THROWING HELICOPTERS OVERBOARD

I woke up on the sofa in the morning, hungover and bleary eyed.  After adjusting  the horizontal roll on the black and white television I slowly focused on a surreal sight.  Saigon had fallen during my hiatus.  Helicopters were flying out to  Navy ships off the coast of Vietnam.  There were people hanging onto the bottom of the choppers which were landing on an aircraft carrier.  As soon as the people cleared, a crew of sailors would push the aircraft into the drink.
I thought, Oh my God, they are pushing millions of dollars of aircraft into the Ocean.  What a waste.  Then I slowly realized that the mission of an aircraft carrier is to launch fighter planes.  This cannot be done with the decks cluttered up with helicopters.  All of a sudden it made sense; as much as war itself makes sense.
     Where am I going with this, you ask.  For the third time in my last two years I am facing the prospect of "downsizing".  The possibility of moving from my new apartment into a single room in assisted assisted living is depressing.  But this is what it may come to, remembering my mission and pushing my personal helicopters into the water. 
      I have had 40 years of happiness and tragedy since Saigon fell 40 years ago today.  I am sober now and much more able to take life's disappointments without drinking but I still wince when I think of all those helicopters at the bottom of the sea.  






 

OH LOOK!!! SEE OUR NEW LAMP.

Bourgeois

YE ASK ME IF I KNOW AMERICANS?

Let me tell you I know Americans.
The other night me old man sent me down to the corner pub
to buy a bucket o' beer and on me way I met an American.
Before you could say Trafalgar Square he'd upped me, downed me.
in'd me, out me, wiped 'is talleywacker on me petticoat,
drank me beer, pissed in me bucket and walked off whistling 
God save the King.
And ye ask me if I know Americans?

A ditty popular in England during World War II.

LOVERS ON THE RIVERA

      Ah, The Good Life

1920's

ON LOVE AND DEATH ON VALENTINES DAY.

She was strong and muscular just like always.  Then she just quit eating.  I noticed that her dish had not been touched.  I watched her for a few days and she did not eat and was loosing weight.  
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.)














 

FOUND PHOTOGRAPH Ca. 1925

                                                                                 BEN

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.

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.