More B. C.

Tonight I was reminded of what I was originally planning to write about last week when I got sidetracked about old phones. One more thing though. The phone we used at Fackrell's Texaco actually had a handle on the side that you had to crank to make the phone on the other end ring. How bizarre is that?

Onward. Back in BC it cost so stinking much to phone someone that didn't live close, people had to resort to an archaic form of conversation known as mail. Instead of pushing buttons on a gizmo the size of a credit card (which didn't exist then either) you would write your thoughts and questions on a piece of paper, fold it in thirds, put it in and envelope, put a 5 cent stamp (holy dodo, I just realized there is no longer a "cent" key! Do any of you even know what the symbol for cents is? or that it went AFTER the number?) on it, address it, put it in a little box out side your house, and a guy would pick it up and take it all the way to the person's house that you wanted to converse with. OK, the process was rather complex and costs about nine times as much now. BUT...

Now comes the redeeming social value of snail mail and why I was reminded of it tonight: Babs (wife) was on her cell phone conversing with Pete (son). I was eating my bowl of mac & cheese. I could hear her side of the conversation but had no idea what Pete was saying in far away Minnesota. I had to leave while they were talking and didn't get to ask her what Pete said until a couple of hours later. She is getting on in years and was only able to recall vague generalities of the discussion. SO...

Had their tete a tete been via snail mail, I would have been able to read exactly what Pete had said to her. Granted, it would have taken a couple of weeks to take place, but I wouldn't have to rely on the memory of some else.

Slow and steady wins the race?

Not on this planet.

The Rule of Thumbs

Last week something happened that caused me to reminisce about times gone by. I'm talking times WAY gone by. I'm talking B.C. That's Before Cell phones. Way back then there was a form of price gouging foisted upon us by the monopolistic A T & T, also known as Ma Bell. This outrage was known as "Long Distance". I know most of you young'ns out there may never have heard of it but it was an additional charge from several cents to several dollars for every stinking minute of conversation just because the person you called didn't happen to live near you.

This caused you to seriously consider not only the necessity of the conversation, but how dear your feelings were for the person on the other end. I'm so old I remember when we didn't even HAVE a telephone. There were only three in all of Atomic City. One time, when I was in the 6th grade at Moreland Elementary (30 miles from A.C.), I had to call home because my left leg fell off or something like that. I had the operator place the call to phone #3 at Fackrell's Texaco to have someone there go get my Mom (who didn't drive) and have her call the school. I'm not sure exactly what she was supposed to do about my missing limb but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

It was so exciting when they ran a new phone line to A.C. and we got our very own phone! It was a "party" line that wasn't much of a party. That meant there were several other homes that shared one single line and you had to wait until no one else was using it if you wanted to make a call. When it rang (there was actually a bell inside the phone that went ding-ding-ding) we had to wait to see if it was "our" ring which was one long and two short rings.

It was free to call the Blackfoot area that was 30 miles southeast of us but it was long distance to Arco that was 30 miles northwest, go figure. Back then they didn't think human beings could remember all seven digits of a phone number so they gave us a mnemonic help for the prefix. Our number was MUrdock 4-5033 (684-5033). Yes Virginia, that's the real reason there are letters under digits on your phone. Blackfoot was SUnset 5-xxxx. Cool, huh? I have no idea why there are no letters under the number 1, but back then there were only three letters for each of the other numbers. They left out the letters Q and Z.

They must have been added to the 7 and 9 with the advent of text messaging when we started talking with our thumbs...

Mein Kampf

Today Aaron referred to my personal trainer (his little brother) as Little Hitler. I do want to set the record straight. I may have given people the idea that he is some kind of Snidley Whiplash kind of task master but that really isn't true. Sure he keeps making me do more reps each week (I'm up to 12 for most machines and 15 on some) but I think next week I go back to eight but add some more weight. He is rather pleasant to work with and hardly ever yells at me. He even helps me when I can't quite make the last rep or two of the third set. I may be even getting stronger (go figure) because yesterday I was able to do all three sets of overhead presses without his help.

I thought I had become a 265 lb weakling through many years of disuse and sedentariness but then I remembered how wimpy I was in high school. What brought this to my remembrance was the semi-fond memory of a fishing/water skiing trip that Brad, Chad, and I took to Mackay Dam in the summer of 1966 or 1967. Chad had a cool pale yellow Studebaker convertible and a boat, and a boat trailer, and skis. I had little brains, fewer arm muscles and lived on the way to the lake.

I had seen people water ski before. How hard could t be? All you have to do is hang on to a rope and skim lightly over the water. Even bugs can do it. Evidently bugs weigh less than the 200 lbs I weighed at the time. Brad and Chad both did quite well. In fact Chad could start on one ski instead of having to drop one off after starting with two. My turn.

I'm in the water, ski tips just above the surface, eagerly anticipating the jolt of the rope. Whang! There it is. Odd, shouldn't I be skimming merrily along the surface of the water? Why do I seem to be swallowing vast quantities of lake water? Perhaps they should have mentioned letting go of the rope.

After an inordinate amount of time I realized the surface of the water really should be below me and I had forgotten my gills. Air became enough of a priority that I figured out all by myself that letting go of the rope would be a decent thing to do. Having more stubbornness than brains, or muscles for that matter, I had let them drag me around the lake far too many more times when, wonder of wonder, I am on the skis and ON the surface! Woo Hoo! Whee!
At this point the boat motor ran out of gas.

Going down. Bottom floor. Dead fish, old tires, bottles, fishing gear, Jimmy Hoffa. I struggle to the surface and wait for Brad and Chad to stop laughing and refill the gas tank. I was fairly successful after that fiasco and even attempted that drop-off-one-ski thingie. A faceplant at 30-40 mph cured me of that thought. Hmm, maybe after I lose some of this tonnage and gain some muscle I'll give it another try.

I Got Your Sting Right Here!

When I told my office mates how well I was feeling last Thursday morning after my first workout, one of them said, "Wait until tomorrow." "Pshaw." scoffs I. So much for pshaw. Friday morning I couldn't lift my arms above my waist. I had to lay my razor on the sink and scrape my face against it. I was pathetic. I whimpered all morning and then realized it was FRIDAY! Saintly Doo-Doo! I had to go back to Abu Grabe again!

It turned out not to be nearly as bad as I feared and I actually looked forward to working out again on Monday (go figure). Saturday I was one big fat dynamo, mowing the front yard and doing all sorts of things other than keeping my backside glued to my recliner (college football hasn't started yet). I was so busy I hadn't taken time to take a dip in the pool until midnight.

Midnight swim. Sounds rather innocuous. Sure Babs (if she'd been awake) would have made a comment about the Sabbath and such, but what could possibly happen? The pool temperature was perfect. Refreshing beyond belief. No drowning, no sharks, no falling off the ladder, no pesky illumination by the TPD pork chopper, it was nice.

I towel off then head for bed. Not wanting to awaken Babs, I forgo turning on the light as I go into the bathroom holding the towel in front of me. I hadn't noticed that the towel was longer that the ones I usually use and managed to step on the bottom of it as I crossed the threshold. Things get blurry at this point. I stumble, I pull up on the towel, BUT, I don't land on my face nor break any appendages (maybe).

The next morning as I'm showering I notice that the big toe on my left foot is much darker than the other toes. Much darker. By the end of the day it was as big as a fist looked like Joseph's coat. It should have been painful as heck but, thanks to my gift of diabetes, I can pretty much just feel my feet when they hurt, not when they are hurt. I know that sounds weird but it is what it is.

After spending Monday morning hearing everyone tell me it's broken, I spent the afternoon at the emergency room where the Dr. took one look and told me it was broken. The x-rays proved otherwise as the radiologist couldn't find anything broken either. That's all I wanted to know. Since I couldn't feel it I just needed to know that I didn't have broken bones crunching into each other. The bad news was that I was unable to work out with Dan.

We had to put the workout off until Tuesday and then Dan wanted a note from my doctor. I thought he would have taken pity on me but no, he had me start doing ten reps instead of eight like last week. His Sadism knows no bounds. Workout number four was this afternoon and I'm still breathing so, so far so good.

Where is Thy Sting

OK, I said Thursday would be my blog night and here it is Thursday,sort of. I actually started this laptop up before midnight but it is way beyond slow booting up and getting the internet going. Now I know why Pete left it booted up all the time and why he got a new one.

The title of this blog is a continuation of my previous one but it really has nothing to do with death, unless you consider the death of brain cells that I should have used to keep me from hiring Danny to be my personal trainer. He's been studying to take the certification test in October so somehow I thought it would be a grand idea for me to be his first client. Why wouldn't he want to try his newly acquired knowledge on an old fat man? Besides, I offered him room and board.

We decided to have one-hour workouts three days a week, on Monday Wednesday and Friday at 1:00 since the weight room at the old gym on base is almost empty at that time and I wouldn't embarrass him too much. Monday was rapidly approaching.

It's the monsoon season here in the Sonoran desert and it actually rained Sunday night and early Monday morning. It was a nice soaking rain, rain that inspired me to get up early and pull the weeds in the front yard (weeds bother me). There were many and I decided that was enough exercise for the day, maybe not the same as pumping iron, but enough. so Wednesday became day one of Danny's project to make me the man of my dreams.

1:00 indeed rolled around and there I was with Dan and his notebook in a room full of machines from the Spanish Inquisition. He had me do three sets of eight reps on various and sundry torture devices until the hour was almost up and he topped the session off with some "crunches" and a particularly devious exercise that I'm sure has been outlawed by the Geneva Convention. He called it a "plank" I think. It consists of resting on your forearms then raising your body to roughly the same position as a push up. It's supposed to be an indicator of how strong your "core" is. He said Bekah could hold the position for 15 seconds...I made it to three. "Try to make it to five," he says. I make it to three. Third try gets me to maybe four. "We'll work on this," he says.

All in all, I was satisfied with the workout even though my crunches were more like just being able to get my head off the floor. I am looking forward to Friday. I felt fine this morning other that the semi-usual excruciating stabbing pains that accompany my gift of diabetes. I was even motivated to mow the back yard (remember the rain? It made the grass grow). Now comes the sting part.

Since the lawn mowing and walking around Bookman's while Bella was at activity day(night) my feet, both of them, have felt like they are on fire. I put them in the pool, along with the rest of me, and let them soak until they were all wrinkled. Ah, much better now. Enough so I can can feel all those muscles I abused yesterday saying "Hey Ronnie, remember us?" Oh yeah, you guys...Ow.

Oh, Death

It seems weird to be writing again so soon but Pete decided to replace is laptop since he will be gainfully employed come Monday and bequeathed his old one to me. It makes it much handier for me to blog while watching TV so my goal is to put something in here each Thursday night. We'll see how long I last. Here goes.

Lorna's head-on collision Tuesday night got me thinking about how fragile our grip is on this mortal existence. Maybe it's because of my current position on my own time line, I don't know. I became acquainted with death at a very early age as I attended the funerals of my grandparents and various uncles and aunts. Going to them had profound effect on me. Such that, as a seventh-grader I was upset by a poem that our teacher had us read that I felt made light of death. The only line I remember is: "Death is here, death is there, death is (something) everywhere." It bothered me enough that I wrote my own poem about death. It was nothing when compared with poetry that Bonnie or my Mom could write but it expressed how I felt at the time. I certainly didn't know when I wrote it how soon I would have t deal with the death of my Dad. I titled it "Death's Sweet Sleep." Here it is as best I remember it:

"Death comes calling at my door,
Taking loved ones as before.

When they are gone I grieve and weep.
So many now are lost in sleep.

Oh, that I could taste of death's sweet sleep.
No more to have to grieve and weep
for those I've loved who've tasted death.
Then to breath my one last breath.

Then to breathe again a purer air,
Air with a fragrance beyond compare.
To see again the ones I love
And dwell with the in our home above.

But I must stay to grieve and weep
For loved ones lost in death's sweet sleep."


It seems strange to think of that again after so many years and funerals. Now I find myself reading the obituaries to the point that I even check the online ones in my home town newspaper, the Blackfoot News. I feel like George Burns who said he would read the obituaries every morning and if he didn't see his name, he'd have breakfast...

Why I Live in a Desert

Babs and I got back last week from a ten day trip to the South. Our son Scott had been transferred to Birmingham, AL and I volunteered to drive to drive the U-Haul full of all his worldly belongings. Since I was a truck driver in a previous life I figured hauling the stuff for a family of nine would be no sweat, especially since it would be my fourth trip that way in two years. Then Babs decided to come along. This woman detested driving the 40 miles to Benson, AZ when our kids were living there and thought a trip to Phoenix was absolute death. But, by coming with me she would be able to visit our kids at Ft Campbell, evidently enough motivation to go cross country in truck with me.

Though skeptical at first I was pleasantly surprised by how well she did on the 2,000 mile trek. She was a more-than-capable navigator and certainly kept me alive by not allowing me to over drive like I did on the other trips. Instead of driving straight through, she convinced me to make it a three day journey. Tumacacori, NM and Lonoke, AR are fine places to spend the night. I'm sure she was impressed by my breaking out in song for no particular reason.

After a night at Jer & Linda's place on Ft Campbell, KY, we borrowed their Corolla and headed for Birmingham. Let me tell you something about Birmingham. It's weird. It's the biggest city in Alabama but you can't tell because it's almost completely hidden by forests and hills. Green until you want to vomit. I had the GPS with me while Babs drove the car so I was depending on Olivia (the Australian chick GPS voice) to guide me to Scott & Suzie's new home. By the way, we called the GPS voice Olivia because we couldn't remember the other Australian chick's name (Nicole Kidman). Somehow she was confused and sent me the the opposite direction of his house so I had to turn the truck around in a space the size of a postage stamp. Major correction but successful none the less. We then began to unload the truck.

Now this is why I live in a desert. HUMIDITY. Ok, the lack thereof. Heat in the desert is HOT. Heat in the HUMID South, SUCKS! I had forgotten how it feels to sweat just because you are alive. Breathing. No concept of working up a sweat. Sweat is like Wal-Mart there. We did manage to get all the stuff into the house though it did take two days. It was tough to leave there knowing it would be quite some time before we see them again.

Jer was at the W.C. Handy Jazz Festival in Florence, AL so we stopped there on our way to Ft Campbell and got to see him perform with the jazz ensemble. They were great and I realized that the tuba player is the hardest worker in a jazz ensemble. It was fun to hear him do some barbershop quartet too. We took the direct route to Ft Campbell on mostly two lane roads with beautiful scenery all the way.

We had fun at Jer & Linda's home then flew back on Monday. Until we got on the plane, we didn't realize we were sitting in different rows, from both Nashville to Denver and Denver to Tucson. Scott bought the tickets. May he thought we'd had enough time sitting together...