FOR I HAVE SEEN THE ETERNAL FOOTMAN HOLD MY COAT AND SNICKER / PRUFROCK / t s eliot

  I have had a hard year, physically,

and emotionally. It has been marked by loss, illness, betrayal and self doubt.  I am slowly pulling out of it. I have a strong constitution and do plan to be around for some time. 

I am writing this post and will probably publish it tomorrow, the day before I report for yet more surgery on Monday, July 23, 2012.  It is nothing as dramatic as brain surgery or open heart surgery.  It is only that my much battered and overused plumbing is shot and badly in need of repair.  There are risks, as there are risks in crossing the street.  When your time is up, your time is up.  It is, of course, possible that this will be my last post.  I hope not and do not plan for it to be.  I’ve got some zingers waiting in the wings but I don’t want to drop the whole load at once.  But for sure, as it says in my profile, “There are many songs that will not be sung.”

Fear, yes.  I have had enough pain and do not want any more.  Not to mention the indignity of it all.  I am thankful that I do not plan to go into this hungover and dehydrated.  One of the many benefits of my sobriety.   I have had an appointment with each of my therapists this week.  I am engaging in prayer and meditation and rest so as to be as physically, spiritually and emotionally fit as possible.  When I go in I will have done as much as I can do.  It will no longer be in my hands.

I know I have not been totally forthcoming in my writings.  My writing has been pretty well controlled.  It is just my style.  I have written some thinly veiled stories but have, in the most part, not used real names out of respect for both the living and the dead and in some cases, my own mortal ass.

There are things I am not, at this point, able to talk about because they are too horrible to comprehend or just too embarrassing.  I believe we all take secrets to the grave. 

I have had fun using the nom de plume of The Shadow.  It was just something I pulled out of my ear and thought “why not”.  I will probably use my own name someday.  I have no problem with that. I am certainly not ashamed of it.

I have always thought that the two worse things that could happen would be to lose a child or to lose my eyesight.  I have buried a child and now I am going blind.  Glaucoma that was not attended to until it was almost too late because I thought only black people got glaucoma.  So much for thinking.  It is a slow process and the Doctor says I will probably die before I am completely blind. Always something to look forward to.  My left eye is almost gone and I am having a difficult time using the computer.  Just so you know.

This sounds to me like the final episode of OLD YELLER.

THE SHADOW

SPITALNY, A CLASS ACT!

In the summer of 1958, after graduating from High School at 17 and before turning 18 that fall, I was working as an apprentice at the Aaron-Ruben Funeral Home in Indianapolis.  The job was that of a glorified gofer that got to wear a suit at least part of the time.  Aaron-Ruben was the only Jewish funeral home in the state of Indiana.  Irv Ruben also ran Hoosier Monument up Meridian Street and ran a livery service to some of the smaller neighborhood funeral homes in the city who found it more economical to rent a hearse or limousine than to stable their own.  I was also sent out to drive on these funerals representing almost every ethnic minority in the city primarily Eastern European.  At that time Indianapolis was unofficially a segregated city and the Black population took care of themselves.

   For my labors I received $15.00 a week and room but as a result I was exposed to far more varied customs and cultures infinitely more interesting than anything I had ever seen in Bindweed county.

   Many of these funerals stand out in my mind for different reasons.  One of them was a family member of Phil Spitalny, whom I had never heard of at the time.  It turned out that Phil Spitalny was a band leader who was billed as Phil Spitalny and his all girl orchestra.  During World War II when all the men were drafted into the armed services, Phil formed an orchestra made up of young women.  I am not sure it quite lived up to its potential.

   I was sent to work this funeral.  I believe I drove a limousine to take the family from either the synagogue, or more likely, the cemetery to their home.  The lawn was covered with tents with a large catered buffet to feed their many friends.  Then I saw something I have never seen before or since that afternoon.  On one side of the lawn there was a separate spread for the people who were working the funeral.  We were actually being fed and cared for when at any other funeral we just went hungry.  I remember thinking at the time that this was an example of the way people should act.  When I think of that day on that tree shaded lawn when we were treated well because that was the thing to do.  Every time I hear or think the name Spitalny I remember this and still think of the definition of class.

THE SHADOW SAYS – ENJOY!  http://youtu.be/2K6CuKdaMQQ

HERE IS THE REAL MEANING OF FREEDOM

When I was a kid of about fourteen, growing up on a farm in Soythistle Township, in Bindweed County, Indiana, my father, who was the consummate outdoors man, ran a trap line.  He had a couple dozen steel traps and would set them in various spots along the Tippecanoe River and its small tributaries.  He would trap for small fur bearing animals, an occasional mink but mostly muskrat.  He sold the pelts to Benny Snyder who ran a junk yard in a nearby town. The unpardonable sin was to run another man's trap line.  That is to spring a trap that was not theirs or, even worse, to retrieve an animal from another man’s trap.

   One day, it was summer; he brought home a trap with a large raccoon, alive but with the steel trap firmly gripping its leg.  I don’t know how long the animal had been in the trap but it had already started to chew its leg off.  The raccoon was put next to the telephone pole that stood in the side yard between the house and the barn.  There he stayed for an entire afternoon, patiently chewing away at his leg until my father finally dispatched it with his .22 rifle.

A real Cavalier, my old man.

I think the analogy about freedom is pretty evident.  Freedom has a price.

THE SHADOW-------LIVE FREE OR DIE