Caught Flatfooted

 Caught Flatfooted

As I pulled off my socks to shower this morning, I heard the telltale whisper that the skin on my feet were becoming dry and cracking. Being a diabetic, it was time to bring out the moisturizer and be proactive with my foot care and slow the winter calluses from forming. Of course, this triggered my memories of my aunt Helen Stahl and several stories about her feet.

My connecting thought was that she was a homebody and seldom wore shoes in her home. Her feet would become rough, callused, cracked, and painful. Eventually, she would sweet-talk someone into driving her from Orlando to one of the Floridian beaches. Dressed in her housecoat, she would stroll in the ocean wet sand. I never saw her wear a bathing suit, only the dusters that she wore at the house. The grit of the wet sand, wore away the calluses, smoothed the dry skin, and made it easier for the cracks to heal.

The second storey of Aunt Helen happened when I was a child. The place where my dad worked offered reduced price admission tickets to Idlewild Park in Ligonier. My parents asked if Aunt Helen and her family would like to join us. She accepted. Aunt Helen arrived at the park dressed to the nines. I can remember her full-skirted pale blue dress, a string of pearls around her neck, her red purse and she was wearing red, high-heeled shoes. For anyone who has frequented the old park knows the pathways were only pea-sized gravel. Walking on it was difficult enough, without high heels. By the end of the day, Helen said she had he blisters on her feet. The next morning, my mom Sybil Beck telephoned her and teasingly said, “Are you ready to go back to Idlewild?”

Helen said, “Just let me get my shoes on,” and snorted a laugh.

My final recollection was of Helen and lightning’s attraction for her. As I’ve said, Helen hated to wear shoes. This occurred while they were living near Indian Head, Pennsylvania. She was in the midst of cleaning her house and went outside to shake the throw rugs. Standing on the wet concrete porch, a bolt of lightning electrified the water soaked porch and made her dance.

I know that she was struck by lightning a second time, but I am not sure just where it happened.

It Came Back

 It Came Back

At the end of my last post I shared my violent and sudden attack on my body of diarrhea and the horrible retching and vomiting. It came out of nowhere, waking me form slumber and washing over me like a tidal wave. The diarrhea hit first. While I was perched on the throne, I felt wrapped from head to toe in a wave of blast furnace-like heat. I felt too hot and I struggled to remove my long-sleeved shirt. My mouth was filled with a flood of water that often will happen preceding a bout of vomiting. The purge hit while my head was buried in my shirt. I barely got it off when the geyser burst forth. I was able to grab a nearby trash can to catch the explosion. Wave after wave of my stomach contents tumbled forth; filling the trash can to the remarkable depth of three inches deep. There was nothing left, but my body didn’t know that and dry retching continued. I’d eaten cabbage roll casserole earlier and I’m not sure I will ever try to eat it again. That sour taste lingered.
The loose bowel movements continued until I was passing clear fluids. The noise form my hyperactive bowels growled like a demon from a horror movie. I finally took a tablet of Imodium in an attempt to slow the tide. I was concerned that if I stemmed the tide of loose bowel movements, it might cause a back-up and I feared for the re-emergence of the vomiting.
The symptoms eased and Monday I mowed my yard. I had planned to mow Friday when my schedule was interrupted by my illness. Sitting inside on Sunday, I heard the sounds of my neighbor mowing his lawn. I felt sick again. My lawn was a mess, ragged with bare dandelion stem wagging in the breeze.
Overnight into Tuesday morning, the diarrhea returned, muscle aches added to my symptoms. I decided to seek professional help. The hyperactive bowel sounds had never stopped and now that the loose bowel movements had returned after the short pause, I wanted to be sure of the cause.
I visited a nearby emergency care center seeking reassurance or palliative care. After signing in, a physician’s assistant listened to my history and gave me the once-over physical examination, she pronounced me ill with a virus. I was doing everything correctly to counter the bug. She said as long as I was able to eat and remained hydrated; it should disappear in ten days to two weeks. How wonderful. I guess I need to lay in a supply of toilet paper.

I Will Survive

 The Walking Dead

I am back among the living and I am able to drive my car again. Not being confined to the house or begging for a ride is a major blessing and it improves my outlook on life immeasurably. The drive into Pittsburgh is always stressful for me. City driving, even as a passenger is not for me. Born and raised in the country, I am more used to back roads.

The Pennsylvania turnpike is okay, but I never liked narrow bridges or the tunnels. To me it is like there is no place to go, if someone decides to direct their car into your lane. There is no place to evade the other driver.

Driving through larger towns was easier for me to do when my wife, Cindy Morrison Beck was alive. She was a great navigator and my GPS keeping me updated and on course. Only one time in all of the years we were married did she misdirect me. We were in the Philadelphia area and the road branched. We took the wrong one and drove through a Puerto Rican neighborhood. It seemed that all the people were on their porch stoops playing dominoes.

On the trips out west, she was a faithful copilot, even though she had fallen off Festus, a mule assigned to her for a breakfast ride at camp. I’ve talked about the trip out west before. Seven adults, seventeen teenaged kids, were tenting for seventeen days. It was a wonderful trip and I saw things that I will never have the chance to see again.

Now, that I can drive again, I hope that the weather cooperates. Coming back from the doctor’s office today, we stopped for a few groceries. Arriving home, the Penn Dot plows had our drive filled with huge chunks of snow and ice. Slick ice had formed in the driveway and I had to take care walking as I helped to unload the car.

Anna knew that I couldn’t shovel snow today, my back was still hurting from the last few storms She took it as a personal insult that our drive was filled with the flotsam of snow. Hurrying into the basement, she attacked the piles with fury, stacking the offensive white stuff along the road below the drive where the plows would push it away.

I was left to traverse the treacherous ice slickened drive and carry in the groceries. After three massive trips that probably should have taken six to unload, it was finished. We were home safe and sound, waiting for the next storm to come, but I’d rather have spring.

This last bout of flu knocked the stuffing out of me. Vomiting, diarrhea, and muscle cramps filled an entire day of my life, leaving me feeling worn and weary. However I am improved. No more rushing the bathroom and fumbling to unfasten my pants. I am feeling that I will survive.

It All Started

 It All Started

I’m running late in posting this morning. Why? It all started last evening while at church for evening revival services. The need to use the bathroom was a necessary interruption. After church at home, my stomach began to rumble and grumble, bubble and boil. The sounds sounded like dead souls took up residence in my gut. The groans and wails soon drove me to perch on the commode. More and more often I became glued to the commode. My stool became looser and looser until it was a fountain of colored water being expelled.

While on the nest, I had a hot flash and pulled off my shirt. I had put on a heavy shirt because I had felt chilled. The hot flash quickly became nausea making my mouth water; soon to follow was the violent emptying of my stomach. Time after time, the nausea turned into vomiting. I grabbed the nearby trashcan instead of having to clean the bathroom after my perch of the john.

The trash can soon contained my stomach contents from the day before, my toe nails, and the calluses from the bottom of my feet. Wave after wave of intermittent diarrhea and vomiting swept over me. Now comes the trifecta. Muscle cramps made it nearly impossible to move without agitating the sharp painful pains.

I’ve survived. Not feeling well yet, but alive.

Slip Slidin' Away

 Slip Slidin’ Away

Sliding boards were fixtures in the playgrounds of my youth. Schools and parks had sliding boards, see saws, swings, “monkey bars,” and the “roundabouts’ or merry-go-rounds. These weren’t the rubber covered, plastic playground items like the playgrounds of today. These were monstrous, man-made objects with metal-pipe bones, rusty-chain sinews, sawdust blood, and concrete pads for feet. There were no safety rails for climbing up to the top of the eight foot tall or taller metal sliding boards. The exposed metal was sun baked in the midday sun waiting to sear any bare flesh that dared to come in contact with it.

If someone would jump off the seesaw the other end would plummet hitting the ground so hard that teeth would clatter shut. The “monkey-bar,” jungle gym rose from the playground like a skeleton of a naked high-rise apartment building. Often the rungs were wet with dew or rain allowing fingers to lose their grip and kids drop onto the hard earth below or ricochet off another iron pipe. Fingers would often be pinched in the rusty chains of the swing, tempting fate with the possibility of incurring the disease of lock-jaw or tetanus. And I haven’t mentioned the merry-go-round yet. There was nothing merry about that spinning disc of death. That spinning saucer was a risk every time a kid climbed aboard when there was another “friend” there. That friend would do their best to spin the thing as fast as possible hoping that someone would fly off to their death or become dizzy and vomit. Aw yes, the wonderful playgrounds of my childhood. They were definitely not OSHA approved.

My first sliding board memory was one on the playground in Sheridan, Illinois at the park of my Uncle Fred and Aunt Cora Miner Hyatt’s town. That metal monster seemed to be at least ten feet tall, but it did have metal handrails to assist the climber to the top. The flat metal slide would clutch at bare legs and arms, giving brush-burns to an unwary child.

There were other slides that I helped lubricate with sheets of waxed paper. The waxed paper minimized the drag and sped up the descent. The last slide I rode was the double humped metal camel at Mammoth Park, Pennsylvania. That beast was about one hundred feet long with a man-made bump near the middle. The steep descent would cause the rider to often lift into the air as he or she hurtled down the metal chute. The rider would shoot off the end of the slide into a muddy landing that could injure legs, arms, or butts. This amusement wasn’t for the fainthearted but for youthful daredevils.

Places I Have Been

 Places I Have Been

Before my stint in the Navy, the only places that I visited were with my parents. My dad Carl Beck was even more frugal than I am and we spent his vacations visiting relatives. The longest trip was to Florida to visit my aunt and Uncle Helen and Jake Stahl in Orlando. Shorter trips included visiting my aunt and uncle, Cora and Fred Hyatt in Sheridan, Illinois and to see my aunt and uncle, Ina and “Nicky” Nicholson in Millersport, Ohio.

For the time while in service to my country, I started basic training and Naval Corps School at Great Lakes training center in Illinois, spending the winter there. Then I was sent to Orlando, Florida from the chill of the north to the heat of Florida. My next assignment was to Keflavik, Iceland and travelled from the hot humid south to a chilly 60 degree weather.

After completing my nursing curriculum at the Fayette campus of Penn State, I was assigned classes at State College, Pennsylvania. After graduating, I found employment at Monsour Hospital then at Frick Hospital. After my marriage to Cindy Morrison, our next trip was to visit her relatives in Jamestown, New York. We also made a short trip into Canada before heading home. Cindy felt ill while we drove home. It was our introduction to parenthood. Cindy was pregnant with our first. Only my craving for greasy hamburgers alerted us to our later two pregnancies, but that’s another story.

Family vacations included Sea World, the Knoxville World’s Fair, a visit to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and to “The Wilds” church camp in North Carolina. The next major trip for me and the family was to “the Wilds of the Rockies.” It was part of the tenting trip out west with seventeen teens, seven adults, also touring multiple National Parks for seventeen days.

My next major trip was to Newfoundland/ Labrador Canada, driving most of the way then riding a ship to Nain and returning to Newfoundland. A trip to Cottonwood, Arizona for my son Andrew’s wedding to Renee Largent was next. Later my son moved to Amarillo. That was my next long distance travel.

I joined a friend on a trip to Elkins, West Virginia to ride the train to the ghost town of Spruce. I travelled with the same friend across the southern border of Pennsylvania, up the east side, back across the northern counties, finally returning home along the western border of our state. Fifteen days of waterfalls, battlefields, and hotels wore me out. I’ve been pretty much a homebody since then. I’m just wondering it’s time for another escape vacation.

Since then, I flew to California with that same friend to visit her aunt and visit sites in California. Now my travels are to a nearby Walmart to shop.

First Sleep

First Sleep

First sleep was a term that was used commonly until late in the 19th century. It was a biphasic sleep pattern where people slept in two distinct separated by one or two hours of wakefulness known as the “watch.” People would sleep roughly from 9 p.m. until midnight, wake to read or work for a few hours, then sleep again until dawn.

First sleep began shortly after sunset. It was characterized by several hours of deep and restful sleep. The interval, “The Watch” was a period of time that was used to read, pray, talk, or tend to chores. It faded and finally disappeared from our vocabulary, our pattern of speech, and our lifestyle with the rise of electrical lighting, industrialization, and a push by society for a consolidated 8-hour period of sleep. In summer’s impressive heat, the night cooled and created a time where it became more tolerable to complete tasks and the person was strengthened and refreshed.

If there is a first sleep, it follows that there was a second sleep. That was the return to slumber-land until rising again in the morning. In the past the time to rise was just before dawn when animals needed fed, chores needed done, and breakfast needed to be cooked. It was a time of sleep that completed the cycle of rest.

What also popped into my head was a trip taken with 17 teens out West tenting. We drove by a city in Wyoming called Ten Sleep. It was named by the Crow nation referring to a 10-day mid-point travel between Big Horn Mountains and Fort Laramie,

Lately I have fallen into a first sleep pattern getting drowsy in the evening after a strenuous day of small chores and watching television. My allergies cause pressure to build behind my eyes making suggestions to my brain that I need an evening of napping. Recently I have succumbed to that siren’s song and fallen into bed for a few hours of slumber. The midnight hour will tease me into full wakefulness and I am compelled to wake, rise, read, write, and pray. For some reason I am not drawn to go downstairs to sit in my recliner to watch some late night program on the boob tube. I don’t need to be rubbed the wrong way by some Leftist comedian who thinks that he or she is funny. Their comments have become political parodies that hurl only barbed insults at anyone who opposes their singular view of reality.

So after an hour or so of putzing around, I decide to go back to bed and sleep for another five or six hours before rolling out of bed to face another day.