A kind friend of mine who is a regular reader of this blog noted that I hadn't posted anything for a long time. I had no idea myself that it was well over a month, nearly two months, as ye old crow flies. Aside from the still as yet not flattened curve of Covid after nearly 15 months (I hear that we here in California might actually be freed from all things mandatory on June 15; I am not holding my breath), I have been distracted by life's other expected and unexpected burdens. The burdens have not lifted entirely (do they ever? And for my spiritual views on THAT subject I refer you to my Podcast on Podbean.com, "Ordinary Old Catholic Me". You can hear it on Amazon, Spotify, Tune In, etc.) but they have become a tad lighter to carry in the last couple of days. So, I thought it might be a good idea to add another one of my late father's writings.
Here's one written probably over 20 years ago. Dad has been gone 13 years and this was written before he moved from his address near Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles in 2002.
It has no title. It is written in Damon Runyon present tense style which Dad favored for a while and it has all the tongue in cheek cynicism that characterized Dad in his prime. So here goes. . . .
You know, I am convinced that if you stand in front of Canter's Delicatessen long enough, you surely meet someone you know sometime a stratosphere away in time and place.
I am savoring the aftertaste of a pastrami sandwich, as I leave the restaurant. The guy in back of me, who I guess has the same gourmet delicacy, is sucking residual remnants from his teeth. I look around to examine the source of the sound effects. He is very familiar, but I cannot place him exactly in whatever orbit we inhabit together.
"Don't look so startled," he says, "we share the same room, some twenty-five years ago. I study you at great length while you chomp on that oversized sandwich, and I remember like it is yesterday."
I remember immediately. Of course I never consider sharing a room with him, nor would I ever consider such arrangement unless I am brought there, unconscious--which by the way is almost the case.
We share a hospital room in Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, for perhaps seven days. We also have two other roommates of whom more later.
Age has altered him, but I recall the mole just beneath his chin that is there, a little larger, but still ejecting a single overlong hair.
I even remember his name--Sal. It is probable that I think at the time that the name suits the person, as I associate him with the subordinates of Don Corleone. This, I think, makes it easier to remember him.
"Sal," I ask him, "do you still have your prostate?"
I remember that he goes through some surgery. I recall he keeps me up one night with his muffled sobbing. I forgive him. In the morning after his doctor ministers to his problem, my anger turns to sympathy.
The physician, a short, portly, bald guy with an unlit cigar in his teeth, removes a gold mechanical pencil from his lapel pocket and probes the tip of his patient's appendage with the instrument. There is the inevitable gush of repressed urine and blood.
"See," says the healer of men, ". . . it is nothing with nothing."
"Sal," I observe, "why do you not bash that fat little medic when he operates on you with hi pencil, and does not even pull the curtains?"
"I give this serious thought," says my long lost friend, ". . .but he is my brother-in-law and I am into him for ten gees, if you do not count the cost of the operation."
"Do you remember any of our other roommates?" I ask.
"Yeah," he says, "the old guy the docs keep telling he has nothing wrong with him--the one whose lady friend shares his meals. You know they do not have restricted visiting hours. She takes up residence with him, practically."
I remember the couple. They are in their mid-seventies. She is clearly there for the meals, maybe also for the shelter.
Since I am sufficiently uncomfortable with my own after-surgery concerns, I pass most of my meals on to them--except for the beverages.
His companion mades the necessary apportionment. She also continues to threaten him with leaving. It always has the shrill complaint, to wit: "After all I do for you!"
In those days hospitals do not hustle the patients out.
Sal reminds me of, as he puts it, "the old geezer they have to tie down so he does not open the stitches." One night, he surely falls out of bed. He is a veritable Houdini who causes much discomfort for the nurses as he unties his restraints continually.
"He had a hernia operation," I say. "I think double."
"You gotta remember Joe Hollywood," says Sal.
Indeed I do. He is the last to arrive and his noisy night peregrinations cause me additiional discomfort. I summon the nurse and she gives me a sleeping pill. They tell me later it is something called Halcyon. It causes me to sleep walk.
If a nurse does not catch me in the process I leave the premises in my hospital gown. She stops me at the elevator and asks me where I am going. I tell her I am going home.
She says, "Let me take you," and she does. The doctors she summons ask me to stay awhile.
It is in this context that Joe Hollywood brings the "joie de vivre" of youth to our room of dismal dramatics. I do not tell you his name, since it is an even bet you see him in many movies.
He arrives escorted by two adoring nurses. They carry his valise, though I do not think this is hospital related equipment or usually permissible.
He does not get into a hospital gown; rather he dons athletic shorts and begins a series of exercises, knee-bends, push ups, then proceeds to a mirror and does facial and neck gyrations.
My headache from the previous night's experience is violent. A caravan of nurses comes and goes with trays, and other emoluments I do not identify. LAter I find out they bring him little extras not on the menu and osme glasses for the bottle he keeps in the valise he brings.
"You know, Sal," I say, "when they bring in that folding room separator and enclose his cot, I am fit to jump out of the bed and belt him one. He is a snob and I think he does not wish to have unnecessary contact with the rest of us."
"He is a star," says Sal, "and he comes there since the hospital holds the only surgeon who can reverse a vasectomy. Besides there are no private rooms available."
I know--everybody knows. He gets the vasectomy since his first wife does not want to have children. His intended does.
"Is it true that his fiance is really a nun who has left the convent?"
"Indeed," says Sal. "One who insists she wants a family."
When she comes in for the first time I reflect, despite my physical travails, that it would be a sin to enclose such physical attributes in a convent.
Now I do not suggest that when she repairs behind the room divider anything untoward occurs. Still, the sounds emanating from that quarter are like unto the sounds pigeons make outside my current bedroom.
"Sal," I say, "since I leave the hospital before you do, I never find out if they repair his fertility. Also, do you know if they marry?"
"I do not hear if the operation is a success. I do hear them in a very loud argument. She says she cannot marry him since, as a Catholic, she cannot marry a divorced man. He says, that is not a problem, since we can get a civil ceremony, or better still, we live together."
"It is a mortal sin," she says. "We get a dispensation from the Church, as you have plenty of bread, and then you convert to the true faith."
"So I do not think they marry," says Sal further, "and Joe is rather wroth, as he is vocally protesting all morning that the nurses do not give him enough medication to relieve the pain in the area of the family jewels. He says he does two conversions already, which is enough for one lifetime."
Sal takes on a very reverent look. "You know, I am very saddened she does not return as she is very good to look at. Also I have to take her side as I am a good Catholic. Of course, I do not attend Mass, and all that, but one thing I can tell you. I never in my whole life eat meat on Friday."
