The Daily Fate

When I was on the poetry scene in New York, one of my friends was a prominent patent attorney. His poetry did not attract attention, and his young wife died suddenly. He had previously been “the life of the party.” These events transformed him from an outgoing guy to someone who tended to be a bit…grim. He began telling people that he swore to leave the literary scene completely and stop writing poetry if he did not strike it big.

He left town and began publishing a newsletter he called The Daily Fate, in which he collected headlines about the random and extreme misfortunes that befall many of us: deaths, disasters, and stretches of intense bad luck. This publication should not be confused with Fate magazine, the spiritualist house organ. Another friend of mine used to subscribe to that, but it chiefly dealt with the “afterlife.”

Here is my favorite story from The Daily Fate: A young couple bought a small wooden house in central Pennsylvania. It consisted of one story, with a small dining room, a living room, two bedrooms, and a bath. The male homeowner liked it but was always bothered by a draft that seemed to come up from the floor when they were eating dinner. Their legs were always cold. This is something that militates against the enjoyment of one’s food.

One day, feeling more ambitious than usual, the homeowner pried up the floorboards under the dinette table. All he saw was darkness. He shined a flashlight into the opening. The flashlight slipped out of his hands. It took a very, very long time to drop.

As it turned out, the house had been built by a company as workers’ housing. The one-story structure had been built over a disused mine shaft that went down hundreds of feet. The only thing separating the residents from that pit was a single layer of floorboards.

Fate or real estate chicanery? You tell me!—Kathryn Nocerino