Ah, The Good Life
1920's
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Thursday, February 26, 2015
ON LOVE AND DEATH ON VALENTINES DAY.
I called a cab and took her to the vet at MaxFund. That is where I adopted her ten years ago. The consensus of opinion was that she might have a tumor. Older cats are prone to these things. They can be healthy and then just suddenly tank. She wasn't that old, I thought. She should be good for another ten years.
She wasn't. After several trips to the vet at Maxfund and about $500 she had lost half her body weight. She was fur over bones and looked like a drowned rat. It was obvious she wasn't going to make it. Finally after it was apparent she was suffering and that she was down to her last couple of days I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I had to have my constant companion for the last ten years euthanized.
When the attendant carried her down the hall I could see her looking at me, her blue eyes filled with love and wonder.
I got a card in the mail signed by all the employees at Maxfund.
I will always cherish it.
I don't know if I will get another cat or not. It's on the cusp.
I miss her.
(See blog post THOUGHTS ON THE POWER OF TURKEY AND UNCONDITIONAL LOVE / Monday, July 21, 2014.)
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
SHE WAS LATE FOR HER OWN FUNERAL
In 1958 I was a 17 year old apprentice at the Aaron-Ruben Funeral Home in Indianapolis when Tillie Frisch died in Los Angeles.
Her body was to be shipped in from LA and the date and time for the funeral were set. Two o'clock at the funeral home in two days. Since she had left Indianapolis for a more congenial climate some years before
the general opinion was that it would be a small gathering.
Bodies were shipped by rail in those days and the duty fell to me to get up in the middle of the night and trek to Union station to greet the train. What I lacked in seniority I compensated in responsibility.
Three o'clock in the morning found me deep inside the massive Romanesque Union Station. the red brick walls were stained black
by the coal soot of three quarters of a century of steam engines. The loading docks were supported by thick wooden beams chewed up by being bumped by countless carts and trucks over the decades.
There I got the news that the train was late and would not be in for another three hours. So, back to the funeral home where I settled in on my cot for a couple hours of sleep. Up again and back to the station. I found a dispatcher who told me the train had now derailed in Kansas and the shipping crate would be put on another train that was due in Indianapolis at---Two o'clock that afternoon.
The same time the funeral was scheduled. This was getting serious.
To make a bad situation worse, no one knew if a Tahara had been performed. A Tahara is the ceremonial washing and dressing in shrouds of the dead by a group called the Chevra Kadisha. It is a very religious and sacred thing. So the women of the Chevra Kadisha were brought in to stand by just in case.
Tillie Frisch was the first woman Certified Public Accountant
in Indiana, if not the nation. She was well known in many circles and had an illustrious and accomplished family. At two o'clock our small and rather seedy chapel was packed with what appeared to be the entire Jewish community of Indianapolis. The Rabbi. The Cantor. The electricity in the overheated room was overwhelming.
This time the manager went to the station along with a police escort. Close to two thirty they arrived at the side entrance of the Funeral home, pulled out the shipping crate, pried off the lid and....
she was in street clothes. The Tahara had not been performed. Another delay while the Chevra Kadisha hastily went to work.
Finally as I pushed the casket through the doorway into the waiting throng the Cantor intoned his first note . Tillie had finally arrived at her funeral.
 |
| Aaron-Ruben Funeral Home 1958 |
Her body was to be shipped in from LA and the date and time for the funeral were set. Two o'clock at the funeral home in two days. Since she had left Indianapolis for a more congenial climate some years before
the general opinion was that it would be a small gathering.
Bodies were shipped by rail in those days and the duty fell to me to get up in the middle of the night and trek to Union station to greet the train. What I lacked in seniority I compensated in responsibility.
Three o'clock in the morning found me deep inside the massive Romanesque Union Station. the red brick walls were stained black
by the coal soot of three quarters of a century of steam engines. The loading docks were supported by thick wooden beams chewed up by being bumped by countless carts and trucks over the decades.
There I got the news that the train was late and would not be in for another three hours. So, back to the funeral home where I settled in on my cot for a couple hours of sleep. Up again and back to the station. I found a dispatcher who told me the train had now derailed in Kansas and the shipping crate would be put on another train that was due in Indianapolis at---Two o'clock that afternoon.
The same time the funeral was scheduled. This was getting serious.
To make a bad situation worse, no one knew if a Tahara had been performed. A Tahara is the ceremonial washing and dressing in shrouds of the dead by a group called the Chevra Kadisha. It is a very religious and sacred thing. So the women of the Chevra Kadisha were brought in to stand by just in case.
Tillie Frisch was the first woman Certified Public Accountant
in Indiana, if not the nation. She was well known in many circles and had an illustrious and accomplished family. At two o'clock our small and rather seedy chapel was packed with what appeared to be the entire Jewish community of Indianapolis. The Rabbi. The Cantor. The electricity in the overheated room was overwhelming.
This time the manager went to the station along with a police escort. Close to two thirty they arrived at the side entrance of the Funeral home, pulled out the shipping crate, pried off the lid and....
she was in street clothes. The Tahara had not been performed. Another delay while the Chevra Kadisha hastily went to work.
Finally as I pushed the casket through the doorway into the waiting throng the Cantor intoned his first note . Tillie had finally arrived at her funeral.
Saturday, December 20, 2014
LOVE AND DEATH: CHRISTMAS 1964.
"Toots" Vestal lay in state in my Funeral Home on that cold foggy Indiana Christmas day. A fine cold mist in the air. Not a single person called, perhaps due to the weather and the holiday. Toots and his wife, Dorothea, while not loners did not have a wide circle of friends.
Toots, a veteran of The Great War, had met Dorothea while they were employed by the same hotel in Capitol City. They had married late in life. They were not a handsome couple if I remember but they were devoted to each other.
Dorothea spent that entire day sitting in a folding chair in front of her husband's casket, refusing an offer of water or conversation, a manifestation of that love and devotion. I have seen all sorts of grief by too many widows. Dorothea's was the most sincere.
And I could not possibly have foreseen that 50 years later to the day, I would be sitting alone in front of a computer in Denver writing about a love I observed long ago.
Toots, a veteran of The Great War, had met Dorothea while they were employed by the same hotel in Capitol City. They had married late in life. They were not a handsome couple if I remember but they were devoted to each other.
Dorothea spent that entire day sitting in a folding chair in front of her husband's casket, refusing an offer of water or conversation, a manifestation of that love and devotion. I have seen all sorts of grief by too many widows. Dorothea's was the most sincere.
And I could not possibly have foreseen that 50 years later to the day, I would be sitting alone in front of a computer in Denver writing about a love I observed long ago.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
THE GIRL ON THE MALL SHUTTLE
Denver.
August 8th. 4:00 p.m. The hottest summer since records have been
kept. I am on the mall shuttle on my way
to the library and then to an AA meeting.
I noticed her
standing across
from me. Shortish. Just short of beautiful. What a lovely face----and then, cleavage. Not enough to be as obscenely in your face as
so many women do now, as though I would miss the point. This was displayed just tastefully right. Firm and a light creamy brown. Pert.
The more I gazed the more my desire.
Look gave way to an unabashed stare on my part. My lips parted and the tip of my tongue
involuntarily played out and gently…..And then she smiled at me. It was a gentle, friendly smile off
invitation. Or was it? She exited the bus and glanced over her shoulder
at me as she entered a McDonalds.
And
then---my concept of reality, or fear….of rejection, or what took control. I am no longer a young man. Was it that female cop who specialized in
entrapment back again having polished her act.
This woman was young enough to be my daughter if not my grand daughter. Still I could make contact perhaps sound he
out. I faintly heard a voiceover of
Eartha
Kitt singing September Song. And it is a long, long way from May to
December. Perhaps I had read the signals wrong and I
would be rejected and embarrassed. But
then I did have to go to the library and I did want to catch the meeting.
So the
risk taker of old regretfully turned away from another ‘face in the train
window’ and plodded. stoop shouldered to the library thinking of the old
saying, “Nothing
ventured, nothing gained”.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
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