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.

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

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..."

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.

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.

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.

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.