Air flight.  Being served greasy, powdered eggs for breakfast just intensified the nightmare, and made it more difficult to forget the experience.

However, we were in Tucumcari on vacation, and soon enough, it was with great pleasure that we left it to resume our trip to Gallup, New Mexico.

Gallup was larger and busier than Tucumcari.  There were actually people out in the streets (although not many), most of them Indians (yes, I know they are called Native Americans now-a-days, but this was then), wearing straw or black, ten-gallon hats.   Don’t believe I saw anyone wearing a feather headdress, but there might have been some traditionalists.  There was also a thriving market in, elaborately-worked, Navajo silver jewelry, and Linda and I both bought watchbands.  For some reason I couldn’t quite understand, it would seem that Navajos were really into watchbands.  Indians wore wrist watches in the Old West?  The rodeo was also fascinating. Surprisingly, most (if not all) of the “cowboys” were Indians.  Riding wild horses and bulls didn’t seem to be an easy or pleasant occupation, as in these contests between man and beast, the beasts generally won, and the men found themselves suddenly and violently deposited in the dust.

We had been on the road nearly seven weeks, and while we’d all had a very good time, we were also looking forward to sleeping in our own beds again.   After Gallup, we headed home.

 

 

 

Besides Forest Lawn and Universal Studios, while in Los Angeles and because we had children on this trip, we also visited Disneyland, a pleasant enough experience of which I remember nothing, except for the crowds and Cinderella’s Castle.  I guess she acquired it after she was married to Prince Charming.  After Disneyland there were still several places to visit along the California coast, among them the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, and Seaworld and the zoo in San Diego.  Much of this part of the trip was spent camping, sometimes in private campgrounds, sometimes in state parks on those gorgeous California beaches.  Linda and I were surprised at the number of people who were camping.  Some of them just set up tents and stayed in one place for a couple of weeks, others set up trailers or tents, then went back to work in the city, returning to the campground only on weekends. We had never thought of just camping in one place for a couple of weeks, and it inspired us.

Hearst Castle in San Simeon was a monument to idle money looking for something to do.  I had heard of it by way of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and as a movie buff knew about the many celebrities who had spent time there.  I, too, would have liked to frolic there with old William Randolph and Chaplin, and Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., all of us splashing around happily together in one of the two pools, indoor and outdoor, which one to use depending on the weather, but unfortunately I had arrived late, and now, Hearst had joined the stars in the firmament, and his abode had become part of a state park, a monument to conspicuous consumption.  Nevertheless, I was impressed.

We trekked on to San Diego, and its attractions, which were mostly things that the children could enjoy, and as parents, Linda and I enjoyed their excitement at the clever seals, the amazing dolphins and Shamu, the talented killer whale.  From there we went on to Baja California, and I was startled by the sudden change from a wealthy, green, productive, agricultural land to one of brown deserts and poverty.  We only spent a day in Mexico, but at the time, that was enough.  The obvious, grinding poverty made it embarrassing to be traveling through it all in a shiny Buick.  In addition to which, I’ve always been an aficionado of American plumbing, and the state of the public bathrooms in Baja California made it imperative I return to the States as soon as possible.  Crossing the border back into the US, I was careful to pile my shoulder length hair under my baseball cap.  I just didn’t want to be stopped by the border patrol, and wanted to appear just what we were, a typical American family on vacation.  We were now ready to return home, but not without two other stops, one voluntary, the other less so.

The way East led through some interesting country, from a Sahara-like desert in California, through Arizona and New Mexico, where our trusty Buick station wagon  once again broke down, this time in Tucumcari, New Mexico, a city of which you probably have never heard, and for good reason.

 

 

No long family trip is complete without a vehicle malfunction.  In this case, on our way from the Grand Canyon, our new Buick stations wagon’s water pump gave out, and had to be replaced.  The event took place in Williams, Arizona, and was uneventful, requiring only a long visit to a diner.  I was surprised that the pump could be replaced so easily in such an out of the way place, but replaced it was.  And on we went, to explore a few other cities of Arizona, none of them all that interesting, except for the fact that they were uniformly hot.

Naturally, when we visited Yosemite we also visited San Francisco, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, going as far south as Baja California, Mexico, and taking time to visit some other tourist attractions in between Marin County and Mexico.  It is impossible to remember everything that happened in California, but it was all thoroughly enjoyable. In San Francisco the seals off the Embarcadero were especially appreciated by the children, and we had a good time joining a picket line of striking longshoremen.  Naturally, City Lights Bookstore was on our itinerary, but we did not meet or see any of the Beat luminaries.

I had wanted to visit Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles ever since I had read Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death, and later Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, and when we got there, it did not disappoint.  It was in fact Whispering Glades, and I kept expecting to run into Aimee Thanatogenos or Mr. Joyboy, but nothing like that happened, although it was somewhat strange to be in a cemetery with scheduled tours.

An unexpected highlight of the Los Angeles leg of our trip was our visit to Universal Studios, in which I had little interest, but managed to surprise me.  Of course, there were the old sets from TV shows and movies, but at one point I was asked to volunteer for something or other.  I had no idea what it was going to be, but I had made it a rule that I was going to go for whatever came along on this trip, and in this case, after I had volunteered, I and the others were told it was going to be a “try-out” on a movie set.  The set was the inside of a crowded airliner, and I was to play the Van Heflin role of the bomber in the 1970 version of Airport, the one in which he wrestles successfully with Van Heflin (I believe) for control of

an attaché’s case which holds a bomb.  The directorial instructions I and the other volunteers received were everything.  They were much more difficult to follow than I would have thought, as none of us were actors or had any hope of becoming actors.  In any case, the scene was filmed, and it was fun doing.  After it was completed, Linda and I and the kids and several hundred other people sat in an outdoor arena and watched the “movie” in which I “starred.”  The clip was only a few minutes long, but it seems to have been memorable, as after that, in several of the places we visited up and down the coast of California, there was always someone who had seen the clip and recognized me as the “star” of that famous non-epic.  Needless to say, I enjoyed my brief and modest celebrity status.

We left Yellowstone and drove to Grand Teton National Park (only about 10 miles away), by way of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Highway.  The country around Jackson Hole is a magnificent landscape of buckrail fences, grassy plains, snow-covered mountains, and the meandering Snake River. I don’t remember much of that visit other than the scenery itself.  Having made a resolution to do whatever “touristy” stuff was available wherever we went, we signed up for our first white water rafting experience.  It was quite a day and quite a ride!  The rafts were large, inflatable army surplus tubes which once upon a time, possibly during a war, might have been constituent parts of a pontoon bridge, but now served admirably to float us quite rapidly down the white water of the Snake River.  Along the way, perched in a tree, I spotted my first bald eagle.  As the ride down the Snake River took the better part of a day, we also stopped along the shore for food and refreshments, before resuming our trip on the current of the rapidly flowing river.  Josh, who was all of five at the time, thought it great fun, particularly as he was allowed to “steer” the raft with about a dozen people on it.  The rest of us just held on for dear life.

While in Wyoming, we visited other tourist attractions, among them the town of Cody, which is named after Buffalo Bill Cody, one of its founders, and is close (as distances go out West) to where General Custer’s 7^th Cavalry was wiped out by Sitting Bull.  The most famous animal in the area is neither the horse nor the bison, but the jackalope, a curious mix of jack rabbit and antelope.  It seems to have the body of a large rabbit and carries a full set of antlers.  Although quite shy—it is never seen, day or night—it appears on many postcards sold in the souvenir shops of the area.  As a matter of fact, it is in the buying and selling of one of these postcards that Josh’s entrepreneurship first manifested itself when he sold one of these jackalope postcards to another boy for five cents less than it had cost him, and was as proud of the transaction as he might have been had he actually made a profit on it.

The only part of the trip that was thoroughly unhappy was when we traveled through the Rosebud Indian Reservation and at least one other reservation.  It is possible that there are bleaker places on the face of the Earth, Siberia comes to mind, but I’ve never seen any.  The reservations that we saw had not a tree among them, just unending scrub grass, unfit to feed anything, and no shade whatsoever.  The homes of the people living there were small, some of them with corrugated steel roofs.  The men we saw were either motionless in the hot sun, or staggered around in a drunken daze.  I don’t want to give the impression that I’m some kind of teetotaler, but the combination of obvious poverty, lack of trees, and drunkenness was a completely dispiriting sight.  There were no attractions, no shops, nothing to see, do or buy.   These “reservations” seemed a purgatory to which lost souls had been condemned and exiled, while they waited for almost anything that might be different or better, and we guiltily left it all behind us as quickly as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

One of the large debates animating animal lovers in the 70’s was what to do about the bears in both Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks.  I believe that in both places there were brown bears (more commonly known as “grizzlies,”) which grew to rather prodigious size and were generally hungry, as well as black bears, which were friendlier.  If you followed the newspapers at all in those days, each summer there was at least one story emanating from Yellowstone about a camper or campers who had been mauled or killed by a bear while snoozing overnight in a sleeping bag somewhere outside of a camping area or just running into one unexpectedly.  Park administration had placed signs all over warning campers of the bears and of the dangers of feeding them from cars or even keeping food in tents.  Besides the signs, there were also bear-proof garbage cans which you were asked to use so as to make certain that the bears wouldn’t ingest plastic garbage.  While this was probably very good for the bears, it left them very hungry, except for the mooching black bears along the motorway who continued to convince many tourists to feed them.

In Yosemite, the approach to bears was different.  Yosemite only had to deal with one type of bear, the black bear, basically the same bear that occasionally shows up in the backyards of suburban New Jersey and New York.  The bear-proof garbage cans of Yellowstone were not used, and therefore the bears helped themselves to whatever they could find in them, and this is turn led to less hungry and much friendlier bears, but the plastic they were ingesting couldn’t be good for them.  One day, while in Yosemite, Josh came running into our tent yelling something or other about a bear.  Indeed, when I took a look out, there was a large, brown bear, ambling through the campsite.  I immediately grabbed my recommended bear fighting equipment—a skillet and a large spoon—and began banging the one on the other for all I was worth, as other campers did the same.  The bear decided he didn’t like the racket, and slowly lumbered out of the camp.  Interestingly enough, I don’t recall any newspaper stories about bears killing anyone in Yosemite.

There were also sugar pine trees, in Yosemite.  These were beautiful, perfect, tall conifers, not nearly as tall as sequoias, but tall nevertheless, which produced, giant pinecones, much larger than those of the sequoias, which tourist were forbidden, under penalty of ome major fine, to pick up from the ground to take home.  The temptation was just too strong however, and Linda and I did pick up some of the forbidden fruit, about six or seven or them, while on our way to Glacier Point, one of the places from which to obtain a magnificent, panoramic view of Yosemite National Park, with its peaks, its forests, its flowering meadows, and its cascading waterfalls.  Unfortunately, while we were admiring the scenery, our car battery died.  Somehow, I don’t remember how (there were no cell phones in those days) I managed to contact a park ranger, who came to the rescue and gave us a boost and got our car started.  Linda and I were both grateful.  We were also somewhat worried because getting caught boosting pinecones in the Park was rather expensive.  To our relief, Smokey never noticed the giant contraband pinecones hiding under our car, and they made handsome decorations in our house for years after.

 

Our cross country trip besides being thoroughly enjoyable was also somewhat educational, particularly as it helped me develop an appreciation of the vast wealth of the Rockefeller family.  At the time of this trip I knew that the Rockefeller name was synonymous with vast, Croesus-like wealth.  I also knew that the Rockefellers had an unsavory reputation, acquired during the period they were accumulating that wealth, and that there was a public relations firm ensconced in the entire 60^th floor of the Empire State Building doing nothing but repairing that reputation.  Actually, I’m not sure of that, as I never checked it out, but it makes a good story.  Nevertheless, the family that owned the land on which both Rockefeller Center and Columbia University were built was certainly wealthy.  During our cross country trip I had occasion to come into contact with more of that wealth.

For some reason we wound up in Chicago.  I think there was a science museum there that we wanted Jennie and Josh to experience, and we were also interested in visiting a famous comedy club flourishing in Chicago at the time.  The science museum was hands on and fun.  I also had a good time at the comedy club (I think it was the Second City), where a waiter refused to believe Linda was old enough to order an alcoholic beverage.  She carried no proof of how old she was, and when the waiter tried to get me to confirm her claim of being old enough and the mother of two children, I told him that she was constantly trying to order alcoholic beverages in bars, although not old enough to do so legally.  Linda was 29 years old at the time, and carried a grudge for a long time about that one.

We also caught a glimpse of the University of Chicago.  It stood in the middle of an urban wasteland, the kind of landscape reminiscent of Berlin right after World War II.  As we drove by this urban disaster area, our cab driver casually mentioned, after pointing out the University, “ and all this land belongs to the Rockefellers,” and this vast blight extended as far as the eye could see.

We had a similar experience when we stood atop the mound or ridge on which stood Tuzigoot Pueblo, in Arizona.  Surrounding the pueblo was nothing.  Miles of nothing but wasteland in all directions as far as the eye could see.  And again, our guide said, “and all this land belongs to the Rockefeller family.” I was duly impressed.  The same thing occurred in San Francisco, down at the Embarcadero.  Again our guide pointed to the fact that all this land really belonged to the Rockefellers.

I had always been aware of Rockefeller wealth, but the immensity of only a partial view of it as real estate holding was somewhat overwhelming, and this was without awareness of the Seal Harbor estate, or of Kykuit.  As Mel Brooks noted a long time ago, it’s a good thing to be a king.

The “profit” of three years of work and the sale of Apple Hill, all three thousand dollars of it, went into our cross country trip.
Linda has always had an enthusiasm for camping, an enthusiasm which at first I did not share. When she first suggested that we go for an actual camping trip, one that would last nearly an entire summer and take us all over the country, I thought she’d lost it. To actually spend days driving hundreds of miles with two kids in the back so as to be able to sleep uncomfortably on the ground at night? Not my idea of a vacation. Linda, can be extremely convincing. We soon traded in our collection of S&H Green Stamps for all sorts of camping equipment. Don’t know about S&H Green Stamps? They were little stamps (naturally, they were green) you obtained in supermarkets with each purchase and pasted into passport-sized booklets. Without making any effort at all, Linda had acquired a great many of these stamps and booklets, and she now decided to trade them all in for “free” camping equipment.
We had also recently acquired a big, blue Buick station wagon, which I packed with all of our gear. There wasn’t enough room in the car for all our luggage, so I tied some of it down to the roof rack. We had also hired a teenage baby sitter to accompany us on this trip (our kids were 5 and 3), after which we were ready for our great adventure.
At the time I was not a really experienced car packer, and therefore the moment we got on the access ramp to the New Jersey Turnpike, everything on top of the car, on the roof rack, came tumbling down onto the highway, and I had to make my first unscheduled and inauspicious stop. I might have thought that an omen of evil things to come, but I didn’t, and the trip was great.
Linda had planned our itinerary in exquisite detail, and her choices of where we stayed along the way, at which motels, which campgrounds were excellent. All I had to do was drive. One of Linda’s more inspired choices was an overnight stay in a motel that had “rooms” in the compartments of an old-fashioned and restored Pullman car. We also stayed at KOA campgrounds, often alternating between motels and campgrounds on our way west, to the fabled national parks. Setting up camp was somewhat of a nuisance, as I had to set up two tents, one for the kids and one for us, but it all worked out. Inside the national parks, we camped of course.

What with snow in July in Yellowstone, the constant bear warnings, the wandering wildlife, the geysers, the flowering meadows, the mountains, the beautiful meanderings of the Yellowstone River, it was all very exciting. Old Faithful was a disappointment, as that particular geyser didn’t do whatever it was supposed to do, and when it did spew some steam and water, it a wasn’t a big deal. I wished we could have stayed longer, but we had several other parks to explore and couldn’t spend too much time in any one of them, which became my constant complaint. Wherever I was, I was so taken with the scenery, with the natural beauty of where we were, that I didn’t want to leave. It was all so magnificent that I wondered why we hadn’t gone camping earlier.

The idea of moving to the suburbs was in the air in the sixties. It even had a name: White Flight. Linda and I just resisted it as long as seemed sensible, which was the point at which we came to realize that without rent control our landlord owned us, that he could charge whatever he wanted, regardless of whether we could afford it or not. We also needed more space as we now had two children. Something needed to be done, and what we did was check out the New York suburbs.
The most appealing of the suburbs was Teaneck, which was about twenty minutes from New York, and not much further from my job north of the George Washington Bridge. Besides proximity, what made Teaneck attractive were its schools and its political liberalism. While much of the rest of the nation was in turmoil about racial integration of just about everything, Teaneck had voluntarily integrated its schools and the town itself. As a matter of fact, a very nice book had been written about Teaneck’s voluntary integration and the success of that move. Teaneck was obviously where Linda and I belonged.
No matter how desirable the move to the suburbs, it was difficult for me. Except for my two year stint in the army, I had never lived outside of a city. The idea of becoming one of those people who grew grass just so it could be cut on Saturdays was too strange for words. And then there were all those trees and bushes! I had promised myself while in the Panamanian jungle that if I never saw another leaf, vine, bush or blade of grass, that would be too soon. Well, we made the move to Teaneck. Again with the help of Linda’s parents (we had repaid a previous loan when we sold Apple Hill), we bought a lovely little three bedroom house, at the end of a cul-de-sac, and life began as suburban parents. To my surprise, I found that I liked it. Growing grass to cut it down made no sense, but I really got into it. It was fun decorating our own little house, and making plans to improve the property by planting bushes, water proofing the basement, painting and doing all those other little things a house requires. I also got into the fixing of everything all by myself, as doing things yourself was popular in those days and hiring people to do it was expensive. In one case, with the experience I had acquired at Apple Hill, I redid the plumbing system, which resulted in more than a foot of water in the basement for over a week, until I could figure out a way of getting all that water out of there. It was all a learning experience.
My near-death-experience occurred when Josh, my healthy six-year-old, decided he wanted to climb to the top of a spruce growing on our property. Being a child of the athletic variety, he easily made it to the top. However, once there, he became frightened and needed help getting back down. So, the diligent and rather large father, began his hurried climb to the flimsy tree top to rescue his male offspring. The top of a spruce is rather thin, causing considerable swaying, particularly when additional weight of over two hundred pounds is brought to bear. Was I scared? You bet I was; so scared I didn’t even think of calling the fire department! Somehow, I managed to grab Josh and carry him back down, but it became one of my most memorable moments of suburban life in Teaneck.

Linda and I were married on April 15th, 1962, at the Delmonico Hotel. I liked the idea of being married in the same place that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt had their wedding reception (with President Theodore Roosevelt in attendance), but I didn’t like the date. I wanted to get married on April 1st, for obvious reasons, but Linda would have none of it. I tried to argue that April 15th was inauspicious because it was the date on which President Lincoln had expired and the Titanic had gone down. Linda was unimpressed, and April 15th it was. After the wedding, although it was rather late in the season for that sort of thing, we drove through Central Park in a mini-snow storm on our way to our new home.
[When we got to our apartment were both starved, as we had been too excited to eat at the reception and decided to go to a little Chinese restaurant on Broadway, just around the corner from our first apartment. We got home, ditched our wedding clothes, got into some more comfortable things, and began our married life together eating in a Chinese restaurant.
We loved our first apartment. It was located on the corner of Riverside Drive and West 144th Street. The building is still there (it was called the Norland for some unknown reason) and still has the twin cement lions protecting its front door and marbled lobby. I believe that by leaning way out of our third floor window we even had a view of the Hudson. In the bathroom there was a hidden scale that flipped into the wall when not in use, and the bathtub was one of the longest and most comfortable I’ve used. It was possible to post a letter by just dropping it into the brass mail chute in the hall. It was a really great apartment for a couple of newlyweds. However, lovely as it was, our stay there was destined to be brief.
New York, at the time, was undergoing “changes.” Harlem and its social problems, particularly its heroin problem, had metastasized, and were now impinging on what were formerly safe, white, middle class areas. The need of addicts to feed their craving for heroin was causing a crime wave such as had never before been experienced in the city. Nothing was safe. In Harlem, buildings were being abandoned because they had been stripped of their copper plumbing systems. In our building, people were leaving as fast as they could. Being good liberals, Linda and I resisted the trend. We tried to stay put, but even we decided to move when in the course of a single month there were seven muggings in our front lobby.
So, we fled North to the border of the Washington Heights—Inwood area, to 4-10 Bogardus Place, and another lovely apartment. Not only was the apartment lovely, we had some great neighbors, including an elderly chess player with a green parrot that was kidnapped and returned after a ransom was paid, but also Ruth Westheimer and her family before she became Dr. Ruth. This apartment had the additional advantage of being within walking distance of work, and the walk was through Fort Tryon Park, one of the loveliest parks in New York. What could be better? It was also to be impermanent.