Life assortment

We picked up some more plants for the garden last Saturday. I think in another year this garden will be packed full and look like an old lady’s garden. No rhyme nor reason, no plan, no symmetry. One picture has the water lily in it, and if I ever meet a fellow tall enough to stand on a ladder and pound the stake further into the ground, it will not be so ungainly tall.

A knock on the door early this week. On the screen door, actually. This global warming thing is more than serious. It is August. It is the end of August. Kids are going back to school. It should be hot, hot, hot in Northeastern Ohio. But, it hasn’t been eighty in a week or two, and when I wake up in the morning, the house is down to the mid fifties. I open the front door wide and let the sunshine in.

So, a knock on the screen door. I went around the corner to see who, and it was a man in khakis and a shirt with the logo of the big owner of trailer parks from New Jersey to Ohio. I stepped out, he introduced himself and I did the same. He blended his first name into his last and I really didn’t get it. He started out saying, “I understand you recently sent a letter to corporate in New Jersey.”

Poor fellow, pushed a bad button. I’ve never sent a letter to the owners of this park. So, I told him what I have done. “I located the bureau responsible for the condition of parks that people live in, and got some drains installed.” I showed him phone pictures of the inches deep lakes between the last units on this road. I told him there was a current brouhaha over grass length, but certainly reasonable adults could compromise on that. I told him I’d put several hundred dollars into landscaping after the drains, as management here ignored the torrential storm that washed all the soil, grass seed and straw away.

Mr. Polo Shirt looked quite ready to get off my porch, and I asked his name again, as we shook hands. “Bob, said he.” “Oh, The Bob,” replied I. “I suppose.” He left. I told my neighbor later, and her immediate reaction was “I cannot believe he led off intimidating you by saying you sent a letter to corporate.” I thought for a minute. I guess that is a kind of intimidation. I’m seventy four, and still waiting.

Laura is through all the classroom instruction and taking behind-the-wheel. She is not a relaxed driver yet, but she’s quite collected. She has eight sessions in the contract, and, what with school and band and damn football and other students, scheduling has been a pain. The previous week night classes were five to seven; last night’s was seven to nine.  Some night driving. I dropped her at the school and was barely home before a text. Could the instructor drop her at home instead of the school.

Why? Where does he live? What time? What is his name?, I shot back. He lives five minutes from here and can go home. And all the rest. I consented; I’d hate to be working at nine myself. At the appointed hour the car arrived, but Laura did not get out. I went out. “We’re finishing the paperwork, Gramma. I’ll be right in.”

I stood back and waited. The instructor never knew I wondered if I’d done the right thing.

How fast the past separates from us

Or, further Friday night thoughts.

My parents swept us all over the country. We children were to see all 48 states before we graduated high school. For me, the oldest, that meant many states more than once.

My dad was an aeronautical engineer. I could not even estimate his annual earnings, but my parents were depression children, and made sure we knew the value of a dollar. We camped everywhere we went, and especially in the west, where camping was as basic as dad’s service days.

Dad was an Army man, from the day he turned sixteen. I think he was alternatively destined for truant’s confinement, but I blogged that to death long ago. He packed his radio equipment on mules. He learned all he could from every person he met and every book he encountered. He marveled he was born the same year the Wright brothers flew a plane, and lived to help put a man on the moon.

Reading a map while riding in the front seat made mom ill, so the job often fell to me. I wonder if she knew the gift she gave me. My dad was an encyclopaedia of natural history, geography, meteorology. Back in the days we drove this country from town to town (“66 goes right at this intersection, Dad.”), Eisenhower was president, and I listened for hours to “this man’s army” being able to move from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Canada to Mexico, on one unified highway system. To dad, the proposed Interstate Highway System was first and foremost to move troops.

Dad designed electrical systems for space capsules and flew around the country and the world to visit Lockheed engineers and Boeing engineers and army bases, but his heart and his discipline always were “this man’s army.”

Interestingly, my father-in-law was a civil engineer. He was after my dad’s depression era, had the benefit of a real education. My dad snatched three semesters at Tri-C college in Indiana, between the army and unemployment. My father-in-law graduated from Case Institute of Technology.

I wonder if my daughters remember how often I told them Grandpa Noragon was an engineer of State Route 2 along the top of Ohio, and becoming Interstate 90 into Pennsylvania and New York State. Probably as much as they remember Grandpa Lytle worked on both Project Mercury and Apollo Eleven. Grandpa Noragon went on to engineer infrastructure for Sun City, Arizona. I think they only returned to Ohio because their first grandchild was born.

I tried the civil engineering story out on Laura the other day. I drank up every syllable of my dad’s civil (military) engineering stories. I’m sure they were lost on my kids, and they surely were lost on Laura. Old news. Whenever you want to change the subject, Grandma. I know all this history isn’t lost on a new generation. They are learning it from a new source.

My dad, John Lytle, at a family picnic in the fifties. I wish I had a corresponding photo of my father-in-law, James Noragon.

Waiting for the band bus

It’s Friday night, right up to Thanksgiving. It’s late this time; the game is at Austintown Fitch, in Mahoning County, two counties away, east on the turnpike. It’s not even a league game, so it doesn’t count. I don’t understand the stupidity of having kids knock the crap out of each other, extra.

It’s late; it’s a long way to and from Austintown. Too late for Radio Theater Los Angeles; listening to the Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn interview, again. Fabulous musicians, wonderful to hear, but a re-run nevertheless. I wonder if PRI will ever get the kind of money they need. They’ve even called me to thank me for my pitiful continuing donation of a few dollars a month. Think how sad that is.

Well, it’s a beautiful night. I have on my lightest jacket and have it unzipped, a wonder for an always cold old person. I’m parked at the curb, not in the lot. It’s a faster get-away out to Stow Road, down to 303 and home. It can be a game of chicken, running the lane between the incoming and the parked cars. I told Laura, if your mirrors can clear, so do you. Just watch for that.

There is a white car parked to my left, in the lot, under one of the many lights. They do light up this campus like day, every night. And, the stadium lights aren’t even on, because it’s an away game. The car seems to have a wrinkled front fender, and I study on it intently, to the melody of Take the A Train. Finally I take a close up picture, but still cannot discern actual crumpled metal.

I’m not the same person as last year. I can stare at that crumpled fender, oblivious to everything. Suddenly the dents disappear, then reappear. I do not understand. I look harder, but nothing happens. I check my phone for the time. ETA is 11:30 for the band busses. The dancer’s bus has already come and sent the dancers on their ways.

The dents disappear again and reappear again. I see it! They are images of the leaves to the tree in the median and a car pulling into or out of a space interrupts the light from one of the lamp standards. How neat.

The band straggles out from the school. They are delivered to a different door, to go in, put up their instruments, change out of their uniforms, and stagger out under the weight of a loaded garment bag and a hat box. No wonder they leave the instruments in a locker at school.

Laura opens doors to deposit her burden in back and then fall into the front seat.

“How was the game?”

“We won.”

“I know, 20-7.” I cheat and keep an eye on the running score so I have an idea when to leave. As for football, I could care less.

“Three guys went down. One went to the hospital.”

It must have been late in the last quarter; the football dad who “broadcasts” the game, somehow, on the internet, has typed no mention of it.

“How were they hurt?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand football.”

The trumpeter who marches in the band falls asleep, and we start home. It’s another Saturday morning.

Citation dénouement

For three days I stopped at the office and asked for someone to show me what of my “property” was in violation of the rules. The first two days no one was sent to show me and the third day no one was at the office. I duly noted this each time on the citation, and this morning filed it in the rent folder.

Laura went out to measure the length of our grass, my best guess being that’s what is in their craw. Our grass, mowed five days before, was just over four inches. Our mower is factory set at three inches. The rules state “cannot exceed three inches.” We got out the mower manual and see we are capable of moving some assembly and lowering the cut. That was on the agenda for today, if we ever got up from last night’s away game.

Yesterday, Dan was roaring through properties, a mowing fool. “Can’t talk!” he shouted, when I tried to flag him to stop his huge, roaring machine. “Damn wimmin!” This morning, Cathy explained, as she was leaving for a day out.

The owners are coming in three weeks, she told me. Apparently this week’s drama is practice for the next three weeks. Cathy paid her neighbor, Danny, three dollars to weed wack her property and mine. I pointed out that Dan had mowed the majority of the properties on the street. She hasn’t been out to see.

But, the people Dan is feuding with (and there are many), he skipped. Cathy hadn’t noticed. I pointed out my Mr. Next Door and Mr. Across the Street. Mr. Next Door keeps his grass tidy at all times, though it’s pushing over three inches. Mr. Across the Street, who I love for his attitude, has lengthy grass. I’m thinking he may mow once before the New Jersey suits show up, and it won’t be the day before.

Dan the Maintenance Man probably will keep his favorite lawns scalped for the next three weeks. I doubt we’ll lower our mower blades to mow thereafter. I think three inches is good; shorter is tough on grass, and the stuff here that passes for grass. 

Cathy and I have a fantasy of hiring a landscaper when our ship comes in, and putting a fence around. Pretty arrogant for renters, eh! Laura now knows every nook and cranny to weed wack.

Laura and I weeded today, and bought new mulch to dress the whole garden. It’s that time of year. I weeded an entire bucket full before I failed. The bags of mulch are staged, and the rest is up to her.

Pig says, if a New Jersey suit comes up the steps, he'll knock him down! Toad will jump right on his chest.

Laura and I, and  Pig and Toad hope all our friends in Texas came through the storm, and I hope the trailer park feud made the rest of us smile. 

Docs in a row

It will be an unparalleled pleasure to push the whole big red bus affair through the gate and see how it rolls. The attorney (we’ll call him Taz, for cause) is in charge of thinking through the pain and suffering, lost employment, pension, all that stuff settlement, and I have been in charge of listing all the docs, as I was the one referred to, and sort of obliged to go, at minimum, to a doc of my choice with the same credentials.

Today was the last doc, the one who performed the abject failure radio ablation of several C’s a while back. In fact, it was his nurse I wanted to see, but as it has been two years since that procedure, no Amy without the doc, too. I had no idea of the protocol, and booked the appointment with his nurse weeks ago, Tuesday last being her first opening.

Some scheduler picking through the records found my violation of procedure and called me to reschedule the whole affair until sometime in September. I pulled off the road, pitched my finest aggrieved patient performance ever, and was magically rescheduled for today, with Amy and the Doc. Now the drug store is working on getting insurance to OK the dissolve in the cheek version of a pain patch they already pay for. Amy, the head pharmacist, is working on that one.

When Dougie Howser and the guy from NCIS, the DC neurosurgeons, took away my Celebrex, they changed my life. My physical therapist and I have agreed we’ve hit the wall on balance training until I have the pain controlled, so here we go, again. Or, as my neurologist told me, “Those neurosurgeons, they hate blood!”

So, when Medicare goes picking through the pile, looking for charge backs, all my docs are in a row.

Here’s a little story about Taz. He rides his bicycle to work six miles each way, every day, he says. He is a law abiding cyclist, and would never ride the fine line between lanes of stopped traffic, clearing side view mirrors by inches. That’s what his friend, Taz, does. Five months of conversations and I’m having a clear mental image of Taz.

I must remember to ask if that suit hangs in the office closet, because he rides to work in and spends his day in jeans and an anti-Trump tee shirt.