JOE COORS REPUBLICAN FOR CONGRESS

                                                                                                                                                                   

Well, now----I have had this old beer ad for a long time.  It pretty well speaks for itself.  I have been saving it for the right occasion.

 votesmart.org/candidate/135695/joe-coors-jr

 Can a leopard change its spots?

www.corporations.org/coors/

THE SHADOW SAYS: VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE NOV. 6

THE WATERMELON MAN

when I was a lad in the ‘50’s living on a farm in

Bindweed County, Indiana we would grow melons, both watermelons and muskmelons.   

(I have been informed that no one calls them muskmelons anymore, but that they are referred to as cantaloupe.)  No matter.

In the summer when they were ripe we would stack them along an embankment beside the state highway which made a natural display area.  People from Jimson City would drive out on a Sunday excursion to buy our melons.

This usually coincided with a visit from my Aunt Vida and Uncle Esthel.  Aunt Vida was my mother’s older sister who had had the good sense to marry Esthel Fish.  My father and Uncle Esthel would sit outside on a bench all day and talk until someone drove up.

At this point Uncle Esthel would go into action.  When he got up to walk over to their car he would be sizing them up as they parked.  This guy was half merchandiser, half manipulator, half Jew, half con man and all salesman!  He would pick up a melon and totally deadpan say “Now this one here is a Dixie Sweet.  It is a deep yellow with a firm flesh and a sweeter than normal taste.  And that is a Mississippi Mellow.  The flesh is a little greener but the taste is indescribable, kind of a sweet, buttery........” and so on until you could smell the magnolias. They thought they were buying a fine wine.  Of course he was making up the names as he went along and improvising the whole thing with what he thought he could get away with.  He would do twofer’s and threefers.  He would offer to, and indeed would, plug a watermelon if he thought it would make a sale.  Then he would throw in a freebie to an already inflated price and everyone was happy.

It has been said that the measure of a great speech is to make them laugh and to make them cry and to thank them for it.  I learned a lot from him.  He was great!

TO SERVE AND PROTECT

 

A few years ago……five, six, It’s hard to tell.  Time blurs after a while.  But it’s a fine, fair Saturday morning and I am standing on the 16^th Street Mall, the pride of Denver.  A ‘Great City’ by all accounts.  World class.

A well dressed matron approaches me and asks directions to a nearby hotel.  Old money, I take her to be.  Very refined and indeed a pleasure to be of service to.  I give her directions, she thanks me and goes on her way.

As I turn to leave another woman stops me.  This one is about 35, blonde and wearing a powder blue plaid wool skirt.  She looks like she should be teaching Freshman English in a high school.  Then it gets a little strange.  She propositions me.  Me!  Jesus, I’m an old man.  (Well, not that old.)  I am standing there thinking, “Look whores do NOT work the 16^th St. Mall.  Ever! And particularly not at Ten o’clock on a Saturday morning”  I ask her why she picked me and she says because she had seen me talking to that lady.  I am starting to think I have been catapulted into the Twilight Zone.  Anyone with any sense would have fled for their life at this point but nobody ever gave me credit for having much sense.  So I think I would like to run with this.  I invite her into a nearby McDonalds.  (What McDonalds isn’t nearby?)

   I buy the coffee and we take a booth.  I ask her why she is hooking.  She says she is doing it to make the rent.  This is at least plausible.  All of this without agreeing to her proposal.  So I ask her how much she wanted.  She says $150.

Now, unless you are into schoolteachers, there is no way that this broad is worth 150 bucks.  No!  Nyet! Nada! Never!

   This is going nowhere.  I am looking at her purse which she had placed on the table.  The fashion police comes out in me.  It does not match her outfit at all.  It is a cheap little square box with a hinged lid and a handle, like a school girl’s lunch pail.  It is just big enough to hold a snub nose .32 and a badge.  I made her for a cop about a minute after she stopped me but I like to play with fire.  I can usually spot a cop or a whore.  Little difference, really, at times.

  I am about to ask her to open the purse when she bolts.  I think she knows she had been made.  She went out the door.  A few minutes later I follow her.  I spot her a half a block away with her head stuck in the drivers’ window of a patrol car of the Denver Police Dept.  It is time to go.

About six months later I am again walking on the mall.  I walk past the horsie patrol.  This is something the city does to promote good will and photo ops for tourists and conventioneers.  And there, in a blue uniform and a cowboy hat and holding the reins of a horse, stands my whore.  There were many things I thought of to say to her but for once prudence dictated that I keep my mouth shut.

True Story.

Citizens, do you wonder where your tax money goes?

THE SHADOW KNOWS

I'D GIVE FOUR MILLION JUST TO BE ABLE TO TAKE A PISS WITHOUT IT HURTING. / HYMAN ROTH / THE GODFATHER

          A continuum of the previous post.

From the recovery room there was a seemingly long and painful trip up to my room where I was to stay overnight before I was sent home.

   The entire stay became increasingly surreal to the point of being bizarre.  I met my nurse, Mike, to be followed by Travis and Brad.    Male nurses who defied all stereotypical concepts of a nurse, male or female.                      

I am old school when it comes to gender separation by profession, Rosie the Riveter aside.  My sister is a nurse, now retired after a long and successful career.  Nurses in my mind are still pert young things who wear pinstripe uniforms with starched aprons and cute little caps.  Another stereotype.  I had my male nurse and a gorgeous unnamed female nurse working side by side to ease my pain.  When you are in a world of hurt, it doesn’t matter.  I could fall in love with every female nurse I ever had and a couple of the
other as well.

In the time I spent there I experienced an epiphany of sorts.  Illness has apparently mellowed my spirit.  I realize that Denver Health is part of the American Health Care System, good or bad.  They make their mistakes and perform miracles.  They are what they are.  But I have always walked out of the hospital and not been carried out feet first.  That is saying something.  Medicine and surgery are not finite sciences and I needed to realize that.

In the American Civil War the first advice from the veteran soldiers to the new recruits was---- “Stay away from the surgeons.”  Surgeons are skilled mechanics.  They work with scalpel and needles and thread to reshape mangled tissue and bone and excise diseased organs and yes, fix it so I can pass water again.  For this I will be eternally grateful.

   When they visit your room the surgeons stand in a line far from your bed and near the door as if ready to make a break for it, should it be necessary.  I do not think they can deal with physical suffering.  Their work is abstract.

The staff of Denver Health, particularly the nursing staff, carries the load.  These are the people I came in contact with on a “hands on” basis.  They are patient, dedicated, professional and sainted.  I have never seen anyone like them.  I heard one of my nurses, Brad, a huge ex-bullrider coming down the hall singing “Mack the Knife” – in German.  I swear—I don’t make this shit up.

I have, and I suspect most men have, a castration complex.  Mine stems from when I was 15 on my father’s farm.  We raised hogs and when it came time for them to be castrated, my job was to wrestle them down and hold them while my father wielded the knife and a rag soaked in Lysol.  I cannot say if it was more traumatic for the pig or for me.

Finally alone in my room I stealthily reached my hand under the sheets and groped to where they had repaired the cursed Hydrocele.  I quickly counted.  One!  Two!  Thank God!  The only things I have left in this world are my dignity and my balls.  The hospital stripped me of my dignity but at least I still have my balls.

   At last when I was discharged and home, to care for myself, it was with some degree of irony that this old farm boy reached for the square green tin of Bag Balm.

THE SHADOW IS SPEECHLESS FOR ONCE.

IN SPITE OF THE BEST EFFORTS OF THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM, I STILL LIVE

I was referred to the Urology Clinic.  I knew what that was.  Kinda.  I mean, they handle plumbing problems.  It turns out my prostate was prostrate.  Now all men have a prostate.  I was never sure why.  It seems to be an annoyance more than anything.  Like male pattern baldness.  It enlarges over time, slowly, insidiously, until you can no longer empty your bladder.  The best answer was surgery.  And quickly.  Ah man, not again! I mean, the scars aren't even healed from the last time.  But it is better than drowning in my own piss.  They want to do a TURP and while they are at it they will repair my Hydrocele. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocele_testis  If you really want to know, check the link.  I can no longer bear to look.  The Hydrocele was a gift from the surgeon who did a hernia repair on me 7 years ago.

Was I scared?  Nah.  More like terrified.    

You see, when I hear the word surgery I immediately conjure up this vision of a well, next to a large shade tree.  Under which there is a kitchen door resting on two sawhorses.  There is a bearded man, shirtsleeves rolled up, wiping a bloody knife on his leather apron.  Beyond that there are blowflies swarming on a large pile of putrefying arms and legs.  In the distance one can hear the dull WHUMP of field mortars and the ripping canvas sound of volleys of musket fire.  You get the picture.  This is where my mind can go.  Back to that place where I have been before.

This is not heart surgery and there is little drama.  They begin by suckering you in.  There is always the ubiquitous needle stuck in my arm.  The nice lady slips a vial onto it and announces that she just wants to give me a little something to calm me.  Something to take the edge off while they get ready.  OK.  I’m all for tha………………….

…………..Out of the blackness into a dim surreal half light.  PAIN!  Muscle Spasms!  I have been raped by a Chinese section gang.  They transfer me from the anesthetic to morphine.  I asked for a lighter dose because I don’t do well on morphine.  Actually I adore morphine but I am a recovering alcoholic and to give me morphine sets loose long dormant urges buried in my brain and I go absolutely Batshit for days.  I did things and said things that I mercifully, only vaguely remember.

THE SHADOW SAYS: WE WILL CONTINUE THIS ON THE NEXT POST.

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