Wednesday morning

15 March 2017

— Et tu, Sufflé?

Good Morning All,

It went okay at the doctor’s. Lotte, a charming lass in her early thirties, shook my hand, saying, “First, I can tell by your skin tone and the terror in your eyes your prostate is working perfectly.”

“That’s a relief,” I admitted, “but what about coughing?” 

“Feel free if you have some phlegm in your throat or anything.”

I did mention that I was subject to dizzy spells but—not wanting to alarm her--I downplayed it as much as possible, saying that they did not involve much more than bumping into walls, falling down the odd set of stairs, and crossing the medium strip into on-coming traffic.

She suggested we run a few routine blood tests, have an EKG, and take a urine sample, all of which might give her some insight into the dizziness. So I go back for those Monday and see her again on Thursday.

Vis-a-vis yesterday’s comment on my friend’s Echo-Alexa gadget, Lowell sent along a wonderful cartoon of two astronauts, standing near their lunar module, looking down at a supine woman in a house dress, and one of them saying, “Good Lord, it's Alice Kramden.”

After I stopped laughing, I watched—just for the heck of it--a couple of Honeymooner’s episodes on You Tube. In one, Ralph manages to get Ed fired from the sewer. Jackie Gleason, who had one of the most expressive faces of all time, is at his absolute best.

The author quoted today is Thornton W. Burgess, who wrote kids books about nature, tales of Jerry Muskrat, Bowser the Hound, Old Man Coyote, Old Mother Westwind, and dozens more. My folks read them to my brothers and me, and I can still see Johs and Holly sitting on my dad’s lap in one of the wicker chairs on the cottage porch as he reads to them in his gravelly voice about Bowser and the rest.

For a time, he lived in Springfield, Massachusetts, just down the street from my dad and his brothers Norman and Stanley. He’d often invite them and other neighborhood kids in to try stories out on them. They also visited him later when he moved to nearby Hampden, where his house was preserved in the Audubon’s Laughing Brook Wildlife Sanctuary. I can remember visiting there with my dad and my Uncle Stanley, who—I think I have mentioned--was retarded and stuck at the age of about eight. There were that day other people visiting their in the living room with us. It did not take them long to realize the tall elderly man was retarded, and they gave him a wide berth. Until my dad said, “Whaddaya think, Stan? This place ring any bells for you?” 

“Oh, yeah, sure,” my uncle said in his usual enthusiastic way. “Mr. Burgess always asked me to sit right here on the carpet by his knee. That was always my spot.”

I watched the other faces in the room, and for two or three seconds they were affording my beloved uncle something he probably did not get too often from strangers: a surprised respect.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Reminded of a joke! Old guy is late to his daughter’s for dinner. Although driving, he calls her on his cell phone. She asks where he is. He says he’s on the turnpike. When she shouts at him to get off it quick since some guy is heading east in the west-bound lane, he says, “Whaddaya mean one, there’s hundreds of them!"