By the Time I Got to Woodstock

 

I had a great morning yesterday. I got to drive out to Woodstock, Illinois for the first time in forty five years. I used to have a job in the 1970s delivering supplies to shoe repair shops, and one of my stops was in Woodstock. It was a beautiful drive that I always enjoyed. It made my job very tolerable driving out into the countryside like that. Forty five years makes a big difference. For one thing, now I was able to buy gasoline for five dollars and two cents a gallon in Woodstock, instead of the forty nine cents per gallon I would have paid in 1976. Considering the price at the gas station a block from my house is five dollars and twenty nine cents, it was a bargain. Also, the quaint two lane highway that ran from the tollway north through farm country was now six lanes wide with strip shopping centers and housing developements most of the way.

Yes, I'm being sarcastic. It was awful to see the countryside I remembered turned into another sprawling suburb of Chicago. Like I told my dad when I was a teenager, just before he slapped me, "We're over populating the planet!" However, here's the good part of the story. Just before the town of Woodstock, I turned off onto a very rural two lane highway. About a mile in, I turned up a gravel driveway to the home of a guy named Ken. At the end of that driveway was a very large garage with a few Ford Model A's parked outside. I was returning a tool Ken had loaned me. What I didn't expect was the tour he soon led me on. It was heaven. He had a parts room, a machine room, an antique collection room that was stuffed with some wonderful, oddball old crap. He took me around and showed me the cavernous garage filled with Model A's, a Model T, and best of all, a Model AA bus that he and a bunch of other guys are rebuilding from the frame up.  I know, it all sounds kind of nerdy and boring, but I left there feeling very happy. I now know a guy. A guy who knows Ford Model A's. Oh, and one last thing. He gave me three little parts for my car. Nothing fancy or expensive, but still, he gave them to me. Wouldn't take money for them. We are stardust, we are golden.

Goldilocks

 

As much as I hated shopping with Mark, he used to hate going shopping with me for shoes. I have weird feet. Wide at the ball of the foot, and narrow at the heel. Besides that, there was my neuroma problem where it always feels like I have a pebble in my shoe. So I would go into a shoe store and start trying on shoes. All kinds of shoes looking for one pair that fit and didn't hurt. Meanwhile Mark would be sighing and whining, but I hung in there even if it took trying on fifty pair.

Three months ago I walked into the La-z-boy furniture store looking for a new recliner chair. La-z-boy is famous for high quality crap so I figured that was where I would find the chair of my dreams. I started at the front of the store, plopping down in chair after chair. This one is too big, this one  is too ugly. Nope, my feet hang off the end too far, and this one is for tiny little people. My head is hanging off the back like a victim in Sweeny Todd. After testing most of the chairs in the place, I found one I liked. As the salesman was writing me up, I spied another chair. Just one more chair for me to try. I sat down, the clouds parted, and angels sang. I had finally found the perfect recliner chair. My feet didn't hang off the end and my head was well supported. Even better, it held my entire body in its arms like a mother holding an infant. This was the one. I gave the salesman my credit card and after a bunch of tapping away at his computer, he told me it was all done. I would be getting my chair in May. The problem is that it was February. Could I wait that long? Yes, I waited and I kept telling myself it was all worth it because this was the most comfortable chair I had ever sat in. Well, the chair is here and it is not the chair that was in the store. It is not the chair that I had sat in that gave me an orgasm. Sure, it looks like the chair. The right color, the right size and shape, but it is not the chair. The chair that took three months to deliver is not comfortable. Yes, I fell asleep in it almost immediately, but when I woke up my back was killing me. The chair is lumpy and I hate it. Man, I don't think I'll ever find the one that's just right. I'll bet the casket they bury me in will be lumpy and I'll hate that too.

Finally

 

It has been a very chilly and wet spring, but finally things have begun to straighten out. They say you shouldn't plant anything before Mother's Day anyway, so no loss. Over the weekend I worked in the garden planting shit. Well, not shit. That's for Scout to do. I planted a lot of flowers. I'm going with a little different look this year. Lots of begonias along with the ever popular marigolds. I think it will turn out pretty good in about a month when things fill in.

I also did some work on my old 1929 Ford. I had ordered a bunch of parts for the car and after planting flowers, I went into the garage and got to work on it. Unfortunately, I was not able to do exactly what I had wanted to do. That's because I am suffering from 'old man eyes', and I ordered the wrong parts. I needed rear spring shackles (Not important to know what those are for the story). When I opened the box I found that they had shipped me shackles for the front end spring. I was furious, but when I checked my order I saw that I had clicked on the wrong part. Same thing for the rear window seals I had ordered. When I tried to put them on the car, they didn't fit. Because they were for the front windows. This time I called the company I bought them from and while I was talking to the guy it became glaringly obvious that it was my fault. Again, checked the wrong box. At least I was able to do one thing I had been planning on. I brought together my gardening with my car hobby. I turned one of my old tires into a flower bed.

Riding With Mom

(This is a repost of something I wrote fourteen years ago on the twentieth anniversary of finding out I had cancer.)

The survival rate for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 1988 for a thirty eight year old man was about forty percent. Twenty years after being diagnosed with that form of cancer, I am still alive and in relatively good health. Besides the doctors and nurses who saved my life, I have to thank my friends, Garet and Dennis who helped me through my chemotherapy. I have to thank my brothers and sisters, who all took a blood test to see if they were candidates for bone marrow transplanting, if I needed it. If they ever wonder why I love them all so much, that is one reason why. Most of all I have to thank my mother and father, who drove into Chicago every Tuesday so they could accompany me to the clinic where I got my chemo-therapy.

The first time my parents went with me to the clinic, I believe my mom drove us in her shiny new, Dodge Caravan. Whether it was my mom or dad doesn't matter because, whoever it was, I didn't like their driving. Not that it was bad, just that I was/am a very impatient driver and I also didn't approve of the route they took, so the next time I insisted that I drive. As I slid into the drivers seat of my mom's car, she moved to the bench seat directly behind the driver. I don't think my mom or dad had ever rode with me before, at least not through the streets of Chicago. As I sped up Halsted Street, and whipped around onto Ogden Avenue, I kept hearing little squeaks and gasps from the back seat. It was my mom, "Alan, can't you slow down a little?", she asked. "No mom, trust me, I know what I'm doing." I replied. My dad just laughed.

So it went for twelve weeks, every Tuesday, dad in the passenger seat, mom in the back seat making sounds like a kid on a roller coaster, and me driving like a bat out of hell. The drive back was always much more sedate, because I had just been pumped full of toxic chemicals and vomiting was a very real possibility. The funny thing about it, is that my mom was one of the people who taught me how to drive, and I drive exactly like she does. Just ask Mark. He makes the same squeaks and gasping noises sitting in the back of moms Dodge Caravan when she drives.

How Alan Got His New Bedroom

 

I hurt my left hand, and I have no idea how or when. I just know that it hurts. I don't know what the hell it is with this turning seventy years old thing, but ever since that day in 2019, my shit has been falling apart. My back, my knees, just about everything hurts at some time or another. Old age sucks. I remember my mom coming down to Florida to visit thirty years ago. She had just turned seventy and her knees were messed up. Sure, she lived another twenty nine years, but her knees were messed up that entire time. So the rule seems to be, whatever breaks on you after seventy, it will never work right again.

Top of the page is a photo of my grandfather in 1961. He had just turned seventy five. I'm not sure how he did it. He worked at the Union Stockyards in Chicago for Armour Meat Packing Company for much of his adult life. He was a sheet metal worker and I assume he maintained the metal buildings that the livestock were kept in. In January of 1961 Armour made him retire from his job because he had just turned seventy five years old. I guess the bosses at the stock yards were freaked out seeing that old guy climbing around those buildings, doing all that physical work. So that summer, seeing that he had some free help, my dad had Grandpa up on the roof of our house in Tinley Park. He had him help build the new dormer addition so little Alan would have a nice new bedroom.

(By the way, Grandpa lived for another 26 years, 11 months, and 2 weeks. Eventually his knees also went bad. But not until he was nearly 100 years old.)