The Smoking Gun

The Cool Kid

My dad quit smoking when I was in my teens. He quit just about the time I started. My cigarette of choice at the age of fifteen, was Lucky Strikes with no filter. They proved a bit too harsh for my tender teenage lungs. So by my sixteenth birthday I quit the Lucky's and started smoking Winston cigarettes. After all, Fred and Wilma assured me that Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. Yes, I was cool. I stood out on the corner, just outside the high school property, smoking with all the cool kids. By the time I was in my twenties I was on the Marlboro Lights, and I loved it. I would sit in my living room next to the giant ashtray filled with dozens of cigarette butts, and smoke until the room was a silvery haze. Seriously, I loved smoking cigarettes. But there was a problem. Doctors and scientists kept telling me it would kill me. I smoked on. Then around the time I was thirty three years old they raised the price of cigarettes to a dollar fifty. Outrageous. So I quit. I was not going to pay that price for something that had been proven to be a killer.

When I met Mark it was obvious that he smoked. No problem. I made him smoke outside when he was in my house. I was now anti smoking. After a few years with Mark and after he landed in the hospital a few times with pneumonia, I told him he should stop smoking. He wouldn't. Mark loved smoking as much as I did twenty years before. So I would find his cigarette packs and throw them in the garbage. He'd just buy more.

Twenty years ago my dad died from lung disease. I don't know if it was the Camel cigarettes he smoked, but I'm sure they didn't help. Now I am full time taking care of my ex-smoker husband. It isn't pleasant. Mark's lungs are not working very well anymore. He's bedridden and in bad shape. Smoking kills. But if that doesn't bother you, how about this. Cigarettes now cost about twelve dollars a pack in Chicago. A pack a day is $4,380 per year. 

The Good Old Days.

Grandpa's House

Grandpa in front of his new house

When I was around eight years old my grandparents bought an empty lot in Tinley Park directly across from Saint George Grammar School. It was bought with the intent of building a new house for them. Grandma and Grandpa had a house in Chicago, but the siren song of the suburbs was too much for them. Their Tinley Park grandchildren were very excited about this vacant lot and the purchase. We took it over as our own. We built a little shack on it, picked pears from the tree growing on it, and played in the overgrown weeds. I would brag to my school friends about Grandma and Grandpa's lot. "It's a whole quarter acre." I'd boast, not knowing exactly what the hell an acre was. "It's private and only my family and those we invite can play over there." 

And then one day a bulldozer arrived, and construction began on the new house. My grandmother didn't want another cookie cutter suburban ranch house, even though that's what they were building. No, to make it stand out she insisted that it be built on an angle to the street. So the house was built that way, giving Grandma a nice view of the school playground and a couple of hundred screaming kids. Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Mary were finally able to move into that house in 1961. They moved from the old neighborhood, Back of the Yards, and a house built in the late 1800s, into mid-century modern. I still remember Grandma baking her big, yeasty loaves of bread in that kitchen. Grandpa would fall asleep in his recliner watching baseball with a can of Meister Brau next to him. Aunt Mary always seemed to be vacuuming and when Grandpa was up and around, he would open the front door and spit a big wad of Plow Boy chewing tobacco out the door. I spent a lot of time over there in that house. One of my cousins moved in with them when he graduated high school. He gave me even more of a reason to visit Grandma and Grandpa. I'd go over there and cousin Tim and I would smoke pot in his bedroom. Those were the good old days.

These are a few of my favorite things.

I brought Mark home from the nursing home one week ago, on Monday. I am now his round the vclock nurse and it is getting to me.

I was having pains in my belly for the last couple of months and on Friday the shit hit the fan. I awoke at three in the morning with a terrible urge, so I scuffled off to the bathroom, stepping over sleeping dogs while trying not to wake Mark. Let me just say without graphic detail, there was a lot of blood. Something horrible was wrong with me. This episode was followed every hour or so by others. I didn't know if I should go to the emergency room or wait to call the doctor. In the interim, I swallowed a Prilosec, four Tums, and a quarter bottle of Pepto Bismal. Feeling queasy and light headed, I called the doctor's office as soon as it opened. After I explained my problem, I was given a three thirty appointment. I assumed that this meant it wasn't an emergency and I calmed down a bit. Later at the doctor's and after a quick exam and query of my drinking and eating habits, the doctor told me,  "You definitely are bleeding in your stomach, possibly a bleeding ulcer. I want you to take Prilosec and Tums twice a day. No more vodka, no more Excedrin, and no more citrus based drinks. Call me after a few days and let me know how you're doing."

Well sonofabitch. After weeks of searching for Fresca to mix with my evening vodka, I can't drink my vodka... or my Fresca. It gives me a headache just thinking about it. Oh what I wouldn't give for an Excedrin. Tylenol just isn't doing the job.

Home

Mom in front of the Poplar trees on Ada Street

I was sitting in my living room last evening waiting for Mark's supplies to be delivered. Mark is supposed to be discharged today, so a whole bunch of things will be needed for support. Anyway, I was sitting there looking out the large living room windows as the sun dipped behind the bungalows across the street. The end of the day, it kind of made me sad. The sun setting reminded me of my grandparent's house on South Ada Street when I was a kid. I spent many overnights at my grandparent's house. When morning came I would get up and look out their living room windows that faced east. I still remember the rising sun rippling through leaves of the Lombardy Poplar trees that Grandma had planted. Three or four of them in the parkway between the sidewalk and the street. She had planted those a long time ago because I see photos of the street from my mom's albums. Photos taken in the 1940s and late 1930s, and the trees were there. It always made me feel good. The towering trees and the sun of a new day, like something good was going to happen.

I got up this morning and took the dogs out to the back yard. Time to do their poopies and what not. Maybe Chandler will eat some raspberries off the bush, Scout will bark at the big German Sheppard across the alley. The sun was rising behind the big trees on the next block. A new day and something good is going to happen. Mark is coming home.

The Fecal Regatta (2020 rewrite)

I was thinking about my childhood yesterday and I remembered something I call 'The Fecal Regatta’. It was a boat race that was held in the creek that ran through Tinley Park. No, not like big boats. My older brother, Dave and his friends would build small toy boats out of two by fours and other wood scraps, then launch them in the creek near the middle of town. There would be two man teams, each with their own little boat. I was on my brothers team and my duty was to run ahead and make sure the boat kept flowing freely with the current. Sometimes this involved stepping into the creek and nudging the boat free from what it had been snagged on.

Back in the nineteen fifties, our home town of Tinley Park had no sewage treatment facilities, no separate sewer line for storm runoff and no separate sewer line for household sewage. Every time you flushed a toilet, your turds went directly to the creek that flowed through town. Directly to the creek that we played in. Those ‘snags’ our toy boats got caught on sometimes were not fallen branches, but turd that had left the Parkside subdivision just the day before. They gave the town creek a certain aroma that I remember to this day. Besides those crap clogs, there was also an occasional white ‘balloon’ floating along with our boats. I always wondered what kids party those 'balloons' had come from and how come I hadn't been invited to that party.

Mark Update

It's been two weeks since they took Mark away in an ambulance, and I haven't seen him since. The hospital and the nursing home where he's getting physical therapy are locked down tight. No visitors. I am able to bring him lunch every day. I put on my mask, walk into the place and leave Mark's bag of food with the front desk. Sometimes they even bring it up to him before it gets cold.

It's weird here at the house. The dogs are sticking to me like Velcro. On the day Mark went to the hospital I put them in the back yard. When I let them back in, Mark was gone. They probably think that if they let me out of their sight, I'll disappear too. I thought it would be nice to have the house to myself for awhile, but I'm not really alone. I'll be in the house, it will be quiet, and then I'm sure I hear Mark's voice. 
"Alan, I need a bowl of ice cream."
"Alan, bring me some of those gummy candy things."
"Alan, where's my dinner?" 
But it's just my imagination. Very weird. Sometimes I even think I see him out of the corner of my eye, coming into the living room with that clunky aluminum walker. It all makes me just a little jumpy. I guess I miss the guy. Today I'm going to try and do that facetime thing with him on the phone. I know how it works, I'm not sure Mark will figure it out. According to what I was told, Mark is only supposed to be in the nursing home until the end of this week. As long as they can get him walking again, that would be nice. Then all those apparitions will be replaced by the real thing and I'll have a reason to be jumpy.