Party At The Elks Club

The man from the Elks Club came for me in a large black Lincoln, a ’49 or ’50 with “suicide” rear doors and extremely attractive chromed inset headlamps.

He had me sit, alone, in the sumptuously upholstered back seat. I felt very tiny. It was the man’s job to drive me in this limousine from the family home in Fort Lupton to the Elks Club adjacent to the courthouse in downtown Greeley.

The occasion was the annual Elks Club Christmas party for crippled children. Santa was going to be there, I was assured.

Also present was an array of unfortunate children. A hydrocephalic boy was next to a girl with cerebral palsy. A kid with no hands shared a table with a Down Syndrome fellow.

Several children suffering from multiple sclerosis were there, right alongside kids with cystic fibrosis. There were several who had survived infantile paralysis, as had I. The blind and the deaf were included.

Having been a patient at Children’s Hospital in Denver on several occasions, this crowd wasn’t particularly unusual for me. You see everything in a children’s hospital. Seeing children in far worse shape than I was not a new experience.

To be sure, the Elks were trying to be charitable, attempting to produce a cheering holiday event for unfortunate children. A little boy with no lips and no palate laughed gleefully when he released his helium balloon and it floated lazily to the ceiling two stories above. For him, the party was a success.

But I was getting a mixed message. A very confusing mixed message.

At home, my parents were telling me that if I did my exercises and if I tried always to “keep my toe in” when I walked, I could eventually recover from the effects of polio.

If I endured all the surgeries being suggested, and if things went just right, I could one day be normal.

And yet, when the Elks Club offered to take me in a big black car to a remote location where I would spend the afternoon with other “crippled” children, my parents happily sent me.

So which was I? Normal, like most of the other kids at school? Or was I a monster like May, the mean-spirited Down Syndrome orphan girl from China who would bite you with her pointy teeth and give you an infection?

Upon reflection, I’m not so sure the Elks party was a good thing. Was it beneficial to gather young monsters from all over northern Colorado and put them in the same room all afternoon?

What do you think?

The red lipstick

At first, because the doctors didn’t know much about infantile paralysis, children stricken with it were hospitalized in isolation rooms.

It is a nasty, contagious virus, after all, and isolation, although painful emotionally, was a necessity. At age 4, I understood this.

I was alone in a room with glass on all four sides. My parents came every day, at least once a day, and tried to talk to me through the glass.

It was understandable that the barber who visited other Children’s Hospital patients balked at entering the isolation rooms. As a result, my curly blond hair got rather long. This brought me a lot of attention, and I came to like it that way.

But somebody had to come into that room and pick up my bedpan, if nothing else.

So they sent in this beautiful woman. I mean, imagine the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. This one was blonde. Buxom. She was clad all in white -- white shoes, white form-fitting dress, pert little white nurse’s cap. The perfume must have been White Shoulders. (The aroma made her beautiful even with my eyes closed.)

But the white sanitary mask got in the way. As she should have done, every time she came into the isolation room, she wore the protective mask over her nose and mouth.

I could see just a little glimmer of red under the fabric. Just a hint. So I pestered the poor woman. Over and over, I persisted, “Let me see your lips.”

By and by, she allowed it. She looked left, she looked right, and seeing no nosy authorities nearby, she held her breath and momentarily dropped the mask.

Gloriosky. Lordy lordy. Cherry Red lipstick against all that white was simply overwhelming. I treasure the memory. Thank you Nurse Nancy or whoever you were. That was the experience of a lifetime for this little boy.

To this day, I don’t have much use for barbers. And, I’m still pretty persuasive with the women.

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Dad thought if I was going to be normal, it would be a good idea for me to “go out” for football. So in eighth grade at Brighton, I did just that. It’s what normal kids do.

One afternoon Dad came to a practice. I saw him standing on the sidelines. It was the day we trainees were to crash into each other, performing intentional head-on collisions.

A line of boys on one side and a line of boys on the other. “Coach” would yell “Go” and one boy from each side would run, head lowered, toward the other boy until contact took place.

When “Coach” yelled go and it was my turn, the kid on the other side was a bruiser with the last name of Salazar.

Bang. The lights went out. I don’t know how long I was unconscious, a few seconds probably.

When I shook off my injury and stood up, I looked for Dad but he was gone. I took the hit but he was the one who couldn’t take the pain.

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Gratitude

Laura and I showed up a few minutes late for the Brighton High School Class of ’60 Fifty-year reunion picnic last Sunday.

In retrospect, we were thankful that we were 15 minutes late. Had we been on time, we might have been trampled in the food stampede. No food remained by the time we got there. Neither scrap nor crumb could be found.

If I ever find out who it was, the piglet (or piglets) who ate our sausages for which we had prepaid $30.00, I will punch him or her squarely in the nose.

I mean really. This is not an idle threat. You know who you are, you rude piglets. Watch your rearview.

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Word of the Week: Hydrocephalus. It’s from Latin and Greek, hydro, water, and kephalon, head. In humans it is a condition characterized by an abnormal increase in the amount of fluid in the cranium, causing enlargement of the head accompanied by a wasting away of the brain, and loss of cognitive ability. It’s not fun.

From Gangrene to Self-Pity

“I smell gangrene. I smell gangrene in this house.”

The voice was that of my Grandmother Randleman. She had just come in the back door and was climbing the few steps into Mom’s kitchen.

Gramma had arrived from the farm in Peckham. She had come to accompany my mother and me to visit an orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital.

Nostrils flaring, Gramma stormed through the house, sniffing out the source of the odor, an aroma she probably remembered from her own childhood in Missouri.

Finding me in the bedroom my brother and I shared, Gramma announced to the whole world, “This child has gangrene.”

She sniffed me until she pinpointed the source of the smell, which was emanating from the plaster cast which had been installed along the full length of my right leg after a surgery.

Gramma was outraged. But she agreed with my mother that since we were going to the hospital to get the cast removed anyway, finding the gangrene could wait an hour while we drove to Denver.

Meanwhile, I myself had already figured out the source of the aroma, but I sure wasn’t going to admit to anything until there was no alternative.

The plan was to remove the plaster cast during a visit to the basement treatment room at Children’s Hospital.

A technician brought out a fearsome tool with which he proposed to cut the plaster. It was about the size and shape of an electric hair clipper, with a circular saw-toothed blade mounted at one end.

My first impression was that the blade would rotate. I strenuously objected when he approached. No, the man comforted me, the blade just vibrates to cut the plaster, it doesn’t spin around.

That calmed me some – but then I realized the secret source of the odor was about to be revealed.

I had been told not to poke anything down into the cast next to my skin. Oops. It had seemed like a perfectly safe place to keep those Crayola color crayons . . . until some of them got beyond range for retrieval.

With the buzz of the plaster saw, the evidence was soon there, right before our eyes, black, yellow, red, and grass green crayons. Buried in pus. Now I knew what Gramma meant by “gangrene.”

No one in the room was particularly happy with me. Silence prevailed.

“Gangrene,” Gramma had said. “I smell gangrene in this house.” Obviously, I lived. Thanks Gramma.

Self pity?

Getting dressed for school one winter’s day, I sat on the floor near the furnace vent, having difficulty lacing my shoes and fastening my leg brace.

The brace (I still have it) was a complex device of leather and stainless steel, hinges, rivets and shoe laces. It was quite a contraption, complex for this spoiled little boy. Lacing it properly was eluding me.

In frustration, I cried out, “Why me? Why did this happen to ME?”

Wham. My own dear Mother smacked me in the left ear. Then she did it again. Hard. Mom had a mean backhand. Bang. Ouch.

Then she grabbed my beautiful little face between her hands and held me so that I couldn’t move, I could only meet her gaze. She said, “There will be no self pity in this house. Understand?”

Then, abruptly, she released her hold on me, went into her bedroom, shut the door, and sobbed loudly for what seemed like about eight hours.

I think I got the point, Mom. And thanks.

The exercises

Somewhere in my “files” at home, I have the original list of “Exercises for Tommy.”

A physio-therapist had taught Mom what the words meant on that list, and how to put those words into action.

Every morning, every day of my life, from the point when I was released from the hospital through grade school, Mom would exercise me.

She’d lay an old white and green blanket on the dining room table and run me through everything, from the rocking horse to the leg lifts, right and left.

Every day.

No matter what else Mom might have had on her agenda, she attended to me and my exercises.

This strengthened me, and loosened up my atrophied, paralyzed muscles.

Mom has quite an investment in me, even if all that counts is her time. Thanks Mom.

The bicycle!

Dad wheezed and puffed as he followed me along the gravel street, downhill from the Fulton Ditch bridge toward our little stucco house on Seventh Street.

He was holding on to my bicycle seat, steadying me while I learned to balance this strange and unwieldy new contraption.

His breath smelled of Lucky Strikes and there was a general aroma about him of Mentholatum mixed with sweat. Puff, puff, puff, he ran along with me.

Eventually, I did master the bicycle, and it set me free.

I was able to go to my first day of first grade on that bicycle. Some of the more fortunate kids had bikes, but most walked.

It was six blocks from our house to Fort Lupton Grade School. At that time, I could not have walked six blocks. One block would have been about my limit.

Dad supplied me with a padlock, I bought a black rubber mud flap with a red reflector for the rear fender, and off I went, arriving independently. I did not want to be brought to school in a car, like some crippled kid. Good idea, the bicycle. Pretty smart, Dad.

The bicycle became an important part of my life when I was six. I have a bicycle to this day. Bicycles have been quite useful to me throughout my life.

Thanks, Dad.

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Word of the week: Atrophy. It’s from the Latin and Greek, Atrophia, a wasting away. In English, it also means a wasting away, especially of body tissue, an organ, or the failure of an organ or body part to grow because of insufficient nutrition. In polio, atrophy is caused when the bloodstream insufficiently feeds the bones and muscles. To this day, my hip joint is the size of one found in a six-year-old boy; it failed to grow, to thrive. Atrophy.

Truth Serum for Mr. Tommy

Often, during my several stays at Children’s Hospital on Downing Street in Denver, I would be taken downstairs to “P.T.”

“P.T.” stood for “physio-therapy.” Physio, from the Greek, “physis,” or nature, is a combining form meaning natural, as in physiography.

Children’s Hospital featured nothing but the best in hardware, equipment and facilities for P.T. High quality stainless steel, ceramic tile and polished hardwood were everywhere.

There was the ramp, a device of hardwood flooring much like a stile, where children were being taught to walk. (Children who had already learned to walk once were being taught to walk again.)

There was a banister on one side, to which a disabled child could cling. The idea was to mount the ramp from one side, pause for a rest at a small landing, then walk down the other side. The idea was for the child to learn to ascend and descend.

There was a line of stainless steel “Jacuzzi” tubs, child-sized, nothing like the hot tubs we know today. Each tub was oblong; forceful jets of hot water entered from invisible pumps.

Water therapy was quite useful. It helped rebuild damaged muscles and even bones, with minimal pain and effort from the tiny patients.

But to really gain strength back, the kid had to expend some energy of his own.

This is where my longtime involvement with swimming began. Swimming is the best form of recreational therapy because it produces little impact at the joints and offers the most friendly resistance to muscles being rebuilt.

Oh Ruby

Water was also the starting point for something else.

An aide named Ruby was assigned to take me from Ward 6, Second South, down to P.T. for a swimming lesson.

Down at the pool, Ruby excused herself to change into a swimming suit, and I was placed behind a curtain to do the same.

Ruby picked me up in her sumptuous brown arms and waded down into the tiled pool, step by step. I was immediately warm and became drowsy.

The idea was that Ruby was going to teach me to float on my back, an elementary lesson in swimming.

But she simply held me like a baby, supine, close up to her creamy brown breasts, which seemed to have a life of their own, floating an appreciable distance above her black Catalina swim suit.

I did not care if I ever learned to float on my back, or if I ever returned to Second South. Oh Ruby. That was one memorable beginning.

Reading lesson

I must have been 12 when I met my friend the “Candy Striper.”

For the uninitiated, a Candy Striper is a young female who volunteers at hospitals or in other situations. She has discerned a potential vocation in health care, and a first step is a volunteer position.

Here she comes into Ward 6, Second South, a large book in her arms. She was perhaps 16, wearing a red and white peppermint-striped dress and a similar nurse’s hat.

She approached my elevated bed and asked if I would like for her to read a story to me.

I was so dumbfounded by her red-haired beauty that all I could manage was a weak affirmative nod.

This gorgeous hunk of volunteer quickly hoisted herself up to sit on the side of my bed, her shapely legs dangling. She read something about a tiger that glowed in the dark.

Whew. My pre-pubescent libido had gone unaffected by infantile paralysis. Whew. Candy Stripers forever!

Hospital stays aren’t all bad.

The anesthesiologist

The first few times I was rendered unconscious by anesthesia so that I could undergo surgery, “ether” was the agent used to put me under.

You’d know. There was a buzz. There was the blackout. Then you’d wake up with a vomit pan beside your head. Then you’d throw up in it.

Obviously, I lived.

In later surgeries, sodium pentothal was substituted for ether as the chemical of choice. It was a marked improvement, both for my safety and for a more gentle recovery with far less nausea.

Readers may recall that a more notable use for sodium pentothal was as a “truth serum.”

Injected with this substance, individuals tend to speak their minds, the inhibitions against frank speech having been reduced or eliminated.

For my first post-ether surgery, this particular anesthesiologist, a woman, placed the needle of a hypodermic syringe in a vein in my left arm, taping it in place.

While waiting for the “go” signal from the surgeon, the masked woman asked if there was anything she could do on my behalf.

One thing that would help, I said, would be if she would warn me when the procedure was about to begin. She said yes, she would inform me.

When I felt woozy and heard that ether-like buzz in my ears, I knew she would not keep her word. Momentarily, I lost consciousness.

She had underestimated her patient. She did not know my history, or the provenance of the speech I was about to deliver to her.

She didn’t know that when I wasn’t in the hospital getting cut on, I would likely be in the slaughter house in Fort Lupton, watching my Dad and Grandpa butcher hogs and cows.

I would be listening to their speech, memorizing the words and practicing them in my head for a time when I might need strong language.

I was told later that during the surgery the anesthesiologist went out into the waiting room to find my parents. She reportedly told them something like: “I have never heard such foul language from a child so young.”

Why, she asked, do you think the child would speak to me like that? I was told that Mother answered, “You must have pissed him off.”

Hooray sodium pentothal.

-0-

Word of the week: Ether. It’s from the Greek, aither, and the Latin, aether, to kindle or burn. Its primary meaning is, an imaginary substance regarded by the ancients as filling all space beyond the sphere of the moon, and making up the stars and planets, the upper regions of space, or clear sky.

In chemistry, it will be any of a class of organic compounds that are oxides of hydrocarbon radicals. It will be a volatile, colorless, highly inflammable liquid.

Yes, I did get burned by ether during one surgical procedure. It doesn’t have to explode or catch fire to burn – it’s volatile without flame. It was like having a sunburn – inside the throat and lungs. It probably causes unconsciousness by displacing oxygen. Oh just wonderful.

The patient is fitted with a mask, and “ether” is inhaled, as opposed to sodium pentothal, which is injected into the bloodstream.

From “ether” we derive “ethereal,” which we use to mean “heavenly.” I prefer the sodium pentothal, which allows me to say what I think. I’ve always had such a problem speaking my mind.

More Hospital Adventures

There was a nice little parking place where I could hide.

It was in the skywalk between two sections of the original Children’s Hospital in downtown Denver. The elevated passage was constructed almost entirely of glass. Ferns and even palm trees abounded there.

It was quiet. I could back the wheelchair into a vacant space at one side and hardly be seen. It was there that I learned to meditate.

Meditation is a skill I didn’t use after that until way later in my life. At Children’s, I’d take a coloring book with me or nothing at all and sleep in the Lord. I didn’t know I was sleeping in the Lord, but that was what it was. He was giving me rest and recuperation.

Once in a while, a bird would find its way into the walkway interior, chirping and flapping around in alarm – the only noise except for pedestrians and sometimes wheeled gurneys. It was a special spot just for me on the face of the earth. I miss it.

It wasn’t all bad

You’d think a hospital stay would be a horrid experience. Not so at all. It wasn’t my parents who spoiled me, it was Children’s Hospital.

It was there that I learned to appreciate the best of things. Surely the institution must have had budget limitations, but the food was so good it seemed as if no expense had been spared.
We were served gourmet quality meals, delivered piping hot under silver (yes, real, heavy silver) warming covers. We were served three meals a day, all with top quality flavor, texture, color and nutrition.

I took a liking to soft-boiled eggs. When the attendant showed up on the ward with our breakfasts on the cart, he or she would place my tray in front of me – and in classic fashion, gently remove the top of the shell, revealing a perfectly cooked egg.

Oh, and don’t forget, the egg was ensconced in a classic silver egg cup. I would even have had that little bitty spoon with which to scoop it out and eat it.

Sometimes the meal would be liver and onions. Lots of the kids turned up their noses. Not me. My dad was a butcher. We had liver and onions, at home and at the homes of either of our grandparents. I liked liver and onions. My skinny little body surely benefitted from the iron.

There was frequently grapefruit. When it was delivered, it had already been segmented and lightly sugared. Someone had taken the time to properly prepare the grapefruit. Someone cared.

Wheelchair revolution

In the early days of my several periods of residence at Children’s, I’d be sent out on daily hallway forays in a very old-fashioned wheelchair.

This would be a heavy, cumbersome, slow device. The chair itself would be of wicker weave. The large propulsion wheels would be in front, with swiveling casters at the rear. It would have an adjustable seat back in which a guy could recline low-rider-cool.

It’s hard for a kid to get in much trouble aboard one of these antique devices.

One day out of the blue, brand new chairs arrived. Still heavy by today’s standards, they were much lighter and more maneuverable than the stodgy old wicker models.

The driving wheels were more sensibly arranged at the rear, with the swivel casters at the front.

Construction was of stainless steel tubing, with the seat and back of heavy vinyl. The whole thing was just friendlier, prettier, sexier.

My friend and I soon determined that the new chairs were much quicker than the old. Naturally we also decided to test the “brakes.”

We lined up at a pre-determined point and headed off pell-mell toward a stairwell.

Obviously, when my friend grabbed the “brakes” he did a more efficient job than I. He stopped a safe distance from the stairwell.

I didn’t. I went over the edge, bumping down the steps to the landing. The chair was undamaged. I don’t remember if I was hurt.

There was no avoiding the authorities – I was stuck there on the landing until people came to rescue me.

Two things happened then: As punishment, I lost my “new chair” privilege for what seemed an eternity, a full day. I was relegated to one of the old wicker chairs; and, we were visited by the superintendent of maintenance for the hospital.

This formidable man took us down to the scene of the crime. There were long, black skid marks leading to the stairwell. The man explained to us that removing the black marks from the floor was difficult and time-consuming – and that if the marks weren’t removed, he’d have to answer to his boss.

Did we want to speak with the hospital superintendent himself? If more skid marks appeared, the man said, we would get the opportunity to do just that.

We didn’t want that. So, no skid marks after that.

The drive home

At the end of my first stay at Children’s, my parents came to take me home.

I was far from a healthy little boy. My Dad turned down the offer of a wheelchair to trundle me to the nearly new black two-door Pontiac Silver Streak waiting on the street.

Instead, he chose to carry me in his arms. I clearly remember feeling like a little rag doll. There was no strength left in me. My arms and legs dangled loosely. There was no sign of muscle tone at all.

On the way down the hall, I looked at my young friend “Billy,” who resided in an “iron lung.”

He suffered from the effects of “bulbar” polio, and lived inside a stainless steel device that looked a lot like a culvert from a ditch, with the ends welded shut. The automated device breathed on behalf of the boy.

The only part of Billy one could see was his head, on a pillow just outside the “lung.” A sort of rear-view mirror had been attached above his head so he could see who was near.

I’m leaving. I’m lolling in my Daddy’s arms. My Mom is carrying my few belongings. Billy couldn’t even wave goodbye.

To this day, I am haunted by Billy’s eyes, looking at me through that mirror as we left. I got to go home. I am certain he didn’t have that privilege. Ever.

Welcome home!

My brother Dick was two years old at the time.

Again I found myself in my Dad’s arms, carried carefully from the Pontiac into the living room of the house on 7th St. in Fort Lupton, the house with the river-rock fireplace and shiny hardwood floors.

Dad lay me on the couch in front of the fireplace. Here came Dick. Age two, remember.

Dick made many trips into our bedroom, bringing toys from our bedroom and piling them on top of me on the couch.

It was an early exhibition of character forming there, character which has become a big part of the man, Dick Hodge.

He wants to help. Always did. Always will. Thanks, Dick.

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Word of the week: Felt. From Middle English and Anglo Saxon or the German, Filt, cloth made by pounding or beating. As it was then it is now: a fabric of wool, often mixed with fur or hair, worked together by pressure, heat, or chemical action without weaving or knitting.

In junior high we’d ask girls, “Hey, is that blouse felt?” Then we’d feel it and, laughing, say “It is now!” Ha ha.

Scandal at Children's Hospital

Frank and Amy Urano were patriotic U.S. citizens of Japanese descent, working hard to make an honest living in post-war Fort Lupton, Colorado.

The Uranos were friends of my parents in the days when I was a frequent patient at Children’s Hospital in Denver. In line with their generous natures and soft hearts, the Uranos came to visit me in the hospital.

For all their good qualities, the two of them would set aside the rules if the rules were impediments to their goals.

One late evening, long after the strictly enforced hospital “visiting hours” were over, they found me in Ward Six, Second South, with about 10 or 11 other boys.

Frank and Amy walked brazenly past the “guard” whom we called “big nurse.” (This is ironic considering the character with that nickname who came much later in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”)

From an innocuous brown paper bag, the Uranos produced a brand-new cellophane-wrapped box of Brach’s Cherry Chocolates – just for me!

Candy was forbidden at Children’s. This was reasonable, since the various nutritional needs of the young patients might be sabotaged by unauthorized treats.

Nevertheless, I had a special affinity for cherry chocolates. Straightaway, I found a place to hide my new prize.

What nice people, the Uranos. How thoughtful. They took the trouble to make a trip to Denver, to find their way to me, and to bring me a precious gift. Obviously, I have never forgotten it.

Contraband

The other boys in the ward had watched with sharp eyes when the red box of candy had arrived. As in prison, contraband was to be shared – or else.

But how? All of us in that room were bedridden. It wasn’t like anybody could just jump out of bed, walk around the room, and share the booty.

Finally, in the wee hours, we hit upon a plan. Tossing single chocolates bed-to-bed would have been foolhardy, as we’d be busted if there was even one bon-bon that went awry. The janitor would find it, and the Nazified Nurse Corps would search until they found the main stash. We knew this.

So we decided to toss the whole box bed-to-bed. I took one and ate it. Then I tossed the box to the kid on my left. He caught it. He took one. He ate it. He tossed it back – and true to my lifelong absolute lack of natural athletic ability, I missed.

The whole box, minus only two candies, went sliding along the shiny waxed floor beneath the bed of the boy to my right.

I was in traction. Both my feet were in plaster casts. My feet were in the air, ballasted with iron sash-weights, cotton-roped over pulleys. The kid at my right was in a sort of bondage, too, with a Pyrex tube inserted into his urethra to drain his bladder.

Since he was unwilling to move (I wasn’t surprised) I knew I had a Hobson’s choice. Young Mr. Tommy had to get off that bed, under the bed next to him, and back on the bed – or he and the Uranos would be in trouble.

Perhaps it was 3 a.m. Without hesitation, I dove off the side of the bed. The weights slammed to their highest-possible position at the pulleys.

Hospital beds are tall, but they’re on wheels. Lucky for me. I pulled my bed sideways behind me until I could reach the box of chocolates.

I hid the contraband in my nightstand. Because of the fear of discovery, I was possessed of inhuman upper body strength. I pulled myself back onto the bed. I was unable to completely tidy up the scene when a night nurse suddenly appeared; she suspected something but didn’t figure it out.

We got away with it! No reprimand. No embarrassment for the Uranos. We beat the system. And more candy for another night!

The whipping

I was only abused once in Children’s Hospital. It took place much earlier than the cherry chocolate incident, in a different area of the institution.

There was only one other kid in this room with me. He was a Catholic boy and he kept telling me I was going to hell because I wasn’t “confirmed.”

I took all of this with a grain of salt. My mother had carefully explained to me that because I had been baptized, my soul was not at hazard.

One of my treatments was thanks to Australia’s heroic Sister Kenny, medical inventor. Attendants and nurses would come and wrap my lower body in wet, hot, odoriferous, steamy olive-green wool “army blankets.”

The treatment was to combat the shriveling effect of infantile paralysis on the muscles. It effected precious little long-term healing – but it gave a great deal of immediate relief. Sister Kenny, by the way, was some other sort of Christian, not Catholic. We looked it up.

In addition, sandbags were placed over the steamy blankets, holding my skinny little legs in the desired positions.

By and by, as I lay there immobilized by disease, sandbags and wet blankets, this nurse comes in.

She was a rather portly individual, dressed all in white, with a crucifix on a chain around her neck, fastened at the sternum in the fashion of bishops, cardinals, and the Pope.

My sandbags had slipped. This infuriated Sister Subcutaneous, and she stood there red-faced, huffing and puffing, while I tried to concentrate on the bright red cross embroidered at the upper front of her nurse’s hat.

She pulled back the hot wet blankets. She barked an order for resupply. Turning back to me, she took off a long white leather belt from her girth, folded the strap in half, and whacked me repeatedly across the tops of my naked thighs.

Despite Mother’s reassurances, I thought maybe I had gone to hell after all. My roommate was quick to point out that this was what it would be like if I didn’t get confirmed. I never saw that nurse again. Whew.

Confirmation

Here I am sixty-four years later, and I have the great and good benefit of full participation and membership in the Roman Catholic Church.

The marriage of Mr. Tommy and Mrs. Laura has been blessed by the Church. We both benefit directly from the holy sacraments.

How could all this Catholicity happen, in view of the beating a nun gave me? Why would I even consider becoming Catholic after that?

A very similar question was asked of me when we were coming into the church, vis a vis, “How can you join a church that has child-molesters . . . “ etc. ad infinitum.

How? Why? My faith isn’t about people who make mistakes. My faith is about the Trinity, the Bible, and yes, the Mother Church.

On balance, I feel sorry for that poor nurse. She was so overwrought with the horrific scene around her that she lost it. Seeing that many sick children every day can have a deep emotional impact.

Oh the baby. I remember the hurt she did. She remembers doing the hurt.

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Word of the Week: Histrionic. It’s from the Latin histrionicus, acting, or histrio, actor. Classically, it means having the nature of acting or actors. These days, we think of it more as behavior that is theatrical, melodramatic, artificial or affected. When you hear Pastor Ted Haggard speak, it is histrionics. Bet on it.

A Dinner Theater Outing

Here we go on another trip in the Wayback Machine. Journey with us now into the dim and distant past – the holiday season of 1985.

President Sadie and other officers at a bank in Brighton wanted to do something to recognize Christmas, something festive and generous, for the bank’s employees.

Laura was one of those employees. So on a given night, a bunch of us dressed in our Sunday best and drove over to Boulder to attend a play. The play was “A Chorus Line” and the venue was the Boulder Dinner Theater.

(I don’t quite hate the word “venue.” I have used it correctly here. A football field is not a venue. A dinner theater is a venue. Overuse and misuse of the word is gauche. Case closed.)

Ponder these words, individually at first and then as a compound title: Theater. Dinner. Boulder. Dinner Theater. Boulder Dinner Theater.

Dinner? I like dinner. I especially relish a fine evening meal, thoughtfully and skillfully prepared, served after sunset, served unpretentiously, served hot, enjoyed without haste.

Theater. For most of my life, “theater” has been a word meant to describe a venue in which movies are shown.

I fell in love the first time in the balcony of a theater in Brighton in 1958. I have fond memories of that theater. To say nothing of the young lady.

But the potential connotations of “theater” are much broader, as I was to learn that night in Boulder. It can mean a place where live plays are produced.

Sometimes wars are fought in different theaters.

Hmm. Dinner Theater. That most likely means it’s going to be a place where dinner is served and a play is produced.

Because of the specter of this, I was already on pre-load. The sequence was wrong, all wrong, for one thing.

For proper sequence, we would first present the entertainment. Then the drinks. Then the dinner. But oh no, not at the Boulder Dinner Theater.

The dinner came first. I don’t remember the menu or even the entrée. I do remember the plates came and went at an alarmingly fast clip. I was hoping for a leisurely pace. No such luck. My plate disappeared from in front of me in a very few minutes. I was fed, but I really didn’t dine. I ate. I didn’t feast.

Then there’s “Boulder.” Just the word conjures up entirely different images nowadays than it did in childhood. Once upon a time, the word meant, “one big mamoo rock.” The word Boulder sets my teeth on edge, winds my preload spring even tighter.

Now the word Boulder means hordes of angry, aggressive, morally superior bicyclist assholes wearing pointy helmets, yellow sunglasses and shiny pants, glaring at me and giving me the one-finger salute.

It means you could get killed in a mob of these haughty, hateful greenie liberal peacenik vegetarian pantywaist jockstraps.

When they’re not harassing us outsiders from their lofty bicycle perches, the Boulder crowd is driving around in eco-friendly Subaru Outbacks and trendy, politically correct Priuses, looking down their aging noses at us outsiders.

Boulder. In the 1960s, Boulder gave an open invitation for hippies to move there. The hippies came. They took over. And that opened the door for gay beatnik bicycle people. They became snobs the likes of which you won’t see this side of Colorado Springs. Oh boy. But I digress.

So I found myself in Boulder. I didn’t know it at the time but I was preloaded to step on an emotional landmine. I’ve had my dinner. I’m here for the party.

Truth be known, I remember nothing of the play – I even had to ask Laura if she could recall the title.

I do clearly remember that I was blindsided, suddenly smacked in the teeth with a two-by-four pine board. Or something akin to that.

One of the actors was excusing his character’s behavior with a spoken line and a demonstrative physical action. “I guess I could always say I had polio,” the character said with a sneer.

With that, the actor left the stage, mocking me all the while. He dragged one leg behind himself. He limped exaggeratedly. His line echoed in my head: I could always say I had polio.

Boulder Dinner Theater. Laura and I were both so shocked at the tasteless, thoughtless line that we simply sat there as if frozen. I remember nothing else of that evening. We were both so hurt, so injured, that we couldn’t even rouse ourselves to get up and leave.

Poor Sadie. She had done her very best to show us a good time for the holidays. I did speak to Sadie about the damage done, and I did make sure she knew it wasn’t her fault.

You know me. I wrote to the Boulder Dinner Theater. I got a response that the offensive line had to stay in the play because of the copyright. I call balderdash on that, but who am I.

Entertainment

In about 1995, we threw out our television set. As time went on, we found ourselves going out to movies less and less frequently.

Laura would probably like to go to a circus, or a concert. But with time, entertainment holds less and less allure for me. I simply no longer need to be entertained.

One might say I blame this on the Boulder Dinner Theater and “A Chorus Line,” but I don’t think so. That event was certainly pivotal, but it isn’t the whole story.

I’m satiated with entertainment. I watched “Mash” so religiously that I lost track of whether I had seen a particular episode or not.

Do I need humor, laughter? Certainly. This is why we have cats.

But for the most part, I simply do not need to be entertained.

Perhaps I am unusual in this way.

(Credit where it’s due, the Wayback Machine was featured on cartoons titled “Rocky the Flying Squirrel.”)

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Word of the Week: Elitist. He’s self-appointed to the most carefully selected part of a group, as of a society or profession. It’s from the French, elite, choice or select.