Summer in Park Ridge

Summer has been my favorite season for as long as I can remember. It was so special to me that I used to have a recurring nightmare in the spring of each year. In the dream, I awoke on a late autumn morning and looked out the window to discover a gentle snowfall gradually burying a layer of fallen leaves. In the dream I was demoralized to understand that I somehow slept through summer, missing it completely.

I had a corresponding daydream in the autumn of each year. In this daydream I strolled along the soft sand of a California beach, soaking in the ubiquitous sunshine and laughing about the weather reports of an early snow back home. I was California dreamin’ to the point of obsession. My love of the Beach Boys’ music dovetailed nicely into this infatuation.

Two years after our wedding, my wife and I temporarily left Park Ridge, my home of thirty-six years, and moved to Los Angeles. It was sort of a proof of concept for a more permanent arrangement if we found our experimental home to our liking. We lived the California dream for three seasons. It rained once during that time—while we were sleeping.

It's not difficult to know where you are. Knowing when you are depends upon clues that we take for granted in the Midwest. Weather plays a big part in that. The weather on the West Coast was quite nearly perfect, being eighty-two degrees and sunny with a gentle ocean breeze. It was the same every day. Monotonously the same. Always. It began to drive me crazy.

Pangs of homesickness hit hard and fast. Several weeks into our endless summer I wrote to the offices of the Park Ridge Advocate to request a long-distance subscription. I had never before read that local tabloid so passionately as I did during the few weeks when spring blossomed back home. In the 1980s we couldn’t FaceTime with family, launch YouTube videos of weather reports, or stream our favorite news anchors on WGN TV. We wrote letters and made phone calls on landlines. It now seems so unimaginably archaic and difficult.

Later during our summer away, like the one in the dream I missed, Mother Nature began to tamper with our escape. Historic rains hit the Chicago area with flooding unlike any in recent memory. We turned on the nationally televised news and saw video footage of National Guard troops stationed a few blocks from our house in the northwest corner of Park Ridge, patrolling intersections flooded by the cresting Des Plaines River. Houses up and down our block began flooding so quickly that there was no time to rescue items from their basements. And the basement was where we stored everything we owned while we were away. By some miracle, our house escaped the flood. A few inches or feet in elevation may have made a critical difference, or houses closer to the river and further down the street absorbed the water, diverting it from ours.

To further our angst, a series of earthquakes began rattling southern California. Meteorologists, with little else to report from day to day, began covering the “earthquake weather,” a term applied to conditions that made even seasoned Angelinos nervous about an imminent “Big One.” Once again, despite disconcerting temblors above six on the Richter scale, we avoided disaster.

You know how they say, “Someone is watching over you?” Yeah, it felt like that.

As the California summer officially began, there were no indications in the air or trees (what few there were) around us of the changes I had come to expect in the town where I spent my childhood. There was no opening of the swimming pools, no nightly summer concerts, or endless chase for fireflies at dusk in the hot and sweet-humid air. There were no seasonal Dairy Queens or thunderstorms, no chorus of crickets or cicadas signaling the onset of mid-summer heat. Absent was the contagious excitement produced by an unexpected summer day in early May and the anticipation of more to follow. Our late evening walks through Hodges Park by the light of gas lamps, the moon and one tall white church steeple were missing. We came to feel that an endless summer was not special at all.

Predictability made the abundance of perfect weather seem boring. Summer to us had always been a crescendo of life on a reborn Earth, not a lingering sameness to be taken for granted. Our Midwestern roots began to twitch and call us homeward.

As the Fourth of July approached, I read that for the fifth year, there would be no fireworks display in the City of Park Ridge to celebrate Independence Day. They had fallen victim to budget cuts. When the change first occurred, I wrote letters to the editor, expressing my dismay at their absence. Others felt similarly and joined the movement I attempted to start. I even promised to match donations to a fireworks fund should one emerge. I created flyers that I delivered door-to-door. This was decades before a GoFundMe campaign could have made a difference.

Since the fireworks’ demise, summer wasn’t quite the same. Each year the number of illegal backyard explosives increased and I, guilty as any, wondered if my luck would hold for another year or if I would fall victim to an accidental injury, yet another statistic.

I recalled fond memories of earlier times I spent gazing skyward, laying on the grounds of Maine East High School, blades of grass tickling my neck as sparkling colors mingled with the stationary stars, colorful clusters bursting in the darkness to rain down upon an awestruck crowd.

I was now forced to take solace in knowing that a display would be staged near the cliffs at Santa Monica. We parked the car as close as we could and walked the remaining mile to the ocean. Gazing out over a sea of bobbing heads, we became two of the tens of thousands of spectators for a mediocre fireworks show, launched out over the Pacific from bunkers on the beach below.

I knew that night that we must go home. There was no hometown atmosphere to be found in that distant place. There was no feeling of community. Any sense of patriotic spirit kindled by fireworks displays in California vanished like so much Hollywood tinsel in the wind. I vowed that night to work toward a rekindling of the feelings of wonder and belonging I felt as a kid while watching the symbol of summer that, for me, fireworks had become.

Granted, that symbol evolved as I grew older, and where I once saw only midsummer magic, I soon began to notice the colors, the flag, and the feeling of relief I experienced upon returning from some distant country. And once my wife and I were expecting our first child, the symbol evolved further. It seemed increasingly important to me that those fireworks, patriotic symbols, and the hometown that displays them, along with the procession of neighbors with their lawn chairs and blankets, should all be together every Independence Day when our American community is allowed to assemble and share a feeling of belonging and pride.

We arrived back in Park Ridge that year just in time for the first snow of the season. Summer was gone. The nightmare had come true. But had it? Our absence put me deeply in touch with many things. I cherished the snow for the yearly change it represented. Christmas lights and fireworks became proper indicators for their respective seasons. And viewing these things, as if through the eyes of a child, I felt young again and knew I was home to stay. I would never again take these things for granted.

And that baby we waited for? I know that he appreciates the blessing of an American life in a city like Park Ridge, learning along the way about Family, Faith, and Community. I guess that's where our job as parents began. Like me, summer has always been his favorite time of year, no matter where in the world his career has taken him. After all, what better time to be born than the first week of July, for another Native Son?

 

For sixty-five stories like this one, please consider buying my new book about growing up in Park Ridge, Illinois during the '60s and '70s. Click below for a link to Amazon.

Sister Salvation

At some point, possibly before the term “bucket list” became all the rage, my friends and I talked about never having been to a psychic. We decided on the spot to see one together. One of us was friends with a classmate whose mother did readings. She went by the name, Ms. Ann.

Now, I’ve never believed in this stuff. A hardcore skeptic, I thought it was just a fun and silly way to spend a little time over summer vacation during college. 

On the day we made an appointment to go as a group, I spoke by phone with a girl I was dating occasionally. She spent her summer working for a friend’s company called Haywires Singing Telegrams. 

 

Her act was to show up dressed in early twentieth-century Salvation Army attire, complete with a hood and cloak, and beating a drum. That made it all the more dramatic when she pushed “play” on a boom box, stripped down to a very revealing belly dancing costume, and delivered her message with traditional Middle-Eastern folk music and handheld castanets.

 

She and I were to meet later that evening. At the time of my call, she was on her way to an appointment at O’Hare Airport.

 

I believe I was the last to have my fortune told, or future read, or however the protocol was described. A couple of minutes into the reading, Ms. Ann, without even making eye contact, said, 

 

            “Your girlfriend is stopping traffic at the airport.”

 

I was stunned. The comment was so specific. I hadn’t mentioned my phone call to my friends or to her. The rest of my reading was uneventful, but that day, my skepticism developed a crack in its veneer. I decided that all things might be possible, after all, and that Ms. Ann was the real deal.

 

For sixty-five longer stories, please consider buying my new book about growing up in Park Ridge, Illinois during the '60s and '70s. Click below for a link to Amazon.

The Long Walk Home

Junior high school was agonizing for me and many others. It was a crucible of terror into which were poured the human contents of a handful of grammar schools, blended and stirred vigorously, simmered in emerging hormones, and shipped off to school on buses for the first time in our young lives.

My day began a half block from my house on the 900 block of Goodwin Drive. It was a convenient location for a bus stop. My mother could even see me from the living room window if she chose to stoop beneath the level of the front canvas awnings and crane her neck far to the left. I am sure she did.

 

I waited with several other kids I'd known for years when we trekked together from kindergarten through the sixth grade to James Madison School further down the street. Ours seemed like the first stop on the route, an illusion shattered daily when the doors shooshed open and we mounted several steep black stairs. After a look into the dead eyes of our driver, already fit to be tied with the ne’er-do-wells at the back of the bus, we turned to face our daily menace.

 

The first stop on our unfortunate route was in front of the trailer park store on Algonquin Road, between Oakton Street and Touhy Avenue. Behind the store was the trailer park. For various socioeconomic reasons, that little parcel of land was a mortar and pestle that ground resident human children into beings that in 1966 were known as greasers.

 

There were five of them, a coterie of black leather-jacketed thugs who owned the back of our bus. I remember several of their faces, carved into my long-term memory with a switchblade of fear. One was a giant man-child who would one day be a formidable opponent for the outsized Dean of Students once he crossed the bridge to Maine South. Another was a handsome, silent but deadly James Dean type. I felt he might have the courage and heart to step out of his scripted existence if needed to save a victim like the one I assumed I might become. A third was most likely the model for the character Scut Farkus in 1983’s A Christmas Story, with red hair that writhed like Medusan snakes in the non-existent wind that swirled constantly around him. His green eyes were feline and his perpetual elvish grin had fangs.

 

The bus loaded quickly as the driver sped through his route, always running late and hoping to shorten the experience for us all. It was cowardly to sit as close to the front of the bus as possible, despite the instinct to distance ourselves from the viper pit further down the aisle. A seat somewhere amidships drew less attention from the venomous nest, and the tough guys were too enmeshed in the battle for supremacy within their ranks to pay much attention to the rest of us. Whatever corrupting force awaited them at home may have promised beatings half to death if reports of misbehavior followed them at day’s end. Exiting the bus at school was an enormous relief. We scattered to our respective lockers and homerooms.

 

The return trip after school was by comparison a dream, a relaxing ride by a different route devoid of the criminally insane. By mid-December, the chill in the air and occasional snowflakes sticking to our gloves and sleeves pointed the way to one of the best times of the year. Christmas break was coming, two weeks during which we retreated to the warmth and coddled safety of our origin story, like a visit to see Santa at a local department store.

 

I vividly recall one walk home from the bus, about three blocks, on a late Friday afternoon that deposited me like a playground slide at ground level before a pre-holiday weekend. It was cold and overcast. The clouds felt like a cozy gray fleece over the entirety of Park Ridge. I walked slowly, not at all in the usual rush to get home and start the weekend. This break was fourteen days long with the best day of the year in its center, itself like a present waiting to be opened. 

 

The anticipation began to mount. I relished every step of that walk home, examining familiar houses on both sides of the street, each beginning to show signs of Christmas. Strings of colored lights on metal gutters, trees showcased in bay windows, and tall red plastic candles on front walkways that said “Noel” beneath unwavering yellow electric flames. 

 

I’d seen the houses a thousand times, but the large red and blue and green colored bulbs on bushes and trees out front lent them an added dimensionality, like a Marshall Field window diorama. They were big glass bulbs, half the length of your hand. I was happy to the point of bliss, the morning ride on the bus completely forgotten.

 

And then the snowflakes began to increase in number. The sky darkened a bit with thickening clouds as darkness approached, still an hour away. As the solstice arrived, the sun put up only a feeble struggle, vanishing so early for several weeks that my father came home from work in the dark during winter’s depth.

 

And then there was a surprise. On the final approach to my house, I spotted a hint of activity through our living room window. Dad was home! And not only home, but crouching down near the bare green trunk of our new artificial Christmas tree. He took his time, knowing that I’d be home soon, wondering what was taking me so long. I sped up the driveway, tossed my hat and coat aside, and joined him, sorting color-coded branches for methodical insertion from bottom to top, eventually crowning the uppermost end of the wooden pole with a genuinely fake-looking sprig of green plastic and twisted black wire.

 

But it was a fine tree, with a better shape than previous real trees that messed up the carpeting in a torrent of dry needles or tipped over during the night as branches shifted, staining the carpet with rusty water from the tree stand. Lights, garlands, and ornaments masked the many gaps between branches. There were even glow-in-the-dark plastic icicles. It was beautiful.

 

Rudolph the Nosed Reindeer was on television later that evening, the yearly telecast that we dared not miss for fear of having to wait a year to see it again. It debuted as an instant favorite two years before on our black-and-white TV. But our minds filled in the missing colors, and the hour-long show’s music provided the evening’s soundtrack with songs destined to be classics. Silver and Gold.

 

We didn’t know at the time that Dad would be gone in three years, or how meaningful it was that he came home early to lengthen the pre-Christmas weekend that year. It was so unlike him, a man as regular as clockwork, almost as if he felt the press of time slipping away, relentless and ever-faster, each moment more precious than the last.

If you'd like to read seventy non-fiction stories inspired by my childhood, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories on Amazon. Click on the image below. A companion volume, Park Ridge Memories: Native Son, was recently released.

 

 

 

 

 

The “C” Word

You’ve been warned. The photos I mentioned before you clicked to come here are posted below, as promised. This is your last chance before scrolling past the following paragraphs to avoid seeing them.

But, to be truly impactful as a cautionary tale, you need to see the photographic evidence of my dermatologic adventure.

 

So, here we go.

 

I see a dermatologist every six months since I was treated for melanoma in 2017. As the surgeon said at the time, “If you have to have a melanoma, this one was shallow and small, the best-case scenario.”

 

Now that we’ve started spending summers in Illinois, I decided to establish myself with a dermatologist up there. I met with her in June of this year for a full body scan. Three women now see me naked. One of them is my wife. I got the all-clear, though she liberally blasted me with liquid nitrogen on a number of sun-damaged spots. Freezing the affected areas causes them to scab, fall off, and heal before turning into something worse. For the record, Florida is a great place to live if you collect sun damage.

 

About two months later I noticed a small spot on my right shin. It looked like a pimple or an infected hair follicle. I didn’t think much about it until it refused to go away later in the summer. By that point, I also had an establishing appointment scheduled with an Illinois primary care physician. I pointed out the growing bump on my leg when she asked if I had any concerns.

 

            “Oh, that looks like cancer. You should see a dermatologist.”

 

Ok, then. We were heading home in a few days so there was no time for a return visit to the doctor I’d seen just a few months earlier. I thought I had an appointment with my Florida dermatologist a few weeks later, but didn’t want to wait. I called and asked to have my appointment rescheduled with her as soon as possible.

 

There was no availability. I even played the “C” card, conveying my Primary’s assessment from a few days before. I was put on a waiting list but never got a call. If you’re not familiar with my earlier death-by-receptionist tale, click here.

 

I searched for another dermatologist, one willing to see a new patient as soon as possible. I had an appointment within three days.

 

When a physician’s assistant came in to greet me, she looked at my leg.

 

            “Oh yeah, that’s cancer,” she said.

The offending bump was “shave biopsied,” and cauterized to prevent further growth. I made the mistake of watching this procedure and was horrified to see a razor blade slicing off part of my leg. Note to self: don’t watch next time. It’s better to lay back and think distracting thoughts.

 

The pathology lab confirmed that my “pimple” was in fact a squamous cell carcinoma that required a MOHS procedure to be fully removed. This is a micrographic surgery that was named after Doctor Mohs in the late 1930s. I’ve had this done before with great success.

 

My procedure was scheduled three weeks later. In hindsight, that may have been too long to wait. The cauterized biopsy wound appeared to develop further during that time.

When undergoing MOHS surgery, an attempt is made to cut out all cancerous growth, quickly examine it in a pathology laboratory, and then stitch the wound closed, or go back and cut out more cancerous tissue if the results demand it. My surgeon had to visit the leg buffet twice, sampling shin meat in a widening hole each time.

I texted my wife in the waiting room while I ruminated about the eventual outcome. The doctor told me not to panic. There’s nothing like being told not to panic to put you at ease. The other calming statement, after being shot full of anesthetic, is, “Let me know if you feel anything,” just as a knife is about to be plunged into your flesh.

 

To shorten this story a bit, the little bump on my leg turned out to be a large, aggressive, deep tumor that got disturbingly close to the bone. As you can see in the photos, I discovered a way to lose weight—the old pound-of-flesh method—but immediately gained it back in staples. Lots of them. The doctor took great pride when he drew the outline of Madagascar on my leg in order to successfully close the incision with a flap rather than by simply using sutures that would have pulled out. He trusted this method to work better than a skin graft. I hadn’t even thought about that possibility.

My message to the reader is, RUN to the doctor when something suspicious arises on your largest organ, your skin. If it turns out to be nothing, great. And of course, use sunscreen.

 

 😎

If you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Or if you'd prefer seventy non-fiction stories inspired by my home town, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories also on Amazon. Click on the image below.

 

 

 

Off to See the Wizard

If you’ve ever been on the gentle ride at Epcot called Living with the Land, you have seen hydroponic and aeroponic gardening. Leave it to Disney to find innovative ways to grow their own food and turn it into a fascinating attraction.

 

We recently visited a local aeroponic farm to look at tower gardens (pictured.) These are vertically stacked pods that can grow twenty or more plants without soil, with much greater yields and lower water use.

 

“Can you grow marijuana in these?” I asked.

 

It seemed like an obvious question, and judging by the laughter around me and the look of delight on our guide’s face, a good one.

 

            “Yes! In fact, the plants grow quickly and to a very large size.”

 

I’ll circle back to this thought in a bit.

 

Why my fascination with marijuana? I’ve written previously about my use of a marijuana-infused cream on my arthritic knees, and the challenge I face in Florida legally acquiring the product. Well, it turns out that my quest was much easier than I thought it would be.

 

I stopped by a local cannabis dispensary and was directed to one of a number of clinics in the area where “cannabis doctors” meet with you. Not unlike the Wizard of Oz, they speak a few impressive-sounding words and send you on a quest to become a registered medical user in the state of Florida.

 

I’m sure you recall that in Oz, the Wizard was a humbug. Several of the creatures in Oz were clueless allegorical characters searching for brains, a heart, or courage. Under the influence of drugs, these things can be obtained, if not imagined.

 

Much like Dorothy, I stepped out of a monochromatic gray concrete parking lot through the cannabis clinic door into a technicolor office space with the vibe of the Emerald City. And much to my surprise, the first character I met was a little dog. About the size of Toto, he had a pronounced underbite, a wrinkly bulldog face, and was immensely curious, sniffing my ankles and demanding to be scratched. I swore he was going to start talking, like many of the animals in Oz. Perhaps after my visit with the cannabis doctor, he might.

 

Seated in the waiting room were two downtrodden customers, perhaps Uncle Henry and his wife. Auntie Em seemed confused and quite rattled by Toto.

 

            “Calm down, it’s just a dog,” said Henry. Then he turned to me and added, “She has dementia.” Maybe they were hoping cannabis would help with that.

 

I stepped up to a window where the receptionist asked how I planned to pay for my visit and fumbled with a credit card reader. It seemed to be just beyond her capabilities, but with a painted-on smile, she generated a receipt and pointed the wrong way down the hallway to a room I needed to visit.

 

There I met a nice young man with hair like a lion’s mane.  More of an Afro really. I hear they’re coming back, having been popular in the days when The Wiz was all the rage. He handed me a product list, instructions for micro-dosing, and a chart that turned out to be a prescription. I guess everyone gets the same prescription.

 

That’s where my metaphor takes a break. There was no wicked witch or Tin Man. Only a Wizard.

 

            “Hi, I’m Doctor Mike!”

 

Doctor Mike goes out of his way to be relatable, in a far too engaging sort of way. Short of saying, “Heyyyyyyy,” like the Fonz, he’s all about making the patient comfortable and tries hard to generate a cool vibe. He wears a flowered shirt unbuttoned too far, several gold necklaces, has dyed hair, and several rings on each hand. This all left me wondering just what kind of doctor this guy was in a previous life.

 

            “Interesting gig you have working here,” I couldn’t help but say.

 

            “It’s the best job I’ve ever had!”

 

Rodney Dangerfield used to talk about his quack doctor named Vinnie Boombotz. Those jokes immediately came to mind. The more Vinnie, er, Mike, talked, the larger his memorized vocabulary became. He proudly spoke words like tetrahydrocannabinol. He was a veritable fountain of syllables, which might impress uneducated customers, but made it clear to me that he was deflecting my questions with canned comments.

 

            “If you don’t like to smoke flowers, you can vape.”

 

            “I just want to get some cream for my arthritic knees.”

 

            “A chocolate edible right before bed will help you sleep,” he continued.

 

            “I sleep fine. I’m here for the pain in my knees.”

 

            “Well, you can see by the prescription I gave you that there are limits assigned to each category of product.”

 

            “I see. So it says I get a maximum of 1400 milligrams for topical applications. How many jars of cream will that buy?”

 

            “Our dispensary folks are like gurus when it comes to that stuff,” he dodged.

 

If we back up a moment, let’s revisit the notion that the Cowardly Lion moments earlier gave me a printout of a “prescription” before I ever met with the doctor.

 

Let’s say that again. I was given a “prescription” before meeting with the doctor. He didn’t know anything about me, my symptoms, or my hoped-for outcome. For this, I paid $154. And I am required to have a follow-up appointment in seven months. The state charges $75 annually to maintain my profile in the Medical Marijuana User Registry. This all happens before I visit a dispensary to make a purchase.

 

So, back to Epcot and aeroponics. It occurs to me that with a tower garden, I can quite successfully grow a large, constantly regenerating crop of cannabis far cheaper than the $65 per ounce I’ll pay for some cream at the dispensary. I would just need a recipe to make my arthritis cream. Unfortunately, that is still illegal, but a group is attempting to amend the Florida state constitution to allow medical users to grow their own drugs. Cheech and Chong would be so proud!

 

I left the Land of Oz, prescription in hand, and returned to my black and white trek across the parking lot. I said goodbye to the characters I’d just met; the scarecrow, the lion, and their little dog too. I’ll miss him most of all.

😎

If you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Or if you'd prefer seventy non-fiction stories inspired by my home town, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories also on Amazon. Click on the image below.

 

Everybody Must Get Stoned

I’m spending the summer in a state where marijuana is legal for recreational use. I remember, decades ago, strolling down Venice Beach in California past an early medical marijuana “dispensary.” Reasons listed on one of those A-frame restaurant placards were: headaches, anxiety, pains in just about any location, disappointing days on the waves, or living near a serial killer (then, a more uniquely Californian experience.)

Now that I’ve tried numerous things to alleviate my knee pain, it was recommended that I rub the new breed of CBD/THC essential oil on my joints. Funny use of the word joint, right?

 

Call me a skeptic, but I’ve long insisted that CBD is just modern snake oil. I tried it several years ago in a moment of desperation, aware that my mind could convince me that the treatment was helping. It was not. But things have changed.

 

Back in the days of Acapulco Gold, my friends paid $200 for a “nickel bag” of buds, weak by modern standards, from a guy who mysteriously showed up at parties in Wicker Park. His name was Ray. He wore one of those paper-cut-sized little Bandaids on one of his nostrils, the left one if I remember correctly. It was always there. No one knew why. Or cared.

 

            “Is Ray coming tonight?” they’d ask.

 

No one knew where he lived, and in the days before cell phones, burner or otherwise, he couldn’t be reached. He just showed up. It was all very shady.

 

But again, things have changed. I recently visited a marijuana (weed, pot, dope, grass) dispensary called NuEra. It is certainly a new era!

 

The windows of the dispensary are translucent to the point of being opaque, shielded from prying eyes by gray plastic sheeting. Given that recreational use is now legal in Illinois, why all the covert tactics? Secrecy lends a naughty ambiance to the otherwise clinical setting.

 

Step in the door at NuEra and the overpowering scent of a skunk in full-release unapologetically hits you in the face. Are the people behind the counter smoking on the job? Or vaping. Or rubbing oils and lotions on their joints? They seemed sober enough.

 

They carefully checked our IDs. From Florida. Hmm, would that be a problem? Nope. But we arrived without state-issued medical cards. Reminiscent of Venice Beach, but much more official.

 

            “Ok, you’re all set. Go through the door to the showroom and talk to one of our Bud Tenders.”

 

If I had been drinking coffee, I would have done a spit take. Bud Tenders? Has someone developed a sitcom about this yet? They must have. (Google search – oh yes they have!)

 

We passed by a young woman seated in the corner of the inhalation chamber I’m not sure what else to call it, but the room felt and smelled kind of like the bowl on a water pipe (bong, hookah.) We didn’t understand her role, but she held an iPad and appeared to be interacting with it as we passed by.

 

            “Oh, you’re my Florida crew,” said our Bud Tender. I don’t recall her introducing herself or wearing a name tag, but she was very knowledgeable.

 

The catalog of products was lengthy and detailed. Remember, I was just hoping to get more, possibly stronger, oil or lotion for my knees, so we never discussed plants, flowers, seeds, or stems in any particular strength or quantity. But behind the counter was a waist-high window to an area that looked exactly like what you see at a pharmacy, complete with labeled plastic bins. It was quite impressive.

I wondered about the supply chain, regulatory protocols, and quantification of dosing that supports this kind of business. I guess liquor stores stock suitably identified liquids, but they've had a hundred years since prohibition to refine their catalogs. The good news is, I've never met an angry stoner. The problems caused by alcohol in our society are well-known and truly tragic. This really is a new era in many ways.

 

And the place was doing business like Starbucks during the morning rush.

 

When I purchased the recommended lotion, I discovered that one thing hadn’t changed. Prices are in line with Ray’s, with one difference.

 

Illinois (or any state where this is legal) is making out like a bandit. The various taxes paid by individuals like myself who don’t have a medical-use card range from 25% to 41%! Other than casinos, our economy-of-addiction is raking in revenue like Vinnie the loan shark in the alley out back.

 

The product works and certainly beats needles in my knees or surgery, for now. I guess the bottom line is that I need to find a doctor who will agree to fill out the Florida-required form required to get a medical-use card when I return to that anything-goes state. Anything, that is, unless you’re gay, Democratic, a history buff, or a Disney fan.

 

Oh, and a certain doctor who tried to kill me not long ago? He owes me one!

😎

If you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Or if you'd prefer seventy non-fiction stories inspired by a town in Illinois, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories also on Amazon. Click on the image below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            

 

 

 

When Every Day is Saturday

I retired at age sixty-two. I’m very fortunate to have achieved that goal a bit early, if at all. My parents never did.

Following a few recent conversations with younger, former coworkers, not much has changed, except, well, everything. On my side of life’s career equation I’m grateful for having made it to retirement before “Me Too” and the pandemic, except for the getting old part. Many people never get to enjoy “the golden years.” My folks paid off their mortgage and unceremoniously passed away while still in their fifties. As I like to point out, golden can sometimes be the color of urine or rust.

Not only did I retire into the path of the largest hurricane ever to come out of the Atlantic (Irma) and into the waiting arms of the most life-altering virus since the Russian Revolution, but I moved over thirteen hundred miles from the place I called home for over sixty years. That necessitated recruiting all new doctors, generally from online searches, in a place where the clientele needs golf carts to make the journey from parking lot to waiting room.

It’s no wonder so many medical office receptionists turn into unsmiling automatons in Florida. They face a slow, steady stream of achy, complaining patients from sun-up to sundowners. It’s a particularly cranky time of life in God’s Waiting Room. And although I managed to survive this gauntlet on my latest checkup, it offered my whippersnapper of an Osteopath, who thinks he’s a real doctor, a chance to comment that my lipid profile looks amazing but, “It would be irresponsible of me if I didn’t mention that…” Pause for effect. “…there are no FAT ninety-year-olds.”

I thought back to the waiting room. He’s right. Jerk.

But I digress, another symptom of life in which every day of the week is Saturday. Honestly, we just say that because it sounds like fun. Every day of the week is actually Tuesday, I think. And therein lies the singular value I can assign to having worked for almost forty years. The days had structure, and each sucked to varying degrees depending on its proximity to Friday.

I was dreaming about work again last night, much like the journeys I have taken for decades through the halls of my high school and college. In those dreamscapes I was generally naked and staring at a combination lock I couldn’t open, or arriving on the last day of the semester without a clue as to why I haven’t gone to class until the day of the final exam, which I am late for, in a room that’s written on a class schedule I can’t find. The question is, do I miss these places, or am I working through long held fears of failure and of being exposed as a complete fraud?

Flavor my new recurrent middle-of-the-night thrill ride a bit differently, and with a happier outcome. I am somewhere near my desk. I liked my desk. I kept a bowl of candy there. People visited, even ones who didn’t particularly care for me. Ah, the power of chocolate.

The dreams have evolved, coinciding with a news story about returning to work after the pandemic and how different it may be. Employers might insist upon sharing desks in open spaces that maintain distance and create a flexible timeshare sort of arrangement between workers who used to value their privacy. News flash: they still do! Workers will hate this setup if forced to return after months of Zooming with no pants, endless supplies of coffee made exactly the way they choose, and no one messing with the supplies or leaving things for the next guy to wash.

So, my real office was a fairly safe space, and I’m almost enjoying it in my dream when I realize I’ve been coerced into working on a large, multifaceted project with a deadline that’s utterly ridiculous and with almost no budget. Yeah, the kind of “opportunity” clients would predictably bring me on Friday after pushing it around their desk for perhaps three weeks.

These work dreams are becoming more layered, nuanced and real. In the most recent episode I approach my old office early in the morning. Someone is at my desk. In fact, a bold nameplate indicates that it is definitely no longer mine. A nicely dressed woman has been given my management job. Well, it’s about time! I’m impressed by her youth and intimidated by her sidelong glance. I back away, apologizing for the interruption.

Work is now structured like college, complete with long hallways, separate buildings, elevators that go all the wrong places and sneering, unfamiliar faces that scan my uncombed hair and outrageous attire. Oh my goodness, work and college nightmares are coalescing!

My attire! I’m wearing bright red-striped short-shorts, unusually white gym shoes and a tank top. I’m looking far too much like a Richard Simmons exercise video to be at work. I press the elevator call button and realize that I don’t know where my next hour of work or my next desk is located. I return to my first wrong desk and collect a small cardboard box of my colorful personal effects. By the way, if you dream in black and white, you were not human in your previous life.

My car keys are missing!

Back on the elevator, I exit, somehow in the corridor of a hospital, an intensive care unit where beeping and swooshing is background for hushed conversations. I look out the window at a brightly lit, snow-covered parking lot. I need to go home and get my clothes. Still no keys.

At this point stress is elevating my heart rate, the speed at which I take shallow breaths, and I realize that not only do I not know which building I should be in, I can’t remember what floor I’ve exited. I try to calm myself, duck into the nearest bathroom to wipe the sweat from my forehead and am immediately confronted with a tiled sub-nightmare, as if passing from one level of a role-playing video game to the next, having chosen to apply the wrong token.

It is a filthy apocalypse of dark, putrid fluids and unclean sinks. I can’t get out of there fast enough. I look down at my box of effects once more and consider the possibility that I am having another work nightmare, the off-ramp to lucid dreaming.

I shake myself; I shake the box. My keys jingle and rise to the surface of my collected things. Thank goodness, because this is no dream. It is real. But of course, it is not. I head to my car. Where did I leave my car?

But here’s the cool part. In my most recent dreams, the horror of the experience jolts me into a state of semi-lucidity. Not really a dream within a dream, but an awareness that I’m not unlike Howard Beale and “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” And since I realize in the dream that I retired years earlier, I loudly and gleefully exclaim, “You know, I’m retired. I don’t have to be here!” 

And then I wake up, relieved, breathing hard. Perhaps my CPAP came loose on my face. Or maybe the power went out briefly. I’m gasping for air, heart racing and happy to be awake.

It was a dream after all. I never have to go to work again, until tomorrow night. For now, I’m ready for another Saturday, or Tuesday. It doesn’t matter.

😎

If you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Or if you'd prefer seventy non-fiction stories inspired by a town in Illinois, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories also on Amazon. Click on the image below.

 

The Delta Tau Delta Murder - A Chastity Delarue Story

Street lights flickered on outside the office building at the corner of Market and Main streets in Vermillion. The incandescent yellow glow of a second-floor office window reflected off the snow on the main drag in town like an after-hours beacon. Its sole occupant celebrated the end of another day with a drink and a cigar.

 

Chastity Delarue looked at the darkening sky outside her window, tilting as far back as she dared against the squeaking springs of her ancient leather office chair. The pace of recent business was a concern, but something always came along. For now, it was as slow as the arrival of a South Dakota Spring, when dirt-encrusted piles of snow crystals lingered like black mold near lamp posts and fire hydrants.

 

The pebbled glass in her office door and the odor of musty wood and cigar smoke in the foyer had a strangely calming effect on her more apprehensive clients. It was a soothing incense from a trip to another era, one populated by city-dwelling grandparents in old three flats. It also lent an appropriate air of mystery to her noirish setting. She drank from a cocktail glass filled with Southern Comfort over ice, dripping condensation on her desk each time she lifted it to her lips. She alternately sipped and launched a series of ethereal smoke rings after each drag on the cigar she held in her left hand. Confidence warmed her from head to toe, each in their own way. Smoke drifted across the office, creating a haze near the single word she viewed from her inverted perspective – “Office,” backward.

The door opened...

 

To read the rest of this story and more than fifty others, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

😎

If you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Or if you'd prefer seventy non-fiction stories inspired by a town in Illinois, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories also on Amazon. Click on the image below.