Things That Make Me Happy

It's amazing how much one's perspective can change over time and circumstances.

Here's what made me happy today: I put away the elevated toilet seat that I've been using since coming home from the hospital.

My reaction: Yeah, baby, that's what I'm talkin' about!

Near Death: Volume One - 1973

It was 1973. Nixon was President. Idi Amin still had hundreds of thousands of people to kill. "W" was in the Air Guard. And I was coming back from Tiffin in my Dad's Ford LTD with Mike Newkirk as my passenger.

We had gone to a bar in Tiffin (Club 224) and the band that was playing that night was famous in those parts for one song: Smut. The words that I remember were, "S-M-U-T, you love that smutty smut." Really profound stuff. They did a lot of covers, but that was their only original song, and they played it several times every time they took the stage.

I was drinking beer back in those days. Hell, I still do when the mood strikes. On this night, Mike and I were on Rt. 18 barrelling toward Bellevue. I was in a hurry to get home (not wanting to get grounded for coming home late on a Sunday night). As you approach the city limits, there's a railroad crossing, and about a half mile from the crossing, the warning lights came on.

We're cruising along at about 80 miles per hour, and I didn't want to wait for a train, so I asked Mike how it looked. He said, "Looks good."

It looked good in my direction, too, so I ignored the flashing red lights and drove over the tracks.

When I was exactly over the tracks, I took a gander to my right and saw a very bright light about 10 feet from the car. It was a light from a train that was moving toward us at what seemed like 800 miles per hour. I've always been good with math, so I knew the train could not be moving that fast, because the sound of its horn reached us the same time as the light. The instant we cleared the tracks, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the train speeding by.

There is a grocery store just past the tracks, and I pulled into the parking lot trying to catch my breath. My heart was pounding so hard that I thought my ears would bleed. I looked over at Mike.

"I thought you said it was clear!"

"I looked your way," said Mike. "And it was clear. I didn't think to look the other way."

The moral of the story: Look both ways before you cross.

Dave's Wisdom

Dave is one hell of a guy, never mind that he's recovering from hip replacement surgery. And, I pity the fool, he's married to my sister.

A bunch of us went to Acapulco last February to live it up a little bit. Months earlier, I was considering whether to go, when Dave came up with one of his Davisms:

We'll all be dead someday, so don't even waste your time thinking about it.

That's not exactly what he said, but that's the gist of it. And he's right. I have 10 years or 20 years or 3 days left, so if I want to see Acapulco, there's no time like the present. I went.

This could be a story of great irony, except that I lived through the trip. I love jumping into the waves and letting them carry me back toward the shore, and I spent a good deal of time playing in the water. Without going into great detail, I didn't appreciate the severity of the undertow, and one day the lifeguards had to come out to save me. Thank God and my lucky stars that my brother Thom was close enough to know that I needed help. The day before, I was alone while challenging the waves, and had the undertow been as powerful...

I've not spent a day since that I haven't thought about that experience. When the tsunami hit the Indian Ocean, all I could think about was the wave (no tsunami, certainly) that almost did me in. I was minutes from giving up. I have a sincere appreciation for the power of water in large volumes.

So maybe Dave is not so smart. Then again, if I had not gone to Acapulco, I would have missed one of the four or five near-death experiences of my life. And nothing makes you appreciate life more.

My Dinner Table - No Place For Amateurs

Yesterday was my birthday, and the discussion around the dinner table turned to frog legs...

DP: We used to hunt frogs at the pond with this three-pronged spear. My dad would shine a flashlight in their faces to stun 'em, then we'd spear 'em and throw 'em in this mesh basket that they couldn't get out of.

ZP: Frogs are cute and cuddly, who'd want to eat them.

SG: Frogs are cute and cuddly?

ZP: Yeah. And how'd you like to be one of those frogs?

SG: I'd be hopping mad.

Nothing better than a good pun, especially if it's at the expense of an unfortunate frog. My sister Linda says that the pun is the lowest form of humor, to which I reply, "That's because you didn't think of it first."

Cabin Fever

I visited the surgeon today for the first time since my December 1, 2004 back surgery.

The good news: all of the hardware he put in my back is right where it was when I left the hospital. (He removed the titanium from the last surgery and gave it to me the day of the surgery. If anyone is in the market for some scrap metal, drop me a line.) I can stop wearing the back brace while in bed, and that will help immensely in the sleep department. I'm now allowed to drive, but only for short distances.

The neutral news: it's too soon to tell if the fusion is taking. He showed me the x-rays they took this morning, and explained that on one side of my spine, he used a man-made protien as the fusing agent. On the other side, he used my own bone -- from bone spurs he removed from my spine. Time will tell if one agent is better than the other, but I feel a bit like a guinea pig.

The bad news: I will see him again on March 1, and I cannot return to work until I see him then. I really expected to go back during the second or third week of February because I feel like I'm way ahead of the game compared to the last surgery. He told me I could go into the office to sign papers and pick up mail, but I'm not to stay there for more than an hour at a time. Since I've arranged for weekly mail deliveries to my house, there's really no need to go to the office at all.

So I'll keep reading my books, watching my movies, and tinkering with the iLife software on my computer. I've also made the mistake of resuming my hobby of coin collecting, and I'm much the poorer for it.

Home

What is the significance of the Golden Hill? It's the name of the farm near Bellevue, Ohio, where I grew up.

Toward the south end of the farm was a huge sand hill that my Dad knocked down before planting peach and nectarine trees. It was too steep for an orchard before he leveled it. The other significant things about the hill are: 1) there were scads of sand burrs, so it was nearly impossible to walk the hill barefoot; 2) as a kid, I had nightmares about the sand swirling and sucking me into the ground, a la "Invaders from Mars"; and 3) the hill is now the site of the Gerhardstein Cemetery, where my Dad, my sister-in-law Debbie, and my brother Rodger Jr. are buried. I suppose I'll end up there too, someday. Then the invaders from Mars will have won.