Mom (1921 - 2021)

 

Lila (Mom)

Mom left us yesterday. She lived a long life, yet I would have been happy to have her around for a few more years. I've always measured the possibility of how long I could live by how long my relatives lasted. So besides wishing Mom good health and a long life, I was rooting for her to break records hoping that DNA was running through my veins.

What I have, what I will forever cherish, are memories of my Mom. My earliest is pulling myself up in my crib and watching her through the doorway of our bedroom. The bedroom that Dad later turned into the dining room. It was right off the kitchen where she spent much of her time. I liked spending time in the kitchen with her. When a song she loved came on the little Bakelite radio on the kitchen counter, Mom would sing along. I swore my mom had the finest voice I had ever heard. If a jazzy song came on she would break into a tap dance. Tippy tapping across the linoleum floor. Mom was multi-talented and I just couldn't figure out why she wasn't a famous star on television. Another talent was her artwork. Nothing fancy, just little doodles of faces she would draw on the shopping list she made for Dad every Saturday. I was impressed. Her drawings were at least as good as Chic Young (Google it).

I'll always have the memories of Mom being either pregnant or taking care of a baby. She did it eleven times. I remember her learning how to drive. Very exciting because she took me along when Mrs. Nelson next door, taught her in the Nelson's Pontiac. Many years later Mom took me out in our 1965 Ford station wagon and taught fifteen year old Alan how to use the clutch and stick shift. Every time I grind the gears in my old Ford Model A, I think of what she taught me. "Don't grind the gears."

Sometime in 1969 I told my mother that I was gay. Her response was, "I know that, but don't tell your father." She said it in such a matter of fact way that I never had to think about it again. Oh, and about Dad. A few years later it became apparent that he had figured it out long ago and found no reason to bring it up.

One more thing about her driving a car. She learned quickly and was a great driver. She never drove scared, never hesitated and always knew what she was going to do. She drove fast and always got you where you were going. Also, she scared the crap out of Mark the first time he rode with her. It was hilarious.

All this and more are what I want to remember about my Mom. The last few months were hard for her, and was only a tiny fraction of her life. There was so much more to it than that.

 ...Oh,  and another little memory that I always find amusing. Mom liked wine. She had a refrigerator in my dad's office filled with half empty wine bottles. She never wanted more than one glass of wine, and once she opened a bottle she didn't ever finish it. Unlike the bottles of Mogen David grape wine she used to go through when we were kids. One per week, just to cope with us angels.

Blow Job

 

We've had a bit of a heat wave this week. A very Florida like atmosphere, with high temperatures around ninety and high humidity. The only good thing is that this is Chicago and I know this will not last long. To combat the heat I have two window air conditioners. One in my dining room and one in the living room. I then depend upon fans to blow the cool air around into the other rooms. One of them is a box fan. I used to go through box fans like an ice cube in an oven when I lived in Florida. That's because I let them run twenty four hours a day. I did have whole house air conditioning, but even that couldn't keep up with the relentless Florida heat. So, I had fans.

I have noticed that the box fan that I use to move air towards the front of the house is not very effective and I want to replace it. Mark bought a really nice fan a few years ago, one of those tower things. It's about three feet tall and blasts out a stream of cool air unlike any other house fan I've ever seen before. That's what I want now, another fan like that to blast cool air around the house. It's made by Dyson and when I looked it up on Amazon I almost shit my pants. Six hundred and twenty five dollars! For a fan, just a fan that blows air around. So I did a Google search. Best price I could find was four hundred dollars. I can't believe Mark paid anywhere near that much. Anyway, box fans cost about twenty dollars, I could get two or three of them. But then again, they blow worse than a five dollar hooker.

Waiting for Rosario

 

I can't believe I had a lady who cleaned my apartment for just fifteen dollars a week. She did everything including wash the dishes, and wash and fold my clothes. Sadly, I can't hire her again. Yes, I lost that sweet deal, but that was forty two years ago. I know things have changed since then.

I have finally bit the bullet and hired a cleaning service to come in and clean my house. The cost will be ten times what my friendly cleaning lady of 1979 charged, and they will only come once a month. No washing dishes, no washing and folding my clothes. I don't know if the person who will do the cleaning is a man or a woman. I don't know their name. That will be revealed tomorrow. I do know the service is licensed, bonded, and well regarded on Google Reviews. When using Google Reviews I always check to see that there are a large number of them and they can't be too slavish. If the amount of positive reviews is small, chances are the business owner wrote them. Anyway, as long as the house is very clean and smells nice when the cleaning person leaves, I'll be happy. Now, I have to get to work cleaning this place before they show up tomorrow.

A Tree Grows on Washtenaw

Actor portraying John.

I had stopped taking the dogs for walks last year. It was so much easier to just put them out in the back yard and tell them, "Poop. Go ahead, poop..... hurry up. Poop." When the weather turns cold again, I will probably go back to that. Anyway, I am now walking Scout twice a day. Chandler doesn't get a walk. He is just too old for that. As it is I have to carry his ass up and down the stairs for him to go outside. Literally, I have a sling that goes under his ass so I can help him on the stairs. Poor old guy.

The other day, as I walked Scout around the block on her early foray, I ran into an old guy named John. I had met and talked to John months ago when they were tearing up my street. Although John lives the next street over, he was in front of my house watching the giant machines tear the place up. It's what old men do. Watch younger men work, then discuss. John was watering some plants in front of his house and I mentioned how sad it was that the city had to cut down the giant tree in front of his house. The city is responsible for the trees in the parkway, that swath of green between the street and the city sidewalk. John didn't say anything. He ignored me. John is old so I assumed his hearing was bad and I repeated myself in a loud voice. Then I added "Is the city going to plant a new tree?" He turned to me and in an angry, bitter voice told me, "Why? Your damn dog will just piss on it and kill it." There are so many things I could have said, and were I younger and more belligerent I would have. Instead, all I said was, "I don't think that's how it works." And kept on walking, since Scout had already peed on his tree stump.

 

Tight Nutz

 

Actual photo of me trying to fix my car

You have to always remember, I am not an auto mechanic. So things went like this. The coil in my 1929 Ford looked to be the original part the Ford Motor Company put in there ninety two years ago. I replaced it because I thought a new one would give me a stronger spark when starting the car. I was correct. The car started up on the first try instead of taking two or three tries. Anyway, that's when I realized the wire from the coil to the distributor wasn't in very good shape. So I replaced that. Now the car wouldn't start. I put the old wire back in there, but the car still wouldn't start. To my ears it sounded like the engine wasn't getting enough fuel to keep it running. I then began dismantling the sediment bowl, which is what Henry Ford put in those cars as a fuel filter. Have I mentioned that I am not an auto mechanic? Now I have a stripped thread where the fuel line connects to the sediment bowl. This is because I didn't read the manual before starting. It clearly says, "Hand tighten". Like a dumb monkey, I took a wrench to it. So at this point I am going to order all new fuel lines, a new sediment bowl, and start over. Oh, and by the way. I never did figure out if fuel was flowing from the gas tank to the carburetor. It definitely isn't now.

Somebody Call the Geek Squad

 

I miss the good old days of parking in Chicago. I used to park just about anywhere I wanted to. Bus stops, corners, loading zones, and as long as I left a few feet for the firemen, I'd park near a fire hydrant. Parking tickets meant very little. I'm talking about forty plus years ago. The city was in such disarray that you had little chance of a parking ticket being enforced, if you got one at all.

About twelve years ago, in his final screw you to Chicago tax payers, Mayor Richie Daley leased the parking meters to a private company for a paltry 1.17 billion dollars. The lease is for seventy five years and so far the city has been on the short end of that deal.

On Tuesday evening, Dennis and I drove over to a local bar. Dennis got lucky, there was a parking spot directly in front of the bar. It was one of those fancy new metered spaces where you pay at a box with a touch screen and a credit card. So I left Dennis out front while I went in to grab two stools and order two beers. Ten minutes later, Dennis was still out front. So I went out to see what was wrong. 

"I can't find the app on my phone for parking." 

 "Why don't you just use the touch screen to pay?" I asked. And as I asked that question, I noticed that the touch screen was not working. I poked and prodded the thing until I noticed a little green button a few inches below. Presto, the little computer screen came alive. "There you go, Dennis." And I left him out there to pay for the parking. Ten more minutes passed and his beer was getting warm. I went back out to check on him. This time he was frustrated because no matter how he tried to enter his information, the machine said "No". Now our friend, Doug, came out to help. He was of no help. The fancy ass, computerized parking meter had stumped all of us. Twenty minutes to feed the parking meter, and in the end it was not fed. We took a chance and went in to drink our beers. It's a sad thing when you have to bring an IT specialist with you just to park. No matter. An hour later and we waddled out of the bar. The car was still there and there was no ticket on the car. Kind of like the good old days.

Lessons From My Father

I was looking at the sun streaming through my porch windows on Friday. Filthy. They were filthy and the window frames looked rough. They needed cleaning and painting. So I got out my bucket of paint, the Windex, and the ladder. I stretched the ladder out to its full length and leaned it against the wall of the porch. It seemed so long when it was laying on the ground, but now against the house it was obviously not long enough. I ignored that and grabbed the Windex and a large wad of paper towels. As I climbed towards the top I noticed a warning on one of the rungs. Something about extending the ladder too far. I assumed that was not meant for me and kept climbing. For some reason I figured that I could reach the second story windows by standing on the top rung. I never got that far. As I neared the top fear set in and a childhood memory flashed through my mind. It was a memory of sitting in our kitchen on Ravinia Drive, eating lunch, and hearing my dad screaming as the ladder he was on made a rat-a-tat sound while sliding down the side of our house. We all ran outside to see Dad writhing in pain and cursing as I had never heard before.

I could feel the ladder bow and bend as my fat ass started back down. There would be no painting of the window frames. No washing of the windows with Windex and paper towels. You can't say I never learned anything from Dad. I learned how to curse really good.