Friday, October 8, 2010

Liver

I hated liver until I got much older; late thirties, when a cushy job made gourmet cooks take over my menu, and Ma’s hash grinder showed up in an antique show, not a kitchen drawer.

(There’s not enough ketchup in the world to erase the memory of that godawful instrument.).

By then, liver had become a discovery. A bartender at Runyon’s introduced it to me, Linda. I knew her by her maiden name and by her first two married names, but I lost track after that.

This was under her first married name. I quickly declined the offer of the dinner special—liver and onions; she insisted I try it. I declined; she insisted, coquettishly. I declined. She said I liked steak, right? I was about to decline, again, but noticed we had attracted some attention, so I relented.

She was right, of course. It was wonderful. Thick, tender, juicy; it bore no resemblance to anything in my history named, “liver,” or anything of the liver family, or anything near the liver, like the spleen, the bile duct, the…I don’t know, the small intestine.

My knowledge of and familiarity with things liver-ish might have stopped there, but I knew I had a liver; I knew there was cirrhosis of the liver, which mysteriously had decimated many of the Lowe’s and their in-law’s, their neighbors and their good friends; and I knew that certain people in my life who cared very deeply about me half-expected me to trip over my liver one night on my way to the bathroom.

I never thought much about liver cancer, though.

Now, I do.

It seems I have liver cancer. I found out two-and-a-half-years after a massive stroke failed for some reason to kill me. And, my liver cancer appears to have nothing to do with my old habits, chief among which was the volume consumption of beer.

I have liver cancer the way a non-smoker has lung cancer. I have liver cancer because itinerant cancer cells roaming the planet happened upon a warm, cozy, hospitable, safe place in my liver to settle down, grow old and be happy.

Well, maybe not so safe. Warm, hospitable and cozy.

I’ve decided (with the consulting help of a surgeon, a few doctors, a bevy of nurses and one pending granddaughter due next month) to make it not so safe for a tumor.

“What the hell, I just busted my butt learning to say, ‘February,’ and, ‘Real Estate Agency,’ and to type, ‘alliteration,’ and, ‘communication.’ You think I’d lay down for a liver cancer that doesn’t have anything to do with my beer-drinking, which I don’t do any more, anyway?”

That’s the attitude I wish I could have, anyway—bold, defiant, devil-may-care, I guess, heroic.

My actual initial reaction, being brought up Irish Catholic, was, “Wow, whoever you are, I must have really pissed you off. You let me have two-and-a-half-years to sort of patch things up after the stroke—which I admit I fundamentally caused—and then you hand me this? A tumor? In my liver? What are you, a Sadist? Nurturing some kind of God complex, are we?

“Okay, withdraw that last remark.”

I talk to myself a lot, and play back the tapes, as if I were thinking.

When I first realized the stroke had not killed me, I was puzzled. Figure: I lived a great life, fruitful, useful, even entertaining. I left a lot of smiles in my wake, precious few frowns. I was ready. Sixty-two years was all right, 20 more than some: 20 less than others. I was never going to see Hobart, Tasmania, anyway.

The puzzlement, though, morphed into anger, when I realized what—well, I had more or less abdicated, really, but I didn’t see that right away—I had given up, in exchange for just living.

I could see not being able to walk, that was a fair trade. But not being able to speak? Me? Are you kidding? All right, the guitar goes. But, the writing? Are you crazy. Me? Why? I’ve been writing since before I knew what the scribbles actually were.

Then, about a year-and-half in, the Worm turned. It was amazing. By that time, I had walked. I knew the rudiments of pronunciation (though, I couldn’t apply them yet). I had re-learned the language enough to write letters.

I was having one of those conversations with myself, where every word is clear, at least in your head.

“You know, if you were anyone else, you would have given ten of your years to be Ed Lowe for just one. Just one. And, you had sixty-two. Sixty-two years as Ed Lowe.”

Yeah. I know. It’s hard to believe.

“And now, you have Ed Lowe’s girlfriend (thanks to the liver tumor, his wife, cagey bastard.)”

Yeah. I know that, too. Hard to believe.

“You have Ed Lowe’s memory. You have Ed Lowe’s children, and Ed Lowe even paid their tuition.”

True.

“So, what’s the problem?”

I guess there is no problem.

“Damned straight, there’s no problem.”

Saturday, October 2, 2010

The Editor

I guess there comes a time when you have to look at your life, define what’s important and what isn’t, and get rid of what isn’t while you’re still wondering what made it loom so in the first place.

I never wanted to loom. I suppose I never I wanted to be loomed over, either, and that’s inherently a problem for the people who want to loom, because a loomer isn’t anything without at least one loomee.

In newspapers, they got away with avoiding excessive looming as long as the paper was small and manageable. Editors were editors, photographers, photographers, and reporters, reporters.

As soon as the newspapers got big enough to divide people into, “management,” and whatever was, “non-management” (It couldn’t be, “labor.” Photographers, reporters and artists would go crazy if they found out that guys they suddenly called, “management,” suddenly thought of them as, “labor.”).

I saw, and got caught up in, the transition from one to the other, and thought I would escape by declaring myself a, “columnist.” I didn’t actually declare myself a columnist, I just came back from any assignment with a story, whether it was the one I was assigned to or not, so that my member of management who had assigned me wouldn’t be embarrassed. It worked, and I was named columnist.

As columnist, I was able to assign myself three times a week. Some weeks were nerve-wracking, some were easy, depending on how lucky I was or how lazy. But I had conquered the looming. I was both management and (not “labor,” but we’ll call it that, here) labor—the loomer and the loomee.

An editor colleague (all right, a superior) noticed me around 1979 and set off to loom over me. I fought, until he demanded that I call the office every hour. One, two, maybe three days, and I confronted him. “What are we doing?” He said that he might someday have a column assignment for me and he wanted to be sure he knew where I was (this was in the days of pay phones, so I was calling from bars, and it was getting to me. Bar etiquette said a beer-in, a beer-out.).

I said, “Fine. Make me a general assignment reporter, again, and I won’t have to pretend that this three-columns-a-week [stuff] is important, any more.”

This was a mistake. I should have known—I did know—that he hadn’t made me a columnist, somebody higher than him had, so I was asking him to do what he could not do. I had just made an enemy for life.

He once asked me to write about Gov. Mario Cuomo’s plan to close Robert Moses State Park. I said, “You don’t want me to do that.” He said he did. He wanted me to write a column, as a resident of The South Shore, about my reaction to the plan. He thought I would write about Piping Plovers and seagulls. I was a fan of Mario Cuomo, but I felt this was a cheap trick. I wrote a column that began, “Ain’t nobody closing no Robert Moses State Park.” At 7 am, a panel truck pulled out of B & B Fish and Clam with a sheet across its transom that read: “Ain’t Nobody Closing No Robert Moses State Park.”

Cuomo was livid. He had his office call me all day. I never had spoken to a governor. He called my home and asked how I was going now to gain access to him. I said, “I never had access to you before. I’m a run-of-mill citizen.” Now, the newspaper and the governor were ticked off at me. I just wanted to be left alone, to be my loomer and loomee.

The editor and I separated, because I went into the Long Island edition, and he became the editor of The Queens Edition. I stayed as a loomer-loomee, while he amassed more people to loom over, eventually becoming the Editor of The Long Island Edition.

There, he asked me to consider an idea of my then wife’s: “The Fathering Series,” to alternate weekends with another series, “The Mothering Series,” about our respective relationships with our children. I had two girls from a earlier marriage and two boys from a current one.

I said, “As long as I own it.”

He said, “Well, you can’t.”

“Then, fine. Get somebody else.”

“Well, we’ll talk about it when it gets closer.”

“All right, but that’s my position. I write a series about my kids, you get to run it, and then it’s mine.”

Major dispute. Back n’ forth, me saying, “I understand. I really do. So, get another guy who doesn’t have this hangup.” Him saying, finally, “You know, we can make you write for Saturday.”

“You can make me write for Saturday?” I said. “Is that what this was all about? What about ‘making’ me write well? Can you do that? What about, ‘making,’ me write about my relationships with my children? Can you do that, too?”

I won, I thought, and I wrote a bi-weekly “Fathering” series for the next four years, when my wife said my writing about our marriage was getting in the was of our pending divorce. I agreed, and stopped. The irate editor said my stopping was his decision. I looked at him. I walked away.

Two years later, Tom Stites, a former Newsday editor, called from Kansas City to say congratulations on the book that Newsday was publishing with his company on the Fathering series. I hired a lawyer. After a year, we wrested a copywrite citation from Newsday. I had won again.

At long last, the editor became The Editor. So. he had to do it. I quit. Now, it amuses me.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Smoking

God, do I hate doing this.

When I smoked cigarettes, I was one of the coolest guys on the planet. That began the mid-semester of my seventh grade.

The night I quit, my thirtieth year, and many, many nights thereafter, I made and remade a sacred and secret vow to all the people who had not quit smoking that I, Edward J. Lowe. Jr., would ever and always recall and remember the joy and pleasure of smoking.

Therefore, I would not break the stones of persons who smoked. Never bother them. Never beleaguer them. I might even be their champion, if asked, because it was their habit, their custom, their life choice, if you will, to smoke, and they had an inalienable right, a legal right, a natural right to light up and blow smoke into whatever stiff face they saw fit.

Gradually, I began to see holes in that position.

The first was, “What about the people who claim the right to breathe air: clean, clear, crisp air?”

Hmmm. Well, they can go to a non-smoking bar or restaurant, for instance, if that is what we’re talking about. Because, that was what we were talking about in those days; having no-smoking sections in bars.

“Why can’t they breathe real, natural air anywhere?”

Because…c’mon, real, natural air isn’t anywhere. It doesn’t exist [already, my argument was floundering]. You don’t go to a bar to breathe in fresh air.

“I mean it.” said my brain. “Not only in your bars [my bars?]. What about a bus stop on a corner. What about Yankee Stadium. Outside church. On a fishing boat.”

All right, all right. Let’s take them individually, my mind said. A tavern-restaurant or bar.

“Fine. Do I impose on you at this tavern-restaurant what medicines I take to prevent the shakes?”

What?

“No, I don’t. To stop my incessant belching? No. To make my seasickness go away. No. To save me from humiliation with my girlfriend? No—although, I’d like to try one out, if you have any to spare. But, no. So, why would you think that I would like to smell your rotten cigarette while I was eating my ice cream dessert? Or putting Wispride Cheese on my cracker.You know, you don’t smoke it in private; you let a dozen other people enjoy it, or suffer it, too. And you claim you have the right to do that? What about their rights?”

Well, to shorten the story, my position didn’t have a chance, and eventually, I abandoned it.

But I still thought it would have a chance. I still thought smokers had rights.

Years passed, and bans on smoking gradually got into everything, as well they should, because there was no way you could argue that an individual had a right to pollute other people’s air, except in the heat of battle or in times of National Emergency, and that was stretching it.

Mayor Bloomberg proposed banning smoking in one place or another, and a guy, a smoker, asked by a reporter what his reaction was, flipped his cigarette on the freaking lawn and said something about, “rights,” and you knew he was gone, and it was over, and he had flipped his flipping cigarette butt into ancient history as punctuation: “Not only do I think that all the ambient air is mine,” he appeared to say, “I think all the world is my ash tray, too.”

All right, I am convinced.

Now, I am hospitalized.

I am in a very private room (there was an argument in my previously destined double-room over whether the departing patient had urinated; so I was whisked into the next room, the last room in the hall, I guess to soothe my nerves; or, come to think of it, hers.).

The third night, the night I finally go to sleep, I am awakened choked, or choking.

I bolt upright…well, to the extent a man can, “bolt,” in my position, and I gasp for air. The room seems blackened with smoke, but cigarette smoke. I realize I haven’t smelled cigarette smoke in years.

Hesitantly, I press all the buttons in my purview and in anybody else’s purview, because I am now seeking to stand, I guess to get more air. My efforts to do that previously have been questionable, at best. So the small army of nurses and aides who rescue me deserve thanks.

Further investigation, with (bright, bright) light, shows no blackening, nor any cigarette smoke, nor smoke. And I still smell it, and fiercely, but I thank God I have said nothing, because, clearly, I have lost my mind. This is not only a smoke-free hospital, it’s a smoke-free campus.

Somebody right away said she notices cigarette smoke. Do you know what that does to your mind? One comment, and you are freed from the accusation that you are crazy.

So, I second that analysis. Not only that, I recollect a previous instance, not 30 hours before, of a previous offense. The nurses use my room to plot against this miscreant. I can hear them.

I have gone from a mind-your-own-business guy to a, hey-that’s-the-guy guy.

Truth is, I hate smokers. Hate ‘em.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Don't Assume

Lefty’s was on a corner on New Highway, which ran north between Republic Airport and the heart and soul of nowhere, now a condominium development.

A two-lane slab-of-concrete road, it had short pitch pine and scrub oak dominating all the land on the west, which it faced, and mainly factory buildings covering the other three other sides.

You wouldn’t stop there unless you worked nearby, and then not until you first watched people walked in, and then walk out. I’m a saloonist, and I drove past every day for years before my curiosity out-wrestled me.

The place turned out to be nice, as most of them are, and a secret hideout for the New York Islanders Hockey Team, as most of them are not. I learned that when a tree fell on my head, so to speak, at the bar, where I was trying to eat a hamburger.

Two young men dressed, I thought oddly, for office work, sat at the deep end of the bar. I sat with them, to their left, rather than make the bartender walk the length of the bar, just to serve me. The rest of the 60-foot bar had been vacated.

They were about to leave when a fourth man entered, and sat at the, “L,” of the bar, to my right. He wore an Argyle sweater.

The two ordered another drink and giggled while the bartender served it. They talked to each other, loudly, and I somehow got the impression that my pants were stained or my shoes were untied, and they were talking about me.

I engaged them in conversation, wherein they gave me information to use on them. My luck, they had been overserved, too, and were easy to entrap into making fools of themselves. Cruelly, I took hold of the situation with information they had provided, and made it advantageous for them to leave, humbly.

I said immediately that what I’d done was cruel and apologized to the Argyle sweater man for having seen me do it. I assured him that I was not, “that,” kind of guy [the kind who made mincemeat out of two slightly-high luncheoneers, as I had just done.].

“Lefty,” behind the bar, who had said nothing, introduced us (“I know who he is,” the Argyle sweater man said): Ed Lowe, meet Denis Potvin.

I hadn’t recognized him.

So, that’s what the joke was: the big shot newspaper columnist has no idea that he’s sitting next to one of the greatest hockey players of all time, the captain of The New York Islanders, which had recently dominated the National Hockey League by winning the coveted Stanley Cup three seasons in a row.

“Pleasure,” Potvin said.

“Well now, I’m really embarrassed,” I said, “because, not only do you know that I don’t follow hockey, you know what an ass I can be when I feel I’m being embarrassed. [He waved me off, as if to say, “Don’t be silly.” But I was determined to be …silly]. And, by the way, I do follow excellence, and I know that you are excellent at what you do, with a group of people I wouldn’t recognize either, whom I also admire…”

“Stop,” he said. “I saw the whole thing, beginning to end, remember?

I stopped. We had a conversation that went on and on and on, until another Islander came in, Bobby Nystrom, who wanted to talk with Potvin. The conversation was about skates, I recall, because it was the height of summer, and I couldn’t even pretend to care about ice skates.

I took the opportunity to talk to, “Lefty,” about his business, and about the few other businesses that attracted the professional athletes on the island.

Pat Calabria, Newsday’s New York Islander’s man, was writing a piece for Newsday’s then-popular Sunday magazine about the team. So, I suggested a sidebar, a piece about, “Lefty’s,” a no-count bar in Melville, where the Islanders hung out, especially since their captain, Potvin, had gotten a divorce, and Lefty had given him the keys to the place, so he could still host the team’s Superbowl party. Nice story.

The walls were festooned with Islander’s jerseys and the ceilings literally covered with hockey pucks and a virtual forest of signed hockey sticks.

At a later date, while I was interviewing Lefty, I felt compelled to ask a stupid, question and introduced it just that way.

“Ask,” said Lefty.

“Well, the place is called, ‘Lefty,’ and you’re called, ‘Lefty,’ and I just wondered if the name…you know.”

Lefty said, “Yeah. It’s named for me.”

A few minutes later, I thought of another stupid question. I said, “Hey, do you mind telling me if you’re left-handed?” He said, “Yes, I am.”

Finally, just before I was to ask him to spell his whole name, I asked, “Hey, are you called, “Lefty” because you’re left-handed?”

He laughed. He said, “No.”

“What?”

“No. My name is ‘Lefkios Evandrou,’ Anybody who comes to this country from Greece with the name, ‘Lefkios,’ is called, ‘Lefty,’ whether he’s lefty or not. In fact, whether he has left arm or not.”

Friday, September 10, 2010

Ailments

I don’t know how to deal with ailments any more, let alone diseases.

All right, maybe I never knew how to deal with ailments, maybe even so much as discomforts, but I could fake it with the best of them.

I am convinced I don’t know any of it, now.

I mean, what if my stomach hurt? (Oh, all right, it does; but that’s way besides the point.).

Other people have stomach-aches. I did. They get cramps. Their stomach has been upset. They get, “doubled over;” “queasy,” “uneasy.” I had that on and off for years before the stroke. You take something—Pepto-Bismol—and move on, or, if it’s really bad, you stay in bed until you’re hungry.

Now…well, first of all, how would I know that a stomach ailment was real? I’ve now talked with people who weren’t there, had conversations with people with whom I haven’t had conversations. I have a recent history of imagined triumphs and vivid post-stroke phenomena that may have happened only in my imagination. I can’t even figure them out.

On what scale would I put, “I think something might be awry in my early digestive system;” or, “I think I’m going to be sick;” or, worse, “What was that sound? Did you hear that awful sound? Did that sound come from me? C’mon, now. Be serious, here.”

Also, I haven’t heard from my stomach (well, in a figurative way) in months (which at first seemed really rather cool, because my stomach, at least, almost never registered any delight or pleasure; only pain and nastiness. So, what was the loss?); and I have suspected it was among the parts benumbed by paralysis. Therefore, I surmised, as long as I didn’t shovel any hot peppers or old clams into it, a numb stomach might be advantageous.

Not so. You really want to know if your stomach is in a bad mood.

“What’s wrong with you?” I ask myself.

I don’t know. I think it’s my stomach.

“You look like you’re in pain.”

Yeah. I think that, too.

“Well, hit me with a symptom.”

It’s painful, and it’s growling, my stomach. And, look, it appears to be moving, not far, but, like, doing calisthenics. Over here [left], it hurts. But not over here [right]. Of course, that may be because I can’t feel anything over here [right]. I get the impression that if I could feel, it would be the same—pain—and I would really be in pain, twice the pain I’m in, now.

“What are you going to do?”

Read. And, I suppose, stay close.

“Read?”

Yeah, see if can forget about it. I can’t go for a ride. I can’t drive yet. Sold my car. Can’t run around the track—although, I never did that anyway. Can’t play with Silly Putty.

“You did that? Played with Silly Putty?”

No, of course not. And at that time, they called it, ‘Nutty Putty,’ anyhow.

“Why would you say that, about Silly Putty?”

I don’t know. Because I’ve never been here before. I don’t know what, ‘sick,’ is any more. If I got leprosy, would I be sick? Hell, I’ve already been dead. If a guy has an arm, and he gets acid on it, but it’s still his arm, is it a sick arm? Is it sick if it’s stabbed? Is it sick if it’s paralyzed? Look at my right arm. Does it look sick?

Vendor says: “Oh, yeah, that’s a perfectly good arm, never been broken, all the joints work; God knows it’s never been used to excess. Why, if it were wired correctly, it would be a damn near perfect arm. Belongs to the writer, there, the guy holding his stomach with his left hand.’ He can’t use it. He had a stroke.”

And, all right, let’s cut to the chase: let’s talk about dying, here. Do I stop having to worry about dying? Or start?

I got stomach pains, big deal. Teams of people with degrees up the whazoo spent hundreds of hours pumping and feeding and wiping and getting blood all over themselves and their shoes for I-don’t-how-long to bring me back to life, most of me. I’m going to complain, now, two-and-a-half-years-later, about a stomach ache? What am I, an ingrate? “Oh, poor dear. Look at him, all upsety-wetty. He has a stomach-ache.”

Shouldn’t I keep my selfish mouth shut about my little upset stomach?

“What if it’s fatal?”

A fatal tummy-ache.

“Well, what if it is?”

I guess there are two points of view, two at least.

One; I died of a tummy-ache. Weird, I guess, after all that melodrama in 2008.

Two: well, hey, I moved in with Susan. I got two years-a-and-half out of the heroes in the hospital. I saw great weddings I wouldn’t have seen, wrote letters I wouldn’t have written, learned a lot—a whole hellavalot—and attended my mother’s funeral. And I moved in with Susan.

“You said that.”

I know.

Friday, September 3, 2010

SPEED

Jimmy McGlynn and The Greek came over this week.

I used to see Jimmy McGlynn every three-to-five years. This is from going back 35 years ago, in Al Ubert’s Ubie’s OTJ (OTJ meant On The Job, which Al Ubert let patrons believe was his pride his in his Suffolk County Police Department younger brother, Jack, when it was really a flat-out attempt to influence the police) in West Islip, where The Good Rats used to play once a week.

And, then, whenever they didn’t have a regular gig.

Al Ubert loved the Good Rats.

Seeing McGlynn has always been a mixed blessing. It was always an accident, but, it was always in a good bar. Then it was always irresistible, but always inconvenient to somebody. Mostly, me.

Jimmy would start talking and I would strain to listen, trying (in vain) to tell if he were on speed, LSD, or far too much natural energy for one man to even stand near without getting into some kind of trouble.
He would talk faster, and that would make him breathe faster, and that would make him rub his face with his hands and, somehow, that would make him talk faster.

I would know that I was going to be tired, going home.

I would allow myself to get caught up in watching—well, first it was watching Jimmy McGylnn’s magic tricks and the mysterious spells he would have worked over girls; then it was observing the uncanny memory he had for mixing a dozen or more exotic drinks rapid-fire; and then the barely credible speed, accuracy, and panache he had in serving them; and then the laser-beam accuracy his hands would perform in the cash register making change for four people at a time.

It would have been a neat show if it were not so unbelievable, but it most certainly was unbelievable, to the degree that I would wonder several times the next day whether it happened or was I dreaming it.

But, I wouldn’t see him for five years, so I would cherish the memory, whether it really happened or not. I used to say, “He put a spell on me,” and leave it at that.

The Greek and I both saw him, years ago, at separate times and in separate places. (Mine was my only visit to Chevy’s, on Sunrise Highway, in West Islip, which had a red, 1957 Chevy in it, center stage.). He would ring up ten times the totals of the other registers—hear me: ten times the totals of all the other registers—and still perform the magic tricks to keep the pretty girls at his, “station,” rather than roaming around the club.

Then, around the early 1980’s, I learned that Jimmy McGlynn was a track coach. I overheard him telling somebody about Bay Shore High School.
He coached for years there. Seventeen years, I just learned, with a 205-2 dual meet record, at one point going on a 96-0 winning streak with the boys team, and, of course, championship after championship after championship. He bought kids their track shoes when they couldn’t afford them. He visited their homes, made friend with their parents.
I suppose heard lots of stories about Jimmy McGylnn and track. I wasn’t interested in track.

I do remember listening to him telling about his younger team members, and how he told them to hold the line, or something, so their senior teammate would win, and earn a scholarship. Evidently, there was a science to competing at track. “Your year is next year,” he told his younger track team members, as if to say, “I’ve got plans for you.”

I never thought a thing about it, until this week, when somebody congratulated him for coming in 2nd in the country.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “He is a fanatic. I’m not surprised that his team came in second in the County.”

“No. You didn’t hear me right. Country. His teams come in first in the county all the time. That’s nothing. He’s been doing that for decades. His team came second in the country. Fifty states. The second best team in the United States of America.”

I can’t take notes any more. But I wanted to hear it from him. So he and The Greek came over.

He brought the trophy to the house, a little one: 2nd Place in the country.

He’s coaching East Meadow, which never had won anything. Never had a winning season. Not one.

The last three years, they won two County Championships. They’re ranked No. 1 on Long Island. And, oh yeah, they got second best in the country. East Meadow.

“I love bartending,” Jimmy McGlynn says, “and I love coaching track.”



Catch up on the post-stroke year columns with edlowehimself.blogspot.com

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Ed Lowe, Himself: SEPTEMBER

Ed Lowe, Himself: SEPTEMBER: "September. I don’t remember all that much about September, 1950, the year I started school. I lived in Amityville. I know Harry Truman w..."

Friday, August 27, 2010

SEPTEMBER

September. I don’t remember all that much about September, 1950, the year I started school.

I lived in Amityville.

I know Harry Truman was the president in 1950, but my guess is, I picked that up later, maybe even this month, from a book entitled, “Truman,” by David McCullough.

I’m kidding, of course. I knew about Truman before this book, and maybe I even knew it then, too, but I don’t remember thinking about it then.

By this time that year, I had fairly well familiarized myself with our new house and environs. We had moved from a studio apartment over my aunt and uncles Norman Avenue garage the previous summer, (where, incidentally, I’d lived my whole life, as far as I knew) to a brand new house on Hamilton Street, maybe four blocks North.

Kids magically appeared on Hamilton Street, but I thought slowly. The first, my predecessor, was Bonnie Jeanne Schaztel. I was the second kid on Hamilton Street. Bonnie’s sister, Elizabeth (Libby) when she was born, was third. After that, a whole flood of kids arrived.

During what passes for public speaking engagements, I’ve said that Bonnie Jeanne and I played, “Cow-[pause] persons and [pause] Native-Americans,” together. “We had different names for them, of course,” I say, to stretch the laugh. “I don’t remember them.”

If you do it right, as if you’ve just thought of it and were careful not to offend, you can get two good laughs out of it; even three, if you smile and let the audience know you planned it that way all the while.

I didn’t know I’d spent the better part of 30 years becoming increasingly comfortable standing in front of people telling stories of my life. One story sort of led naturally into the other, I thought, until a comedian friend complimented me on my, “Callbacks,” as if I intended something.

“What’s a callback?” I said.

He explained that you set the story up so that you’re going to come back to a phrase or a repeated memory long after the audience heard it the first time. That’s a callback.

I started out one story with the fact that I was a Brooklyn Dodger fan. Walter O’Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, had a summer house in Amityville, and used to give the Amityville cops home game tickets to his box seats, when he wasn’t going to be in town.

“What’s a box?” I asked my Amityville cop father.

“Box Seats. We’re in Mr. O’Malley’s Box Seats. Watch the game. There’s your hero, look! Gil Hodges.”

“Box Seats. Oh.” There was no box.

I talked and talked, about teaching, advertising, and somehow got the story around to the Suffolk Sun, 1969. I was going to ask for a job there, despite the fact that had I no journalism background at all. None.

I pulled into the parking lot, and was about to go inside, when an unmistakable voice came on the radio: “Hello, this is Howard Cosell, Speaking of Sports,” which Howard pronounced unlike any other person. “Suppoorrtss.”

“Gil Hodges, manger of the New York Mets, has finally done something smart.” Cosell pronounced. “Back after this…”

I hadn’t followed the Mets. I had no interest in baseball since the Dodgers left Brooklyn. But, I told the audience, Cosell now had me trapped. I had to listen to a Gillette commercial and a, “Shaffer is the one beer to have when you’re having more than one,” commercial. And some other commercials, in order to hear Cosell come back and say something good about Hodges, who, yes, had been my hero, in spite of all the pressure to make Jackie Robinson my hero, because, bottom line, I had a first-baseman’s glove, and Gil played first.

Cosell said that Hodges had decided to start Buddy Harrelson at short. I slammed the car door and stormed into the offices of The Suffolk Sun, madder n’ hell at myself for letting Cosell upset me like that, about a ball team I didn’t care about or even know about. Buddy Harrelson. Who the hell was Buddy Harrelson?

The woman at the reception counter was really nice, considering my mood. She called the city editor, and he set up an interview, right there. For me.

I didn’t know that the Suffolk Sun was about to fold.

The City Editor interviewed me and arranged for, next, an interview with Cortland Anderson, editor of the paper. I didn’t think that was unusual, believe it or not. I just walked into his office, which I noticed was huge, and festooned with Mets memorabilia.

Anderson didn’t look up. “What makes you think you can write for this paper?”

“I read it,” I said.

It didn’t sound the way I’d planned.

He looked up, cursed, then stood, and called me a name, cursing.
I backtracked fast. So much so that he offered me a coffee, to calm my nerves. He asked what I thought of that (curse word) Mets Manager Gil Hodges.

“That [curse word]!” All I knew was what Howard Cosell had just said. “He ain’t no [curse word].” So, I said it. “He just put that guy Harrelson at Short. Buddy Harrelson.”

He thought about a moment, and he hired me.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Reunion

I don’t know why I so wanted to be different.

First-through-tenth-of-all, it’s not possible; though I think that idea made it all the more desirable to me. But, really, I wanted to be that …different.

As a youngster, I set my compass on the idea of being a priest. Not many boys aspired to being a priest. I was in a public school. I knew one other kid in the whole school who had thought of this vocation, being a priest. I wasn’t a particularly holy kid, but, right away, that ambition would limit the competition.

I imagined that, then, I would be a priest who was “cool,” a linguistic designation just coming into favor at the time, one that would make me capable of wiping out eighty, maybe ninety competing priests of every hundred.

Of course by that time, I had gotten kicked out of the seminary. I had discovered sarcasm, and was developing a hair-trigger mechanism that I had trouble controlling when faculty was about, when any kind of authority was about. After four years of pretty good training, I was told to nonetheless seek my, “…vocational satisfaction in a trade other than the clergy.”

It was an exceptionally good separation, I thought, honest and straightforward, even with a touch of dignity and humor on both our parts. The Rector asked me what were my plans for the next year, and I took that cue to tell him, humbly, that my plans did not include any more seminary training.

I think his exact, smiling quote was, “How convenient.” He didn’t have to bother with the rest. We could just chat.

I turned my sights towards teaching.

An English teacher who was cool might well do, so I trained for and tried out that, but the host of cool teachers in every school district was so disheartening (and the work level so beyond my energy and ambition), I gave up after two years.

I became a daily newspaper reporter.

There were two daily newspaper reporters assigned to every town, and in all my days…Well, I didn’t know. I was all of 23…I never had seen even one

I saw, and was even acquainted with, the local editor of the local newspaper. I saw him every time I went to the Village Newspaper office.

But I had never seen a daily newspaper reporter, a reporter whose work would seen by thousands, right from the start, right out to Montauk, every day, while he or she was, as far as I knew, hiding.

That was different. That was real different. That was more different than a priest (plus, a newspaper reporter, unlike a priest, could marry, which I, by that time, had done).

Okay. A newspaper reporter would do. My, “vocational satisfaction,” and I would gobble up newspaper reporting.

This is, of course, the short version.

Boom.

I blinked, and next thing I knew, forty-one years had gone by.

There was a party to celebrate roughly, ah, say, 55 years of relatively different ambitions of newspaper folks who for various reasons aspired together to be different the same way.

They even successfully did it, in the main, or can successfully pretend they did it, some in a vaguely ordinary way, which is quite extraordinary. After all, the pace is somewhat erratic, or the work hours; the language is different from…other language, at least the language the public sees; the ego’s pretended to be larger. Maybe some were, but not now.

Some achieved difference in a quietly profound way, and subtle; some in a consistently spectacular way; and some in a way that others will agree was really, really different. Special, in its time. Prizewinning.

But the cool part was, no one knew that, except the partygoers, and not one of them cared. Not one. They were just glad to see each other.

The party celebrated nothing, commemorated nothing, heralded nothing. Nobody was singled out, except the person who thought, “Hey, let’s have a party.” We thanked her repeatedly.

There was no cake, no speeches, no assigned seating. The band wondered what they were doing there, except interrupting. It was remarkable. These people came to this boardwalk at Sunken Meadow State Park on a summer evening, 2010, just to see each other, and maybe make sure they were still different, and all right.

One man, maybe, might stand out in the minds of many. Henry Moritsugu. A Canadian. He was there years before my entry, and he’s still there now. He knew everybody. At a time where everybody had a good time, Henry may have had the best.

But, not by much.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Mental Notes

I’ve accepted a speaking engagement. Two, in fact.

That’s no great shakes, I know. It may never have been. I’ve accepted invitations to speak hundreds of times before, and, as long as I didn’t charge anything, I could probably be booked to the max long after I’m dead.

Before the stroke, of course.

I sound like my mother. She measured time in, “…that was before my hysterectomy, wasn’t it,” until she got another, more dramatic one, “…that was after I lost half my top,” or, “…that was before my triple-bypass, wasn’t it?” And on and on: “…that was before my carotid artery surgery,” or, “…that was around the time I had this defibrillator-pacemaker put in, wasn’t it?”

I guess I shouldn’t have made fun of her for that; or I maybe should make fun of myself.

“Were we talking about Ed Lowe before the stroke, or Ed Lowe, now? Because, you couldn’t get Ed Lowe to shut up before the stroke. Now, he’s much more pleasant company.”

So, all right, public speaking is a big deal, now, for me, in this time and circumstance, because speaking is one of the things I used to do well, and really, really enjoy, and, perhaps take for granted, too. (I suppose I could say that for playing the guitar, too. Who’s to check?).

Anyway, now, probably not so much.

I don’t take it for granted, to be sure, and I don’t do it so well, any more.

Speaking at all turns out to be a major triumph (…all right, like walking; let alone walking while waving, “Hi,” while making a call, paying attention to the traffic, finding your keys, stepping aside to allow the two-seater stroller to pass by and tipping your hat. But I don’t blame myself for being dunderheaded about that. I’m just saying—I was dunderheaded.).

I didn’t know that, about speaking, that it was a triumph.

Maybe I did know that, but I never paid it any heed, any mind, any attention, and, now, of course, I do. Have. I guess, ever will.

First, the mechanics of speaking, the oral summersaults and lingual trumpet-playing to distinguish an “F” from a “V;” a “P” from a “B;” a “Ooooh” from a, “Whoooh,” from a, “Ew,” to a, “Uh,” to a, “pomegranate.” You never think of those skills as separate from you, as not part of you, until they’re…well, not, and you have to learn them.

Can you imagine? You have to learn to say, “F.” I wonder how many times I just said, “F,” or, “Efff,” or, “Ffff…lorida.”

Pretty comical.

I tried speaking at Larry Shewark’s retirement from 30 years with the State Troopers. An experiment. He is a good friend. I was the one speaker who was not in law enforcement. They tell me I did all right, but I was the one who was going to lighten things up. I think I got applause for standing up.

I’m torn between feeling blessed that I get to recognize what gifts I had; frustrated that I didn’t get to exploit them further; and wondering whether I’ll get them back, again, or some of them. Maybe enough to get some laughs.

I’m just getting past the false-yet-real humiliation you feel when you discover that things were not what they seemed for a longer while than you knew. For a long while.

They were far worse.

“Don’t be silly,” I echo a dozen friends, “you were out of it.”

“Well, yeah. I guess I was, and, no, I don’t feel silly. But, dammit, yes I do. My body fooled me, really played me, betrayed me. I thought I was saying what was in my head. I heard words come out of me. Do you mean words weren’t coming out of my mouth when I spoke to you?”

Silence. I’m asking the question of myself, now, anyway. I know, now, the answer is they weren’t. I don’t know what I was hearing, but I evidently was alone in hearing it. People don’t wear those stupid expressions when they understand you. They didn’t understand you. You weren’t making any sense; they didn’t understand a word you thought you were saying, and that maybe was the first year. Get it, and then, get over it.

When I motioned—and maybe that was a lie, too—for a friend to, “here, take that black chair and bring it over here. How are you? How…”

What came of my mouth was, “Gnf.” And I didn’t know it.

I know I’m not supposed to be embarrassed by that; I know it. Maybe someday I’ll make a joke out it, and the embarrassment will disappear.

Mimi Juliano was my speech teacher. She’s 10 years younger than I, has two masters degrees and is a saloon-rock n’ roll singer. A good one. My kind of girl. She taught me that even when I finally heard words coming out my mouth, I was talking to my sternum. “I don’t want to hear any of this, ‘Godfather’ dialogue any more,” she said. “Talk to me.”

Now, I have accepted an invitation to speak. What was I thinking…

I have to remember stuff. What I wanted to say, where’s my cane, where do I go when it’s over, what did I say, where’s my right foot…It was right there; what am I doing? What am I doing?

Ah. Don’t be so dramatic. It’s only a speech.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Money


 

Money


I had a problem with money.

I had a problem with money even when I didn’t know what money was.

Try as I might (which, of couse, I didn’t), I always have had it.

Every now and then I (surreptitiously) think: maybe mine is a solution with money, not a problem. But, usually I get convinced otherwise, because it is a solution that enough people consider a problem that I have begun to think I must have the problem, even when I do not. It just gives me a headache to think about money, mainly because it requires thinking in numbers, and I think in words.

But, hey, if you think you have a problem, you have a problem. Not so with a solution.

So, my problem is that I don’t care about money.

I admit that this sounds crazy, but I have always had a problem with, “crazy,” too. I think more people ought to look at, “crazy,” as the answer to their problem, not as their problem.

Whenever I needed some money to get access to a thing, or a place, or a reasonable facsimle of a thing or a place, I got it. I can’t explain it; I assume it’s just luck, but all the same, I got it. Maybe I wasn’t ambitious enough to be disappointed.

I remember drawing charcoal portraits of guy’s girfriends from their high school prom pictures and selling them on the idea that this would make a neat Christmas present for their girl.

I was 17 and a college freshman. I did it only because I needed $100 to live for three days in Washington D.C., in January,1964. Ten portraits at $10-a-piece covered it. Never did it again. I didn’t need it.

When I needed pizza and beer money at Marist College, I played guitar and sang with two friends every Friday and Saturday night for seven months at Foster’s Coach House Tavern in Rhinebeck, N.Y.

Hell, I sent money home.

I drove a Bungalow Bar Ice Cream Truck, worked in the freezer at Good Humor Ice Cream Corp., was a proofboy at Newsday, taught 7th grade English, and spent 40 years writing for newspapers.

I must have thought about money, worried a little now and then, but, never really cared about it.

So, I would imagine now, when life looks a little bleak, newspapers are struggling (all right, a little understatement there), I’m paralyzed on my right side, can’t pay attention to two things at the same time and only recently have sworn off falling on pavement, I should pay dearly for my fiscal negligence. I should suffer severely for my devil-may-care attitude towards my own financial well-being. I should be poised on a precipence over disaster from which I never can recover.

Check this out:

Whenever Newsday’s financial experts offered Newsday’s employees the opportunity to sock away more money for the distant future, I elected to do it. Not because I was prudent, because I wasn’t prudent. I figured, if I let you keep any of my pay away from me for my own good, don’t even tell me about it. Just do it.

In recent decades, various financal machinations have occurred way over my head that, unbeknownst to me, profited me for my not knowing I could have prevented them (and, lose my shirt).

Maybe 15 years ago, a couple of tectonic plates shifted that sent rumblings under even my sheets, and I started to try to understand what I knew I could not understand, and therefore worry and care about money, which I knew I could not ever do without driving off the road and into a tree.

Okay, so I’m now in my fifties and in the market for a, “financial advisor,” a role I’ve heard about a bazillion times and think of the way I used to think of an, “engineer.” He passes tests that I cannot decipher; he makes a lot of money; and I haven’t the vaguest idea what he does; let alone what he does with my money.

I pick a total stranger, recommended by an ex-colleage I rarely talk to but bump into one day. Big, impressive company; impressive, work ethic; impressive furniture; impressive secretary who calls and makes me feel cared for. I give him my money.

I tell a friend, an ex-math teacher and retired school administrator, who hears me out and says, “Good.” I don’t know he is a free-lance financial advisor. He doesn’t identify himself that way. He just says, “Good,” and because he majored in math and talks in numbers, I am comforted.

A few years later, my, “financial advisor,” whom I do not know, switches to another big, impressive company. He asks me—and, presumably, every other of his customers—to switch impressive companies with him.

I balk.

I don’t know this guy.

Now, the impressive company who used to employ my guy sends two (two?) strange guys to take me out to lunch to talk me into abandoning the first guy and staying with them.

Me.

I have three strange guys and two impressive companies wanting to take care of me.

I return to the friend to ask him what I should do. He looks at my papers, which I never look at, and he says my guy has been, “pretty good” to me.

I plead: “Look, save me. Even if my guy is pretty good, I don’t even know him.”

My friend takes over all my stuff. He explains that he’s putting more than half into an account that will earn something like 5 per cent, no matter what happens. He explains all kinds of other stuff I know I’ll never remember, but I am happy.

A few months go by. There’s a big recession. I am spared. Another year; I have a colossal stroke.

But, I can retire, if I want, because my money, which I had a problem with, is okay.


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Saturday, July 24, 2010

Pain

I suppose I knew something like this might happen.

Falling down and going boom was sure to have consequences. My body wants a word with me.

Damn.

I joked about it. Joked about it. I should have known. My parents were right, they said (careful to quote their parents), “There no fool like an old fool.”

What would make me think I could fall over backwards onto a sidewalk, and then get up without angering, insulting, disturbing or annoying some section of my body.

It would be a section that naturally didn’t expect or anticipate it. A part that was innocent, guilt-free, and not perfectly okay with the surprise inversion of itself, as if that kind of thing happened all the time.

My skinny behind, for example.

“No, a warning isn’t necessary, Ed, just throw yourself down on the sidewalk whenever you feel like it, we’ll be all right. No problem. Remember how we used to do that, boys, about, what was it, sixty years ago?

“Sixty years ago, Ed. That’s why you had elbow pads and wore snow suits.”

You can’t fall down, even after fifty, and not hear from some (sarcastic) part of your body.

The pains took three days coming. I almost thought I had escaped. When I woke up the third day, like I had gotten away with something, like I had raided the cookie jar and nobody had noticed the missing cookies. I thought, I still had no pain. Whoopee!

“Hey, some cookies are missing over here,” said a part of me on the third day. “I’m going to have to deliver some pain because of those missing cookies.”

Let me explain, I said to myself, quickly.

Sunday, when I reached for the door handle of the restaurant, I had the handle of my stand-alone cane in my left hand. (You get that when you graduate from the grocery-cart cane, which you get when you graduate from the wheelchair.). I was planning to temporarily abandon the handle of the cane, to use that hand, my only functioning hand, to grab onto the handle of the door.

“Do I want to hear this?” my body is saying. “I don’t need this. I’m late by, what, three days. Three days, you haven’t had pain.”

Now, just let me finish: leaving the stand-alone cane to stand alone, which I was pretty confident it could do, I planned to pull the door open, stick my right foot and maybe the right cheek of my…well, my right cheek…into the wide open space created by the opened door…ow, what was that?

“The cookies are gone. It is three days. I’m delivering pain here….”

…Then, I would return my left hand to the stand-alone cane, which would still be standing where I had left it, and use it…ow… to balance my body as I strolled blithely into the restaurant.

“Sorry. This is…”

To this day, I don’t know what went wrong with that plan.

“Sorry, this is the third day. I haven’t time.”

Did the stand-alone cane get distracted by the décor of the restaurant and lean in to get a better view? Or, maybe my efforts with the door required more strain than I anticipated, more struggle, perhaps a step I don’t recall. Or, did a bad man come into the restaurant and move the stand-alone cane just away from my grasp. Ow.

“C’mon, you know what you did.”

I fell backwards, and from a slightly inclined plane leading up into the restaurant. The inclined plane (which I hadn’t noticed before) went from the restaurant floor maybe a inch down to the sidewalk, so there would be no tripping over a step. So my body was already tilted to fall…Ow. What was that?

…While I fell, I resolved not to hurt my head, if possible. I remembered that of all the parts struck by the stroke, the head seems to have healed faster—the right arm was the slowest; it still just is, sort of, there—and caused ow, ow the most dramatic changes in my attitude.

Fortunately ow, I have a crooked back, which I think absorbed the blow, so my head bounced no more than three times.

Ow. That hurts. Was that sidewalk pain?

“Yeah. And do you know you’re paralyzed on the right side?”

Yes. I know.

“So, you know that the right side is hurt more that it’s saying, with the pain, I mean?”

Well, I assumed. Yes I guess I knew. I couldn’t imagine I could fall like that…ow…and not eventually hear from you, some part of you …owah.

“So, you know, you could be hurt more that you know.”

Yes.

“And you’re taking chances?”

No. Ow. I mean, I’ve stopped. Look, my girl is a nurse. She told me. Even if I don’t remember. I know she told me. I just forgot. Ow, dammit. Look, just let me have this one, sort of, slide. I’ll be careful. I will.

“You’ll stop all this wise-ass nonsense, pretending you’re not a stroke survivor for long, and bounding into restaurants and such?”

Yes. Yes.

“You know, I’m not authorized to do this.”

Just this once.

“An awful lot of people are asking favors—big favors—for you.”

I know. I’m ashamed. I’ll be better.

“Well. Maybe once.”

Thank…Ow…OW…Oooh…Okay, all right, I deserved that.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Falling

Falling



I mustn’t have fallen much, as a kid.

Or, I overfell, to the extent overfalling is possible, and got fed up with, or maybe frightened of, or just considered myself more or less done with falling as an activity worth pursuing.

I mean from, say, the age of 12 to…well… only recently. I’ve returned to the study. I’ve become something of a reluctantly insistant faller.

I guess I should have paid closer attention to some of the intricacies of falling, because now, it’s coming up—the subject of falling down—again, and again, and so is the humiliation attendant to it, and the risk, and the debates, all of which you stand an excellent chance of losing when you are arguing from the perspective of being on the floor.

Maybe I was humiliated a lot, as a kid.

Nah. I think of all people, I would remember that.

As I contemplate falling, which I usually do in the endlessly embarrassing time between the second I realize I have lost the ability to grab, seize, or reach a rescuer, and am thus destined to create a scene, at least, and, hurt myself at worst; and the moment of brain-rattling inevitable impact, I am forced to review my actions. None of the reviews are good, because the results are the same. By the time my head hits the pavement—and one of them actually rattles—I am struggling with self-hatred, self-doubt, and an illogical crisis of faith.

I think falling down would be easier (a) if you were alone, as long as you avoided breaking or cutting anything; (b) if you were in the company of total strangers, who luckily had the kindness of passersby who would help you up and then be on their way; (c) or, I suppose, with a member of your immediate family, as long as he or she is not the person who warned you that if you were to do this or that, “…you likely would fall down; then, who would have to risk bodily injury struggling to help you up? I’ll tell you who [no, please, no…]. Me.”

I talked Susan into going out to dinner one recent Sunday evening. I can’t remember what argument I used—any one of them might have succeeded, I’ll never know—but it was a summer Sunday, when you still can find a parking spot and a table anywhere in Huntington (though, not near each other).

We had made it through back-to-back weekend weddings of sons—her fourth child; my fourth child—without the slightest complications (thanks to the four recently-wed people), and I, the magnificently unemployed, was suggesting celebrating our good fortune by doing what we used to do all the time, going out to dinner.

Susan was tired. She had been to the beach, which somehow makes you desperately fatigued. She was on call from 11pm until 7 am, when her regular Monday would start (from 7 am until 3 pm, and so I bit my tongue), but she said, “Yes.”

We aimed for Riley’s, but Riley’s was under renovation, so we aimed next door, Besito’s. Susan helped me out of the car (about which I talk to my right leg all the time: “You know, you could at least try…”), and over the curb (“…now, I know you can do this. You do it at Push-me-pull-you [my name for Gold Coast Physical Therapy, a name I cannot remember when I need to] all the time, on those fiberglass steps.).

Susan asked me to, “Stay there until I park the car and walk back.”

She was probably a bit more emphatic than that.

I don’t know if I agreed. I might have appeared to, but Besito’s has a number of tables
outside, with people seated at them in such a comfortable, even romantic way, they couldn’t possibly want to have a man with a four-poster cane standing near them for more than three, maybe four minutes. I thought, anyway.

I lasted two minutes, before I made for the restaurant door. I figured if I got inside, and better yet, secured a table, even sat down, Susan would be uplifted, pleased beyond measure, even proud of me.

Amazing how being an invalid warps you, makes you think you can make your date proud of you.

The fall began while I was busy working on the fantasy. I didn’t even know, yet. I was busy. I had to release my grip on the cane in order to open the door. As the door opened, I had to step back to allow it to open further, making my hand and my cane just shy of grasping distance.

So, I commenced falling. Of course, once you start falling, you cannot stop. There isn’t time to explain your situation or make any excuses for it. All those romantic people you were sparing are now going to pay more attention to you than less, and you are going to be embarrassed. You might as well use this time to get used to it.

Whack. Rattlerattlerattle.

Two men lifted me up, following a brief discussion interrupted by my insistence they get on with it. I said I didn’t want my girl to see me like this. All the people but me seemed to think about how I felt; I said I’d feel a hundred times worse if Susan found out. One very nice lady said, “Aren’t you Ed Lowe?” Thinking maybe they would work faster, I said, “Yes.”

Talk about mixed emotions.

They got me up, these fine people, and then, two Suffolk police officers showed up out of nowhere. “The police?” I thought. This was maybe three minutes from the moment I decided to open the door. “She’s going to freak.”

I insisted I was fine. The police offered assistance. Worse, they were genuinely concerned. I declined, thanking them, thinking, “Please, disappear, please.” The manager graciously showed me to a table. I hurriedly sat. I ordered a fake beer. I did something with the cane.

Susan came, smiling. Big smile. Big, wonderful smile. Happy. Oh, God.

I couldn’t stand the tension. I told her.

“WHAT?”

“Want to split a…uh…you know…uh…that..”

“Guacamole?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Guacamole.”

“That’s going to distract me, make me forget…?”

“Yes, guacamole. I’ll have to remember…”

Friday, July 9, 2010

The Choice

I know my way around the average bar.

It’s not something everyone would brag about, or even be proud of, or even be cognizant of, but I do; have; and am.

For decades, I even kept a personal coin for the expertise: I called myself a, “saloonist.”

From the setup to the cleanup; the mundane preparations, the hopefully smooth operation, the sadness, the madness, the sometimes electrifying drama, and the often disgusting cleanup after, I have seen, lived, or imagined, in my 50 years as a regular, the way the world works, in a bar.

Try as I might to not star in a untoward bar scene that, as time wears on, grows increasingly unflattering with each re-retelling; or, mindlessly inexplicable; or, downright dunderheaded, I have not been immune.

I have been terribly careful. I’ve been suddenly quiet. I’ve disappeared. I have been clever, cowardly, non-confrontational, apologetic for breathing, for looking this-or-that way, for having a mustache, for drinking a Guinness with ice cream cake, for being a newspaper columnist…

But, still, I have not been immune.

Two of my own bar stories involve hats.

Peter McGowan, who made a fortune in the early 1960’s with PJ’s, on Main Street in Farmingdale, used to have a rule that nobody could wear a hat in any of his places. Pete, who later served time as The Supervisor of the Town of Islip, held that hats caused trouble. That didn’t bother me in the 60’s. I didn’t wear a hat.

But in the 70’s, I did. In the summer I wore a 80-cent, blue, crushable, fishing hat; and in the winter, a standard, warm, Donegal, Irish tweed cap.

The 80-cent hat got me into 80-cent trouble with a Newsday advertising guy. An unwritten rule said that advertising people, the big shot businessmen who made lots of money, drank on the south side of the oval bar at the Garden-City-Bowling-Lanes and Restaurant. We poorly-paid editorial employees gathered on the North side.

One day, an advertising guy named John wandered over and stood next to me, talking, violating the rule. By-and-by, he took my fishing hat off my head, put it on his head, and declared it to be his hat, now.

I couldn’t remember for the life of me what Pete McGowan had said twenty years before, but it sure seemed important, now. Had I remembered, I would have bequeathed the advertising salesman the hat. He had it, anyway.

Instead, I said, “Give the hat back.” He said, “No. Do what you gotta do.”

Not having any expertise with this sort of enterprise, I hit him rather harmlessly in his ample, and strangely firm stomach. My fist bounced back so fast, I had to step out of its way.

“Is that it?” he said, incredulously.

“Yeah.” I said rather glumly. “That’s pretty much my whole show.”

“Good,” he said. “I’m keeping the hat.”

That was in the 70’s. I should have remembered it.

One day in Garrity’s, in the next decade, while I was busy ordering lunch and trading stories with Bernie Tanzillo, a tall man entered to my left. He whisked my Donegal Tweed cap off my head as he passed me and placed it on his own head. He then took the far left barstool in the U-shaped bar, and commenced conversing with no-one-in-particular about nothing-in-particular, as if he hadn’t done what I knew he had. He laughed, when somebody said, “Well!” like comedian Jack Benny.

My first reaction was laughter, too, but I still don’t know the reason. I looked at him; acknowledged his existence. He didn’t seem to care what I acknowledged. I said something to Bernie, but I have no memory of what I said, or what he said, or even whether he said anything. I think I was feeling alone.

Bernie resumed his story, I think, while I looked attentively at him, having no idea what he was saying. The head waitress, Laurie, served me my opened fresh ham sandwich on a hard roll. I looked at it as if to say, “And what do I do with this?”

Thinking only of my hat, I managed to eat the sandwich, and wash it down with a 7 oz. Budweiser. I also think I convinced somebody that I was listening to Bernie. I finished and said, loudly, “Joe, I think I’ll have one more of those little beers before I go back to the paragraph factory.”

It was Joe’s Gavitt’s place. He gave the beer to me. I drank it slowly. I said aloud, to the guy in the corner, in a surprisingly steady voice, “I’ll be going back to work soon. I’ll want the hat.” And I raised my beer to him.

“Naa,” he said. “The hat’s mine, now. I’m keepin’ the hat.” He showed no emotion.

“Well, just so you know.” I said, returning my attention to Bernie, who was talking to Laurie, ignoring me, as if my life weren’t on the chopping block.

What had gone wrong? This didn’t happen in Garrity’s, certainly not to me. I was a trouble-free customer. I hadn’t said, “Boo,” to this guy.

When the moment to leave came, my mouth operated absent direction. It said to the man, “Can I ask you a personal question?” My face showed nothing.

My brain suddenly said, “Mouth! What are you doing?” My mind began telling my mouth muscles to stop it, stop the mouth. “The mouth is operating without supervision!” some part of me yelled. My mouth prepared to keep moving.

“Sure,” said the tall man, who had gotten taller.

“No! No, mouth, no!” my brain pleaded.

“Okay. Are you willing to die for the hat?”

“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. We’re dead.

The question came out clear and slow. I heard it. The questioner sounded seriously curious and inquisitive, not daffed, not plum crazy. Several surrounding conversations stopped. The man looked at me with a new expression.

Quick, Joe Gavitt grabbed the hat off the man’s head, saying, “You crazy sonofabitch,” and put the hat in front of me. I didn’t know who was the crazy sonofabitch, but I stared at the guy as if I did. I didn’t look at the hat. The whole thing took maybe 11 seconds and with the argument going on inside me, it seemed like an hour.

I saluted and walked out to a really ridiculously large, body-rotted, 440 cu. in. Chevy Suburban. I locked all the doors before heading back to the paragraph factory, shaking uncontrollably.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Garrity’s



The parking lot was known for its ruts.

You wouldn’t suppose a parking lot along such an up-and-coming commercial-industrial major boulevard would be rutty, let alone characteristically rutty, but Route 110 wasn’t quite so up and coming yet. Tradesmen and commercial truck drivers still had a few front row seats in the bars along the already exceedingly trafficked road, especially the one with the most ruts.

The little lot on the corner of 110 and Gazza Boulevard looked as if God had allowed his nephews to dump out their boxes of trucks and cars in Farmingdale, in the ruts, in front of, beside, and behind an old, green farmhouse named Garrity’s.

Four of those bars would disappear in a decade, replaced by, first, gourmet delicatessens and pizza places; and then, by bank branches and chain restaurants, all with meticulously paved parking lots; nary a rut in sight.

But as the 1970’s grew into the 1980’s, there still were a few lots made of ruts, populated by the bumpier, ostensibly unsophisticated members of the social order that accompanied the ruts; people rather used to ruts.

The vehicles at Garrity’s looked rather individually arranged—seemingly haphazardly, so to speak—according to the depth and breadth of the prevailing ruts and the prevailing mood of the operator. A Volkswagen Rabbit might straddle one big rut on a diagonal, while a nearby pickup truck took three or four ruts; a large truck, five; and a tractor trailer, eight.

The place was intentionally not-named for its proprietor, Joe Gavitt, although it appeared to be named for him. It bore his wife, Jean’s, maiden name, “Garrity.” The choice was Gavitt’s not-so-subtle way of telling his father what he thought of his refusal to lend Gavitt the last $8,000 to buy the place.

When Gavitt eventually invited his father out from Gerretson Beach, Brooklyn, to celebrate his payment of loans and witness his success, the father heard dozens of patrons calling Joe Gavitt, “Joe Garrity,” and him, “Mister Garrity.”

Gavitt would answer without correcting them. But for a few neighbors from his home in Farmingdale, patrons thought his name was Joe Garrity.

At Garrty’s, even the stories had stories.

I was very comfortable there. Very comfortable.

I wore a jacket and sometimes a tie, true—and in the winter, a cap—but I could have been literally surrounded by shirts of flannel, chamois, canvas, and denim, and be as comfortable as a puppy.

Even more so than in Garden City, where the tradesmen and deliverymen and I sometimes felt overwhelmed at Leo’s by the proliferation of insurance salesmen and stockholders…well, especially the stockholders.

Nobody who didn’t do whatever they did understood what stockholders did, if anything, or what they fabricated, or traded, or made. Yet, they had been catapulted from a job as a barback out of college to a role of global currency expert on Wall Street, two years later.

They conversed with each other, mostly, and sometimes talked about each other mockingly—when the subject was out of earshot. I talked to them, even entertained them, but I did not understand what their expertise was, or gain any knowledge for the conversational exercise. They were foreign.
Still, I got two stories, maybe three a year out of Leo’s.

Garrity’s? Two newspaper stories was a slow January.

Warren Berry, formerly of the former Herald Tribune, discovered the place while researching the environs of the new Newsday location, which was tough, because it overlooked the National Cemetery on one side and the new Pergament warehouse—acres of warehouse—on the other.

However, a determined Berry worried that we wouldn’t have a place to eat, free of pretension and members of management, and he found Garrity’s. But the following autumn of 1979, when Newsday moved, I might just as well have parked a desk at Garritty’s.

There were drivers, mostly, Drake’s Cake and Met Food Drivers, and independent drivers that went out of their way to lunch at Garrity’s when they visited Long Island.

Then, well, employees of Black Angus Meats (with special guest, Sal The Butcher); a gym teacher from Uniondale; the Contract Renewal Guy and the Payroll Department Head of Republic Aviation; Gerry Cesspool; Tom Horan, the president and founder of a boiler dealership; two or three firemen; one steadily employed lather; and teams, ever-changing teams, of, first, operating engineers, to dig the hole for, say, the Royce Carlin Hotel, under construction up the road; then, the union concrete workers and lathers, who made the footing for the hotel; then waves of steel workers, framers, bricklayers, carpenters, sheet metal guys, plumbers, electricians, finishers; all to spend a half year, and then start over again when, say, the giant postal center project got cranked up, and they all came back.

Once, a fearfully massive, impossibly-tall, old-Buick-broad-shouldered, 19-year-old, ironworker confided in me—as if it weren’t already clear from his pained expression—that he hated, hated, drinking boilermakers (a shot of Four Roses whiskey, washed down by a 7 ounce beer). The taste was killing him.

“Okay,” I said, after hesitating a bit. “I’ll ask this, as long as you promise not to cripple me or dismember me: why do you do it, then? I mean, what? Do ironworkers have a rule?”

He looked at me, puzzled. I mean, stunned, baffled, befuddled, like I didn’t know which way North was. He said, “Yes, ironworkers have a rule. Are you serious?”

If you liked stories, Garrity’s was as close as you could get to heaven.

Joe Gavitt and Eddie Siscaretti presided over the lunch-crowded bar, Eddie absent three fingers that he’d left inside a New York City Sanitation hopper. Each of them traded insults with the patrons served full restaurant dinners at the bar. They had about a half-hour to get down a heaping plate of pot roast and mashed potatoes and corn and a hot pepper and two boilermakers, before they went back to work. Then, they came back after work, to see if everyone was all right with their day.

I made only one mistake in all that time at Garrity’s. Somehow, I got away with it. But I scared myself good.


Next: The Choice

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Silecchio, Twice

Silecchio, Twice



Rick Silecchio plays guitar with the Jim Small Band. Maybe forever.

“As I sit here in Afghanistan and peruse the band website, I remember the most amazing experience of my life, not just with Jim Small, I mean ever, so here it is for you to read.

“For those of you who can’t put the names together, its not cosmic co-incidence that me and the bearded wonder of a guitarist have the same name, the one you all call ‘Slick.’

“I happen to call him, Dad.

“I’ve been playing drums since being influenced by listening to the old [Jim Small Band] tapes and hearing Phil Cimino and his younger and marginally insane brother, Vinny, play […drums for the Jim Small Band. One Cimino succeeded the other.].

“I’m 22, now, so it’s been about 15 years since the first time I picked up a pair of sticks and started hitting stuff in a concerted effort to make noise into music.

“After a while I started to get pretty good and would be treated to sitting in a rehearsals and being made an honorary part of the band for a little while.

“Over the years the band started to become family, and seeing the guys was like having a large number of Uncles come over on Saturday nights and play me a private concert in my basement.

“Life was good...to the point where I would stay in on weekends just to sit and listen, which in time paid off, because Vinny became a huge influence on how I played.

“I watched his uncanny ability to stay in the pocket and adjust the dynamics, all the while still performing complex fills; or, on the other hand, leave larger than normal pauses in the rhythm, all the while keeping the time, and not overpowering the band, and becoming a showboater.

“Life was better.

“Then 3 weeks before I shipped out for basic training for the army, I got my chance. I was allowed to sit in with the band for half a set on stage at Mulcahy's in Wantaugh.

“For some kids this probably wouldn't sound appealing on a Saturday night, but for me, this was the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the World Cup all rolled into one.

“We started off easy with, ‘Mary Jane,’ and rolled into a song with a name I can’t remember but it was a blast to play. Then we hit up: ‘Your Baby Used To Be Me.’ And then I was loose, no longer trembling at the fact that I was 18 and on stage with guys who’d been playing together for longer than I was alive.

“That being said, Phil Reilly and Mike Guido were like second fathers to me. Vinny was like a wacky older brother, slippin’ me shots before the show, and sneaking me Marlboros to calm down.

“Bobby and [Jimmy Varelas, The] Greek were always there with quick, witty lines to make me laugh, and Jimmy was just Jimmy, always there with support.

“After that song Dad looked at me and said something that would stick with me for the rest of my life.

‘“I love you son, but don’t [Mess] this up.’

“I then began to count off, ‘Kill the Pain.’ The first part of the song, I’m a nervous wreck, but having listened to that song so much as a kid, I can pretty much play it in a coma.

“We hit John's solo [singer John Boyle plays the tenor saxophone, (…well, and the piccolo, and the harmonica)] and I loosened up and really started playing.

“Then it gets quiet, Dad walks out front a little to my right, the crowd goes nuts and he turns around and smiles at me a smile that loaded me with enough confidence to conquer a small country by myself, as if he was thinking to himself, ‘That’s my son, this is great.’

“I was happier than a kid on Christmas. We rolled into his solo slow, keeping it quiet, but playing to the crowd. He gets a little louder, and I answer with controlled rimshots on the snare, and louder hits on the bass drum. Then he went into a riff that was the signal to kick it into high gear and rip the stage up.

“And oh man did we do just that. I caught a roll and made that set sound like a machine gun. I’d never played like this in my life. He looked up at me and simply nodded, telling me it was time to blow the roof off the place.

“Now we were playing to each other. The crowd being there was just a bonus. We went into the big Freebird-esque breakdown, and it’s safe to say I’m concentrating like I’m taking the SATs for the second time.

“I count, and I count, and I get to the downbeat, where we come back in, and I nail it. I almost wanted to cry, I was so happy.

“We play through the rest of the cuts and riffs, and it comes time to end. He walks in front of the set and holds his guitar up while I’m playing the last bit of life I’ve got in me through these sticks.

“I end the song and walk out from behind the set.

“The only hug that can compare to this one is when he watched me step off the plane after my first tour to Afghanistan. He hugged me so hard I thought I was going to die, but I didn’t care because if I did, it would be happily.

“I had just received a standing ovation on stage with my father. What son can say that?

“Life was amazing.”

Still Here

Dear Arthur and Julia,

I am sure that in these paragraphs, I might be writing to only one person. Maybe one who’s sharing my sentences with a partner, but, one author, anyway.

I mention that because one of your earlier messages was signed, “Arthur and Julia.” And, I confess, at least now, something deep inside me cries out for even the idea of that: two people. Or, the hope of that. (No doubt the weddings starting up in my camp this week have something to do with it. Anyway, I’m going to go with both names.).

So, dear Arthur and Julia,

You really caught me with your last e-mail.

You said something so damnably simple; used a phrase that all of a sudden was so powerful, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

And then I couldn’t get out for all the times in my experience I may have missed it, or worse, dismissed it.

Then I just couldn’t get it out; couldn’t make it leave. I repeated it like it a new phrase in a new language, one that captured a way to say the highest compliment to somebody.

“…I am so very glad” you wrote, “you are still here….”

I think I felt foolish, or blind, when it struck me. I thought I’d tell you, just in case you thought I don’t think about it. I do think about it. Eventually, maybe I get it. I’m learning. Yours was like, maybe I heard it a hundred times, but, I never heard it before.

“I am so very glad you are still here.”

What a strange and wonderful clause.

I could make excuses. I mean, I probably have said a weaker version of that, and heard a weaker version in response a million times, maybe in shortened form: “Hey, glad to see you,” or, “Good to see you.” Maybe in longer form, when a person really wants to tell another person that it really, really is good to see him; uplifting, life-affirming, maybe, just what the doctor would have prescribed; and that he really wants anybody within earshot to know it:

“Hey, Eddie, damn glad to see you!” or, “You don’t how we looked forward to this!” or, “Gosh, it’s really good to see you.”

I say that a lot. And I mean it a lot, when I say it.

“Hey, I haven’t seen you guys since the last, ‘Paper Bag.’ Geez it’s good to see you.”

Or, “man, look at you. You know, I would have bet on the entire American Hotel sliding into the Corner Bar before I’d have expected you to be here for this. Wow. Man, it’s good to see you.”

I’ve said exactly that.

And that’s only when it’s, “good to see,” somebody. And it was good to see him, and I was really thrilled.

But this is different.

“I am so glad you are still here.”

And, of course, I am in this, specific life, where I occasionally shared intimate details of my 40-year-narrative with anywhere from two to upwards of a million readers.

(I’m still rather astounded at the gall of that. I can hear my mother and her sisters cackling: “Do you believe the gall, to say this.” Of course, my mother also was very proud to be the mother of all this gall. “You’ve got seeds, Ed. You’re out there saying something just under my consciousness, just out of reach, until you say it.”

And I say these things—especially the infuriating parts; or, the poignant parts…well, or…the funny parts; or the humiliating and embarrassing parts; the surprise parts, the proud parts, the painful parts…the scary parts—blissfully unashamed.

The strangeness of that is I reveal these things largely to un-introduced people—I never met you and you never met me—and you become very familiar people, even intimate people, because of what one of us says; or, the shared familiarity of what he/she says.

I suppose, the risk is mockery, but the reward is not-having-to-be-so-alone. I’ll take that.

Still, I didn’t get it, not until today.

The reason I think I stopped this time is a seemingly simple switch in emphasis. It was in front of me all time, and really should been have obvious to me all the time. I don’t know what made it so clear this morning, when it was not clear at all ever before.

I wonder, can a stroke, like, open some other passageways to the brain, or am I just thick?

You wrote, “I am so glad you are still here.”

I translated that somehow to mean a compliment to me, and not a statement of fact about you. What a dolt.

I say, or even think, “Thanks a lot,” or, “Thanks for saying that,” and thereby skirt, duck, or miss the whole point of what you just said.

You are so glad that I am still here; that I didn’t leave, yet.

That, alone, is a reason to live.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

ALEXIS

ALEXIS


This is sort of cheating, or maybe it just feels that way. Ten years ago, I wrote a story very much like the one I write now, which feels like the cheating part.

It is the same story, just 10 years later.

The problems are the same, except maybe a little more complicated. The proposed solutions are pretty much the same—complicated, unsatisfactory, baffling, illogical, late, bureaucratic, infuriating, even cruel.

And, the efforts are the same—heartfelt, heartwarming, heroic; then, because none of them are coordinated or organized or official, a little unprofessional, too. And only temporary. And really inadequate. And they are worthy of a lot note than this, because you would think this situation and others like it—thousands of situations—couldn’t exist; just couldn’t be, wouldn’t be, in this world of expertise, promises, achievement, campaign, money, dedication.

Yet this situation is; it exists; it, “be’s,” and many variations of it continue to be; always; and always, always, always, it is.

So, same as 10 years ago, here is the story.

Lisa Cardinale was in her freshman year at Suffolk Community College when, on July 19, 1996, following a perfectly normal pregnancy, Lisa gave birth to Alexis, who weighed 7 pounds, 12 ounces and seemed fine, until three months later, when she suffered her first seizure.

Both arms flailed uncontrollably, and her legs froze in a 90-degree angle to her body. The family took her to the hospital, saw one specialist after another, saw a neurologist who prescribed an anti-seizure medication and jokingly said she shouldn’t drive, because the medication was for adults.
After the seizures, family member noticed that Alexis was cringing when in the presence of bright lights.

She didn’t look straight at people any more. She didn’t close her eyes any more. They consulted one doctor after another. They visited many different hospitals, from Stony Brook to New York University.

“Somebody in Queens Hospital put her on a ketogenic diet, a metabolic diet specifically for seizure control.” Mary Cardinale (Burke, now) said at the time. “It reduced them by about 90 percent.

“By that time, though, we had learned that she was microcephalic, which means she had a smaller than normal brain. At first, they thought she might be hydrocephalic, and they did spinal taps to relieve the pressure, but it turned out she wasn't hydrocephalic.

“She’s been misdiagnosed many times,” Mary Burke said. “She's had a bolt put into her brain to monitor brain waves. She's had open heart surgery to repair a large hole in her heart—this, by the way, after one pediatric cardiologist said there was nothing wrong with her heart. Another just refused to operate on her because he had no fatalities on his record and the baby had so many other problems. He said, ‘Why do you want to put her through heart surgery, anyway?’

“The point is,” Mary Burke told me 10 years ago, “there are things she needs. Not luxuries, but the kinds of things that might make it easier for us to care for her, or make her life just a little more comfortable for her. She's going to be 4 [now, 14]. She's outgrowing the regular car seat. We need a custom bed for her. She has her bath literally in sections on our kitchen counter. She's dead weight, and we will most likely need a hoist for her soon. And should we not take Alexis out of the house because no stroller can accommodate her safely any longer? Even something as simple and obvious as diapers, she'll always need diapers. The expense is tremendous.”

Mary Burke continued 10 years later: “She is now 13 and we are having our second fundraiser for her, [Sat. June 19, 2010 at the Holiday Inn Ballroom, Sunnyside Boulevard, Plainview, NY 11803, called, ‘The Love for Alexis Trust Fundraiser, A Night of Comedy’] because as you see, nothing changes. Alexis must have all her needs met, and as she gets older, it gets harder. We are hoping you may mention this to your readers.

“Alexis will be 14 this July 19th. She was finally diagnosed with Rett Syndrome, CDKL5 the most severe form. We are still carrying her, still changing her diapers, still feeding her. It is unreal. We are still battling for therapies.

“Alexis now lives 15 minutes from me in a house that is run by UCP. We get Alexis on weekends and holidays and visit her often to make sure that all things are running smoothly, which is important when your child is not living at home and has no voice to let you know how things are going. It is a sad life, but, we do the very best we can for our girl. We need a hydraulic lift in our house now for Alexis as I can no longer carry her nor can her mother.

“Alexis can't help herself at all in any way. We have had our bathroom adapted for her showers, we have a special shower chair and had doors put into her room so we can wheel her into our home. We bought a used and, yes, beat up van for her that I need that show, “Pimp My Ride’” to re-do this van as we cannot afford a newer model (the van is 1999 Ford), if you know any of those guys.

“We need ceiling lifts. The list goes on and that's why we need fundraisers for Alexis. Unless you are wealthy and we are not, we cannot do these things for Alexis and we need to have her with us as she is our girl. Ed, Alexis is like having a real live angel in our lives that gives us the strength to go on and we are blessed to have her in our lives, but, we need help. Thanks to you for your help.”

Write this down: “The Love for Alexis Supplemental Needs Trust P.O. Box 2701, North Babylon, NY 11703.”

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Short Term

Short Term





The short-term memory (even the normal short-memory), works two ways, almost as if by intent.

Annoying thoughts that a stroke-patient doesn’t yet need tend to occur abruptly, and then disappear just when he/she has found a use for them.

It is really more disconcerting than the more obvious changes, like being unable to use a right arm, or kick a person when he’s down, or enunciate, “illogical,” which I now and then do, but with unpredictable success. (I don’t think I’ve kicked anybody, but I don’t recall using my right arm, either.).

Non-stroke men and woman of a surprisingly early age swear to me that this phenomenon happens to them, too, this short term memory hiccough, but I am skeptical.

Maybe it happens to them once a week. Maybe three times a week, tops. I am inclined to believe that more frequency than that would have made all conversations cease long ago.

To begin with, it happens to me whenever I want to say, “Hello,” to someone. I remember the person’s name when I have started the, “Hell…” but because I have this fixation with saying “l’s,” correctly, I’ve forgotten the name by the time I get to the, “lo!”

So: “Hel…lo (…Frammis…Punch Bottbully…Whatever.).”

Multi-tasking evidently is the first to go in a stroke, anyway. I remember experiencing it early on, though I didn’t know what it was, yet.

Well, I didn’t know what anything was.

I think I first noticed that I could not talk while walking. There probably were other examples, but none so graphic as to make me fall down. The subject of the conversation would change, real quick. So, I would get lost, trying to remember something nobody now had any use for, because a man had fallen down.

It stands to reason, now, when I think of it, which I damn well better do, or draw unwanted attention to myself.

I had to move both my legs, balance a dead half-body, watch that curb, be aware of the pothole at the top of the hill, be careful of the car door, all without falling, and somebody wanted to know what I thought of the dark-haired skinny kid we saw in, “Rent,” in Northport. Could they be kidding me? Was there ever a time when I could do all that?

Then, first names: Generally speaking, I now begin to remember a man’s first name when that person says, “Hello, how are you? You look good. Really.” Then, I’m on: and the name disappears.

“Yes,” I manage to get out. And he walks off.

“That was Tom,” I think to myself, late. “Oh. This is Tom’s wife, Hilde...”

“Tom,” the man whose name I’ve triumphantly trapped, is fetching a beer, no doubt. While my mouth is still formulating, “Tom,” my brain promptly whisks, “Hildle,” away because it is pushing, “Tom,” away. But I am looking at a fabulously familiar face and say to Tom’s wife, Hildegarde, “Hi, Bruce!”

“Bruce?” We look at each other.

“Yeah, I don’t know where that came from. I was thinking of Tom, your husband.”

She’s gone by the time I get that out, so, I don’t know whether I got it out. It could still be trapped in my imagination.

Or, when I refer to a specific person, whose name begins to slip out the back as soon as I think of him; or, when I make an aside comment about a guy, that, worse, would be enchantingly funny, if I had remembered the name; or, when I use one as a backup example, saying something like, “I’m not kidding. Just talk to…oh, hell, he was there… (uh…blank…BLANK)…my…(…blank). He was there!”

I sound as if nobody I know actually was there, or where there was, and people are trying to spare me from embarrassing myself, now, by leaving.

(My mind takes on a defensive mind of its own, again, imagining: “Maybe you think I wasn’t there because I can’t remember—that guy’s name I was talking about—but I’ll tell you, he’ll tell you: I was there!”).

Nobody is listening, because why would they?

It happens alone, too.

Suddenly, I couldn’t get the name, “Stephanie,” out of my head. I knew its origin, which was an improvement, over all, but I didn’t need it then. I didn’t need it all through April or May. Why does it insist on being at the forefront of my thoughts now, in June?

I was trying to dial a number to get another number for a haircutter named, “Dawn,” when the name, “Stephanie,” danced across the stage of my brain. It cut in front of, “Dawn,” and threatened to make, “Dawn,” disappear.

“Stephanie,” was the name of the woman who for the last two years has cut my hair. I knew for some reason that Stephanie was unavailable. Why would she, now, be elbowing Dawn out of my mind.

I would say, “Typical for, ‘Stephanie,’ to do that when she isn’t around.”

But she has nothing to do with it. Neither did Dawn. Neither one even knows about it. My brain is doing it; my brain is having a ball doing it. My brain is getting back at me for whatever I did that I don’t remember.

The Free 411phone service was just about to come on, for the seventh time, after the unrelenting Optimum Online commercial, which was getting real old. I was to say, “Residence,” then wait, then say, “Meville, New York,” then say, “Brad Hores” (and not, Dawn O’Keefe Hores, the person I wanted to speak to. I really like Brad, but I don’t want him going near my hair with anything sharp. Or, for that matter, any of his colleague firefighters and their sharp things.).

Anyway, the name Stephanie barged in, took the names, “Dawn,” and, “Brad,” out, and trashed the name, “Melville,” which didn’t matter because the computer didn’t get the long, arduously rehearsed, enunciated rendition of, “Melville,” anyway. And I hung up, again.

My phone rang. I didn’t even know what to do. I started punching it, pressing button after button, until I heard, “Ed? Ed?” In my ear.

I looked at the phone, remembering (suddenly) that I had a blue tooth in my ear (!). I said, “Hello?” to no instrument, to nobody I could see. “Hello?”

“Ed? Ed? This is Dawn. How are you?”

I don’t what kept me from sobbing.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Stroke Cut Call

Stroke Cut Call





I don’t know why, but I was convinced one morning recently that I needed a haircut.

Such conviction is not normally worthy of discussion or attention, and I wouldn’t normally pay attention to it, let alone bother someone else with it, but my little world is different, now. It has been amended by a stroke.

I don’t why I keep forgetting that. It’s a reality I am learning about daily. Who knows, maybe one day, when I get the hang of it, I could teach it; Stroke 101.

I am discovering, day by day, that a stroke alters one’s perception of what, “normal,” is. Is fact, a stroke should come with a warning; “Be careful of, ‘Normal.’ It’s likely a trap.”

“Normal,” is not that for me any more. Invariably, it comes as a surprise, almost every time.

The best, as far as expectations go is, “approximately,” normal. The worst—well, I don’t think I’ve seen the worst. But to paraphrase one of my sons—the worst would have to be, “really [messed] up.” Maybe, “really, really [messed] up.”

My son used that on my mother last fall. She was 89 and had been dying for—oh, I don’t know, long enough that the funny lines were getting really competitive. By then we were delivering lines about short-circuiting her combined defibrillator-pacemaker, because every time she died, it woke her up.

“Jesus, am I still here?” she would say.

Jed arrived from Florida. He abruptly said: “Oh, man, Grandma, you really look [messed] up!”

The simple beauty of it tore the house down. I was sure she would die laughing after that. Of course, she waited for someone to top it.

So, I needed a haircut. I needed one desperately, which in itself, is not normal. “Desperation” and “haircut,” were never words that appeared together in a sentence of my construction.

If they did, however (“desperate,” and, “haircut,”), two years ago, I would have walked into the upstairs bathroom, taken the comb and the small, blue haircutting scissors (presented to me by a professional haircutter, as a testament to my self-haircutting prowess), and had at my head.

Well, I’m right-handed. My right hand now doesn’t budge. My left hand never has seen scissors. I certainly don’t want it experimenting near my head.

Plus, I can’t get to the upstairs bathroom, because my whole right side won’t accompany my left up the stairs. Something about a strike. Maybe, a stroke.

I am home, alone, which is no big deal—in fact, I find that I like it—but there is no car to get to a haircutter. Remember: “One thing at a time.” Driving a car is about, well, twenty-three, on the list. I am still working on five; getting up by myself. (One and two were crucial, especially for an insufferably modest Irish-Catholic male.).

“Ooooh!” I thought. “I have a phone. Aha!”

And I had the name, Dawn O’Keefe Hores, in my head, for the first time—not the lady who cuts my hair but a haircutter, nonetheless.

I couldn’t believe the names were suddenly there. Dawn O’Keefe Hores is a friend. Friends’ names drift in when you don’t have any occasion to use them—like, say, you’re eating spinach—and drift out when you do. (This is from Stroke 101.). She gave me the blue scissors. She said she would love to come one day a give me a haircut. I would call Dawn.

I knew there was a function on my phone that said, “Free Information.” Or was it, “Free 411.” I don’t often dial out. It’s a one-handed thing. It’s a right-handed-one-handed thing. I would soon learn that it was a right-handed-one-handed-automated-voice-activated-too-fast-with-the-questions-don’t-hang-up-give-me-a-freaking-break thing.

Free 411 has commercials. All right, no problem. But the commercial for Verizon…or, was it Optimun…stole, “Hores,” as in, “Dawn O’Keefe Hores,” from my head. I couldn’t remember her last name. Bad news, I hung up.

Then, “Free 411,” is completely automated. So, first I answer, “residence,” and it corrects me: “Residential.”

“Sorry.” Now, I’m apologizing to a machine, which is not listening. It’s on to the next item…

“City and State, please.”

“Uhh…oh…Wait. Melv…”

“City and State, please.”

“Oh, of course…uh…” And I hung up, which took a while, now, to remember how to do. Nerves.

Okay, start again. First, I jot down her husband’s name, because Automaton is going to ask: “‘Brad…’ Oh, come on! I know his last name. He’s a fireman, I can see his face. I can see his truck. Big truck.”

How am I going to ask her number without her husband’s first name.

“Hores. Hores.” Write that down…oh, yeah…lefty…dammit…The ‘H’ looked like a ‘4.’

“City and State please.”

“Hores…I mean, no, Melvil…”

“City and State please..”

“Melville, New York.” (YEAH! Ta da!)

“Farmington, New York?”

“What? No. No, Farmington?…No, Melv…”

“What listing in Farmington, New York?”

“What? No…uh…Dawn O’Keefe…oh brother…Brad…I don’t remember…”

I would write, “Click,” but I really pressed every button on the phone. It’s really a good thing no one was home. I’d be getting my strait jacket off about now.



This is obviously not over, yet…cont’d